Whiskeria Spring 2019

Aye Aye, Captain!

Scotland's John Barclay Spring 2019

Bruicladdich — Glenmorangie — Johnny Walker The Macallan — Glenfiddich Distillery + The Glasgow School of Art Letterpess My Craft + McGregor, South Africa Travel + Hot for Spring 19 New Releases

The Magazine of

THEY SAY THE BEST THINGS COME IN THREES. Introducing BenRiach Sherry Wood Aged 12 Years, creatively made using three facets of sherry cask maturation. By expertly marrying full sherry cask maturation with Pedro Ximénez and Oloroso sherry cask finishing, our Master Blender has created a luscious single malt with layer upon layer of fruit notes, sherry sweetness and toasted oak spice.

BENRIACH. UNCONVENTIONALLY SPEYSIDE.

Choose to drink responsibly. © 2018 The BenRiach is a registered trademark, all rights reserved.

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As I see it…

Competition

Eastern Promise

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Chinese customers buy wonderful things like The Dalmore Constellation to drink and enjoy”

Win! A full Game of Thrones Single Malt Scotch Whisky Collection This is a very exciting opportunity to win a full set of Diageo’s Game of Thrones malts, which became instantly collectable after going on pre-sale at the start of the year.

Comprising of eight carefully selected expressions, each aligned with one of the iconic Houses of Westeros, as well as the 'Night’s Watch', the collection has been released ahead of the HBO show’s eight and final season. This highly sought-after collection is a must-have for Scotch and Games of Thrones fans alike.

To get your hands on the set, simply tell us: Which whisky is paired with The Night’s Watch?

Ian P. Bankier, Chairman of The Whisky Shop

Answers should be emailed to: competition@whiskyshop.com Please include your full name and your answer.

Terms & Conditions The winners will be selected from all entries via the email address stated above by midnight on Thursday 28th February 2019.

The judge’s decision will be final. The competition is not open to employees of The Whisky Shop Ltd. All normal competition rules apply. UK entrants must be 18 years old or over to apply. International entrants must be of legal drinking age in their country of residence.

As we put this first Whiskeria issue of 2019 to print, we enjoy the Chinese Spring Festival or the Chinese New Year. Chinese nationals across the globe, representing an astonishing 20% of the world’s population, will have spent the fifteen day January lunar cycle feasting, setting off fireworks to chase away monsters and reuniting with their families. The whole shebang culminates on 5th February. This one is the Year of the Pig – not the most alluring symbol, but one the gifting market nonetheless has had to work with.

The Chinese New Year gift of choice is a deluxe whisky. This is a relatively new development. Reflecting its historic French colonial connection, China was a big cognac market and special bottles of cognac would be saved up for and toasted at the New Year.

Latterly, Chinese drinkers turned to Scotch Whisky. Their broad preference would be premium blends such as Jonnie Walker Black Label or Chivas Regal; more recently, however, they have adopted old and rare single malts.

A good example of a Chinese New Year gift would be an excellent Vintage 1979 bottle of The Dalmore Constellation. The design of its silver topped decanter bottle exudes luxury

and prestige, both highly important factors in the Chinese psyche. But more importantly, as I see it, is the deep amber sherry cask liquid; it’s nothing short of glorious! Another favourite amongst the Chinese is anything with The Macallan on its label. The prestige of this distillery in this market is unparalleled.

When you think back 40 years to the day when this wonderful Dalmore single malt was distilled and put into cask, the last thing on the worthy distiller’s mind would have been that the ultimate drinker would be Chinese.

Back then scarcely any Chinese national would contemplate, not to mention afford, a Scotch whisky.

So how did that come about? “It’s the economy, stupid!”

China announced its ‘open Doors’ policy in 1978 and since then it’s economy has grown remorselessly. By the turn of the 21st century it had become the largest market-led economy in the world – average growth has been at the rate of 10% per annum and more than 800 million Chinese nationals have been lifted out of poverty. China today is the largest manufacturer and exporter inthe world – despite the best efforts of

Donald Trump to fence it in – and, naturally, China has accumulated a large middle class population. Within that there is a growing and increasingly affluent subset who feel that Scotch malts, rather than blends, reflect their lifestyle aspirations.

Unlike their UK counterparts, who buy old and rare whiskies to put under the bed or flip at auction, these Chinese customers buy wonderful things like The Dalmore Constellation to drinkand enjoy. These single malts are being consumed as they were meant to be back in the day when they were carefully put to cask to be matured until perfection. Hallelujah!

Slàinte Ian P Bankier, Executive Chairman,

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–– produced by Ascot Publishing Limited PO Box 7415 Glasgow G51 9BR –– contact enquiries@whiskyshop.com

–– commissioning editor GlenKeir Whiskies Limited –– executive producer Claire Daisley claire@whiskyshop.com 0141 427 2919 –– executive chairman Ian P Bankier ipb@whiskyshop.com –– feature writers Brian Wilson Charles MacLean Gavin D Smith Claire Bell –– product photography Subliminal Creative 01236 734923

New Releases Spring 2019

–– creative direction a visual agency emlyn@avisualagency.com –– feature photography Brian Sweeney Christina Kernohan –– photo assistants Cat Thomson –– stylists Meredith Wilkie Vixy Rae –– illustration Francesca Waddell Hrafnhildur Halldorsdottir Sean Mulvenna

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Glenkeir Whiskies Limited trades as

Prices effective 31 January 2019.

THE WHISKY SHOP. Opinions expressed

All prices in this edition of Whiskeria

in WHISKERIA are not necessarily those of

are subject to change.

Glenkeir Whiskies Limited. Statements made and opinions expressed are done so in good faith, but shall not be relied upon by the reader.

This publication is the copyright of the publisher, ASCOT PUBLISHING LIMITED, and no part of it may be reproduced without their prior consent in writing. No responsibility is taken for the advertising material contained herein. © ASCOT PUBLISHING LIMITED.

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Contributors

Claire Bell

Brian Wilson

Formerly an MP, Brian held several Government Ministerial posts during his political career. He lives on the Isle of Lewis, from where he pursues various business interests, notably in the energy sector.

He also led the regeneration of the Harris Tweed industry and is currently Chairman of Harris Tweed Hebrides Ltd. His first love was writing and he continues to write books as well as opinion pieces for national newspapers.

Time in History Spring 2019

Claire Bell has written on travel for Time Magazine, The Herald, The Times, The Guardian and Wanderlust. A confirmed nomad, Claire lives between Glasgow, France and her native South Africa where she co-runs the dialogue collective Consciousness Café. Whatever the season, she is guaranteed to find new, exciting and inspiring places you’ll love to visit.

Travel McGregor 38

Gavin D Smith

Gavin is one of the world’s most prolific and respected whisky writers. He’s regularly published in a range of top magazines and has written more than a dozen books on whisky, while co-authoring many more. He is also responsible for editing and releasing the latest version of Michael Jackson’s seminal whisky publication, The Malt Whisky Companion.

Distillery Visit Slane 48

34 Charles MacLean

Charles has published fourteen Scotch whisky books to date, including the standard work on whisky brands, Scotch Whisky, and the leading book on its subject, Malt Whisky, both of which were short-listed for Glenfiddich awards. He was also script advisor for Ken Loach’s 2012 film The Angels’ Share and subsequently played the part of the whisky expert in the film (which he claims to be his biggest career highlight to date).

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created with Scottish coastal botanicals

New Releases | Winter 2018/19 The Scotch Whisky Auction Scene A Time in History | Auld Alliance Travel | Dazzling Dolomites My Craft | Glencairn Crystal Distillery Visit | Bain’s James Sedgwick Mixing It Up | Winter Journey My Whiskeria | Edith Bowman The Whisky Shop Section Expert Tasting | Jura / Littlemill Dear Uncle Ether

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Loch Fyne Whiskies | Inveraray | Argyll | PA32 8UD | t: 01499 302 219 (Shop) / 0800 107 1936 (Orders) e: info@lochfynewhiskies.com | www.lochfynewhiskies.com

Whiskeria

Spring 2019

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Reviewed by Charles MacLean 001 002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010 011 012 013 014 015 016 017 018 019 020

Maker’s Mark Private Select The Whisky Shop Batch 001 Inchmurrin 17 Year Old The Balvenie DoubleWood 25 Year Old The Macallan Rare Cask Batch No.1 Compass Box The Spaniard The GlenDronach 15 Year Old Revival The BenRiach 12 Year Old Sherry Wood Old Pulteney 18 Year Old Old Pulteney 15Year Old Old Pulteney Huddart The Glenrothes 12 Year Old The Glenrothes 18Year Old The Glenrothes 25 Year Old Platinum Old & Rare Highland Park 21 Year Old Platinum Old & Rare Tomatin 23 Year Old Platinum Old & Rare Laphroaig 20 Year Old The First Editions Benrinnes 2005 The First Editions Mortlach 2007 The First Editions Inchgower 2008 GlenKeir Treasures Coimeasgadh

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New Releases Spring 2019

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Lowland Single Malt Age: 12 Year Old

Vol: 46%

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Daftmill Winter Release 2006

Spring 2019

Arran 21 Year Old

70CL

Island Single Malt

£130

Age: 21 Year Old

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70CL Vol: 46%

£125

Pale gold in colour, with lemon lights. A fresh cereal nose – grass and dry pin-head oatmeal – with a suggestion of white wine at base. The taste is sweet and lightly acidic, with the short finish typical of Lowland malts. A drop of water introduces a trace of white chocolate and stem ginger.

Deep gold in hue, with good viscosity. The nose is rich and mellow, with abundant fruit (Meltis crystallised Newberry Fruits, with liquid centres); the taste is lightly sweet, with the same fruity notes combined with a suggestion of milk chocolate, some ginger in the finish and a faintly nutty aftertaste.

Daftmill Distillery, near Cupar in Fife, went into production on St. Andrew’s Day 2005 but was only released as a single malt in May 2018. This is the second expression, the first having sold out rapidly, distributed by the distinguished London wine merchant, Berry Bros. & Rudd.

The founders of the distillery, Francis and Ian Cuthbert, were in no rush to release their whisky: when asked, they simply said they would bottle “when it’s ready”. Their family has been farming the land hereabouts for six generations and also own a gravel quarry nearby. The land provides malting quality barley; the quarry, the cash to run the distillery.

Indeed, the inspiration to create a small distillery on their farm came from having a surplus of cash and owning a charming meal mill, dating from the late seventeenth century, which was simply used for storage.

It forms three sides of a square, with the glass-fronted still-house as the base, the mash-house and tun room on the left and warehousing on the right, and has the capacity to distil 65,000 litres of alcohol per annum.

The Cuthbert brothers are proud Fifers, and at the launch party last year, they stressed that the conversion of the mill was very much a local affair. “We wanted to make sure that the work was carried out by people living close to the farm. Indeed, apart from our copper pot stills, which were made by Forsyth of Rothes, on Speyside, everything was done by people living within a five mile radius.”

The unusual name comes from the stream which runs through the site and which used to drive the mill, named the Daft Burn, since it appears to flow uphill.

