It was a wet and stormy winter’s night in the calendar season of spring when the note came. The wind swirled menacingly in the half-light. The atmosphere was tangibly foreboding. As I walked towards the front door of the building, the sense of dread built and a sudden, low and particularly long piano note could almost be heard. (The longer the note, the more dread.) I slowly opened the small black envelope that awaited me just inside the door, and the contents took me aback!

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I’m sure you’ll all remember the frankly fantastic couple of bottlings launched by the irrepressible duo from Caskstrength Neil and Joel in the past year or so?

First up was an Arran – a delight of a whisky with a frankly absurdly low outturn of only 92 bottles. This astonishing bottling rapidly sold out, and is now changing hands for hundreds of pounds on auction sites.

Second was an astonishing Benriach, matured for an impressive 16 years, and finished for 4 of those years in a Pedro Ximenez cask. This too, sold out in incredibly short order.

After ‘A’ for Arran, and ‘B’ for Benriach, must come ‘C’.

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Thursday was Jura Day. It started far too early for any of our liking, and lack of sleep is beginning to play heavily on people’s sanity; that and the midges.

We left in a hurry to catch the ferry at 8.30am, at the other side of the Island. You know, over there. 

It is not a long journey. In fact we reached Jura in about 4 and-a-half minutes, the malt mobile rolling off the boat and onto the rugged shore.Force of habit made us reach for the sat nav, to aid us in our navigation of the Island’s one, single track road. We were going the right way. 

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Thursday/Thorsday last week was the day the Runes foretold, their arrival marked by the noise of the door buzzer as the DHL man arrived – just like the days of yore. They spoke of the coming of something that would require valour, and bravery (check and check), though sadly due to "the way of things", the Runes didn't arrive daily as a lead up to Thorsday. One arrived on Tuesday, the rest, on Wednesday. It was still quite dramatic though (let's just say it didn't Rune the surprise), even if they did come in either a fake felt pouch or a mauve mesh-bag-thing that a small girl would keep her jewellery in.More...

The two most popular choices for whisky ageing - sherry casks and bourbon barrels - offer a totally different style of single malt and here at Master of Malt, we love both in equal measure. Just like with children, it’s wrong to have a favourite (unless one child is a maths-whiz-head-boy-sports-star-type, and the other is one of those miserable kids that dyes his hair black and combs it over his face, whilst complaining constantly about how “unfair it all is”). More...

Today we’re thrilled to announce the launch of Caskstrength.net’s first official whisky! Bottled to mark its 3rd Birthday, this is the first time any blog has released its own single malt, and we’re very proud to be the exclusive stockist!

Caskstrength.net was founded in 2008 by Neil and Joel, both formerly rival A&R men, working at Warner Bros and Island Records respectively. They formed the blog to share their love of whisky with friends and family, but since More...

Following our intrepid journey to Islay in May, we were invited back to brave the gale force winds and torrential rain to attend a very special event at the island’s youngest distillery.

We left early, and headed to Kilchoman for the launch of their new bottle, as well as a new limited edition, cask strength distillery-only number. More...