Paula’s Feis Ile 2010 Odyssey - Part 2

My whisky odyssey had started in Campbeltown and Springbank’s open day would be a hard act to follow on an ordinary trip but I was heading to the peat-lover’s homeland for ‘FEIS ILE’. More commonly known as Islay’s Malt and Music Festival, this is an opportunity to visit all eight distilleries on Islay and maybe [...]

Caol Ila and Lagavulin for Islay Festival 2010

Islay Festival 2010 is looming and it is now known what limited goodies two Diageo-owned Islay distilleries have in store for thirsty visitors.
From Lagavulin there is a single European oak cask filled in August 1994, bottled at 52.7% ABV. The release consists of 528 smile-inducing units of happy-happy-joy-joy. The cask was picked by Iain McArthur [...]

Manager’s Choice, Executive’s Price

So… the biggest whisky news of the year has been broken. The Managers Choice selection. 27 single cask whiskies, one from each Diageo distillery, bar the behemoth that is Roseisle.
When I first got wind of this news from one of our very secretive sources, I was really excited. Not only could I try single caskings [...]

Paula on Islay: Day 3

A pretty good night’s sleep- got woken briefly by the malt lorries at 6am. Shot down to Port Ellen to get cash (again) and a thank-you present for the staff and returned to find I’d missed the morning tour - typical! Now, what to do first…Islay Ales beer festival or Bowmore open day? Where’s that map…?
Couldn’t [...]

Single Cask Caol Ila and Lagavulin for Islay Festival

Press Release from 5 May 2009:

To celebrate this year’s Islay Festival of Malt & Music on 23-30 May, Diageo is once again making available two special Festival editions of its Islay Single Malt Scotch Whiskies. These very limited editions will be available only to personal shoppers, with a limit of one bottle per person.
The first-ever [...]

Six Nations, five whiskies, one hipflask

Wondering what whisky to take to Scotland’s games during this 6 Nations tournament? Our friend, Euan Martin* solved the problem for you! Read and never lose hope…
As the 6 Nations approaches I have begun to look out the essentials for any trip to Murrayfield. Game tickets, check. Kilt, check. Scotland jersey, check. Hipflask, check. But [...]

Lucas’s Top 5 Whiskies. At last.

Yes! At last the schedule allows me to present you with my current Top 5 Whiskies list, which by the way is sooo much more interesting than Chris’s.
The choice is utterly subjective and has nothing to do with the availability or price issues . Maybe one day I will create Top 5 Whiskies I Can [...]

Highland Park 18 yo follow-up…

When I was first getting to know whisky regions, Highland Park simply belonged to the Grand Uniform Region Of All Islands. It was nice and simple, geographical and logical. Those of you, who bother to follow that at all, know that now it’s all a little bit more complicated.
Islay is now a region on its [...]

Lagavulin 16 yo

When looking at whiskies to taste in Teuchters, myself and Lucas were debating over the age. For our first tasting, we wanted to have some well matured malts. We had picked three whiskies (Glenfiddich 21, Macallan 18, Highland Park 18) and we were looking for our fourth and final treat.
Chris: Lagavulin 16? It’s [...]

Whisky tasting in Teuchters Landing

Teuchter - a Lowland Scots word used mainly for Northern, Highland Scots, or Doric speaking Scots, although sometimes to any rural Scots by urban Scots (…). Like most such cultural epithets, it is often offensive, but is sometimes seen as amusing by the speaker. The term is often taken to mean “ignorant northerner”. (Wikipedia)

I’m on [...]