Laphroaig, despite being the biggest-selling Islay whisky, doesn’t mess around with many special edition bottlings. The distillery has a solid core range, an occasional selection of older and more expensive bottlings, and a few travel retail exclusives, but it focuses almost all of its special-edition efforts on a single bottle each year: Laphroaig Càirdeas. Care Chase? Back in 2008, Laphroaig decided to fully embrace its fan club – the Friends of Laphroaig (FoL) – and launched Càirdeas (pronounced a bit like ‘care chase’) as a yearly bottling to celebrate its existence. Uncoinc ..read more

Elixir Distillers has been in the news recently, first getting planning permission for and then finally revealing the name of its Islay distillery: Portintruan. The company is now making what maybe its biggest announcement yet: Elixir Distillers is buying Tormore distillery. From Elixir co-founder Sukhinder Singh: “Tormore is one of the most visually stunning distilleries in Speyside. It produces a beautiful spirit and fits in perfectly with the Elixir Distillers flavour-first philosophy to bottle only the very highest quality whiskies. We are hoping to build on the work that’s been done by Pe ..read more

I’ve tried to write about The Lakes a few times. I visited shortly after they opened and returned again a couple of years back, during which time it had changed to be almost unrecognisable. It’s a distillery that my opinion has changed about more than any other and with this latest release my opinion has shifted once again. Time to have a look at The Lakes Whiskymaker’s Editions: Liberty. In the beginning I’ll skip over the distillery’s history, as the early releases of The One blended whisky – its first product – soured many whisky fans including myself towards them. Dhavall Ghandi and his tr ..read more

If you’ve spoken to me in person in the past couple of years, I’ve almost certainly started rambling about Japan. I’ve been obsessed with the country for most of my life and, in more recent years, its drinks. Back at the beginning of 2020 I got to visit and explore the world of shochu and awamori, and my discovery of the latter continued through 2020’s lockdown. It’s all recently culminated in my first in-person awamori tasting – A Beginner’s Guide to Awamori hosted by The Shochu Lounge, an incredible bar hidden underneath ROKA Charlotte Street. What is Awamori? Simply put, awamori is a spiri ..read more

It is Halloween. Rather than skipping through the streets helping children acquire diabetes, I am locked up in my flat with all the lights off, ignoring knocks on the door and drinking weird spirits. The first part of that sentence is expected – I’ve been scared of trick or treaters ever since my university flatmates stole my strawberry Milky Ways to feed to some while I hid in my room (I’m still not entirely sure why, but dress kids up as skeletons, and I’m hiding). However, the weird spirits bit needs some explanation. All hail the sausage king Stamp-loving meat-molester Oliver Klimek i ..read more

It’s Fèis Ìle – The Islay Festival of Music and Malt – and, for the second year in a row, it’s not the normal island-population-doubling week of in-person shenanigans. While you can now go and play on Islay, the festival has stayed online, and this week sees a host of virtual events, from quizzes and dances to whisky tastings. While the festivities have kicked off a day earlier than usual, with Ardnahoe grabbing the Friday, the opening Saturday focuses on Lagavulin, with queues usually snaking out of the distillery shop from first light. Sister distillery Caol Ila joins the fray on Monday ..read more

Here’s a guest piece from Lee ‘Connas’ Connor – the Distilled Consultant, who you may know from his work with The Whisky Lounge and Scotch Malt Whisky Society – looking into the wonders of Waterford Distillery. There can be no doubt that when Mark Reynier announced his return to distilling at Waterford, the whisky community was braced for a veritable wave of provenance-centred propaganda. And who can blame him, given his huge success in the regeneration of Bruichladdich Distillery and their ongoing obsessive commitment (even post-Reynier) to transparency in their whisky making process? Fr ..read more

There are waves in the drinks world. Ideas that roll around and smash together to create rolling peaks where everyone seems to talk about the same thing for a short time. I really like negronis, and having seen a bunch of mentions of them and the negroni family over the past week, I better jump on before my metaphor breaks. Negroni variation #1: the Boulevardier. Negroani I blame Stanley Tucci. This time last year, we were all getting used to lockdown and trying to order fancy drinks from whatever establishment would fling them in our direction. The negroni was too simple – just three bot ..read more

It’s almost Christmas and that means it’s time to be on the look out for booze bargains. On the whisky front, there is a lot of discussion about one particular deal – a good whisky, at a good price, with a hidden origin: Lidl Ben Bracken 16 Year Old. But could it secretly be Lagavulin 16 Year Old? What’s a Ben Bracken? The big discounters – Aldi and Lidl, especially – are both well known for having decent drinks selections. Lidl’s whiskies are concentrated on the Ben Bracken range, which are put together behind the scenes by Whyte & Mackay. The Whyte & Mackay connection often ..read more

This past couple of years have seen lots of new independent bottlers hitting the scene. With industry veterans from Italy and groups of mates from St Albans all joining in the race to find and bottle great whiskies, the new independents are a varied crowd. Surprisingly, one of the places without as many newbies is Scotland, so it’s nice to see Dràm Mòr stretching out from its Dumbarton home to expand into the world of bottling its own whiskies. Big Dram Dràm Mòr has been around for a while in one guise or another, and if you’ve been to a whisky show somewhere in mainland Europe recently, then ..read more