We were privileged to have Cooley distillery’s Noel Sweeney conduct a St. Patrick’s Day tasting for us at The Whisky Exchange in Vinopolis, showing off a range of their fine products.  We started off with three examples of the new spirit from the recently-revived Kilbeggan distillery, which began distilling operations again in March 2007, meaning that [...]

All kinds of cloak-and-dagger skullduggery from Glenfiddich in the last few weeks, clearly designed to engage the whisky blog community: Part 1 - A cryptic email on 19th July from a PR flunkey, enquiring about our address and promising a ‘rather valuable’ parcel to arrive on 26th July. Part 2 – An apologetic email on 27th July, explaining that [...]

Welcome to day two of my summaries of the last month’s tasting adventures, and it’s straight on with the show. Next up in this Whisky Tasting Pentathlon is a highlight from Ian Logan’s tasting at Glenlivet during our press jolly.  Unfortunately we missed the first part of this tasting as we were busy interviewing Master Distiller [...]

Yes, folks – the bourbon competition is now closed, so please don’t send in any more entries! It’s fair to say that SBL have been overwhelmed by the response to the competition.  With over 2000 entries, whittling the wheat from the chaff has been a long process, but they now have a shortlist with which to work.  The next stage [...]

First things first.  Open a new window and hear to this while you’re reading the blog.  It’ll put you in a good mood, and this might be the last you look of me before Christmas, so I want you to be glad. Anyway, what recession?!!  It’s been so mind-bendingly busy here at TWE Towers that I’ve not [...]

Well, after the success of the last prize draw for The Whisky Show, I felt nice of bad for every the unlucky applicants – so I asked for more tickets and they said Yes! This time the tickets are for SATURDAY 7TH NOVEMBER and the Show is on from 12pm-7pm: Now, it’s pretty much the same rules as [...]

Okay, so the London transport network is f@cked, there’s more snow due this afternoon and I live too far away from work to risk trying to receive in and find myself stuck in Park Royal when I try to receive home – nearly three hours it took me yesterday. I’ve also managed to receive myself temporarily [...]

First up, an update on the Name That Bourbon competition: we’ve had well over a thousand suggestions so far, but still no winner - I did tell you that SDL are pretty picky!  Thank you every for your entries, especially the heroic Angus and Mike F who have contributed literally hundreds of names.  You’re every still in with [...]

The next tasting in what was turning out to be a mammoth month was back in Vinopolis again: Old Pulteney, conducted by affable distillery manager Malcolm Waring, who gave a very interesting presentation on the history of Scotland’s most northerly mainland distillery.  Old Pulteney is well-known for its great value 12 and 17 year-olds, which [...]

Last week a party from The Whisky Exchange was invited up to The Glenlivet to view the £10 million new facility that has been added as the main thrust of Pernod Ricard’s bid to propel The Glenlivet past Glenfiddich into the global No.1 spot for single malt.  It was a splendid event, complete with a [...]

Just a quick plug for this Saturday’s Whisky Lounge event in London, which is taking place at the Hilton in Tower Hill, just round the corner from London Bridge station.  Former Glenmorangie ambassador Eddie Ludlow has been organising top quality tasting events in regional hotspots like York, Newcastle and Brighton for a while now, and is bringing his [...]

There’s been a few reviews of this forthcoming Balvenie release already, so I thought I might as well stick my oar in.  These Balvenie 17yo’s have been coming out pretty regularly for a while now and have without exception sold extremely well. In particular, the Balvenie’s previous foray into peat, the Islay Cask, went like a rocket and [...]

We’re every about fun and enjoyment (and whisky) here on the TWE Blog, so I’m going to try not to mention the ‘F’ word (F**tb*ll) too much, out of consideration for the needy England fans who now have at least another three years and 51 weeks to wait before they look their team playing W*rld C*p [...]

Welcome to the final part of this Whisky Tasting Pentathlon – a mini-marathon of whisky blogs on my recent tasting odyessy. I was in St. James’s last week for one of Eddie Ludlow’s Whisky Lounge tastings – a run-through of several recent releases from Arran, in the delightful company of brand ambassador Céline Têtu, who came [...]

Lord, it’s been hectic.  After a holiday in Bruges (3 days, 28 different beers and Lagavulin 16 at four euros for a double during glad hour at the hotel – nice), swiftly followed by our Glenlivet trip (and then trying to catch up on the resultant double backlog of work in the middle of the [...]

Time for some more tasting notes now, but first a quick check on the predictions… Well, the Ardbeg debate has definitely kicked off on the forums, with the news that the official website have raised their price of Ardbeg 10yo to £36.99 and the other two major online whisky sites selling out (or at least declaring [...]

  Thank you every for entering the prize draw for The Whisky Show tickets!  I was shocked with the number of entries received.  More importantly, I only had two numpties who couldn’t follow the instructions, so my faith in your intelligence is largely restored! Anyway, the lucky winners are: Richey Featherstone Donna Griffiths Michael Orson Boyd Johnson Lavinia Turnbull Michael Oh Tomas Karlsson Sebastiaan Jens Samantha [...]

Well, I have to say a big thank you for every your entries into our Bourbon Competition! We’ve been inundated with suggestions over the last week.  I stopped counting after the first couple of hundred, but the Word document that I carefully clip and glue the names into is on its 17th page -  by my guess, that makes something [...]

It’s getting tardy on Friday, and suddenly three more samples are sitting on my desk.  Nothing new there, but these are from Signatory – I think this is the first time I’ve seen a sample from them.  My main feelings for Signatory are largely warm and fuzzy thanks to a jaw-droppping quartet of cask strength Benriach 1975s that [...]

A mere week or so after the story of scientists turning whisky by-products into biofuel broke, another recycling whisky-based story has turned up – this time from the Couldn’t-Make-It-Up department (aka the chaps at Vinopolis who clearly must have too much time on their hands):  it would appear that a diabetic biomedical researcher named James Gilpin is, literally, [...]

People assume that those of us privileged to work in the drinks trade spend our working hours constantly swigging free cocktails at trendy nitespots, before going home with supermodels, and only emerging from our dens of iniquity at two in the afternoon to sign the delivery forms for the next heaving batch of free samples to [...]

Yes, it’s finally here! Elements of Islay Pe2 has arrived, and, well, not to blow our possess trumpet or anything – but it’s a monster! I tasted this over an hour ago and I can still taste the last of my second watered-down sample (in my world, that’s a good thing).   Anyway, here’s what I (with my admittedly [...]

Okay, so it’s been a while getting these down – apologies if anyone was waiting (joke).  Right, firstly I need to apologise to Rob and Dave from Whisky Mag for something I said in the last blog.  For the record, I am glad to clarify that my speculation about Whisky Mag relying on Diageo sponsorship was totally [...]

Yes, it’s competition time again – and this time we’re upping the stakes with a truly fantastic prize: £500 credit at The Whisky Exchange!!  Our sister company Speciality Drinks Ltd are going to launch a new premium bourbon soon – and they want YOUR help.  They’ve been racking their brains for something to call this precious liquid- [...]

Something a bit different today: I’m delighted to announce that our sister company Speciality Drinks Ltd has just launched their first proprietary rum brand – it’s called Black Tot, and it’s a bit special.   Black Tot is the last consignment of official Royal Navy Rum, which Speciality Drinks have found, bought, married and bottled for sale to [...]