Hot on the heels of our success at the Off License News Drinks Retailing Awards, the World Whiskies Awards 2013 were presented last week at the Waldorf Hotel in London, and, erm, we cleaned up again*.

I’m not going to re-hash the recent blog post I wrote about our success at the OLN awards, but suffice it to say, there’s a reasonable-length post here about the innovations and initiatives we’ve launched in the past 12 months. It’s well worth a read if you’ve not already.

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For those of you hitherto unfamiliar with them, our ‘Secret Bottlings’ series of Single Malts have long been a staple of our core range of Master of Malt branded whiskies. They provide exceptionally well-aged whiskies at a price that seems utterly unthinkable in today’s world of 5-figure 50 year olds, and six figure 54 year olds.

The secret with these whiskies has always been that we’ve released them without the name of the distillery present on the label, hence preserving the distillery in question’s brand equity, and allowing us to buy them at a fraction of the price that would be possible if the distillery’s own name was on it.

A bit more on that, because I’ve just read it back, and it sounds suspiciously like marketing bullshit. I’ll expand:

If a distillery (let’s call it Glenyummy) has a certain number of customers (X) for its standard 12yo whisky, the chances are they’ll have a customer-base of about 0.05X for their 18yo expression, 0.0005X for their 30yo expression, and 0.0000005X by the time they hit anything over a few hundred quid. More...

That Boutique-y Whisky Company's first four releases

Those of you who inhabit the twittersphere may have noticed that we’ve copped a bit of flak recently from the hardcore whisky community out there. The reason? Well – we keep releasing products (steady yourself dear reader) other than whisky.

Gin, Absinthe, Summer Fruit Cups and the like are all well and good, but, well, they’re not whisky. So – in a twin-pronged attack designed to 1) make my life easier whenever I meet ‘whisky people’, and 2) do something almost unspeakably cool – we’re launching a whole brand-spanking new independent bottling label.

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Well - last week was quite a week. Further to staying up unfeasibly late on Tuesday drinking Hot chocolate and Lemonade into the wee hours with the lovely folk at Glenfarclas and Pol Roger, I was invited to judge the World Whiskies Awards on the Wednesday evening (an amazing showing all round, the results of which can be found here). .

Following that, I was up bright and early (ish) to present at the World Whiskies Conference on Thursday afternoon (I didn’t say any rude words during the course of my speech. I am proud of this).

After the world whiskies conference was the World Whiskies Awards, whereupon myself and another couple of directors were left at a table, unsupervised by any kind of grown-ups, in the presence of a bottle of Kavalan Solist, and a Batch 30 bottle of Aberlour a’Bunadh. More...

Finally we’ve arrived at the halfway milestone; that point in Movember when our upper lips no longer look lazy and unkempt, but instead play host to genuine moustache excellence. The chaps at Master of Malt are now fully fledged mo-wearers, and could proudly play the lead role in the upcoming biopic of Tom Selleck that I’m secretly writing when Ben’s not looking. That is, aside from one of the new “placement stiaowdents” and our MD, Justin, both of whom now must cope with ridicule and social ostracism for their inability to develop anything more than a shadow under their noses. They live with their shame.

Onto the really important stuff, so far, just halfway through Movember 2011, we’ve raised £5,135! Cripes! We’ve done this by selling our marvellous Movember whisky – a stunning 9 year old Glenfarclas drawn from two casks. We’re selling the bottle for £39.95 and you can read full tasting notes here. More...

Created by the “madcap” Professor Cornelius Ampleforth, the romantically- and SWA-appeasingly-named Proprietary Barley Spirit Drink combines the Professor’s signature love for infusin’ and mixin’ with his passion for whisky and the ways and techniques of yore. Yes, yore.

For this thrilling instalment, Ampleforth turned to Spain, and to the mountainous countryside that surrounds Pajarate. It was here that Paxarette was born; a dark, syrupy liquid made by boiling down grape juice and fortified wine. In the past, the Scotch whisky industry made use of Paxarette to season casks, simply by pouring this rich flavouring into the wood, to help impart a fuller, richer sherry character into the whisky that was aged in them.More...

It must be said, we’ve been on a bit of a bottling frenzy recently; in the last few of months alone we’ve put our name to four new casks, including an incredibly bourbon-rich North British, a big, complex Cragganmore, a rich and spicy Dalmore, and an impressively malty Inchgower!

Today we have another new addition to the Master of Malt range, in the form of an utterly delicious number from Dailuaine (pronounced Dall-YEWan). More...

We gave a few whisky bloggers a simple brief: come up with a great cocktail using our 8 year old blended whisky. We’ve had some great responses, and today’s cocktail is no exception! This recipe was sent to us by Gal Granov who writes the brilliant blog “Whisky Israel”, which is a great source of tasting notes and whisky reviews (despite being written in a country with an incredibly high tax on spirits!). So without further ado… More...

Father’s Day 2011 (Sunday 19th June) is encroaching, and as a whisky retailer we feel dutifully obliged to recommend that you buy your papa a gift he will actually enjoy, and not another pair of socks. In a bid to save father/child relationships the country over, we’ve compiled a list of the socks you were going to get him, and the whisky-related merchandise you should really get him instead. More...

It all began a few weeks ago…

We received a brochure through the door at MoM towers from Adnams Brewery, advertising the range of wines they sell under their own label. More often than not, generic marketing materials such as this would end up swiftly filed under ‘B’, but in this instance, we had a quick flick through as Adnams are a pretty superb brewery, making one of our absolute favourite beers ‘Broadside’ - a 4.7% abv bitter that’s arguably one of the best on the market in the UK. It was only upon turning to the centre page of the brochure however, that we came across something that made us do a double-take. A chuffing great Carl Still sitting in front of a huge window looking out over the beautiful seaside town of Southwold. More...