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...

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...

On Monday we took the train up to London for an event we’d been looking forward to for some time. London in summer is quite possibly the best combination of city and season the world has to offer, it has to be said. So we were in high spirits as we arrived at the Saatchi Gallery for a Suntory tasting entitled “The Art of Japanese Whisky”. 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...

You’ve almost certainly seen the numerous posts about the Blogger’s Blend competition on the bloggers’ own websites. Just in case any of you missed it, you can read more here.

Well, it’s votin’ time. If you’ve bought yourself a Bloggers’ Blend set with samples of all the blends, you can vote for you favourites at the Blogger’s Blend Voting page. Look how shiny it is. It was crafted by the finest artisans, all of whom were gifted with an in-depth knowledge of jQuery and ASP.NET, just like the craftsmen of yore. We’ve selected AV as our voting method, so simply visit the page and order the blends by order of preference. More...

Sadly, when we awoke on Saturday, we discovered that there had been “poorly defined ferry issues”. This meant we couldn’t attend Ardbeg’s distillery day, and instead we had to pack our things and race across the island to reach the morning boat. You can imagine our chagrin. It looked to be a great day and the weather was splendid, complete with blue skies and, for the first time in over a week, we were thrilled to see our tired bodies were casting shadows on the ground. This felt like a good omen for our Lord of the Rings-style quest home (in this case, back to the Shire). More...

Well, as far as the world of whisky goes, it doesn’t come much bigger than a new release from Ardbeg. We don’t mind telling you that we’ve been absolutely fit to burst on this one for the last few days…

Whilst we were on Islay, we were offered a sneak preview of the New Ardbeg Committee bottling by distillery manager Mickey Heads on the strict understanding that we didn’t go shooting our mouths off until the bottling was out. Well, the day has finally arrived – we can talk about it. More...

Friday was Bunnahabhain’s distillery day...

As far as Islay distilleries go, Bunnahabhain is perhaps the least talked about among the Scotch cognoscenti, and whilst this is entirely unfair (due to the quality of the spirit), it is unsurprising in many ways. For a start the whisky isn’t particularly peaty, nor is not subject to any wild experimentation during production or maturation, and overall, well, it’s decidedly gentle. More...

We drove over to Kilchoman early in the morning, knowing the Feis Ile bottling would be in high demand. We were right too, as the queue of excited whisky lovers took up the entirety of the visitor shop and all of one of the distillery buildings. It was obvious by the sheer volume of people that Kilchoman is in very high demand and we ended up queuing for almost 2 hours to pick up our bottles, it was all worth it in the end though…

After a hearty breakfast of bacon, eggs, black pudding, white pudding and potato scones, we left the cottage for Bowmore. There were only 100 bottles of Bowmore’s official 2011 Feis Ile bottling, so we didn’t worry about turning up too early; there was literally no hope of picking one up. In fact, the die-hards had been camped out since the wee hours for a prized bottle. It begs the question why they didn’t simply make more. Oh well. More...