Another month (well, nearly – it’s been over 3 weeks), another clutch of supremely awesome whiskies bottled by That Boutique-y Whisky Company. This time we’re bringing you whiskies from Brora, Arran, Tobermory, Tormore and Aberfeldy.

Sadly, one of these beauties has already sold out (no prizes for guessing which I’m afraid), but the rest are still available for your delectation:

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Yep.

Seven.

Like a striding colossus of the whisky industry powered by pure inspiration, awesomeness and zeitgeist*, That Boutique-y Whisky Company have brought you not one, but seven brand new releases, as well as a second batch of Aberlour.

Without any further ado:

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I like the Langham Hotel.

I like the Landau restaurant within the Langham Hotel, recently taken over by Albert and Michel Roux Jr. especially as there's a lunch menu which will allow you change from £80 for two people… We'll get onto the whisky in a bit. Patience.

I *really* like the hotel's bar – Artesian, the meeting place for the launch of Glenmorangie's newest addition to their Private Collection. Ealanta. In the last couple of years Artesian has come on leaps and bounds under the supremely competent stewardship of Head Bartender Alex Kratena.

It's possible to get one of the best Martinis in London at the bar in Artesian—The Langham Martini (and for almost £20 including service, it wants to be) and on Wednesday evening I did just that.

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It’s a scary place, the brain of Ben.

It consists mainly of Alan Partridge and Father Ted episodes, cocktail recipes, and rain-man-esque recall of horsepower and torque figures for most production cars. There’s also usually something in there about whisky.

What I can tell you about the brain of Ben though, is that these Boutique-y whiskies have recently been upgraded from ‘a bit of fun’, to ‘something with a lot of potential’.

Because of this, you’re going to see a pretty decent number of new releases from brand spanking new distilleries over the next few weeks / months, and if the results of some of the recent whisky auctions are anything to go by, I think we’ll see them selling out in pretty short order.

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Well that last batch of Boutique-y whiskies certainly sold quickly. Terrifyingly quickly in fact.

Apologies to all those who didn’t get one from the first edition of the Ardbeg, Macallan or Caperdonich – but fear not – the second batches of all of these are now here, and available for purchase. You’ll notice that all three of them have the new batch number, new ABV, and a minor change to the illustration on each of the labels just to keep it interesting. You’ll also notice that the Caperdonich is cheaper than last time. Don’t say we never do anything nice for you.

We’re working on getting you another Port Ellen release* – more details on this as and when we’re successful.

So – now on to the next whiskies to be added to the series. It was pointed out to me today that completely by accident, we’ve selected 4 Speyside Whiskies, all beginning with ‘a’ and ‘b’. Not planned, just a weird coincidence…

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For those of you hitherto unfamiliar with them, our ‘Secret Bottlings’ series of Single Malts have long been a staple of our core range of Master of Malt branded whiskies. They provide exceptionally well-aged whiskies at a price that seems utterly unthinkable in today’s world of 5-figure 50 year olds, and six figure 54 year olds.

The secret with these whiskies has always been that we’ve released them without the name of the distillery present on the label, hence preserving the distillery in question’s brand equity, and allowing us to buy them at a fraction of the price that would be possible if the distillery’s own name was on it.

A bit more on that, because I’ve just read it back, and it sounds suspiciously like marketing bullshit. I’ll expand:

If a distillery (let’s call it Glenyummy) has a certain number of customers (X) for its standard 12yo whisky, the chances are they’ll have a customer-base of about 0.05X for their 18yo expression, 0.0005X for their 30yo expression, and 0.0000005X by the time they hit anything over a few hundred quid. More...

That Boutique-y Whisky Company's first four releases

Those of you who inhabit the twittersphere may have noticed that we’ve copped a bit of flak recently from the hardcore whisky community out there. The reason? Well – we keep releasing products (steady yourself dear reader) other than whisky.

Gin, Absinthe, Summer Fruit Cups and the like are all well and good, but, well, they’re not whisky. So – in a twin-pronged attack designed to 1) make my life easier whenever I meet ‘whisky people’, and 2) do something almost unspeakably cool – we’re launching a whole brand-spanking new independent bottling label.

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Maple Syrup? Gooood.

Rye-Heavy, 9yo Bourbon? Goooooooood.

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This is (at this stage) just a rumour.

But there are rumours, and there are rumours. I’d be inclined to say that I’m probably over 90% that this is happening.

I’ve now heard sufficient rumblings about it to make me comfortable in simply repeating what I can already find online (including a rather marvellous entry from the state of Florida that’s clearly more focused on freedom of information than Ardbeg’s Brand agency).

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We are soon approaching that quadrennial day in which we un-married men must hide fearfully from our other halves in case they try to enslave us in a life of penury and servitude. That's right – the 29th February. I have already prepared for myself the finest secret cellar this side of Austria, and plan on sequestering myself away in it for the duration of the day.

Marriage-related terror aside, the idea of gaining an extra day is rather novel, and so we've set about creating a very special something by means of celebration – the Secret Leap Year Cocktail (OK - naming things isn't our strong suit). We're also giving away a pretty exciting prize too…More...