In 2016 the Isle of Arran Distillery celebrated its 21st birthday. I was invited to say a few words after the celebration dinner, and was sat beside the company’s Chairman and principal shareholder, a charming and elderly Irishman.

We were appreciatively sipping the single malt distilled in 1995.

“Do know what I regret more than anything about my involvement with this distillery?”. He said to me. I looked at him quizzically. “Not investing more in the early days…”

“You see”, he went on, “At the outset we were very short of money, and as a result had to sell casks. So now we have very little of this lovely 21 Year Old left”. Indeed this release is limited to 9,000 bottles worldwide.

New distillers take note! There is an important lesson to be learned here: if you deplete your early stock in order to raise working capital, you will not reap the rewards provided by long-aged whisky. [see Daftmill, where the owners did not offer a drop for sale until it was 12 years old].

The founder of Isle of Arran, Harold Currie (formerly Managing Director of Chivas Bros.), introduced an innovative – unique, to my knowledge – ‘Bond-holders Scheme’ according to which individuals or small groups could buy a bond for £450 which entitled them to five cases of blended Scotch in 1998 and five cases of Isle of Arran Founders’ Reserve in 2001. While this raised the required capital, as well as promoting the distillery, it depleted stock.

There was much debate in the early days about what style of spirit the distillery would produce, standing as it does between Lowland Ayrshire, Campbeltown, and Islay. As a former Speyside distiller, Mr. Currie wanted a soft, sweet Speyside style, with no smoky notes.

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A fresh cereal nose – grass and dry pin-head oatmeal

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Fruity notes combined with a suggestion of milk chocolate

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Single Cask Kentucky Bourbon Age: NAS

Vol: 54.95%

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Maker’s Mark Private Select Batch 002

Spring 2019

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Glen Scotia 2003 2019 Festival Edition No.4

70CL

Campbeltown Single Malt

£85

Age: 15 Year Old

70CL Vol: 51.3%

£70

Deep amber in colour, with rubious lights. The nose is immediately fresh and oaky, with notes of toasted white bread, dried fruit (including angelica root) nutmeg and allspice. The texture is smooth; the taste sweet and spicy, with a long warming finish and an oaky aftertaste.

Pale amber in colour with good beading. A mild nose-feel with slight prickle and a sweet fruity aroma topped by plums.

There is a wisp of smoke and the merest hint of rum toffee.

To begin with, the taste echoes the aroma (sweet and fruity), but then finishes salty and distinctly peaty.

Maker’s Mark is one of only three American whiskies which use the Scotch spelling, rather than the more usual ‘whiskey’ – the others are George Dickel and Old Forester. It is marketed as a ‘small batch’ Bourbon, which the owner defines as “a bourbon that is distilled in small quantities of approximately 1,000 barrels or less (20 barrels) from a mash bill of around 200 bushels of grain.”

An American barrel holds approximately 200 litres of liquid.

The mash bill for Maker’s Mark is unusual in containing no rye. It comprises 70% corn (maize), 16% red winter wheat and 14% malted barley. The story goes that the distillery’s founder, Bill Samuels Sr., developed seven different mash bills for his new bourbon and since he did not have time to distil and age them he made a loaf of bread with each recipe. The one without rye tasted best.

Bill Samuels Sr. bought ‘Burks’ Distillery’ in Loretto, KY, in October 1953 and released his first whiskies in 1958. The red wax dip which gives the brand its name was inspired by his wife, Margie, who also drew the label.

Bill Sr. was succeeded by his son, Bill Samuels Jnr., who managed the company until his retirement, aged 70, in 2011,when he, in turn, was succeeded by his son, Rob. The company is now owned by Beam Suntory.

Maker's Mark is one of the few distillers to rotate the barrels from the upper to the lower levels of the ageing warehouses during the ageing process to the greatest temperature variations during the year, so rotating the barrels ensures that the bourbon in all the barrels have the same quality and taste.

This bottling is ‘customised’ for The Whisky Shop by being finished using specific oak staves selected by a team including Whiskeria’s editor and her colleagues, and is the second exclusive release of this type for them.

The bottle explains: “Each stave imparts a distinct flavour profile, which in combination produces a whisky that is truly one of a kind, every time.”

Now in its 11th year, the Campbeltown Malts Festival 2019 will be held between 21st and 24th May. Although much smaller than our two major whisky festivals – Islay and Speyside – it is a wonderfully cheerful, friendly event and well worth a visit en route to Islay…

I am sure that readers of Whiskeria will know that Campbeltown was once Scotland’s ‘whisky capital’ – in the 1890s it was dubbed ‘Whiskyopolis’ by Glasgow journalists and was home to around thirty distilleries.

Although there are only three operating in the town today (Springbank, Glengyle and Glen Scotia – joined last year for the first time by Beinn an Tuirc gin distillery, situated some 13 miles north of Campbeltown) – the whisky flows generously, each distillery has its open day and offers master classes on other days; there are tours of the town pointing out what remains of former distilleries and splendid opening and closing dinners for those lucky enough to get tickets.

The second day of the festival is reserved for Glen Scotia’s open day, a lively affair, featuring live music from the Kinloch Ceilidh Band and the Kintyre Schools Pipe Band in the distillery yard, with stalls offering fresh and smoked local seafood, burgers, ice cream and local crafts.

In 2018 cocktails were dished out in wee taster cups – full sizes were also available from the filling store which had been converted into a bar for the occasion.

The Loch Lomond Group, Glen Scotia’s new owners (since 2014) have spent a fortune restoring, upgrading and expanding the distillery and the staff – led by the hugely knowledgeable local man, Iain McAllister – are justifiably proud of their achievements.

This year’s Festival bottling of Glen Scotia is from peated spirit, finished in a rum puncheon, bottled at natural strength and colour and without chill-filtration, providing you with a ‘sneak preview’ of what will become a highly sought-after malt come May.

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notes of toasted white bread, dried fruit

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wisp of smoke and the merest hint of rum toffee

Spring 2019

Mortlach 16 Year Old Distiller’s Dram Speyside Single Malt Age: 16 Year Old

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Vol: 43.4%

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Highland Single Malt

£80

Age: 27 Year Old

Under the headline ‘Mortlach Relaunches Malts After Backlash’ (July 2018), a leading whisky website echoed what many of us felt about the introduction in 2014 of a new range of Mortlach expressions and the withdrawal of the legendary Mortlach 16 Year Old Flora & Fauna bottling.

In my view, none of the four new expressions – Rare Old (RRP £55), 18 Year Old (RRP £180), 25 Year Old (RRP £600) and the travel retail exclusive Special Strength (RRP £75) – were as satisfying as the original 16 Year Old, and dissatisfaction was compounded by their price in 50cl bottles!

Happily, Diageo acknowledged their error. Rich Walker, Global Head of Whisky Marketing, stated: “Whilst every whisky we have launched from Mortlach has always been welcomed and indeed won awards, it was felt that we needed to listen and review our position. We have now rethought the range and this is our response to that feedback. We are confident that this outstanding new liquid, which is bold in flavour, and will deliver success for the brand moving forwards.”

Indeed. All the new bottlings are first rate – the 16 Year Old especially, in my view. The range has three core expressions – 12, 16, and 20 Years Old, plus a 14 Year Old travel retail exclusive. All four have been bottled at 43.4%Vol – the original bottling strength of Mortlach in the early 1900s – and are offered at realistic prices in 70cl bottles.

Known locally as ‘The Beast of Dufftown’, Mortlach is a famously rich whisky and has long been ranked Top Class by blenders (it is a key filling for several Johnnie Walker blends). The new make spirit is described as ‘meaty’ and smells a bit like a roasting tin, or Bovril, and as a result the spirit benefits mightily from maturation in ex-sherry casks. As the distillery owner, Dr. Alexander Cowie, told the Royal Commission on Whisky in 1908: “ I am a malt distiller of highly flavoured whisky, a thick type of whisky.”

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The GlenDronach Grandeur Batch 10

70CL

Deep amber with oily viscosity; sherry-wood maturation.

A mild nose-feel, slightly dry. The top note is of buttery treacle toffee and faintly scented oil, on a base of Demerara sugar and dried fruits. Pleasantly mouth-filling; sweet to taste, with light spice (nutmeg, then clove) and a trace of coal-dust. A drop of water expands the aroma (now soft fudge and redcurrants).

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70CL Vol: 50.1%

£499

Deep dull umber in hue, it beads well even at this strength. The aroma is profound: rich and fruity, with damson jam, prunes and cherry liqueur chocolates, on a dry base of hay and polished leather. A drop of water dries it further. The texture is smooth; the taste sweet to start then slightly salty (especially at natural strength) before finishing gingery and dry.

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buttery treacle toffee and faintly scented oil

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The aroma is profound: rich and fruity

Founded in 1826 by a group of local farmers and businessmen led by James Allardice (whose name appears on the distillery’s 18 Year Old expression), Glendronach passed through several ownerships until being bought by William Teacher & Sons in 1960.

The land was owned by the 5th Duke of Gordon, who had persuaded Parliament to pass the 1823 Excise Act which laid the foundations of the modern whisky industry. After dinner at Gordon Castle and somewhat the worse for wear, Mr. Allardice was over-effusive with praise for the Duchess of Gordon’s piano-playing. Next day the Duke informed him that Her Grace was ‘not amused’, to which Allardice replied: “Well, Your Grace, it was just that trash of Glenlivet you gave me after dinner that did not agree wi’me. If it had been my ain guid Glendronach I would not have been ony the warr”.

Readers of Whiskeria may remember that the Duke had supported George Smith of Glenlivet to take out the first license in the region – Glen Livet was also part of his extensive estates. A cask of ‘guid Glendronach’ was immediately ordered.

Allardice has been described as an “inventor, pioneer and entrepreneur; exuberant and extroverted”. The story goes that, soon after he commenced production he travelled to Edinburgh with a small cask of his whisky with a view to taking cask orders from the city’s taverns and spirits merchants. Alas, nobody was interested.

Returning to his lodging in the Canongate one evening he fell in with a couple of ‘ladies of the night’ and, over a few drams of ‘guid Glendronach’, explained his predicament.

Impressed by the whisky and by his generosity, the ladies spread the word to their colleagues who were not slow to join the merry tasting. Next day all the taverns on the High Street were ringing with demands for Glendronach from this motley crew… and, as Allardice recorded in his memoirs, “orders were swiftly forthcoming.”

The high reputation of GlenDronach as a single malt came in recent years after the distillery was bought by the legendary Billy Walker in 2008 and two years later he selected and released the first, limited, Grandeur bottling of exceptional sherry-matured whiskies. This style – European oak, seasoned with Oloroso sherry – is now The GlenDronach’s hall-mark.

After the distillery had been sold yet again (to Brown Forman, the giant American distiller), Rachel Barrie moved from Bowmore to become Master Blender.

She describes Grandeur Batch 10 as “an intense Sherry expression… with layers of damson plum, Morello cherries in dark chocolate, black walnut and truffle on a bed of antique leather and old-fashioned treacle gingerbread, Batch 10 celebrates the robust, full-bodied style of the GlenDronach distillery.”

