The Whisky Exchange BLOG

All kinds of cloak-and-dagger skullduggery from Glenfiddich in the last few weeks, clearly designed to engage the whisky blog community:

Part 1 - A cryptic email on 19th July from a PR flunkey, enquiring about our address and promising a ‘rather valuable’ parcel to arrive on 26th July.

Part 2 – An apologetic email on 27th July, explaining that as not all the whisky bloggers to be involved in the ’surprise event’ had supplied their addresses on time (naughty bloggers!), the parcels were being delayed, but would be sent out on Friday 30th for arrival early this week

Part 3 – A notification email on Tuesday 3rd August explaining that the parcel was to be sent on Wednesday on a pre-noon delivery.  What a palaver!

Part 4 – The arrival this morning of a locked wooden box, with instructions to watch my inbox (presumably for the combination to the lock). 

Read the rest of this entry >>

Welcome to the final part of this Whisky Tasting Pentathlon – a mini-marathon of whisky blogs on my recent tasting odyessy.

I was in St. James’s last week for one of Eddie Ludlow’s Whisky Lounge tastings – a run-through of several recent releases from Arran, in the delightful company of brand ambassador Céline Têtu, who came across very well despite the occasional interruptions of some noisy construction works outside the Red Lion pub in Crown Passage, where the tasting was held.  Friendly and informative, Céline’s cause was greatly helped by her fabulous Gallo-Celtic accent, which put me in mind, somehow, of the splendid Julio Geordio from the Fast Show (whose Youtube videos have all been taken down, boo). 

The compact, picturesque Arran distillery

Read the rest of this entry >>

Welcome to day two of my summaries of the last month’s tasting adventures, and it’s straight on with the show.

Next up in this Whisky Tasting Pentathlon is a highlight from Ian Logan’s tasting at Glenlivet during our press jolly.  Unfortunately we missed the first part of this tasting as we were busy interviewing Master Distiller Alan Winchester at the time, but we managed to get back at just the right moment to try this little beauty, bottled to celebrate the distillery’s extension.

That yummy Glenlivet Founders Reserve - hands off, plebs

Read the rest of this entry >>

Lord, it’s been hectic.  After a holiday in Bruges (3 days, 28 different beers and Lagavulin 16 at four euros for a double during happy hour at the hotel – nice), swiftly followed by our Glenlivet trip (and then trying to catch up on the resultant double backlog of work in the middle of the Father’s Day rush), my feet have hardly touched the ground this month. 

I’ve been lucky enough to be present at five really excellent whisky tastings during the last four weeks.  I’ve ticked off quite a few drams I hadn’t previously tried and a couple of forthcoming treats as well.  So, to catch up, I’m going to do a whisky blog post every (working) day until next Wednesday – one for each of the five great tastings I went to in the last month.

Happy punters at the Aberlour tasting

First up was an Aberlour tasting at TWE Vinopolis – follow the link and sign up for their newsletter if you fancy coming along to any of their splendid events.  The tasting was led by gregarious Pernod Ricard brand ambassador Phil Huckle, who was as charming and entertaining as ever, and supplied me with a great quote for my treasured stash: Churchill’s ‘Never trust a man with no redeeming vices’. 

Read the rest of this entry >>

It’s getting late on Friday, and suddenly three more samples are sitting on my desk.  Nothing new there, but these are from Signatory – I think this is the first time I’ve seen a sample from them. 

My main feelings for Signatory are largely warm and fuzzy thanks to a jaw-droppping quartet of cask strength Benriach 1975s that they showcased at Whisky Live in 2005.  I wasn’t a massive fan of cask strength whiskies at the time, but those bottlings…wow. (Some of you will have had them, I’m sure.  We still get asked about them, five years later). 

Read the rest of this entry >>

First up, an update on the Name That Bourbon competition: we’ve had well over a thousand suggestions so far, but still no winner - I did tell you that SDL are pretty picky!  Thank you all for your entries, especially the heroic Angus and Mike F who have contributed literally hundreds of names.  You’re all still in with a shout, though -  please, keep those entries coming to me at tim[at]thewhiskyexchange.com.  Don’t forget to check out the rules first, mind.

Now, the latest of our 10th Anniversary bottlings has just arrived – a Clynelish 37 year-old bottled at 46%.  It’s got high standards to live up to – I really enjoyed our recent Linkwood and Glenglassaugh and the rest of the bottlings have all been bloody good (if we do say so ourselves).  You can check out the other bottles we’ve done here.

I tasted this for the first time informally last night in the middle of a rather spectacular session in Sukhinder’s office (other highlights included the famous Rare Malts Brora 22yo and a wonderful 1980s Longmorn 12yo by Gordon & Macphail, but I digress).  I enjoyed it last night, but wanted to come at it fresh for my proper tasting notes, so here goes:

Read the rest of this entry >>

We were privileged to have Cooley distillery’s Noel Sweeney conduct a St. Patrick’s Day tasting for us at The Whisky Exchange in Vinopolis, showing off a range of their fine products. 

We started off with three examples of the new spirit from the recently-revived Kilbeggan distillery, which began distilling operations again in March 2007, meaning that the first of the new spirit has just reached the three years it requires to be called proper whiskey. 

Read the rest of this entry >>

Okay, so the London transport network is f@cked, there’s more snow due this afternoon and I live too far away from work to risk trying to get in and find myself stuck in Park Royal when I try to get home – nearly three hours it took me yesterday.

I’ve also managed to get myself temporarily barred from remotely accessing my work computer by getting my password wrong too many times (because I’m a total numpty). So in fact the only thing I can work at from home today is Wordpress.

Read the rest of this entry >>

Okay, so last night I was lucky enough to attend the press tasting of this year’s special Release from Diageo, the details of all of which are in my last post.  It was a fairly merry affair, although I wasn’t socialising much – firstly because on paper we only had an hour and a half to sample nine cask-strength malts, and secondly because I’m pisspoor at networking – as a card-carrying whisky nerd I can be quite nervous around new folk and whisky ’slebs, and I’m also very poor at feigning interest if I get stuck with someone really boring, which I find particularly excruciating.  Not that I encountered any boring people at last night’s tasting, I hasten to add – on the contrary, everyone that I did speak to was great.

Now, I like to think of my readers as intelligent types, with a healthy mix of up-to-date bespectacled middle-aged intellectuals perusing their laptops from the comfort of a big leather armchair in their libraries, alongside the thrusting, iconoclastic young whisky troubadours taking everything as it comes and making up their own minds on lots of important stuff. 

How I like to think of you all, reading Kerouac with a cup of java

Read the rest of this entry >>