I genuinely don’t think I’ve ever seen a delivery driver so amused.

Literally the second the new bottling of the Noh Karuizawa Whisky walked through the door, the office broke out into a frenzy – photographers snapping, directors grabbing tasting glasses and falling upon the beautiful decanters like they contained the elixir of eternal life.

Such is the sense of anticipation and wonderment that surround all whiskies bottled by the Number one drinks company. This particular release is a 32yo Karuizawa from 1977 (Karuizawas before 1981 are revered as somewhat special because of their intense Umami-rich flavour), and it’s spectacular. It’s by no means a gentle giant at 32 years of age – we’d describe it more like being kicked in the face by an angry bosozoku than the peaceful tranquillity brought by Hanami (ed - d’you like that? Bit of Kulcha and that)…

Anywhoo, enough rambling, here are our tasting notes:

Nose: This dram opens with an olfactory delight of walnuts, chestnuts roasting in New York, pineapple and maple syrup. As it sits in the glass the nose develops stewed fruits in mulled wine, a slight note of autumnal bonfire and orange peel element and finishes on glacé cherries

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The caption contest closed on Friday evening. We were sad that we’d no longer be receiving suggestions, but we felt elated that soon we would reward the hilarious wits of the whisky world.

Thank you for entering; we all know it’s the taking part that counts, though in another more real way, we know that winning is everything.

With this in mind, we devised a complex scoring system, made a shortlist, and selected three winners. They are thus… More...

Good morning one and all! This week we’ve got an exciting competition for you to take part in, and the prize is dram of the incredible Parker’s Heritage 27 Year Old bourbon - Malt Advocate’s 2008 American Whisky of the Year. Its nose is rich with rum, nougat, butter scotch and pepper, and its glorious palate offers vanilla, cinnamon, peppermint, juicy oak and caramel – sounds good huh! More...

Right, our fantastic Cooley Competition is officially over. We’ve drawn a close to the prize draw that some critics have described as "the greatest competition since the Ancient Greeks first started running around and lobbing objects in Olympia." The prize shone like a beacon on our site, attracting the myriad Irish whiskey lovers with promises of a trip to Ireland, personalised bottles of whiskey, wining and dining, two nights in a luxurious hotel and more!More...

With some great new products in, we decided to a do a quick tasting. We now stock a couple of Jefferson's bourbons, and this morning we put the eponymous whiskies through their paces.

Both were Gold Medal winners at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition and both are produced by small batch distiller McLain & Kyne (notable as one of few Americans distilleries to spell whisky in the Scottish style - sans the 'E').

Both are also available as 3cl samples too...More...

Glenfarclas added a 40 year old to their core range this year. A bold move like this is testament to Glenfarclas’ incredible stocks, and most distilleries would struggle to maintain production of a core range 40 year old bottling.

It was set apart from the year’s other high end releases by two factors. One was quality; we’ve sung its praises before so we won’t go into too much detail, but suffice to say it’s a stunner! The second factor was price; most whiskies in this age range (particularly from stalwart premium distilleries like Glenfarclas) retail at a minimum of a grand. Amazingly, you can find Glenfarclas 40 at just £289 (from us of course!). More...

The American whiskey fraternity is enjoying the burgeoning success and ever-increasing popularity of a thing called craft-distilling. There’s always been something intrinsically exciting that surrounds artisan food and drink, and whiskey is no exception. In fact, the spirits industry is abuzz with new releases of wonderfully packaged and gloriously quaint bourbons and other American whiskeys and we thought we’d throw in our two cents. You see, whiskey really is a spirit of provenance and it requires great attention to detail. You simply can’t go about mass-producing the stuff without due care and diligence, and that’s exactly what the new breed of craft distillers are tapping into, and they’re creating some of America’s best exports. More...

The Next Batch of Whisky Samples

The sun is shining, the sky is blue and the birds are just about to start getting on our nerves. But times are good, and after launching Drinks by the Dram – our whisky sample service – the Master of Malt offices have become organized chaos.

The samples are flying off the shelves and we’ve been flooded with emails and phone calls from you all, telling us how much you like them.

We’ve made a solemn pledge to keep adding loads and loads of new samples to the site every day, so this morning we gathered around the board table (sat in a huddle on the lawn) and came up with the day’s batch of whiskies to “dram” (turn into samples). More...

Old whiskies have always commanded respect from the drinking public. It is widely thought that the older the whisky, the better. Distilleries have always pushed for this, because they can demand higher prices, and the increased rarity of old whisky has helped cement their éclat. At Master of Malt, we think whiskies have a life span; some require a lot of ageing to reach their peak, and others need only a few years. There are some very young whiskies which have reached their full potential very early in life; Ardbeg 10 is an awe-inspiring single malt and we’ve only got good things to say about the 3 year old English Whisky Chapter 6!

It is undeniable, however, that there is something very special about extensively aged malt. We’ve been lucky enough to taste some great 40 year old whisky recently. 

A single cask 40 year old Glenfarclas had this impression on us:

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In 1975, the Old Bushmills distillery laid down some very special “private casks” of whiskey to be bottled for the new millennium. Straight from the cask, with just a little water added, these would be unfiltered, single cask whiskey. This is Bushmills Millennium Malt

With Bushmills you’ll typically find flavours like sweet barley and fruit and the whiskey is silky and creamy in true Irish style. The 10 and 16 year olds have both seen sherry casks lending a nutty, raisin-like character, this character is very different in the Millennium Malt due to the exclusive American white oak maturation.

We recently got hold of a consignment of this rare old whiskey, and wanted to find out more about it. As you’d expect, single cask Bushmills like this is rare stuff indeed, with very little to be found. We think some of you will want to consider this as an investment malt and, based on market performance, it certainly makes sense. Limited edition Irish whiskey can appreciate remarkably well and old editions of Jameson and Midleton have massively increased in value over the last few years.

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