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Spring 2019

Amrut Naarangi Indian Single Malt Age: NAS

Vol: 50%

Whiskeria

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Whiskeria

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Indian Single Malt

£155

Age: NAS

This family owned company was founded by Shri J.N. Radhakrishna Rao Jagdale to supply bottled liquor for the Ministry of Defence.

He was succeeded in 1976 by his son, Shri Neelakanta Rao Jagdale.

In August 2002 Amrut trialled the sale of its single malt whiskies in Indian restaurants in the U.K., starting in Glasgow, where it was especially successful, and the brand is now familiar throughout Europe, tirelessly promoted by its ambassadors, led by Ashok Chokalingam, a familiar face at whisky fairs everywhere.

The company’s malt distillery opened in Bangalore, Karnataka in 1987. The mean temperatures here in summer are between 20-36ºC and 17-27ºC in winter.

As a result the angels’ share stands at between 12-16% per annum (compared with around 2% in Scotland) and the spirit matures at a far faster rate – Surinder Kumar, Amrut’s master distiller, estimates that one year’s maturation in India is equal to three in Scotland.

Most of Amrut’s products are bottled at 4 to 5 years old; Mr. Kumar says that after four years the spirit has to be monitored very carefully to avoid it becoming too tannic.

Maturation is in a mix of new oak and ex-bourbon barrels, with some ex-sherry casks and occasional rum, Madeira and brandy casks for finishing. Barley is grown and malted in Northern India, while peated malt comes from Scotland. It surprised me to read that the distillery’s process water is tankered in from a well fifteen miles away.

In Hindu mythology, the amrut was a golden pot containing the elixir of life; Naarangi is Hindi for ‘orange’ – Oloroso sherry from Spain was infused for over two years with orange peel, disgorged and filled with three years old single malt for a further period of maturation.

Amrut Madeira Finish is a limited edition malt, cask strength and without chill-filtration of tinting.

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Amrut Madeira Finish

70CL

Deep amber in hue, with blood orange lights. An intriguing aroma of orange fondant (Orange Cream chocolates) – subtle and not intrusive – with traces of vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg. A smooth texture and very sweet, slightly citric, taste, a long warming finish, and an aftertaste of chocolate.

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70CL Vol: 50%

£160

A gorgeous deep magenta colour, with good beading. Shy to start with, the nose opens to reveal vanilla fudge, almond oil and a trace of orange peel, on a faintly ashy base. A smooth texture and a sweet taste, with light acidity and a warming finish, leaving an aftertaste of chocolate orange.

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Vanilla fudge, almond oil and a trace of orange peel, on a faintly ashy base

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An intriguing aroma of orange fondant

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Island Single Malt Age: 11 Year Old

Vol: 46%

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The First Editions Jura 2006

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The First Editions Speyburn 2006

70CL

Speyside Single Malt

£74

Age: 12 Year Old

70CL Vol: 46%

£74

Tarnished silver in hue – from a much refilled cask.

The nose is closed to start, then suggests a sand-castle made with a polythene bucket; dry overall. The taste is sweet and nutty, with a hint of basil, a short finish and an aftertaste of white chocolate.

Deep gold in hue, implying maturation in an American oak cask. Aromatically shy, there is a suggestion of almond praline on the nose, with a milky middle (even crowdie cheese) on an ashy base (even a hint of matchbox striker). The texture is light and the taste sweet, with notes of marzipan sprinkles with white pepper in the finish.

Andrew Laing, one of the directors of Hunter Laing, writes of the company’s First Editions series: “As the name may suggest, each cask is carefully selected to evoke the qualities of a rare literary volume – those of character and collectability. Colour-coding on the labels denotes the particular regions the whiskies themselves are from and each bottle is individually numbered and presented in a gift tube. A First Editions bottling without doubt makes a valuable addition to anyone’s whisky library.”

These youthful additions to the range demonstrate just how good young whiskies can be. I must confess to being initially nervous about assessing them: their almost complete lack of colour indicates that the liquids have spent their short lives in very tired – even exhausted casks – but I was happily surprised. They have lost any immature characteristics, and while the wood has not added much in the way of flavour (let alone colour), this allows the original distillery character to shine forth.

Although there had been a distillery at Craighouse, Jura in the 19th Century, it closed in 1901 and the present distillery was established by two island landowners in 1963, with support from Scottish & Newcastle Breweries, via its subsidiary, Mackinlay Macpherson & Company.

Jura was designed by the leading distillery architect of the day William Delme Evans, who wrote. “It was our intention to produce a Highland- type malt, different from the typically peaty stuff last produced in 1900”.

Accordingly, he specified unusually tall stills (7.7 metres), designed to increase reflux and contact between the alcohol vapour and the copper walls of the stills, and therefore to produce a light style of spirit.

The first Isle of Jura single malt was released in 1974.

Speyburn’s founder was determined that his distillery should open in the year of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, and achieved this on the last day of 1897, by dint of the workforce toiling day and night while a violent snowstorm raged, in a still-house in which windows had yet to be fitted!

It stands in the steep wooded Glen of Rothes, just outside the village of the same name, the site being chosen by the founder, John Hopkins (who also owned Tobermory Distillery), on account of the “unpolluted water supply from the Granty Burn, one of the major tributaries to the River Spey”, which supplies its process water.

It is a neat and picturesque distillery, designed by the leading architect Charles Doig of Elgin, and constructed from stones raised from the adjacent river bed. The ingenious Doig , who had previously invented the ‘pagoda roof’ which soon became the leitmotif of Scottish malt distilleries, solved the considerable challenge posed by the very narrow site by installing a ‘Hennings pneumatic maltings’, the first drum maltings in any malt distillery, in order to avoid the need for extensive malting floors.

This operated until 1968.

John Hopkins & Co. joined the Distillers Company Limited in 1916 and its successor, United Distillers PLC (now Diageo) first released a 12 Year Old expression of Speyburn single malt in its Floral & Fauna series in about 1990.

Next year the distillery was sold to Inver House Distillers who replaced the 12 Year Old with a 10 Year Old and more than doubled capacity in 2014/15. Although the still-house remains as Doig designed it, a new, larger, wash still was installed and the existing one became the spirit still. Unusually, both retain their original worm-tubs.

Although the malt is almost unknown in Europe it stands among the Top Ten singles in the U.S., and apparently is Number One in Finland. This youthful expression comes from indie bottler, Hunter Laing, in their First Editions series (see Jura, oppposite page.)

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A sand-castle made with a polythene bucket…

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A milky middle (even crowdie cheese) on an ashy base (even a hint of matchbox striker).

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New Releases

Speyside Single Malt Age: 20 Year Old

Vol: 50%

012

The Old Malt Cask Inchgower 20 Year Old

Spring 2019

New Releases

The Old Malt Cask Glen Ord 14 Year Old

70CL

Highland Single Malt

£124

Age: 14 Year Old

Vol: 50%

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70CL £99

Pale gold in colour, with good beading. A mellow nose, comparatively closed. A suggestion of malted fruit loaf, with sultanas, on a chalky and somewhat maritime base. At full strength the texture is surprisingly thin; the taste begins lightly sweet, passes through a salty phase and finishes as Walnut Whip chocolate!

Very pale gold; drawn from an American oak refill cask. Good beading. A mellow nose in spite of its strength. The top note is of soft and fragrant wax, with a fresh-fruity middle (including orange peel), on a base of vanilla fudge. All restrained and elegant. The texture is lightly waxy (teeth-coating); the taste sweetish and fresh, with some pepper in the warming finish.

Inchgower is a Bell’s distillery, so passed into the ownership of Guinness in 1985, then Diageo two years later. It is a key component of the Bell’s blends, and as they have grown in popularity the distillery has been expanded, most recently in 2012 when capacity was increased from 1.9 million LPA per annum to 3.2 million LPA. The distillery stands just outside the fishing port of Buckie on the Moray Firth – a long way from Speyside, although it is classified as such. Arthur Kinmond Bell, son of the eponymous Arthur Bell, bought it in 1936 from Buckie Town Council, who had acquired it following the bankruptcy of its previous owner for £1,000.

A.K. (as he was always known) travelled up by train, inspected the distillery in the company of the Provost of Buckie and liked what he saw, and offered the Provost £3,000 for the distillery, its extensive warehouses and eight ‘model’ cottages. This was promptly accepted on behalf of Buckie Town Council, then, as they were leaving the distillery, the Provost pointed out a picturesque old mansion-house nearby which traditionally housed the distillery manager and which was also for sale. A.K. immediately offered him a further £1,000. Dazed by the sudden offer, the Provost accepted and the deal was done. In later life he was heard to mutter: “It was the first time I was done twice in one day”!

Because of its importance as a blending whisky, particularly for Bell’s, Inchgower is not often seen as a single. Indeed, I am not sure that the only expression offered by the distillery’s owner – at 14 years old (in Diageo’s ‘Flora & Fauna’ series) – is still available. So this 20 years old from the everresourceful family firm, Hunter Laing, offers a rare opportunity to taste it.

Glen Ord – both the distillery and the brand – has gone through many changes over the years.

The whisky has been branded Glenordie, Ordie, Ord, Glen Oran, Muir of Ord, and, most recently, The Singleton of Glen Ord. I have to admit a deep affection for the latter, having helped Diageo launch it in Taiwan in 2006 – I am known as ‘The Godfather of the Singleton’ on that island! – and later in Mainland China. Together with its siblings, The Singleton of Dufftown and The Singleton of Glendullan, it currently stands at number four bestselling single malt in the world.

To keep up with demand the distillery was doubled in size in 2014/15, with eight new stills located in Glen Ord’s former maltings and 12 new washbacks in the former kiln and malt storage areas, bringing capacity to 11 million LPA – the sixth largest distillery in Scotland.

Like many others, the distillery on the edge of Muir of Ord in Ross & Cromarty, licensed in 1838, stands on a site which had previously been very popular with smugglers. The visitor centre displays several stills and worms recovered from local lochs and bothies.

In 1878 a new still-house was built, but this burned down the same year. The owner started again and on his death in 1896 the distillery was bought by James Watson & Co. of Dundee who tripled production by 1901. On the death of the last Watson, who had the exotic name ‘John Jabez’, Ord went to John Dewar & Sons in 1923, and thence to the Distillers Company Ltd (now Diageo).

The floor maltings were changed to Saladin boxes in 1961, and a large drum maltings was built on an adjacent site in 1968, the distillery itself having been rebuilt and expanded two years previously.

The 14 Year Old expression comes from Hunter Laing’s Old Malt Cask series, described as being a range of “rare and old malts, bottled at 50%Vol without chill-filtration or colour adjustment.”

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Malted fruit loaf, with sultanas, on a chalky and somewhat maritime base

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All restrained and elegant

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Speyside Single Malt Age: 30 Year Old

Vol: 52.4%

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Platinum Old & Rare Glen Grant

Spring 2019

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Johnnie Walker White Walker

70CL

Blended Scotch Whisky

£460

Age: NAS

70CL Vol: 41.7%

£34

Deep gold in hue, with excellent beading, the nose-feel is mild and drying. The top-notes reminded me of dry Xmas cake, complete with almond marzipan, with a suggestion of hard toffee in the middle, on a faintly oaky base. The texture is smooth, the taste sweet and lively, with light vanilla and almonds, and a long spicy finish. Traces of milk chocolate in the aftertaste.

