Well, as we write this post we’re basking in the warm glow of the candelabra, and the unforgiving light of a laptop screen, which is down to its last 20% of battery life. That’s right, there’s been a powercut. Just like the story of the optimist and the pessimist… The pessimist says: “this is terrible, it can’t possibly get any worse!” the optimist says: “oh yes it can…”

Right now it’s cold, dark, damp and miserable outside, but we’re soldiering on.

Today began promisingly, with Caol Ila’s open day, though the weather was not on our side. We parked on a grassy hill in force 10 gales, and were gracefully ushered to the distillery bus by what felt like a hurricane. We then drove down to the Caol Ila distillery, the most remote on the island.

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...

With Father’s Day encroaching, we’ve teamed up with the good folks over at Glenfarclas to offer you a frankly mind-boggling whisky giveaway. In fact, we can hand-on-heart tell you that we’re offering you our best prize yet! Drum roll please…

We are giving you the chance to win a 50 year old, single cask bottle of Glenfarclas, worth £3,995! More...

You may have already heard about the Bloggers’ Blend from some of the bloggers themselves, but for those of you who are less acquainted with what some people are already calling “one of the things happening in 2011”, allow us to tell you a little bit about our latest venture…

It all started one day, when we were thinking about creating our next whisky. We wanted to come up with a whisky like no other; a true classic which would not only taste incredible, but also be great value for money as well.

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We hope you’ve had a wonderful Easter! It’s been a very eventful past couple of weeks for everyone, and we’ve certainly had more than our fair share of barbeques, cocktails and general revelry (there was some kind of wedding on at the weekend, apparently).

In other news, we have some new products to announce (for real this time, this isn’t another April Fool), and we’re sure they’ll be the topic of much enjoyment, discussion, and possibly even a little controversy.

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After one of the most catastrophic natural disasters of recent years, there has been some speculation about nuclear radiation in products exported from Japan. Several countries, as well as the EU, have called for testing and certification of Japanese products prior to export, though this has yet to be controlled at a government level in Japan. More...

It’s a trend we’ve seen emerging for many years, that of bartenders mixing their own versions of the Manhattan, Rob Roy, and other Classic cocktails, then bottling them and simply leaving them alone to mature (sometimes for many years) before stirring and serving.

We’ve sampled absolutely superb examples at (in our opinion) a couple of the best bars in the world; 69 Colebrook Row and Purl, and are seeing the trend spread out into more and more cocktail bars throughout the UK.

Whilst Bottle-aged cocktails are appearing in tremendously forward thinking bars these days, they are also a revival of techniques used by infamous pre-prohibition bartenders such as Thomas Handy in the early 1900s. Handy, famous for the invention of the Sazerac Cocktail is recorded to have pre-bottled his potent mixture of liquor to serve to patrons in the renowned Merchants Exchange Coffee House, New Orleans. More...

We've had an incredible reaction to the release of the 105 year old Aisla T'Orten whisky, with its asking price of just £870,000.

But, now we must tell you the truth... More...

There are few moments like this in history; moments which involve something daring and utterly extraordinary. Moments that no one will ever forget.

For us, the Chaps at Master of Malt, this might just be our biggest moment yet…

We’ve discovered the world’s oldest whisky. What’s more, it’s more than a century old. This, ladies and gentleman is an absolutely spectacular achievement, and one that will hopefully go down in the annals of whisky history.

We are proud to announce… More...