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...

Alchemy is one of Science’s earliest precursors; it is the tool the ancients used in the search of the three most desirable treasures known to mankind: gold, eternal life, and infinite knowledge.

The early Arab chemists - more conjurers and cooks than scientists - were obsessed with Alchemy’s elusive rewards, but they remained unattainable. They did, however, make one great discovery: alcohol – without which there’d be no whisky!More...

We’re proud to announce that we now stock whiskies from Adelphi. Over the years we’ve had the good fortune to sample quite a few Adelphi bottlings, and we’ve been very impressed, so we were thrilled when the new bottles arrived.

The Adelphi Distillery is actually one of the lost distilleries of Scotland, which operated from 1826 to around 1907. In 1880, the distillery was acquired by Messrs A. Walker and Co and it was Walker’s great-grandson, Jamie Walker, who restored the Adelphi name in 1993, but this time not as a distillery, as an independent bottler.More...

Kilchoman has firmly cemented itself as a member of that most exclusive club of distilleries… a club whose members release whisky which sells out instantaneously.

Now we’re up to the third release of single malt from Kilchoman having had the Inaugural and Autumn 2009 releases (both aged for roughly 3 years and finished for a few months in Oloroso sherry butts).

The distillery (to the very west of Islay) is one of Scotland’s very smallest, producing some 90,000 to 100,000 litres of alcohol per year – the whisky is rare and, by proxy, sure to sell out quickly.

The Spring 2010 release was matured in fresh Buffalo Trace bourbon barrels for 3 years before a finish in what the distillers describe as “very active” Oloroso sherry butts. This was then vatted with another four casks of refill bourbon matured spirit before being brought down to bottling strength with water from the Octofad Farm on the Rhinns of Islay. More...

Further to our prophetic post last week about Old Whisky, the release has been announced earlier today of the new Mortlach 70 Year Old - the oldest bottled Single Malt Whisky in the world. At a full 70 years old, this is one in the eye for Dalmore, whose recent super-high-end releases have never quite hit this magical age marker.

Bottled by Gordon and Macphail, an award-winning malt whisky specialist from Elgin – this super-luxury whisky has been produced and bottled in exceptionally small quantity from a Spanish Ex-Bodega Sherry Hogshead which was laid down in 1938. Click here to read more...

The presentation of whiskies of this age and calibre is paramount, and this release certainly does not disappoint. Presented in a crystal and Sterling Silver decanter, all housed in a hand-made box made from Brazilian Rosewood.

Whilst we’ve not (yet) tasted this world first of a dram, we can include below tasting notes from Charles Maclean..

Available now, and an absolute snip at only £9999!

Mortlach 70 Year Old

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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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Yet more amazing samples of Japanese Whisky have turned up with us from the lovely folks at No 1 Drinks Company, so to whet your appetite – we’ve done a few tasting notes…

Both Whiskies are from the closed Distillery, Hanyu, Located in southern Japan. Both will be available in late spring… Subscribe to our twitter feed, and we’ll let you know exactly when they come in…

Hanyu Cask# 9305 Number One Drinks Company 53.4%

Bottled by Number One Drinks Company

1990-2009

Nose: Very full and fruity, peaches, calvados, hint of bourbon too, that tangy fruity top note you get in bourbon.

Palate: Fruity, Sweet and sour, quite meaty, some mushrooms, tangy,

Finish: Becomes Drying, refreshers sweets.

Overall: Very good – meaty, but not over the top.

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It’s a very dreary Friday afternoon here at MoM towers. We’ve gone from a horrid frost at the beginning of the week to a grim, drizzly day today, and we’re in desperate need of a little cheering up! Luckily we have just the thing! A consignment of the new – well ok, not that new – Yamazaki Sherry Cask - a beautifully dark whisky limited to 16,000 bottles worldwide.

Sherry Cask was launched in late 2009, and although there have been sherry matured whiskies from Yamazaki before, this has a higher outturn and is slightly more youthful – it being made of whiskies of around 12 to 15 years of age. 

Yamazaki was Japan’s first whisky distillery, and the first cask ever to be filled was a sherry cask. To this day, Spanish oak is specially selected from northern Spain, before the local coopers turn them into giant, 500 litre butts. They are then taken to Jerez in southern Spain for a three year seasoning with rich Oloroso sherry.

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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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There is an absolutely huge kerfuffle going on in the mainstream press at the moment about the hot new release of the first English whisky in over 100 years from St George’s distillery in Norfolk…

We visited the distillery in September and met with Managing Director Andrew Nelstrop. We’ve got a few juicy exclusives, photos and insights to share with you lucky, lucky people.

The Distillery and visitors centre. The still room is behind the large window facing the front on the first floor.

We’ll start by saying first and foremost that we absolutely adored the spirits we tasted – the complexity and depth of flavour found in the samples we tried with Andrew were stunning, and the dedication to excellence displayed at every step of the distillation and maturation processes were truly a delight to see.  These guys are doing it properly.

The distillery is located in a picturesque village just outside Norwich, and on pulling up to the entrance, we thought we were looking at a rather nice country home rather than a working distillery.  It would doubtless have been incredibly easy (not to mention cheap) More...