Bright gold and gloopy-viscous from the freezer. At this low temperature it has little aroma, except perhaps of snow.

The texture is smooth and the taste centre palate, fresh and sweet, with a warming finish. As it warms, notes of vanilla cream and fresh fruits emerge; the taste becomes slightly acidic. Crisp and fun overall.

In the 1880s Glen Grant was being sold “in Scotland, England and the Colonies”, and during the late-1960s and 1970s it became the first single malt whisky to take off in a big way in any export market.

The market was Italy, and the man who drove the brand’s success was Armando Giovinetti, who was appointed its agent in 1961, following a visit to the distillery during which he filled the back of his Volvo with cases. His plan was to take on grappa and accordingly asked to be supplied with young whisky (five years old), pale in colour, which he sold with a slogan which emphasised its purity – ‘Puro whisky; puro malto d’orzo’ – and emphasised that it did not have the usual ‘bite’ of blended Scotch.

One ingenious tactic was a joint promotion with a company making throat lozenges: doctors were all sent a miniature, demostrating the Glen Grant was not as harsh on the throat as other whiskies (and grappa).

By 1970 Italy was the leading export market for Glen Grant, and Italy the first country in the world to embrace single malt whisky. By 1977 sales were around 500,000 cases a year.

The man who appointed Armando as agent was Hugh Mitcalfe, who died in January this year aged 84.

His obituary on scotchwhisky.com (17th January) was headlined ‘Marketing Genius’. Hugh joined Glen Grant in 1959 as export and marketing director – relatively unknown job titles in those days – and was sufficiently impressed by Giovinetti to supply him with malt whisky.

They became close friends and when Glen Grant was taken over by Seagram in 1978, Hugh moved to The Macallan and, with Giovinetti, built that brand in the Italian market. In the obituary, Willie Phillips, The Macallan’s MD 1978-1996, wrote: the rest, as they say, is history.

This release, under Hunter Laing’s Platinum Old & Rare label, is from a single refill hogshead which has yielded only 205 bottles. It was distilled in September 1988 and bottled at natural cask strength in October 2018.

This, the first in Diageo’s innovative Game of Thrones series, is named after the scary ‘White Walkers’ – a mysterious undead race from ‘beyond the Wall’ in the far north, bent on destroying humankind in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.

George R.R. Martin, whose novels inspired the series, described them as “tall and gaunt and hard as old bones, with flesh pale as milk… eyes deeper and bluer than any human eyes, a blue that burned like ice”. They are accompanied by intense cold and wear armour which “seemed to change colour as it moved” – as does the White Walker bottle when it is frozen! Their voices are “like the cracking of ice on a winter lake”. A reviewer in the American media network, The Verge, described them as “the most visually iconic creatures on the show”.

Diageo notes on its website: “The Scotch has notes of caramelised sugar and vanilla, fresh red berries with a touch of orchard fruit and features single malts from Cardhu [known as ‘The Home of Johnnie Walker’] and Clynelish – one of Scotland’s most Northern distilleries”.

The drink’s creator, George Harper used the Frozen North as his inspiration for White Walker.

He said: “Whiskies from Clynelish have endured long Scottish Winters, not dissimilar to the long periods endured by the Night’s Watch who have ventured north of the wall – so it was the perfect place to start when creating this unique whisky.”

White Walker is designed to be served direct from the freezer, served straight in a frozen glass or as a highball (with block ice and either soda or ginger ale, garnished with mint and lemon peel), or perhaps as an Old Fashioned (with simple syrup and a dash each of Angostura and orange bitters, garnished with ‘a sprig of frozen thyme’).

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Sweet and lively, with light vanilla and almonds, and a long spicy finish

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WBright gold

and gloopyviscous from the freezer

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New Releases

Diageo’s Game of Thrones Single Malt Collection Speyside / Islay / Highland / Island Single Malts

70CL

Age: NAS

£various

Vol: various%

The American ‘medieval’ fantasy TV series, Game of Thrones, is loosely based on the storylines of the seven epic novels which comprise A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R.Martin. Set in the fictional Seven Kingdoms of Westeros on the continent of Essos, the series chronicles the violent dynastic struggles among the realm's noble families for the Iron Throne, while other families fight for independence from it. Casting a shadow over all is the threat from the supernatural ‘Others’ in the far north (see my White Walker review).

The author set out to make the story feel more like historical fiction than contemporary fantasy, with less emphasis on magic and sorcery and more on battles, political intrigue, and the characters themselves, believing that magic should be used moderately in the epic fantasy genre. He has stated that “the true horrors of human history derive not from orcs and Dark Lords, but from ourselves.”

One American reviewer jokingly suggested “The Sopranos in Middle-earth” as Game of Thrones' tagline, referring to its intrigue-filled plot and dark tone in a fantasy setting of magic and dragons. In a 2012 study of deaths per episode – the average then was 14! – it ranked second out of 40 recent U.S. TV drama series.

A common theme in the fantasy genre is the battle between good and evil, which George Martin says does not mirror the real world. As with people's capacity for good and evil in real life, Martin explores the questions of redemption and character change. The series allows the audience to view different characters from their own perspectives, unlike in many other fantasies, and thus the supposed villains can provide their side of the story.

In early seasons, under the influence of the A Song of Ice and Fire books, main characters were regularly killed off. This was criticised, but credited with developing tension among viewers. In later seasons, critics pointed out that certain characters had developed ‘plot armor’ to survive in unlikely circumstances, and attributed this to Game of Thrones deviating from the novels to become more of a traditional television series. The series also reflects the substantial death rates in war. The eighth and final series will be screened this spring.

The individual malts were assigned to the Houses based on the history and geographic location of each distillery. Flavour was not a key consideration when assigning a single malt to a House.

Each of the bottle labels depicts the sigils of the Houses: a leaping trout for the Tullys, a golden lion for the Lannisters, three-headed dragon for the the Targaryens, a golden kraken for the Greyjoys, and so on.The whiskies are very good, and in my view this is an inspired way to introduce Scotch malts to a new audience.

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The whiskies are very good, and in my view this is an inspired way to introduce Scotch malts to a new audience.

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New Releases

Speyside Single Malt Vol: 40%

017

Highland Single Malt

£48

Age: NAS

Vol: 51.2%

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Game of Thrones | House Baratheon:

Royal Lochnagar 12 Year Old

70CL

Highland Single Malt

£48

Age: 12 Year Old

Vol: 40%

Game of Thrones | The Night's Watch:

Oban Bay Reserve

70CL

Highland Single Malt

£38

Age: NAS

70CL Vol: 43%

£65

Diageo’s Notes: Fueled by the same fiery spirit of the fierce female leadership of Daenerys Targaryen, this single malt celebrates legendary women and their unwavering perseverance. Cardhu distillery was pioneered by Helen Cumming and her daughter-in-law Elizabeth during the 1800s, a time when the whisky industry was almost entirely male-dominated.

Diageo’s Notes: House Tyrell of Highgarden rules over the Reach, the lush and fertile region of Westeros. Like the Reach, Clynelish is positioned among green pastures and rolling hills, with scenic views of the North Sea. This vibrant, golden Scotch is light and floral, like House Tyrell, and it’s not to be underestimated with its underlying complex combination of Highland and maritime qualities.

Diageo’s Notes: Royal lineage drives the iconic pairing between House Baratheon and Royal Lochnagar. Similar to Robert Baratheon ruling the Seven Kingdoms upon the Iron Throne, Royal Lochnagar was deemed a whisky worthy of a Royal Household when it was granted a Royal Warrant after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert visited the distillery in 1848.

Diageo’s Notes: The Oban distillery sits beneath the steep cliff that overlooks the bay in the frontier between the west Highlands and the Islands of Scotland, separating land and sea, just as Castle Black, home of The Night’s Watch, sits between Westeros and the lands beyond The Wall. The liquid’s richness is balanced with a woody, spicy dryness that The Night’s Watch could enjoy even on the coldest of nights.

An elegant, floral/fragrant aroma with lavender, musk and vanilla. A smooth texture and a light body, with these aromas translated into tastes, adding white pepper in the warming finish. A very interesting example of Cardhu.

Clynelish’s hallmark note of candlewax is immediately apparent on the nose, supported by fragrant moorland scents and dried seaweed sea-shore aromas. The texture is waxy, the taste starts sweet, becoming salty and finishing spicy.

The top notes are dry and bosky – a bramble thicket, sawdust, moss, beech mast – beneath this are notes of dry fruit-cake.

The taste is sweet, drying gently to a lightly peppery finish, with a faintly cereal aftertaste.

A dry and dusty first impression, like an antique desk drawer, with a hint of beeswax polish and dried figs: relatively closed.

A pleasant oily texture and a taste which starts sweet (dried figs again) and finishes dry and lightly spicy.

Game of Thrones | House Stark:

Game of Thrones | House Lannister:

Game of Thrones | House Tully:

Game of Thrones | House Greyjoy:

Dalwhinnie Winter’s Frost Highland Single Malt Age: NAS

Vol: 43%

Lagavulin 9 Year Old

70CL

Islay Single Malt

£48

Age: 9 Year Old

Diageo’s Notes: House Stark’s resiliency, strength and ability to thrive under the most intense situations are greatly shaped by Winterfell’s frigid temperatures. Dalwhinnie, known for being one of the highest distilleries in Scotland, is cold and remote much like The North which House Stark calls home, making the two an iconic pairing.

Extreme conditions are responsible for shaping the signature Dalwhinnie Winter’s Frost honeyed sweetness and spicy warmth. Best served chilled or over ice.

A lightly oily nose, with maritime suggestions – surprising for an inland distillery. Then some dried fruits (Christmas pudding with ignited brandy). Soft texture, easy drinking, with a light taste, starting sweet with a hint of salt.

Vol: 46%

The Singleton Glendullan Select

70CL

Speyside Single Malt

£65

Age: NAS

Vol: 40%

023

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Age: NAS

Clynelish Reserve

70CL

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016

Cardhu Gold Reserve

New Releases

Talisker Select Reserve

70CL

Island Single Malt

£38

Age: NAS

70CL Vol: 45.8%

£48

Diageo’s Notes: Lagavulin is one of the most legendary single malt brands and has been crafted on the shores of Islay for more than 200 years – mirroring the meticulous calculation and tenacity employed by the Lannister’s in their rise to conquer the Iron Throne. This whisky is a roaring single malt that recalls the Lannister’s riches and is best served neat or with a single drop of water.

Diageo’s Notes: House Tully, located at Riverrun, rules as the lord of The River lands. The power of water flows through both House Tully and The Singleton of Glendullan Select as it is made on the banks of the River Fiddich in the wooded hills of Dufftown. Here they harnessed the water that flowed through the land utilising a water wheel to power the entire distillery.

