By this morning, the weather had lifted, and whilst power had not yet returned to our quaint little cottage, we felt like our fortunes were changing for the better. With no means of cooking breakfast (or for Darren to make use of his ridiculously loud juicer), we headed out at around half eleven, and made our way to Ardbeg’s café for stomach-lining sustenance (which came in the form of a delicious crab chowder, followed by venison steaks). All in all it was good and hearty and just what we needed. If you’re ever on Islay, Ardbeg’s eatery is well worth a visit. More...

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.

More...

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...

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...

We ran our first official in-house whisky tasting last Thursday and all-in-all it was a rip-roaring success!

The tasting, led by Darren Rook – our tastings manager - was all about the Scotch regions, and the extraordinary variation there is in whisky from different parts of Scotland. Beginning with the lightest/gentlest whisky first, we journeyed (figuratively) to the Lowlands, with a single cask 19 year old Rosebank no less!

This was followed by the lower strength version of our single cask Tomatin 19 year old (Stephen Fry’s favourite whisky!), which offered up a fantastic array of barley, zest and malty sweetness.

Next was a charming Speysider: a 1987 BenRiach, bottled by Gordon and MacPhail. The refill American hoggie maturation resulted in a spicy, biscuity dram with oodles of creamy vanilla on the palate.More...