It all started so well. The Master of Malt Mobile was pimped, packed with drams and a simply outrageous selection of fine booze, and we were ready to go by 9.30am… not bad going I think you’ll agree.

We’ll be doing a bit of entertaining in Islay, so we packed our entire range of Vintage Cocktails, a selection of whisky and a few special bottles including Glenfarclas Cognac Cask, a single cask Ardbeg 1993 (more on this in coming weeks – yes – it’s going to be a new bottling from MoM), and a 28-year-old Port Ellen.

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I know what you’re thinking: The shock! The horror!

Scratch that. You’re thinking: I know. Boring. Old news. Who gives a doodle?

Full disclosure: until 3 March, 2010, I was a whisky hater. Full on. In my youth, I partook of the occasional whisky sour, but that was in an attempt to sound sophisticated to a bartender who could not care less about my ingénue posturing. Mostly, I just couldn’t stand the stuff. More...

Okay, so here’s the thing – I’ve got a reasonably good idea. It’s a secret for now, but won’t be for much longer – in fact to those of you with reasonably astute imaginations, the cat’s probably out of the bag already. The idea hinges on being able to find sources of Juniper which are specific to one particular location, and to be honest I’m drawing a little bit of a blank.

Now it’s worth pointing out that as I type this post, I have a rotavap going behind me, I’m planning the details of a trip to Islay, ordering some Vinyl Graphics for our car (more on that later), working out the final details of a business trip to Poland, planning for a visit to the Tanqueray distillery next week, sorting out tastings for the lovely folk at Selfridges and Harvey Nichols, finalising a gin for The Spectator, and there was one more thing as well… oh yes – ‘running a whisky business’. So – it’s probably fair to say that perhaps I’ve not gone as far as I can down the road of investigating each and every producer in the world, or contacting every friendly distiller to try and prise out of them the details of from whence their juniper came, but I’ve had ‘a bit of a crack’.

This, dear readers is where you, and the bounty come in. More...

The weather may have thwarted the brave Walking with the Wounded team’s attempt on the summit of Everest, but their journey is still an inspiring story.

And tonight, they will commiserate by staging the world’s highest ever whisky tasting, streamed live on Glenfiddich's website at 7pm tonight. Technology eh? More...

Magic happens on the darkest night according to Bowmore, and to prove it the company recently employed some of the dodgiest Scottish accents in North London to guide a group of slightly bemused drinkers through “a sensory-filled journey of exploration that conjures mystery, myth and legend.”

Some things are better in the dark. Nightclubs, hiding from people, sleeping… being Fred West… It’s an exhaustive list. Bowmore’s exploration of darkness and/or novel marketing strategies didn’t include any of these things, but we did get to try Bowmore 15 Darkest (do you get the theme yet? Do you?).More...

We had to double check this first to make sure it wasn’t late April Foolishness, but it seems Ardbeg really has boldly gone where no other whisky has gone before.

Yes… they’ve sent Ardbeg to the International Space Station at 25,000 mph, which we believe is just short of Ludicrous Speed. 

Well, to be strictly accurate they’ve sent new make spirit, so it’s Ardbeg, but not as we know it…at least not yet.

Because the point of this extra-planetary excursion is not to make the lives of the crew more bearable by providing them with delicious peaty whisky, but to explore the effects of zero gravity on the mysterious maturation process.

Along with the new make, samples of oak have been blasted into the earth’s orbit where the reactions between the two will be noted and closely compared to control samples back on earth.

A US team will closely monitor the experiment both in Houston, Texas, at the NanoRacks' facility, and also in Warehouse 3 at Ardbeg Distillery. More...

Well - last week was quite a week. Further to staying up unfeasibly late on Tuesday drinking Hot chocolate and Lemonade into the wee hours with the lovely folk at Glenfarclas and Pol Roger, I was invited to judge the World Whiskies Awards on the Wednesday evening (an amazing showing all round, the results of which can be found here). .

Following that, I was up bright and early (ish) to present at the World Whiskies Conference on Thursday afternoon (I didn’t say any rude words during the course of my speech. I am proud of this).

After the world whiskies conference was the World Whiskies Awards, whereupon myself and another couple of directors were left at a table, unsupervised by any kind of grown-ups, in the presence of a bottle of Kavalan Solist, and a Batch 30 bottle of Aberlour a’Bunadh. More...

Tullamore Dew is returning to its spiritual home after 58 years with the announcement that William Grant & Sons will be building a new distillery in Tullamore town itself. 

The company, which also owns Glenfiddich and several other brands you’ll be not unfamiliar with, acquired Tullamore Dew in 2010. Second only to Jameson in the popularity stakes, sales of the Dew are growing by 15% annually according to William Grant & Sons, and production from the new distillery is intended to sustain the long-term demands.

Work on the new distillery is scheduled to begin later this year, subject to planning permission, and from the sound of it, it’s intended to be something of a showpiece for Irish whisky. More...

Maths, hepatitis, civil aviation… what do they have in common? Obviously they should all be avoided wherever possible but there is one more thing – all have their own day.

In fact, through detailed research conducted over the course of two entire minutes I've found the list of things that have their own day is longer than the queue at a Greek job centre.

So it was a travesty, nay an outrage, that whisky did not have its own day… until now. Yes, at last whisky has joined the exalted ranks of things that have their own day – left handed people, pirates, children, left handed pirate children… the list goes on. More...

Fans of Bushmills and rough sleeping may want to head over to the brand's Facebook page where you can bag a ticket to an exclusive whiskey-orientated music festival.

Bushmills Live, as the name implies, will be based around watching live music while drinking Bushmills; there are definitely worse ways to spend a June weekend.

Held at the Bushmills distillery in Northern Ireland, bands will perform in the distillery buildings themselves, which is a good thing as being Ireland in June it will almost definitely rain. More...