Here it comes! The new Ardbeg is just round the corner. On February 15th Ardbeg Rollercoaster will be made available through the Ardbeg website. It is a vatting of 10 casks, one from each year between 1997 and 2006, put together co celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Ardbeg Committee. It is bottled at 57.3% and it will cost £50.
I am such a sucker for those quirky Ardbeg releases, I can’t wait! I love the packaging and the rollercoaster theme. I want it now!
Sorry for the poor quality photo, I’ll put a better one up as soon as I can get my hands something decent.
Something significant happened today. Scotch whisky made it to the headlines of news services worldwide. And not because Tiger Woods bought a nice bottle for his wife in the way of apology.
Kiwi snow-and-frost-lovers found and unearthed some MacKinlay’s blend from underneath Ernest Shackleton’s hut built and used by him in Antarctica during his failed South Pole expedition in 1907-1909. When retreating in extremely difficult circumstances the explorer and his team left three cases of whisky and two cases of brandy behind them. No regrets, no second thoughts, no attempts to retrieve it? I have a sneaky feeling MacKinlay’s whisky was absolute piss in the bottle. That’s why it was left behind and buried so that no other explorers would find it and no one would ever Read More…
As I would imagine somebody will be quick enough to point out, this isn’t really a post with a point. It’s more of a musing, maybe a push for some discussion. I was looking at the price of Smokehead 18 year old yesterday and was struck by just how expensive it really is. In case somebody reading this doesn’t know, Smokehead is an independent bottling of an Islay Single Malt by Ian MacLeod. It’s not cask strength and it’s not single cask. Yet a bottle of it will set you back £86.84 (I should add that all prices in this post come from The Whisky Exchange). Have a look at how that price matches up to some comparable whiskies below.
Brand*********************Price
Smokehead 18 £86.64
Laphroaig 18 £65.38
Bowmore 18 £58.74
Caol Ila 18 £56.19
Talisker 18 £55.67
Port Askaig 17 £51.08
Smokehead 18 stands a good £20 above its’ nearest competitor, the Laphroaig. How can this anonymous Islay malt be priced so far above the others - especially given the excellent chances that it is a product of one of the distilleries listed? It strikes me as slightly odd. There doesn’t even seem to be any emphasis on Read More…
Sitting fabulously in contrary to my previous post about the prospects of turning whisky into a high-tech industry with the use of lasers, nanotechnology and chemical engineering; Bruichladdich sent us photos of two ‘new’ stills installed recently at the distillery. One of them is a 130 years old Victorian pot still, renovated by Forsyths of Rothes, probably the oldest working whisky still in the world (the first photo).
The second is a highly unusual Lomond still (the bottom photo), salvaged from Inverleven before it was demolished in 2004. You may not have heard about Lomond still… it’s one of those plumber’s-wet-dream stories, not unlike the one you can find at Penderyn. Moving elements inside the still neck and dustbin-like shape would be the summary of what it says in technical description. They call it Ugly Betty and you can see why, it’s not exactly the Mona Lisa of the whisky world.
Good luck to Jim McEwan and the team with using their new toys, we’re looking forward to the results.
I woke up this morning with very unpleasant symptoms; uncrunchable thirst, slight headache, dry skin, dodgy gut and garlic sauce aftertaste in my mouth to name but a few. I grew out of the I’m-never-drinking-again-style lines long time ago, so all I could say to myself when I opened one eye to confirm my whereabouts was ‘I wish they would invent hangover-free whisky’. Wouldn’t that be great?
The nanometre laser
I read somewhere recently that the scientists are very close to building a laser with will project a beam about 1 nanometre in diametre. That is one thousand-millionth of a metre, so pretty narrow. We’re talking molecular level here. Apparently this will revolutionise medicine, help us fight cancer. Human kind is becoming super-smart and it’s about the time, they say we have a planet to save and I think it will have to be through the technology. I doubt the narrow elite will ever be able to persuade the masses to change their lives dramatically for the greater good. Cycling to work, going vegetarian and not flying to Ibiza twice a year is not something my yuppie neighbour would willingly do (but he works in finance so he’s bound to be an idiot). Therefore the technological advancement is our only hope in the world ruled by masses not by elites. Long live the technology!
If my morning-after philosophy is correct here and Read More…
We got this wee cutie from Chivas Malts for our birthday last month (thanks very much). We appreciate how rare and collectable this bottle is. But we’ve always said that whisky is for drinking. Nice whisky, like this one, kept sealed in a dark cupboard is like a beautiful girl kept away from the world by her psychopathic father, locked away in a dark cellar somewhere in Austria enduring… never mind, you get the point.
As The Four Tasters Of The Apocalypse gather once more tonight to perform their dark arts, an important decision must be made. Drink it or keep it locked away in a dungeon? Have your say! (click ‘Read more’ for a picture of the whole bottle)
Another short video from my wee holiday last week. This one shows the highlight of the trip, a night on a lash with a bunch of old friends and a handful of brand new ones. Now, I must say I hadn’t had such a good time for months before that night and even considering the consequences the morning after (and then another morning after) I still would have done everything exactly the same way… well actually, maybe that fourth Talisker was unnecessary now that I think about it. But hey-ho. As they say: everything in moderation, including moderation itself.
By the way, go to Poland! You will be gob-smacked by how beautiful the women are and how cheap the booze is. And it’s just nice overall. But maybe don’t go in January when it tends to be -20 degrees, go in the summer. Oh, and they consider 25ml of spirit a half-measure! 50ml is the way they roll. Crazy.
For much higher quality as well as comment and rating options, please visit our YouTube channel. It’s worth it guys.
I had this idea to include a small thumb up/thumb down picture with every Quick Dram we do (see previous post on Tamdhu), just to be perfectly clear on whether we liked the whisky or not. What do you think? Vote and leave us a comment. If you give the idea thumbs down we’ll drop it.
I just came back from my wee holiday and look what I brought with me - videos! There are a couple of short clips, first one below, more coming up soon. Have you ever been to the World of Whisky at any airport? What do you think? Do you like them? Are they all the same? What is your favourite airport retail only whisky?
Here it comes! The new Ardbeg is just round the corner. On February 15th Ardbeg Rollercoaster will be made available through the Ardbeg website. It is a vatting of 10 casks, one from each year between 1997 and 2006, put together co celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Ardbeg Committee. It is bottled at 57.3% and it will cost £50.
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