Diageo’s Notes: House Greyjoy rules the Iron Islands and worships the Drowned God. Talisker was a natural pair for House Greyjoy as this single malt is distilled on the shores of the Isle of Skye, one of the most remote and rugged areas of Scotland.

The layered flavors and signature maritime character of Talisker Select Reserve are the result of its wave-battered shores. This liquid is an intense smoky single malt Scotch with spicy, powerful and sweet elements combined with maritime flavors.

Initial aromas of natural turpentine and camphor give way to dentists’ mouthwash and carbolic, with gradually growing peat-smoke. A smooth mouthfeel and a sweet start, with a blast of smoke in the finish. A splendid example of the make.

A mellow nose, with subtle top notes of malt loaf and cooking spices. Homely (I hope this fits with House Tully!). The taste is lightly sweet, rich and comforting on a winter’s night.

Smouldering peat on a beach, with a background of burnt toffee and dry seaweed. The taste begins sweet, then becomes salty, with Talisker’s keynote chilli pepper in the long, warming finish.

New Releases

Game of Thrones | House Tyrell:

Game of Thrones | House Targaryen:

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In The Know

What makes whisky collectable?

Box Sets It should come as no surprise that collectors love collections! This is especially true for brands that have attracted a niche, devoted fan base, such as Highland Park. If you own part of a collection, it’s likely there’s somebody out there keen to complete their series with the very bottle in your possession.

Official or Indy?

Whisky’s popularity as a luxury asset and secure investment option has grown dramatically in recent years. But how can you tell if a bottle is worth investing in, or even if something you already own could earn you big bucks?

Big Brand, Limited Edition

Silence is Golden

The rarity of a bottling depends on how in-demand the release was when it first came to market, so make sure you weigh up the popularity of the brand against the quantity of product made.

Silent, or closed, distilleries attract lots of attention and are often in huge demand, which translates into big bucks at auction!

This is especially true if the liquid already has a fantastic reputation.

A limited release of 18,000 bottles from a big name like The Macallan is much more collectible than the same run from a smaller distillery, simply because their whiskies have a much bigger audience to begin with. That means they’ll sell out of 18,000 bottles before you can say ‘Edition No.1’, and those bottles will become instantly collectible.

Take Karuizawa and Port Ellen as examples: Karuizawa Distillery closed in 2001, before the recent boom in Japanese whisky’s popularity. Rumour has it that there are now only 50 casks of Karuizawa whisky left in the whole world, causing demand, and prices, to skyrocket!

Port Ellen Distillery closed in 1983.

Now set to reopen, whiskies produced in the original distillery – already highly revered amongst whisky drinkers – are more in demand than ever.

As a rule of thumb, official bottlings (those released by distillery itself) hold more value than independent bottlings, although the latter are growing in popularity.

If you’re just starting off in whisky investments, we recommend focusing on Official Bottlings

Origins of the species…

As whisky appreciation has spread across the globe, a whole world of whisky production has followed. Scotch still dominates the market – both in retail, and at auction – however it’s becoming increasingly common for people to collect whiskies from one lesser-known whisky producing country.

So, if you’ve got a souvenir bottling from a far-flung craft distillery, it may well appreciate in value

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Industry News

Industry Top-Up

Whisky News Digest Catch up on key news and important sales from recent months, and stay abreast of what’s going on in the world of whisky.

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Brand & Distillery News Eye-Catching Auction Results ➘ £110,000

The Macallan 50 Year Old Lalique Six Pillars Collection sold for a record UK price in a December auction, going for £110,000.

This follows the same bottle fetching a record £65,2010 at auction in April 2017 – which made it the most expensive non-charity bottle sold at UK auction at that time.

➘ £14,0141 Karuizawa 1983 Single Cask #3557 was originally released on 3rd October 2015 for the Nepal Earthquake Charity Masterclass, has sold at auction for £14,141 on 7th January this year.

➘ £410

Whisky memorabilia is a growing market, and well worth looking into for keen investors.

A book called Macallan - The Definitive Guide To Buying Vintage Macallan (First Edition) has sold for £410 on 15th January 2019 – a £400 increase on it’s original sale price of £10 in 2002!

➘ £62,000 The Macallan 50 Year Old released in spring 2018 at £25,000, recently sold at auction for a whopping £62,000, meaning The Macallan 52 Year Old announced in late-2018 is certain to be a shrewd investment.

Ardbikie are launching what is thought to be the first Scottish rye whisky created in over a century. The single grain expression comes from the family-run highland estate distillery where sustainability is key, and they are proud to produce multiple ‘field to bottle’ spirits on site including gin and vodka in addition to whisky. The rye whisky will be limited to 998 70cl bottles and sold through high-end retailers at an RRP of £250.

Ardnahoe, Islay’s ninth distillery, is currently in the commissioning phase by Hunter Laing & Co.in summer 2018 and it is rumoured their spirit trials are now underway!

Elixir Distillers are seeking to become the 10th Islay distillery, having submitted plans for a contemporary site to be built on theHebridean island. These including underground warehousing, perhaps inspired

by Bowmore’s No.1 Vaults, plus suggestions they will produce both gin and rum on the island, alongside whisky.

Suntory has launched a new product in its core range: Ao. Billed as a ‘world whisky’, the blend features whiskies from distilleries in five of the major whisky-producing regions: Scotland, Ireland, America, Canada and Japan. The name translates from the Japanese colour signifier for blue-green, and is inspired by the seas that separate the origins of the whisky used.

The launch is thought to be a step towards greater transparency in the Japanese whisky category, as currently the country has no restrictions on relabelling imported whisky as having Japanese origin.

Barra-based entrepreneurs have launched a crowd-funding campaign to raise capital for a new distillery on the remote Hebridean island.

The co-operative, named Uisge Beatha nan Eilean, are seeking to raise £2.5 million to open the distillery, where they hope to produce 26,220 LPA using 100% renewable energy, capitalising on the island’s fertile soil, pure water sources and unique location.

Edrington has announced that Ian Curle will be stepping down as CEO. His successor, Scott McCroskie, will take the post from April 2019. Scott is currently Managing Director at Edrington, which he joined in 1986, and is also Chairman of North British and former Chairman of the Scottish Whisky Association.

Hugh Mitcalfe, ‘Mr Scotch Marketing’ for The Macallan, has died peacefully on 2nd January 2019. He joined The Macallan as its first Marketing Director in 1978, following almost 20 years as Export and Marketing Director at Glen Grant from 1959 (see more in Charles Maclean’s New Releases review).

Mitcalfe was responsible for starting The Macallan’s 25th Anniversary line, and was also behind the 50 and 60 Year Old expressions that sold for over £1 million at auction. He left The Macallan in 1996 following its acquisition

by Highland Distillers.

Dan Jago has stepped down as CEO for Berry Bros. & Rudd, where he held the position for three-and-a-half years. The company reported a 17% increase in full-year profit, boosted by a 12% surge in spirit sales, in the first year following Jago’s appointment as CEO. His successor is yet to be named, with Company Chairman Lizzy Rudd stepping in in the interim.

Bladnoch Master Distiller, Iain MacMillan, is leaving the position to start his own whisky consultancy business. He joined the distillery in 2015, and was instrumental in its revival. He will remain in an advisory role.

Sales & Aquisitions Glenturret Distillery sold by Edrington to Art & Terroir, operated by Lalique owner Silvio Denz, with the deal to be finalised this spring. All jobs are safeguarded as part of the sale.

Edrington also recently sold Cutty Sark to the French group La Martiniquaise-Bardinet, owners of Glen Moray, and the world’s fifth largest spirit group. Edrington will continue to provide blending and bottling services during the transition period.

WhistlePig the Vermont-based rye whiskey specialists – have have sold a minority stake of their business to investment bank BDT Capital Partners to fund international expansion.

They experienced an impressive 40% revenue growth in 2018 (around twice as much as the competition) following a US$25 million assetbased line of credit from JP Morgan Chase in 2017, giving them further funding to expand their operation as well as their global reach.

Sazerac have kicked off 2019 with the purchase of 19 brands from Star Industries, including several whiskey brands. They’ve also upped their stake in India’s John Distilleries Private Ltd. (owners of Paul John whisky).

This follows their December 2018 acquisition of 19 other brand from Diageo for $550 million.

Remy Cointreau, owner of Bruichladdich, Octomore, Port Charlotte and The Botanist reported strong year-to-date growth via ‘organic sales’ of 8.1% at the end of 2018, with sales of €929.4m across the company.

In addition, Remy Cointreau has initiated sale of its distribution chain for the Czech Republic and Slovakia to Jägermeister. Once approved, Jägermeister will take over distribution of Remy Cointreau’s portfolio in the area from 1st April 2019.

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Unsinkable Spirit Brian Wilson discovers how, one hundred years on, the Titanic is lifting Belfast's spirits with plans for a new distillery full steam ahead…

Knowledge Bar Titanic's Cargo Manifest 20,000 bottles of beer and stout.

15,000 bottles of wine.

850 bottles of liquor.

8,000 cigars.

Champagne-style wines were favoured on the Titanic because they could be easily chilled after being brought onto the ship.

Bordeaux wines were less favoured because the rumble from the enormous steam engines could dislodge sediment from inside the bottle.

Cargo manifests from the Titanic chronicle a grand selection of spirits available aboard the ship — wine, vermouth, Champagne, Cognac, brandy, and whiskey were all on offer.

For a century, Belfast did not want to talk about the Titanic. The identification was with the liner’s grim fate rather than the glory of her construction in the Harland and Wolff Yard.

And anyway, for most of these years, why would anyone come to Belfast to hear about the Titanic?

All that has changed in a quite dramatic way.

As peace dawned in the early years of the 21st century, Belfast was a city in search of a dividend.

It needed a landmark attraction to put a stamp on its new identity and pull in visitors from all over the world. Finally, it was time to tell the Titanic story, and where better than in the very place where the ship was built.

Most of the vast area which Harland and Wolff occupied was by then derelict and in search of a new purpose. Both public funding and private investment were available to transform the 200 acre site at the entrance to Belfast Lough. At its heart now stands the Titanic Centre pulling in up to 800,000 visitors a year, most of them from outside Northern Ireland. Now everybody in Belfast talks about the Titanic.

Abiding fascination with the ship was reflected late last year in a bidding war for 5500 relics of the disaster. Titanic Belfast joined with Northern Ireland Museums and the National

Maritime Museum to offer $19.5 million to the bankrupt Florida-based owners. The idea was to keep the entire collection together in Belfast.

However, they were outbid by a consortium of three New York hedge funds.

As befitted a vessel carrying some of the wold’s richest people, the Titanic was well stocked with expensive alcohol for the ill-fated voyage.

According to the manifest, supplies also included 15,000 Champagne glasses. Accommodation was rigidly class-structured from the giddy luxury of First, with interiors inspired by London’s Ritz Hotel, downwards. There would not have been much demand for Champagne from the poor emigrants in Third Class, just above the waterline!

James Cameron’s 1997 movie, Titanic, showed a baker drinking from a flask and hanging from a rail as the ship went down. That was Charles Joughin, the Liverpudlian head baker on board the Titanic who became one of its most famous survivors.

