Cream Gin - £41.95

It’s fair to say that I’ve been a fan of the guys from Fluid Movement (the team behind The Worship Street Whistling Shop, Purl, and the new Dach and Sons) for a while now. In fact, I reviewed Purl almost 18 months ago here should you care to read about it.

It was a somewhat off-the-cuff suggestion that we ‘do something together’ made whilst at the Whistling Shop about this time last year which has ultimately led to the situation of us jointly launching the first retail product from this team of really very clever chaps.

So, without further ado – I give you ‘Cream Gin’. The main ingredient in the Whistling Shop’s signature cocktail – The Black Cat’s Martini.

This really quite marvellous concoction is the brain-child of The Whistling Shop’s erstwhile head barman, and all-round mixological genius, Ryan Chetiyawardana.

In the name of journalistic plausibility, and to make for a better read, I briefly forgot all about the extensive NPD conducted for the product, and the fact that I now know more about vanillin content and fat globule homogenisation than any man has the right to, and caught up with Ryan for a brief Q&A:More...

So. We launched our Navy Strength Bathtub Gin about a month or so ago, and it’s already doing really rather well. It’s kind of a given that we had to follow this up with a Navy Strength version of the incredibly popular vanilla-and-christmas-spices-laden spiced rum – Rumbullion! It’s almost* like there’s some sort of planning going on.

For the Navy Strength version of Rumbullion, we’ve taken the same basic recipe, and simply scaled up the vanilla, sugar and spice content in line with the ABV (ie – it’s not intentionally spicier and punchier, like the Bathtub is). The reason for this is pretty straight-forward – Rumbullion! is already a pretty aggressively spiced little number as it is, and the Navy Strength version was more than capable of standing up to the initial ABV at the same proportional concentration.

Incidentally - if you’ve not tried the Navy Strength Bathtub Gin yet – it’s sort of like being kicked in the face by a Gin-Soaked Santa Claus. Really quite fantastic, and absolutely laden with Christmas spices - it don’t ‘alf pack a punch.

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Pretty awesome huh?

I've lost count of the number of times I've been asked - either by bar owners, or just experiment-loving whisky-geeks - whether we can get hold of little diddy casks for them to mature stuff in.

So – ladies and gents – here we are: 4 different cask sizes from 1 litre to 50 litres, all provided with a diddy little bung to go in the top of the cask, and all with a nice little tap from which to dispense your very own cask-aged products.

They’re made from 100% Fresh Kentucky Oak, and have been toasted to a medium level (maybe medium-heavy). As with ‘normal’ casks, the ends are un-toasted. In the name of science, I took the hoops off one of the 5 litre ones and bashed it to bits for you to see the way they’re charred for yourselves.

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Those of you who’ve been paying attention may remember that back in February of this year, we ran a little competition – the purpose of which was to get you lot to guess the ingredients in a yummy new cocktail we’d invented. The winner of this competition then went on to name the cocktail  (I won’t reveal it, as it’s going to be launched in full 70cl glory at some time in the next month or so).

In order to facilitate this competition, we made samples of the cocktail available in cute little 20cl versions of the standard bottle used for The Handmade Cocktail Company’s wares.

The more observant amongst you may remember that the little 20cl bottle was labelled as part of the ‘experimental series’? Well – today we’re revealing the purpose behind that ‘experimental’ moniker.

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Today Bowmore made a monumental announcement that they are releasing the oldest Islay Single Malt ever produced, ever… 

Bowmore is the oldest distillery on Islay and is famous for producing extraordinary bottlings such as the Black Bowmore and the White Bowmore, as well as their better known (and more affordable) Bowmore 12 Year Old and Bowmore 18 Year Old. In addition to these they have also produced the tasty sherry cask Bowmore Darkest and the stormy cask strength bottling of the Bowmore Tempest.

This, however, is the Bowmore 1957, which was bottled in 2011 after 54 years of cask ageing. In 1995 a number of casks of Bowmore were bottled, but one cask was kept in the legendary Bowmore  No. 1 Vaults, the oldest maturation warehouse on the island. This cask has been monitored every six months until it was deemed to have reached perfection.

The bottles have been beautifully hand-blown and sculpted into the shape of the waves that pound the walls of No. 1 Vault by renowned glass artists Brodie Nairn and Nichola Burns. The glass has also been flecked with platinum to create a shimmering sea-like effect.

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So – Summer’s here. Sort of. From time-to-time. When it’s not flooding or what-have-you.

With this in mind, Professor Cornelius Ampleforth has turned his attention to perhaps the most quintessentially British drink that there is – the Summer Fruit Cup.

Now – it’s worth noting that there are several other cups on the market, from the Ubiquitous Pimm’s, through several distillers’ own recipes (Chase is rather good – coming soon – watch this space) to the really rather excellent Sipsmith. There was one thing that the Professor had deemed to be missing from all of these concoctions though – pure, distilled Madness*. More...

Today we’re thrilled to announce the launch of Caskstrength.net’s first official whisky! Bottled to mark its 3rd Birthday, this is the first time any blog has released its own single malt, and we’re very proud to be the exclusive stockist!

Caskstrength.net was founded in 2008 by Neil and Joel, both formerly rival A&R men, working at Warner Bros and Island Records respectively. They formed the blog to share their love of whisky with friends and family, but since 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...

Are you a single malt drinker of discerning tastes? Do you have the cocked eyebrow and furrowed brow of a whisky aficionado of esteem and worldliness?

Well, we regularly cock our eyebrows and furrow our brows (as evidenced by the photo of the devilishly charming Sir Roger Moore below).

We also find that most whisky liqueurs are too sweet for our liking. And are often made with cheap grain whisky, instead of top quality single malt. Eurrghh! This will not do!

So we decided to do something wholly unthought-of – we created a whisky liqueur for the single malt connoisseur.

This was much, much easier said than done though, in fact this liqueur has been literally months in the making. More...