Another week and some more news from The Whisky Exchange Whisky Show…
First up is that our last masterclass is now on sale. Whyte & Mackay master blender Richard ‘The Nose’ Paterson will stop throwing whisky at people at their stand for an hour on Friday evening to host a deconstruction tasting of their newest blend – Mackinlay’s Rare Old Highland Malt, aka The Shackleton whisky. Tim’s done a rather thorough job of writing about the whisky before, but Richard will be along to delve more into the story and, more importantly, will let us sample some of the whiskies that went into the making of the blend.
Shackleton's Whisky - Mackinlay's Rare Old Highland Malt
He’s being uncharacteristically quiet and hasn’t told us exactly what he’s bringing along as yet, other than an aged Tamnavulin, some Glen Mhor (the closed distillery whose spirit is at the heart of the blend) and some heavily peated Dalmore, a whisky that we’ve only heard about through some lucky writers that Richard’s shared it with before. Tickets are £25 and you’ll also need to have a ticket to the Friday session or the whole weekend in order to attend – you can pick them all up over on our ticket page.
Next is a pile of rather exciting news about the various new bottlings that Speciality Drinks, TWE and associated entities will be releasing at the show. There’s a press release over on the show website, but here’s a quick run down:
Firstly there will be some new Elements of Islay bottlings: Kh1 (the first independent release from Islay’s newest distillery), Bn1 (another first in the Elements range), Lp3, and, fates willing, Pe5.
Lochside 1964 Single Blend / 46 Year Old
The flagship launch under the TWE banner will be our Lochside 1964 Single Blend, matured for 46 years. While a new Lochside is already a reason to rejoice – as it’s a closed distillery whose stock doesn’t appear very often and is generally quite tasty – this is quite special due to being a blend of grain and malt whisky both produced at the distillery. These spirits were then filled into the same cask in 1964 before being left to mature together. There aren’t many distilleries producing both grain and malt which makes Single Blends few and far between and this is the finest I’ve tasted yet. I recently took a bottle to the Maltstock festival in The Netherlands and was occasionally followed around like the Pied Piper of Hamlyn…
Along with the Lochside we have the successor to last year’s inaugural entry in our Masterpiece series, a Bowmore 1993. This is a more heavily peated Bowmore than usual and is rather intriguing, promising to be every bit as good as the excellent Longmorn 1978 that we bottled last year.
From Speciality Drinks we have a Karuizawa 1981, a Glen Garioch from the rapidly-becoming-legendary 1971 vintage (which I was cornered about a number of times at Maltstock), Single Malts of Scotland releases from Clynelish, Ardmore and Aberlour, and Whisky Trail bottlings from Caol Ila and Macallan.
Last, but my no means least, are our official show bottlings. These are being released specially for The Whisky Exchange Whisky Show and are very limited in numbers – we don’t expect many of them to survive the two days. Bottles include a 30 year old Brora, a 1983 Port Ellen, a Glenallachie from 1974, a 1999 Springbank and a 17 year old Caol Ila.
If you come by the Speciality Drinks stand you’ll probably find me or Tim armed with a number of the bottlings ready to share a dram and have a bit of a natter. All of these whiskies will be available to take home on the day, thanks to us having our usual expansive range on site in our Vinopolis shop.
Anyways, if you haven’t got a ticket for the show yet you can get one over on The Whisky Show website – be quick as we’re filling up fast…
Enjoy responsibly