We are currently in the midst of The Balvenie Whisky Fête, which runs from 13th-15th June, with many of you no doubt planning on heading down there this weekend.

London’s Tavistock Square Gardens has been transformed into a whisky wonderland complete with two handcrafted domes made from cask staves as well as The Balvenie Craftman’s Bothy. David Stewart, the great Malt Master who has who has worked at the distillery for over 50 years is on hand to run tutored tastings amongst various other workshops and goings on.

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It's fair to say that Feis Ile aka That Boutique-y Whisky Company On Tour 2013 was a rip-roaring success! Enjoyment was had by all, 3 fantastic Competitions were run and entered into with rabid enthusiasm. And nobody died, either! Great success.

From our Distillery Dog Peaty getting lost (and getting found again) to our Message in a Bottle Islay Treasure Hunt, to loads of you literally flagging us down with the signal, you (yes, you) all made this our best Fèis Ìle yet! We’re already hard at work planning next year’s shenannigans...

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The final day of Feis Ile 2013 was of course Ardbog Day! Although thoroughly shattered, we nonetheless dragged ourselves down to the Kildalton coast with dogged enthusiasm!

(The good thing about Ardbeg of course is that they have Ardbeg there. Mmm... Ardbeg.)

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‘International Port Ellen Day’ 2013 (#iPed2013), organised by the one and only Jon Beach, took place on the Friday during Fèis Ìle this year.

First though, we paid a visit to Bunnahabhain and even solved the mystery of what really happened to the nearby Wyre Majestic, now shipwrecked off the coast...

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It seems that everywhere we've gone this week people have been talking about one thing in particular: the mysterious bottles that have washed up on the shores of Islay containing messages written by "Doc" Emmett L. Brown way back in 1859!

This was, as you may know unless you've been living under a rock (you do read all my blogs with avid enthusiasm, right?), part of our third competition for Feis Ile 2013. Everybody who found a bottle was told to meet at the clock tower at Laphroaig distillery at 12 noon on Wednesday 29th May 2013 - their prize for doing so was a full bottle of That Boutique-y Whisky Company's brand new Caol Ila (worth £54.95) AND the chance to feature on our next cultish comic book-style label!

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The day ended with a game of Islay-opoly where three people landed on Caol Ila at the same time at one point (apt).

That morning we had headed over to Port Askaig, to that very distillery, to continue the search for our lost dog Peaty...

Have you seen him?

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Saturday 25th May 2013 was Lagavulin Day at the Fèis Ìle but more importantly it was the day that the Master of Malt team ‘uncovered’ a number of priceless bottles of Malt Mill new-make spirit.* It was previously believed that only one bottle, from the final filling, was crudely preserved for posterity when this near mythical distillery closed its doors in 1962. Extraordinarily, we now know that a further four bottles have survived from the second-to-last right down to the to the fifth-to-last fillings.** A spokesperson has said that it is “unlikely” that any further bottles are still out there.

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Last week was quite a week.

Tuesday evening saw the MoM team in the opulent surroundings of the Dorchester hotel, having been nominated for not one, but two awards at the highly prestigious Drinks Retailing Awards – organised by Off Licence News. Spoiler alert: We won them both.

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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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