Browsing Posts in: SPIRITS & LIQUEURS

Gin is far from a simple beast. As a whisky geek, I looked down on white spirits for many years until I started looking into how they are actually made. Making a distilled gin –…

Father’s Day is just over a week away on Sunday 21 June, and it’s one of our busiest times of the year – you all seem to like buying drinks as presents for your dads. As…

It’s that time of year: World Gin Day is rapidly approaching – Saturday 13 June. Yet again I’m using it as an excuse to tell you about some of the weird and wonderful new gins…

Now, stick with me – this is going to sound a bit weird: I like Jack Daniel’s Honey. That’s not the sort of admission you’d expect a whisky geek to make, but after extensive sampling…

Every country has its national spirit. Some are better known: the Caribbean has rum, England has gin, and Poland and Russia have vodka; others are lesser known: Unicum in Hungary and soju in Korea. China’s is baijiu. The world’s…

George Clooney is now very much the country gent, following his marriage to a British barrister and recent house-hunting expedition in the English countryside. But when it comes to drinking, he hasn’t quite acquired a…

Scotland now has its first potato vodka – the Jarron family at Hatton of Ogilvy Farm began distilling there for the first time in September last year. The farm has been in the same family…

Ask a room full of people what the world’s best-selling spirit brand is and you’ll no doubt end up with a variety of answers: Smirnoff, Bacardi, Johnnie Walker, Jack Daniel’s. In fact, it’s none of…

Cleo Rocos is recognisable to many for her TV career in the 1980s and 1990s, most notably as co-star of The Kenny Everett Television Show. These days she is known for being the queen of…

Campari is one of the most iconic of Italian drinks. Its popularity has waned in the UK over the past couple of decades, but with the current cocktail renaissance slowly spreading out across the country,…

Telecoms-project-manager-turned-distiller Phil Brandon founded Rock Town in 2010, the first legal distillery in Arkansas. While he’s based in downtown Little Rock, he spends a lot of time on the road, travelling around the USA and…

South American cuisine and drinks are enjoying something of a heyday at the moment. We’ve fallen for the delights of ceviche, empanadas and Caipirinhas as quickly as we once did for enchiladas, tacos and Margaritas….

There are many drinks that attribute their creation to a historic moment, but one trumps them all (especially as it’s actually true) – The King’s Ginger. In 1903, newly crowned King Edward VII had taken…

Although we’re known for whisky and fine spirits, we also have a carefully chosen selection of that most celebratory of drinks, Champagne. We’re always looking for new and exciting additions to our range, too, and have…

For the past year, we’ve been naming a Malt of the Month. We’ve had some excellent drams, with great  special offers, from old favourites like Laphroaig 10 and Highland Park 12, to lesser-known gems like…

Cinzano is so ingrained in drinking culture, it’s almost taken for granted. I was first made aware of it by one of those famous mirrors that adorned so many households in the 1970s, as well…

Italy at the turn of the 20th century was a strange place. Having become a unified country in the middle of the 1800s, the new state had changed a lot, but was still steeped in tradition,…

Some brands are synonymous with their categories – Hoover (vacuum cleaner), Bic (biros), Disaronno (amaretto). And in the world of cherry brandy, the daddy of them all is Cherry Heering. Officially called Heering Original Cherry…