The film’s portrayal, at least by some accounts, scarcely did justice to his role.

When the Titanic hit the iceberg 350 miles south of Newfoundland, Charles ordered his fellow bakers to pass out food and supplies to the lifeboats as well as rounding up passengers and shepherding them on board. Job done, Charles

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returned to his cabin, accepted his fate and hit the bottle. After about an hour, he emerged to throw chairs into the water not because he was drunk but in the hope they could be used as floats.

As the ship started to become submerged, Charles is reputed to have stepped off the stern and entered the freezing water without getting his hair wet. After several hours treading water he found a lifeboat to hang on to. The story goes that it was the whisky he had consumed that saved his life. Anyway, he survived long enough to be rescued and died 44 years later in Paterson, New Jersey.

With that background and amidst all the other memorabilia, a Titanic whiskey was an obvious contender – and it now exists. The man behind it, Peter Lavery, says: “The grain for Belfast whiskey came into these docks, the exports of Belfast whiskey went all over the world from here and the men who built the Titanic would have drunk Belfast whiskey. So why not a Titanic whiskey?” Put like that it makes perfect sense.

Peter was a bus driver who won €10 million on the lottery in 1996. Since then, he has become a shrewd property developer and a Titanic Distillery is his most ambitious project. He has secured part of the former Pumphouse, immediately adjacent to the Thompson Graving Dock from which the Titanic finally emerged into Belfast Lough – a great site for the iconic project he envisages. For the time being, Titanic whiskey is made at the Cooley distillery, just across the Border in County Lough.

When the Titanic distillery comes to fruition, it will represent a step towards reviving the whiskey-making tradition in Belfast which has been in abeyance since before the Second

World War. Yet, as Brian Townsend wrote in his Lost Distilleries of Ireland: “Although the world today regards Scotland as the stronghold and main producer of whisky, those epithets long belonged to Ireland… a great industry has been drastically condensed – a hogshead shrunk to a hip-flask”.

And Belfast was second only to Dublin within that industry.

For several decades, the Irish resisted what they regarded as the adulteration of their own product’s quality through blending with Scottish imports. As Brian Townsend noted: “The Scots, harnessing their legendary sense of thrift and efficiency, eventually found a way to make a palatable whisky more cheaply and eventually elbowed the Irish whiskey distillers out of most of their markets”.

Until the 1920s, Belfast had three distilleries.

Two of them – Avoniel and Connswater – along with two in Derry, were closed after their Irish owners, United Distilleries, were taken over by the Distillers Company Limited, the powerful Scottish concern which had a strong interest in killing off Irish competition. The third, the Royal Irish Distillery, survived until 1936 and was the home of Dunville’s whiskey.

Royal Irish had a capacity of 2.5 million gallons a year and Dunville's was for decades the best-selling Irish whiskey in the US market. It was a highly successful family concern located in West Belfast and according to Townsend, only “a rare set of circumstances killed off the best and most enduring Belfast distillery”.

In 1931, the last of the Dunville lineage “died suddenly during an export promotion tour of South Africa”. The remaining directors voted themselves a very large dividend – “a special distribution of surplus capital”,

as the new chairman delicately put it – and within five years the business was in voluntary liquidation with the loss of 400 jobs. It’s a story that still makes the blood of Belfast whisky aficionados boil.

Since 2013, however, the Dunville’s name has been revived with initial success by a local businessman, Shane Braniff, whose small distillery – still only the second in Northern Ireland alongside mighty Bushmills on the north Antrim coast – is located on farmland he owns at Kirkcubbin, 25 miles outside Belfast on Strangford Lough.

Shane was encouraged to invest in the project by the growth in demand from the United States. “Irish whiskey,” he said, “is now the fastest growing brown spirit worldwide and demand is currently outstripping supply in the US and many other markets”. Locally grown grain barley from his farm is being used in the Dunville’s whiskeys.

Evidence of Belfast’s past as a centre of whiskey production is not hard to find. Distillery Football Club, which plays in the Irish League, was founded by Dunville’s workers. There is Distillery Street, Malt Street and Excise Street.

Some of the city centre’s most interesting buildings, in what is now known as the Cathedral Quarter, are converted bonded warehouses.

There’s a Whiskey Trail, great pubs like Bittle’s Bar, and the Friend at Hand museum displaying a treasure trove of rare Irish whiskey.

All that is now missing is the first working Belfast distillery for over 80 years. In that respect, hopes now rest on Peter Lavery and the Titanic, preferably without ice.

SPIRIT OF THE OPEN

Two award winning Customer Favourites from The Spirit of The Open.

DOUBLE GOLD MEDAL WINNER

Left to right: Peter Laverty in the old pumphouse; a bottle of Titanic Irish Whiskey; John Bittle of Bittle's Bar; Dunville's Three crowns. @lochlomondmalts

Loch Lomond Whiskies

WWW.LOCHLOMONDWHISKIES.COM

San Francisco World Spirits Competition

BEST HIGHLAND SCOTCH 12 YEARS & UNDER

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Travel

Travel

Valley of Dreams Nestled between the Cape winelands and the Karoo desert is a South African valley with a Scottish name, which is a magnet for those seeking a more creative and tranquil life.

Knowledge Bar McGregor Coordinates: 33°57'S 19°50'E Population approx. 3,125 First language: Afrikaans Small village in the Western Cape, South Africa approx. 150km east of Cape Town, located in Ward 5 of the Breede River Winelands Municipality Est. 1861 and renamed in 1905 after Rev. Andrew McGregor

Polokwane

Mahikeng Johannesburg

Ladysmith

Kimberley Bloemfontein

Durban

SOUTH AFRICA

Bhisho

Cape Town

Po Elizabeth

McGregor

They call it the Road to Nowhere because of how it ends, abruptly failing to traverse the mountains as was the original plan before the engineering became too difficult and the money ran out. En route though, it does go somewhere.

After fifteen minutes you will spot a Scottish saltire billowing alongside a South African flag outside a wine farm, and a few minutes later you arrive in a white-washed village where children ride BMX bikes down the middle of the high street, dogs take themselves out for walks, sometimes with a human trotting behind, and there is a whisky bar in an old Post Office, that opens for just two hours, three times a week, and only if the owner is in the mood.

There is also an Italian ice-cream shop, a cultural centre that programmes its monthly offerings at the whim of its owner (December 2018 was Antonio Banderas month), a grand old church outside of which is a sign advertising Lord’s wines (which turns out not to be named after Our Heavenly Father, but rather the cricket ground in London), five galleries, a brass band, a donkey sanctuary, a live music venue, a restaurant named after an opera singer and another that only opens for dinner on Mondays, with the menu changing each week to fayre from a different country.

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Knowledge Bar Visit South Africa’s other quirky villages Riebeek Kasteel where Cape Town’s arty set spend their weekends | riebeekvalley.info Tulbagh South Africa’s fourth oldest town, in the Cape Winelands | tulbaghtourism.co.za Stanford a riverside village with great dining | stanfordinfo.co.za Rosendal a hamlet of artists and writers in the Free State | rosendalinfo.co.za Prince Albert a creative oasis in the heart of the Karoo | princealbert.org.za

Polokwane

Tulbagh

Mahikeng

Stanford

Johannesburg

Rosendal Prince Albert

Rosendal Kimberley Bloemfontein

Ladysmith

Pietermaritzburg Durban

SOUTH AFRICA

Prince Albe Cape Town

Welcome to McGregor, named after the muchloved Reverend Andrew McGregor, a Scottish Calvinist preacher who was brought to South Africa to head up the local Dutch Reformed Church in the late 1800s.

During the draconian days of apartheid, McGregor was one of the few villages that was not racially segregated. Whereas the apartheid state imposed segregation to enforce its policy of white supremacy, the law was ignored in McGregor, and white people lived side by side with the coloured population, those descendants of the Khoisan who mostly speak Afrikaans as their first language and call the Western Cape home.

Since the end of apartheid, many of South Africa’s small villages – or dorps as they are locally known – have become havens for people wanting to escape the urban pressures and crime of bigger cities – each nurturing its own unique character.

“I like the fact that the people here are free spirits.

You can be anything you want here,” says Billy Kennedy, who first arrived in McGregor in the mid-nineties at a time when the village counted a white witch and someone who believed in aliens among its inhabitants.

Tulbagh Stanford

As a young man Billy had trained for the priesthood, before choosing instead a career in opera. Years later, he decided to marry his love for pastoral care with his passion for bringing beauty to life, and create a spiritual retreat centre where people could escape the pressures of everyday life.

With the help of local gardeners and builders he transformed a sheep field into a magical garden full of fountains, labyrinthine walkways, peacocks, secluded cottages and sacred spaces that pay homage to the religions of African shamanism, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity, and gave it the Greek name Temenos, meaning ‘sacred space’.

“I invited Credo Mutwa, the famous South African sangoma to come in 1994. He came and said this place would flourish because it was once a sacred burial site of the San people,” Billy says.

Twenty years on, it would seem Credo Mutwa was right. Not only is Temenos, and the village itself, a haven for those seeking tranquillity, the McGregor valley is a magnet for those seeking to build a more creative and fulfilling life.

Bhisho

Po Elizabeth

Ilse Schutte had long been a salaried winemaker for the larger vineyards – including Lord’s which produces one of the finest rosé Methode Cap Classiques, South Africa’s answer to Champagne – but had a dream of creating her own signature wines. Without the capital to buy a wine farm, Ilse adopted instead the French concept of the ‘garagiste cellar’.

“The idea is that you don’t make more than 12,000 litres of a vintage and you buy in the grapes you want to work with, rather than grow them. Garagiste wine is more about what the wine maker does with the wine, rather than the terroir,” says Ilse, who created her label Bemind – Beloved – in her mother-in-law’s garage on McGreogr’s main street, decorating the space with her wedding dress.

It’s here, around a metal table, where she hosts daily tastings and sells her wine direct – selling out annually.

“After being here four years, I’ve realised that wine is my passion, but it’s also everyone else’s,” she says. “People come to Bemind, and then return with friends to share what they’ve found.”

One of her signature wines is a Cinsaut – “it tastes like candyfloss,” says one fan – which spends only 3 months in the barrel and is

Left to right:

served cold like Beaujolais.

Another is the Sauvignon Blanc, which she makes through very cold fermentation in plastic vats. “I don’t enjoy most South African Sauvignon Blancs as I find them too green and heavy on the acidity. I wanted to make something totally different,” says Ilse.

It was the same motivation to do something new that brought Anette and Robert Rosenbach to settle here.

“South Africans know how to make wine and brandy, but in Germany, it’s common to have a digestif after your meal, and we rarely found anything on offer in restaurants and saw a gap in the market that we could relate to and that is part of our culture,” says Robert.

After realising that their dream would be a good fit in McGregor – “it’s a village of eccentrics who are opening, welcoming and supportive” – in 2009 the couple bought Tanagra, a poorly run agricultural farm that dates back to 1882. They chose to keep the farm’s original name, which echoes the Khoisan expression for a “well-shaded place”, perhaps a reference to the enormous branches of the wild fig trees in the heart of the farm, turning the farm cottages into tourist accommodation, and converting an old horse

stable into a distillery, shipping a Jacob Carl Göppingen pot column still from Germany.

