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...

A rather interesting package came in the post yesterday.

Now, we've seen several new expressions from The Famous Grouse in recent years - from the rather deliciously smoky Black Grouse, to the silky smooth grain whisky, the Snow Grouse and more recently the unbelievably popular Naked Grouse, which also won a prestigious world whiskies design award for the really rather beautiful bottle.

This, however, is the first time that another avian has been brought into the flock (sorry). More...

Japanese distillers made a fine showing last night at Whisky Magazine’s 6th annual World Whisky Awards.

Yamazaki scooped the coveted Best Single Malt Whisky award for its 25 Year Old expression, while Nikka won the Best Blended Whisky category with its Taketsuru 17 Year Old.

This marks the second year in a row Yamazaki’s has triumphed, with their sublime 1984 vintage taking home the best single malt prize in 2011.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...

Thursday/Thorsday last week was the day the Runes foretold, their arrival marked by the noise of the door buzzer as the DHL man arrived – just like the days of yore. They spoke of the coming of something that would require valour, and bravery (check and check), though sadly due to "the way of things", the Runes didn't arrive daily as a lead up to Thorsday. One arrived on Tuesday, the rest, on Wednesday. It was still quite dramatic though (let's just say it didn't Rune the surprise), even if they did come in either a fake felt pouch or a mauve mesh-bag-thing that a small girl would keep her jewellery in.More...

Note how careful I was with the punctuation there. It’s not that our online editor is wanted, but rather that we want an online editor.

If Mike - our current online editor- was wanted, it might at least go some way towards explaining his decision to move from the sunny, safe, really rather delightful climes of Royal Tunbridge Wells, to Perth. Nope, not that Perth (the sensible Perth, the Perth that’s within just a few miles of a load of great distilleries), the other Perth. The one in Australia. More...

I’m going to relay to you two phrases that I’ve uttered over the last few weeks which have genuinely made me chuckle maniacally to myself for about 5 minutes.

The first is unrelated to this post, but I think very pleasing anyway – “Look – all I need is for someone to find me a consignment of Fresh Sloes - how bloody difficult can that be” (incidentally, if anyone knows where I can get hold of a consignment of Fresh Sloes, there’s a bottle of something nice in it for you).

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So, a couple of Tuesdays ago, I had possibly one of the most random evenings of my life. And I'm not talking about the end of the evening, where Myself, Joel Harrison (one half of caskstrength.net), Dr. Whisky, and Pierre from off of that there Connosr ended up in a basement Sherry bar late in the evening arguing the finer points of the various Port Ellen releases over Manzanilla and nibbles. No. I'm talking about the launch of Aldi's 40 year old whisky.

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“Hey! Wait just one second. People are incorrectly spelling November and are growing things on their faces that suggest they shouldn’t be within a 500 metre radius of a school. What the devil is going on?”

Maybe that reaction was entirely made up, but it does give me an excuse to fully explain Movember to all who will lend an ear, and so here goes…

At Master of Malt, we’ve been loyal Movember supporters for ages, but for the past few years we’ve actively participated by launching our own, incredibly special, More...