It’s a scary place, the brain of Ben.

It consists mainly of Alan Partridge and Father Ted episodes, cocktail recipes, and rain-man-esque recall of horsepower and torque figures for most production cars. There’s also usually something in there about whisky.

What I can tell you about the brain of Ben though, is that these Boutique-y whiskies have recently been upgraded from ‘a bit of fun’, to ‘something with a lot of potential’.

Because of this, you’re going to see a pretty decent number of new releases from brand spanking new distilleries over the next few weeks / months, and if the results of some of the recent whisky auctions are anything to go by, I think we’ll see them selling out in pretty short order.

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Gareth: We clung on, fingertips buried in the soft mulch of the steep hillside as the Spey roared dark and terrible in the late afternoon light, 60 feet below.

How had it come to this? Half an hour ago we'd been enjoying the rich, dark fruit notes of a Macallan 25yo. Now we faced the very real danger of plunging to our deaths in a raging torrent. Something had gone wrong somewhere, and it was only my third day on the job. More...