Today they distil lemon, quince, peach and apricot eau de vie, all from locally-grown fruit, and produce a local version of grappa or marc, as it is called in France, using grape skins from the local wine industry.

“In South Africa they know it as witblitz (white lighting) and it’s typically a very rough drink,” says Robert, explaining that witblitz is often made with the lowest quality grapes that did not make the grade for wine production, and is distilled in a single pot.Tanagra, instead, triple distils using top quality grape skins, notably the skins from the nearby Springfield wine estate’s highly acclaimed Life From Stone Sauvignon Blanc, to make the fresh, mineralic Marc de Sauvignon Blanc and the pomace from their Wild Yeast Chardonnay to create the delicious Marc de Chardonnay with its fragrant nose and cocoa-like aftertaste.

“The more you distil it, the smoother and cleaner it becomes,” says Robert, adding, “People are surprised by how smooth and elegant it can be.”

Their neighbours are as determined to carve a new niche in the valley. Former architect Dustin Taljaard and his entrepreneurial wife Stephanie had long dreamt of moving away

from an urban Cape Town life, but realising they had neither the capital nor skills to buy a working farm, they bought instead a few acres of land outside McGregor, and a train carriage which had previously served as the guard’s carriage on the Trans-Karoo service that connected Johannesburg with Cape Town.

The couple stumbled upon this 1941 caboose on the classified sales site Gumtree, and first viewed it by the light of a mobile phone screen under a railway bridge in downtown Cape Town.

It was something of a logistical obstacle course to get it to McGregor, first towing it by steam train into a nearby valley, before making the final kilometres by truck, but they are now in the throes of transforming it into an alt. holiday cottage, complete with an outdoor hot-tub.

“It’s a little bit off the rails,” laughs Dustin.

Indeed it is, just like the rest of McGregor.

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MAN OF LETTERS Edwin Pickstone is artist in residence, lecturer and typography technician at The Glasgow School of Art, where he presides over the institution's world class Caseroom – home to a letterpress printing suite that includes centuries worth of equipment, and maintains traditional, hand-set printing methods.

My Craft

My Craft

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What lead you to taking over the caseroom at Glasgow School of Art? I studied Graphic Design here, and I really enjoyed being in the Caseroom. At that time nobody else really used it – maybe a few students a week, compared to now where it’s about 14–15 students every day.

You can tell when you come in here – a room full of a few hundred thousand letters – that there’s a hum of potential, because each off those little letters could be doing something.

I wanted to see what you could do that was still relevant today and could lead to different ways of thinking and what value was still in it, because it had obviously been superseded by more efficient means of typesetting and printing.

I spent a year doing that and, as I was the only person who used the place, they asked me to stay on for the next year as designer in residence. Then Fraser (who ran the caseroom) was retiring, so I took over.

How has it changed since you were studying?

This place has become a lot more accessible and students are thinking about this room in a different way. In 2005 (when I was studying) students were fighting over who got to go on the computer, because we thought that you needed to know how to use one to get a job (which was true!). Now, students have their own laptop, they find these spaces very exciting because they’ll have access to equipment they wouldn’t otherwise have.

There’s also a lot to think about in terms of collaboration because the room is humansized, so if you’re working with an artist you can both be in here. Normally when you’re working with type you’re working on a computer, which is one-human sized, with one mouse, one keyboard and one monitor. That can sometimes be isolating as a process when collaborating.

When you’ve got a big room you can run around together, like you’re inside InDesign, or Microsoft Word, and see what happens. We work a lot with unintentional mistakes – although I’m not sure you can have an intentional mistake – and it’s nice to have a space that’s big enough to have multiple people working at the same time.

How do those unintentional mistakes become finished work?

I’ve done a few of these collaborative projects where you start from nothing and work up to something; you’ve got all this equipment, so you’ve got the restrictions of the project already inherent within using the studio. You work with someone through experience and shared interest, then start making together, discovering what you like and don’t like about the thing you’ve made, and iteratively getting to a point where you’ve produced a new body of work for show.

I’ve worked for artists and in collaboration with artists, and also with writers [Edwin has worked with Ciara Phillips, Scott King, Duncan Campbell] . Working around the restrictions of the collection, combined with working with someone else, often allows you to make something that you didn’t know you were going to make, which I find really exciting.

How did those collaborations evolve?

I used to make lots of club posters – they don’t pay well, but they’re a nice thing to do and they’re interesting. You do them because your friend asks. It can be the cheapest way to make an interesting poster; I’m not paying any overheads here, and if someone wants to make something they can do some of the work, which you can’t do at a commercial printers.

In that situation you work out what you’re trying to do very quickly, because of the financial constraints of making work that will only be on a wall advertising for a couple of days.

Having done that, I realised that one of the key things I’ve learned is working with other people who haven’t been in this situation before, helping them create something they’re happy with and it not being compromised by both your ideas, but instead being a natural collaboration.

What other sort of work do you do?

Time constraints mean that now I’m mainly working on bigger jobs that can run over months. At the moment I’m doing a memorial with Louise Welsh, the writer, for The Glasgow School of Art. It’s a memorial for non-combatants in World War I and it needs a lot of thought about how to interpret her writing graphically, and how that’s going to work in terms of the aesthetics, what it’s about, and also how that will function visually on a large scale.

I’ve worked on quite a lot of historical projects as well. I was a consultant typographer to the Royal Bank of Scotland new banknotes, and I do a lot of work with graphic design agencies.

We have this great historical collection of things – so we have the blocks from over a 200 year time period that we can use. Sometimes it’s about trying to work out what’s appropriate historically when a design company has taken on a historically lead project, or other times it’s about giving the design an individuality you might not be able to find otherwise.

How does your collection at The Glasgow School of Art compare to others around the world?

It’s one of the best collections of its type at a Higher Education institute in Scotland, and Scotland full stop.

There’s a connection for students with the history of publishing, the history of the alphabet, the history of letters. That’s really exciting. You could be confused into thinking that graphic design is the aesthetic wing of advertising, and you could still think that as a student, but having a broader understanding of your discipline through experiences and equipment like this is really helpful. Understanding the significance of letters to our culture.

What defines good or bad letterpress fonts?

Part of it is taste, then part of it is whether they were made to last a long time – if it’s produced in a way that’ll allow it to last for a couple of hundred years rather than just for the job at hand.

Once we moved onto photo litho printing processes, which are the forerunners of the digital and litho processes we have now, you couldn’t put the old style blocks (which we use here) in the new machines. But generally they’re made from hard woods, so they are made to last.

How has printing evolved, and how has that informed the way you work?

We think of things in terms of design. When you read books about the history of design you're usually given a clear narrative overview of designers and design styles: that certain people designed certain things, and then subsequently certain people designed other things, and that most posters made in a particular period look a certain way, for example.

But actually in real life, styles and processes are more jumbled, if you look at photos of the street from the 1960s, they’re full of posters printed with letters that were made in the late 1800s, because there were still printers using those fonts. It’s not until the technology totally changed that you get a total change in aesthetic. Even then, commercial printers in

W You can tell when you come in here – a room full of a few hundred thousand letters – that there’s a hum of potential, because each off those little letters could be doing something.”

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My Craft

certain places, even in Glasgow and especially in small towns, would still have this type of equipment right up until the end of the 1980s.

Also, being a designer is about making decisions, so letting a computer make those decisions for you can limit the amount of voice you have within the work that you’re making. For students it’s really useful to come through here and have to think about those decisions, because it makes you more articulate when using the computer.

How does the Caseroom compare to a contemporary commercial printers?

The set up here also allows you to use industrial equipment to test and do weird stuff that you wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to – you can’t shut down a big printers to have a play with the ink cabinet. They’ve got too much work to do!

Lots of students make prototypes of really interesting things, or pieces that would be really expensive to do commercially without economies of scale, and that helps them understand how the processes work.

Here, the machinery is slow, so there’s the benefit of being able to pull it apart to do things that it isn’t exactly designed to do. You can design and manufacture at the same time.

When you’re printing this magazine, someone designs it and that’s a fairly detailed specification of what you want it to look like, then somebody else (at the printers) actually makes it. Obviously this set up wouldn’t be appropriate for printing a magazine like Whiskeria, but for the kind of work that students do, or that I would do professionally with artists or other designers, it’s important to offer a combination of design and manufacture, and a different way of working with different outcomes.

I don’t use the hand roller very often – we have a big set of machine ones on here for when you’re ding poster runs and things. But when it’s just a test, you use the hand roller.

Knowledge Bar Project: Alasdair Gray Custom Typeface A few years ago I was asked to write a 45-minute public talk about the ‘history of the alphabet’ for a lecture series in the Art School as part of the Alasdair Gray season, a series of events dedicated to the famous Scottish writer and artist, that was going on in partnership with Kelvingrove Galleries. Through that we started talking about type, so Alasdair gave me a call when he wanted to design a typeface.

He was after a functioning typeface based on letters that he’d previously designed for other objects (artwork and novels). I put together a team of myself, graphic designer Neil McGuire and type designer Imogen Ayres to try and achieve this. The first job using it is about to be finished, which is a head stone for his partner Morag Nimmo McAlpine Gray. Obviously Alasdair is very articulate and can use his words in any way that he wants, so it’s nice also he can use this type to do a lot of his work now. Hopefully it’ll be used for the books that are published subsequently that he’s working on at the moment. Imogen did a really good job of originating something – it’s a bit like translating, so she tried to keep in his personality.

Hopefully we’ll have a little publication from this about letters and locality. It’ll cover whether these are Glaswegian letters, or whether they have a feeling particularly associated with a geographic locality, and considering other things that are like that. Can you get a sense of a particular city from things like public lettering, shop signs and streets signs? Can you distil that? That’s leading onto broader research projects which I’m looking forward to getting stuck into this year.

Knowledge Bar A glossary of the caseroom Sticks • A ‘Composing Stick’ is a basic tool of typesetting. It’s a little rectangular of metal that you put your letters into.

• Each type has a little place where it lives within the case – and they all have a small notch on one side which is to let you know which way round the letters are., otherwise lowercase Ps and Qs, Ds and Bs, Os etc. can be really easy to put in upside down.

• That’s supposedly where the phrase “mind your Ps and Qs” comes from, because, when setting, the letters are back-to-front and upside down when you set them!

Sorts • Each individual part is called a ‘sort’.

• A quarter space, which is your normal word spacing, is a quarter space sort.

• Each font collection has its sorts for each section – so there are, say, the lower case U sorts.

• If you’re “out of sorts” then you can’t finish your work.

That’s the origin of that phrase too, although it might not be true…

Spacing • You need lots of different sized spacing sorts so that you can correctly make lines of text exactly the same length.

• There are defaults in the system because we’ve developed spaces that function as a ‘word space’, so you aren’t having to invent that space every time.

• You do need to use your brain a bit to work out what’s the appropriate thing at the time, which is something InDesign does automatically nowadays.

