We’ve long since been firm advocates of the Meantime Brewing Company, and it’s largely because they’ve had such great success in fighting against the rather dull mainstream of mass-produced lager that our nation is sadly awash with. Meantime focus heavily on quality and authenticity, shunning methods like pasteurisation, whilst making use of a minimum 28 day maturation period for all their beers. But despite all this attention to detail, one of the truly great things about the brewery is how prevalent their beer is; you can walk into Sainsbury’s and buy a bottle of their London Porter or IPA, and we love that. More...

We've just received this press release from the Number One Drinks Company. This is literally the biggest thing to happen to Japanese whisky in decades!

The entire remaining inventory of Mercian’s Karuizawa Distillery has been acquired on behalf of Number One Drinks by an Asian-based company. International importer and distributor of Japanese malt whisky, Number One Drinks Company, has handled worldwide sales of Karuizawa single casks since 2006 and has helped raise the profile of Japanese single malts internationally, especially with the help of distributors in the key markets of Taiwan, France, UK and Sweden.

Of the 12 Gold Medals awarded by the Malt Maniacs in 2010, four were for whiskies sourced by Number One Drinks (including three Karuizawas) and the Best Japanese Whisky in Jim Murray’s Whisky Bible 2011 was a 1967 single cask from Karuizawa. More...

It must be said, we’ve been on a bit of a bottling frenzy recently; in the last few of months alone we’ve put our name to four new casks, including an incredibly bourbon-rich North British, a big, complex Cragganmore, a rich and spicy Dalmore, and an impressively malty Inchgower!

Today we have another new addition to the Master of Malt range, in the form of an utterly delicious number from Dailuaine (pronounced Dall-YEWan). More...

You may remember a little while ago, we launched our biggest prize giveaway yet – a chance to win a 50 year old, single cask, one-of-a-kind bottle of Glenfarclas worth £3,995. Quite possibly the greatest prize ever…

All the entrants had to do for a chance to win this astonishing prize was purchase any 70cl bottle of Glenfarclas from our website. There were just 500 chances to enter, and as you can imagine, they sold out pretty quickly!

We put all of the names into our bowler hat of wonder, and duly picked a name, and we can now announce the winner, Mr Steven Wright of Cardiff. Here’s a picture of his beaming mug… Envy this man... More...

Okay then – new competition / announcement / sort of thing…



If I told you that these images represented the ingredients of a brand new concoction we’re currently putting together, would you think: More...

Astonishing.

It’s an easy term to bandy around (and god knows I’m possibly more guilty of doing so than most), but from time to time, one is simply so taken aback that the term “astonishing” is really all that fits the bill. I found myself using that particular word on approximately a dozen occasions, when my good lady wife and I visited Purl earlier this year.

Just as it is usually possible to accurately assess the competence of a curry house by ordering a simple Madras, the ‘control’ drink in any half-decent cocktail bar, for me, is a martini cocktail. Good glassware – points; correctly chilled glass – yet more points; really, really good Sicilian lemons for the twist, many points. If, however, as in the case of one restaurant recently visited who shall remain nameless – you serve it in a chipped glass, complete with crushed ice, and a slice of lemon, you’re scoring very low indeed. More...

The votes have been counted, the results are in, and we can now reveal the winning blend from the Bloggers’ Blend Competition. If you’re just tuning into this now and haven’t read our previous posts about the competition, allow us to fill you in…

We asked ten top whisky bloggers to create their own blends, using pipettes, measuring cylinders (and other scientific accoutrements) and a selection of malt and grain 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...

We gave a few whisky bloggers a simple brief: come up with a great cocktail using our 8 year old blended whisky. We’ve had some great responses, and today’s cocktail is no exception! This recipe was sent to us by Gal Granov who writes the brilliant blog “Whisky Israel”, which is a great source of tasting notes and whisky reviews (despite being written in a country with an incredibly high tax on spirits!). So without further ado… More...