About the only good thing to come out of The Scottish rugby team’s recent loss to Italy in Rome was that my family who had been across for the match brought me back a whisky from the airport. Talisker 57⁰ North, until very recently only available in airports. It is pretty much a cask strength Talisker, although it should technically be referred to as ’special strength’ - it is deliberately bottled at 57% abv to match Talisker’s longitude.
All well and good, but I was thinking the other day that the appearance of 57⁰ North is actually a very significant bottling. It is a release from a Diageo distillery which very much mimics the releases of the last few years from Ardbeg. Now Ardbeg is undoubtedly the Scotch distillery which has the most buzz around it, for reasons that have been well covered recently with the release of Rollercoaster. But what does the future of Ardbeg hold? Anyone who has read the latest issue of Whisky Magazine will have seen Dave Broom’s column ‘Reasons to be cheerful (part 2)’. In it he lists possible events that will occur in the coming years for the whisky industry. He anticipates that Diageo will take over Moet Hennessy which will give them Glenmorangie and Ardbeg Read More…
Obviously the news of the moment is the oldest whisky in the world - Mortlach 70 years old - released yesterday in Edinburgh by Gordon & MacPhail. Now, I was actually there, as those of you who follow our Twitter well know, and I have all the press goodies - detailed info, high-res pictures, opinions - all of which will be up here soon. On top of that I also have an hour or so of video footage I shot there, which I will condense for you into a nice and short YouTube clip.
Not to mention that I had a sample ( I actually drank all of it) so there will be tasting notes!
The annoying thing is, my dissertation is due in a couple of weeks and the bloody thing is anything but finished. I am currently spending all of my time doing this and I really can’t get stuff out on the blog as quickly as I would like. Having said that I will do my best to put something together over the weekend.
Thank you so much for you witty captions. We were very much testing this format this time and we promise that next time we will have much flashier and more valuable awards.
Chris and I will be posting the beanies very soon but obviously if you need the q-jump passes they would not get to you in time. So we figured that if you’re going to the game you are likely to be in the city in the morning before the game. We are going to leave 10 passes at the reception of The Scotch Whisky Experience on the Royal Mile (have you been on the new tour?) and if you took part the competition feel free to just grab them from there.
The magic password is: ‘Err, excuse me, I think Lucas and Chris might have left some q-jump passes for me here…’
If you have any questions, just email me on edinburghwhisky@gmail.com
I am officially the (better looking) James May of EWB. I am that guy that, at the most amazing party, ends up doing the washing up in the kitchen. Why do I say this? Well Lucas writes an exciting article about a Famous Grouse competition, and I get stuck with the terms and conditions. So here they are! (Sigh)
1. Queue skip/jump passes are for the Famous Grouse tent that is at Murrayfield. This has to be used in Conjunction with a match ticket (We couldn’t get our hands on any match tickets. We did try, but no luck)
2. Closing date for entries is Friday the 12th of March
3. The beanies and the queue jump are a prize together. If you don’t have tickets to the game, tell us in your email and we will send you the beanie and keep the queue jump and give the queue jump back to Famous Grouse.
4. We will email the winners on Friday. Anyone that can make use of the queue jump tickets can collect there prize from us on the Saturday.
5. We have 10 beanies and passes to give away
I am sure there are more terms and conditions. There always are. If you spot one we have missed out, please don’t sue us.
We have a bunch of Famous Grouse branded Scotland vs. England rugby beanie hats and some Q-jump passes for the weekend game to give away. All you need to do to get your hands on them is Read More…
Here is the promised tasting from the Tomatin Distillery Focus feature. Myself and Chris sampled three different Tomatins (continuing the EWB policy of not relying on a single nose wherever possible), and our tasting notes and thoughts are presented below.
12 Years Old
Nose: I went for violets and refresher sweets (apologies if our foreign readers haven’t come across those, a kind of sugary fizzy candy!). Nice and light on one hand, but it wasn’t one dimensional. There was a very faint smoke there accompanied by a little leather. Chris went for more fruity notes, picking up on citrus, hard candy, foam bananas and Chewits (we should really stop referring to British sweets…). He also found a little bit of oil, chiming in with the smoke and leather.
Palate: I struggled to define the palate, it felt a little indistinct. I eventually settled on mint toffee and after eights, though it was a little sweeter than I had expected from the nose. Chris went for sweet apples and grass with a little oak. Very outdoorsy!
Finish: Both of us went for a little smoke on the finish, very faint and delicate. Chris felt that his citrus reappeared Read More…
Well here we go, the very first Distillery Focus feature. It took us a little longer than we had planned, but EWB always delivers eventually. We had made a conscious decision to focus on distilleries that perhaps do not have the highest profile in the UK, so hopefully our readers can branch out and try something that is not their norm.
A very short bit of background first, Tomatin distillery was formally founded in 1897, though there is a history of illicit distilling in the area going back to the 15th century. The distillery lies just about exactly half way between Inverness and Aviemore and just west of Loch Ness. It is quite a large distillery with 12 stills operating, though not always at maximum capacity. It is a key component in the celebrated Antiquary blend and has the Japanese parent company of Takara Shuzo and Okura. It is a popular single malt in Japan but the distillery itself is holds firmly to its roots, with the core workforce actually living on the distillery estate. But without further ado, onto the questions we posed to the good people at Tomatin.
1. There has been lots of chat in the news over the last few months about how extreme our winter weather has been. How are things looking up in Tomatin? Causing any problems around the distillery? Being 315 meters above sea level we do get our fair share of snow during the winter months. We have had to cope with a fairly substantial snow fall this year, in fact the first real snow fall was in the 3rd week of December and there is still a reasonable amount of snow at the distillery. Thankfully we have not had any problems with warehouse roofs collapsing but unfortunately we did have to delay the start of production this year as we spread effluent to land which you cannot do in the snow.
2. Earlier this year you relaunched your products with updated packaging. When you redesigned did you look to any specific markets? Apparently your whisky is very popular in Japan, did that influence your thinking in any way? We are currently selling Tomatin in 25 countries throughout the world with the USA, Japan and Sweden being our biggest markets. The other 23 markets represent only a small portion of our business so naturally we looked towards Read More…
As Ardbeg Rollercoaster is about to go on sale in an hour or so (Monday, 9am), we give you a line or two of very subjective review. Euan Martin and Chris Hoban sampled the whisky on Thursday and came up with their own tasting notes and opinions without consulting each other on the night!
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Euan: Firstly, big thank you to Mike from the Water of Life Society for the invite to the preview tasting. I (unlike Chris ‘Mr. Responsible’ Hoban) went for all six Ardbegs on offer during the evening, so by the time we got to the Rollercoaster my taste buds were, well and truly warmed up. Whilst Chris wanted to go in with a fresh palate, I thought it would be better to view Rollercoaster within the context of the range. So after the New Make, the 10 year old, Blasda, Uigeadail, and Corryvreckan it was time for the big one. The new Ardbeg. The most written about distillery in Scotland. Limited release. True collector’s item. Sure fire bet to sell out. But is it any good for drinking? Read More…
Nose: I went for violets and refresher sweets (apologies if our foreign readers haven’t come across those, a kind of sugary fizzy candy!). Nice and light on one hand, but it wasn’t one dimensional. There was a very faint smoke there accompanied by a little leather. Chris went for more fruity notes, picking up on citrus, hard candy, foam bananas and Chewits (we should really stop referring to British sweets…). He also found a little bit of oil, chiming in with the smoke and leather.
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