The Maker’s Mark party line is a stoic stubbornness when it comes to quality and, in more or less every production process, Maker’s use slower and often out-dated techniques to maintain theirs as an incredibly smooth and supple bourbon.

Aside from production, the grain selection is a big factor in the overall flavour. Maker’s Mark is what’s called a “wheated bourbon” - distilled from a mashbill with no rye, and a higher content of wheat in its place. Rye is a spicy, heavy grain – like the Iron Maiden of the grain world, and wheat is mellower – like a cereal version of Lionel Richie. The omission of rye makes for a smooth and supple spirit that’s easy like Sunday morning. 

At every step it’s all about reducing harshness and retaining the distinctive character. More...

The Next Batch of Whisky Samples

The sun is shining, the sky is blue and the birds are just about to start getting on our nerves. But times are good, and after launching Drinks by the Dram – our whisky sample service – the Master of Malt offices have become organized chaos.

The samples are flying off the shelves and we’ve been flooded with emails and phone calls from you all, telling us how much you like them.

We’ve made a solemn pledge to keep adding loads and loads of new samples to the site every day, so this morning we gathered around the board table (sat in a huddle on the lawn) and came up with the day’s batch of whiskies to “dram” (turn into samples). More...

Imagine a world where you could try a glass of a whisky, or rum, tequila, even vodka for that matter, without having to buy the bottle first. A world with 100% customer satisfaction, and an end to buyer’s remorse! To literally try before you buy…

If you’ve got a little stash of whisky, you’ve also almost certainly got “that one bottle” (maybe even more than one) that just wasn’t quite what you expected, or wanted. Maybe it was too peaty, too sweet, or light, or rich, or maybe it just wasn't that good. More...

Signatory came up with an excellent game plan: find the best single cask whiskies in Scotland, and package them beautifully. Unsurprisingly, they’ve been very successful.

The range is staggeringly large, with an enormous breadth of whiskies from all sorts of Scotch distilleries; some silent, many still up and running, some grain whiskies and some from the most legendary distilleries in the world!

There are several different Signatory lines, but the jewel in the crown is the Cask Strength Collection. The range consists of natural cask strength whiskies, almost all of which are from single casks. Every time we’ve tried anything from the range we’ve been consistently delighted, so imagine our joy when a set of 5 samples arrived through the letter box!More...

Bruichladdich’s New Releases for 2010

The Bruichladdich distillery is one of Scotland’s most innovative. Their back catalogue is massive, and they are constantly finding new ways of breathing new life into a centuries old industry. 

Peating levels, barley strains and distillation methods are all fair game for their whisky alchemy and Jim McEwan, the Master Distiller at ‘Laddie, is an ardent fanatic when it comes to sourcing casks – they’ve used casks from first growth Bordeaux wineries – a 16 year old Château Lafite Finish for example - we’ve sampled a wonderful Guyanan rum finish and have even witnessed them delve into the occult with the 1989 vintage Black Art, finished in bourbon barrels and a medley of wine casks in the “stygian darkness of Warehouse No.12” (the tin and bottle are even emblazoned with a rather sinister looking pentagram!). More...

We’re proud to announce that we now stock whiskies from Adelphi. Over the years we’ve had the good fortune to sample quite a few Adelphi bottlings, and we’ve been very impressed, so we were thrilled when the new bottles arrived.

The Adelphi Distillery is actually one of the lost distilleries of Scotland, which operated from 1826 to around 1907. In 1880, the distillery was acquired by Messrs A. Walker and Co and it was Walker’s great-grandson, Jamie Walker, who restored the Adelphi name in 1993, but this time not as a distillery, as an independent bottler.More...

The third batch of Diageo’s Managers’ Choice whiskies is looming (which you can preorder from us now), following the first two batches in September 2009 and January 2010 (with the fourth and final batch set for May of this year). Ultimately the complete selection will feature a single cask bottling from every one of the 27 working distilleries owned by Diageo, which is a noteworthy feat, and quite a talking point amongst whisky drinkers. More...

When we flung open the MoM shutters this morning we were greeted with the sound of birds chirping and children playing as blissful sunshine poured into the room.

We’ve earned this summer, having had the coldest winter for 31 years! Just imagine our chagrin last year, when the Met Office promised us a “barbecue summer” and instead we were given drizzle, and lots of it.

Positive Weather Solutions (who have been a tad more reliable than the Met Office and have a pleasingly optimistic name) have predicted Summer 2010 to be a record breaker, with a good chance of temperatures exceeding 2003’s high of 38.5C. This is good news indeed. More...

Further to our prophetic post last week about Old Whisky, the release has been announced earlier today of the new Mortlach 70 Year Old - the oldest bottled Single Malt Whisky in the world. At a full 70 years old, this is one in the eye for Dalmore, whose recent super-high-end releases have never quite hit this magical age marker.

Bottled by Gordon and Macphail, an award-winning malt whisky specialist from Elgin – this super-luxury whisky has been produced and bottled in exceptionally small quantity from a Spanish Ex-Bodega Sherry Hogshead which was laid down in 1938. Click here to read more...

The presentation of whiskies of this age and calibre is paramount, and this release certainly does not disappoint. Presented in a crystal and Sterling Silver decanter, all housed in a hand-made box made from Brazilian Rosewood.

Whilst we’ve not (yet) tasted this world first of a dram, we can include below tasting notes from Charles Maclean..

Available now, and an absolute snip at only £9999!

Mortlach 70 Year Old

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All you avid whisky enthusiasts will know of our little (not so little) prize giveaway of last month. We’ve reached our 25th anniversary and we’re full of collective beans so we picked a 40 year old Glenfarclas off the shelf (worth £1,500!) and offered up 250 chances to win it – all entrants had to do was buy any full-size Glenfarclas from the site…

Now, the purpose of this post is twofold. Firstly, we wanted, very much, to revel in our own beneficence, as we join the list of history’s greatest philanthropists (Paul Newman, Bono, Matt Damon…) that’s right…

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