• Leading is used to create the spaces between the lines, and is made out of strips of lead

Lighting

• There’s a light here that’s meant to be colour corrected so that

when you’re looking at print work you get a rough idea of what it’ll look like outside.

• Some things that we’ve done in here look really different (invisible!) outside.

• The lesson was don’t ever print yellow on a white background!

Chase, furniture and quoins

• When you’re ready to set your text you put it in the chase, a metal

frame that you put the type into, which you then fill with furniture.

• You furnish the chase, then you add these little expansion bolts

called quoins to tighten up the contents.

• It could be where the term “to coin a phrase” comes from, although it’s as likely it comes from the way we write phrases on actual coins.

• These are all nice 16th Century terms from wood working or metal working and related industries, because anything made out of wood was called furniture then, apparently.

Setting stone

• After tightening the quoins up a little bit on all sides so you’ve

got equal pressure running in all directions, you pick up the chase and drop it onto the setting stone.

• Once upon a time this surface would’ve been a nice big piece of flat stone.

• Once the printing plate us ‘set’ the collection of items (chase with sorts, leading, furniture and quoins) is called a ‘forme’.

• Type is cast so that it’s 0.918 of an inch high, which is Anglo American Type Height. It’s measured in thousandths of an inch because it needs to be really accurate, because those thousandths of an inch will make a difference to whether it’ll print nicely.

• The table needs to be perfectly flat as well – there’s a little dot in the middle and the whole table is milled out from that to make the it totally flat – so that the surface of the type when you’re setting it is flat too.

Ink

• You then go to the ink cabinet which has a full range of Pantone inks and special colours in it.

• You can make every colour in the Pantone book. It looks a bit

informal, but actually there’s a professional inking system in there, like one you’d have at a commercial printers.

• You only need about 17 cans to make everything that comes in the system, and one of the cans of ink might last us three years.

• It’s nice because you’ve got metallics and fluoroescents, and all types of things that, as a student, you wouldn’t normally have access to if you were just using an inkjet or laser printer.

• By having access to print fluoros or metallic, or custom mixed inks, you then understand how they work and get the basics of what’s being done in the industry.

Press • You take the forme and position it on the press.

• The one I’m using in the photos is a cylinder proofing press from Switzerland, bought by the Art School in the 1970s. It’s top class, the Rolls Royce of proofing presses!

• This machine (used in photos) can go up to about 500 copies, which is a whole day’s work.

• The other machine we have here does about 4,000 an hour, so it has to be set up a lot more specifically on the machine so you don’t break the machine, yourself, or the other equipment!

• The slower the machine, the more you can play, and do things the machine wasn’t necessarily intended to do.

• For big printers, the machine is a lot faster, so you run a lot of copies before you get anything right, whereas here we do two or three tests, then we’re off onto the actual production.

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Headline Act

Whiskey and rock and roll have often made raunchy bedfellows, and at Slane distillery in Ireland’s County Meath, the two come together in a unique and fascinating way.

Knowledge Bar County Meath

Slane distillery has been created in a former stable block at the magnificent 18th century Slane Castle, which stands at the heart of a 1,500 estate that has been in the hands of the Conyngham family since 1703. The River Boyne flows through the estate, and the famous 1690 Battle of the Boyne was fought just down river.

Rocking Slane More recently, Slane has been known globally for its rock concerts, held most years since 1981 in the natural amphitheatre of the castle grounds, and established by the 8th Marquis Conyngham.

The inaugural concert in August 1981 featured U2 and Hazel O’Connor, with the headline act being Thin Lizzy. Since then, Slane has played host to many music greats, including The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Queen, Oasis, Robbie Williams and Madonna.

The 8th Marquis’ son Alex Conyngham is co-founder of the distillery project and serves as global brand ambassador for Slane Whiskey.

He explains that “We started out with the Slane whiskey brand in 2009. It was my dad’s idea, but I had previously worked in the Irish whiskey industry for a time as a brand ambassador.

Distillery Visit

Distillery Visit

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Distillery Visit

Knowledge Bar Brown Forman In 1870, young Louisville pharmaceuticals salesman George Garvin Brown and his half-brother started selling whiskey in sealed glass bottles so that customers knew it was genuine, with Old Forester Kentucky Straight Bourbon being their principal brand. Ultimately, Brown entered a partnership with his friend and accountant George Forman, thus forming Brown-Forman. In 1901 George Forman died, with Brown purchasing his stock in the company, which was incorporated shortly afterwards. 1923 saw George Garvin Brown’s son Owsley Brown acquire the entire stock of Early Times Bourbon, having received a licence to bottle whiskey for ‘medicinal purposes’ at the onset of Prohibition in 1920. Thirty years later, Early Times became the best-selling Bourbon in the USA. In 1956 Brown-Forman purchased the Jack Daniel Distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee.

“The family has survived at Slane since 1703 by diversifying. Dad took over the estate in 1976 and decided to put on a gig in 1981. He has a real love of rock and roll music, and that gig changed the future. I suppose it’s that maverick spirit that led us to move into something else, rather than rely on the gigs for income. That led us to the whiskey.” slane whiskey The whiskey in question is Slane blended Irish whiskey, which at present is sourced from third-party distillers and undergoes a unique ‘triple casked’ process of maturation.

Component whiskeys are aged in a combination of virgin American oak casks, seasoned Tennessee whiskey cask, and Oloroso sherry casks, sourced from Jerez in Spain. The three styles are then vatted together for optimum harmony prior to bottling. As the company strapline puts it, “Slane Irish Whiskey is tripledistilled for smoothness and triple-casked for rich character,” and in its relatively short existence it has garnered an impressive collection of prestigious awards.

Having established the blend in Ireland, the Conynghams decided to create their own distillery, taking water from the River Boyne and growing malting barley on the excellent quality farmland of the family estate, which has the potential to produce up to 2,000 tonnes per year.

From the outset, sustainability was high on the

Slane agenda, with energy efficiency, and the re-use of process water and waste materials being central to the project.

A listed stable block dating from the 1750s and an adjacent grain store were selected as the site of the new distillery, and constructing unobtrusive new buildings was also part of the scheme. Comprehensive plans were drawn up for the venture, and then, as Alex Conyngham explains, “We met up with Garvin Brown, Chairman of Brown-Forman Inc for lunch, and by this time they had publicly declared an interest in becoming involved in the Irish whiskey category.

“We talked about the importance of family, we had shared values as both ran family businesses, in effect. We both have to think to the next generation and beyond, led by thought of family. We were very comfortable with the ‘fit’ between Slane and Brown-Forman.

“They looked at other locations in Ireland, but settled on Slane. This was partly because our distillery was fully designed when they came on board. They liked our designs and the fact we had a project ready to go. We’d obtained all the planning permissions and everything else, and were about to start building.”

brown-forman buys So it was that, in 2015, Jack Daniel’s distillers Brown-Forman acquired Slane Whiskey, and went on to invest in the region of €45 million in the project to create Slane Distillery, which took two years to complete. One early benefit of Brown-Forman’s involvement was that the existing Slane blended whiskey suddenly gained some 10,000 new trade accounts in the USA! Three copper pot stills and six column stills to produce grain whiskey were fabricated by independent coppersmiths McMillan Ltd of Prestonpans, near Edinburgh, while Briggs of Burton plc put their 270 years of experience making brewing and distilling vessels to fabricate a full lauter mash tun.

As Alex Conyngham explains, “The whole venture is about respecting the best of tradition, so we got Joseph Brown Vats of Dufftown on Speyside in Scotland to build us three wooden washbacks, rather than use stainless steel, and we have room to add another four if we want to expand production in the future. Overall, we can make the equivalent of 600,000 nine-litre cases of whiskey per year. In time, we will definitely launch a single pot still whiskey as I see really good growth in the category. If you visit the distillery you can buy a special unfiltered, higher proof version of Slane whiskey, and we will look to do more such exclusives over time.”

making whiskey Conyngham adds that “We are making whiskey to go into the existing Slane blend as and when we deem it ready, so that eventually all the components of the blend will be distilled here. So far, we’ve been making both single malt and single pot still whiskey, and the column stills have been commissioned and we’ve done two initial batches as of early 2019.”

When it comes to sourcing casks for maturation, Brown-Forman’s own Blue Grass Cooperage in Kentucky comes into its own.

“The virgin oak casks with a heavy toast level that we use as one of the components in Slane whiskey were produced for us by them,” notes Conyngham.

“We are currently filling ex-Bourbon casks and some Oloroso sherry casks, and we will be doing other interesting things with wood in future.”

The distillery is expected to attract as many as 40,000 visitors per year, and boasts a Stalls Bar where tastings are conducted, along with a café and retail outlet. One unique feature of the retail offering at Slane is an array of vinyl LPs recorded by groups that have played Slane concerts over the years. As Alex Conyngham says, “In a way, rock and roll is where we’ve come from. The last concert was by Guns n’ Roses, and Slane whiskey was certainly flowing in the VIP area that day!”

Knowledge Bar The Conynghams Albert Conyngham and his son Major General Henry Conyngham were recorded as fighting at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. The family were of Scots descent, and 1703 saw Major General Henry Conyngham purchase the land where Slane Castle now stands. In 1781 members of the family developed the small village of Slane into something close to the attractive settlement we see today, and 15 years later, Henry Conyngham improved and expanded the stables at Slane Castle, where the distillery is now situated. This was the work of the renowned Capability Brown, who also designed the castle parklands. In 1820 Lady Elizabeth Conyngham became the last mistress of King George IV, who reputedly had the road from Dublin to Slane straightened to speed up travelling time for his assignations with her!

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Mixing It Up

Mixing It Up

The Classic Lassie

Bruichladdich Brand Ambassador, Abigail Clephane, shows us how to harness local ingredients and seaside inspiration for a true taste of Islay.

In Abi’s own words: I have worked as Brand Ambassador for Bruichladdich distillery now for just over three and half years. I come from a bar background and have always been interested in flavours and experimentation. When I drink malts I will generally have them neat, but that’s just not what you want all the time! Whiskies have such a broad flavour profile they’re great to mix.

Bruichladdich is the perfect place for that kind of mindset as we’re constantly asking questions, and challenge industry convention. In our one small distillery, located on the island on Islay in the Hebrides, we make unpeated Bruichladdich, heavily peated Port Charlotte and the world's most heavily peated whisky Octomore,

as well as The Botanist Gin. We passionately believe in terroir – in authenticity, place and provenance, transparency and traceability. At Bruichladdich we only use Scottish barley in our whisky and, where possible, we grow on Islay. We also believe in leaving the natural oils in whisky so we don’t chill filter, and we also don’t add anything to our whisky. We seek to produce natural, thoughtprovoking spirits with a progressive mindset, whilst continuing to hand make everything in our old Victorian equipment. We commit to distilling, maturing and bottling only on Islay, first for the distinctive flavour this creates, but it's also as a commitment to our local community and providing professional

jobs within it.

Its great to be part of such a large team of diverse people that champions experimentation over yield, and that reconnects people with the land and the quality of the liquid. We are Progressive, Hebridean Distillers. marinetini We make and mature our spirits on the shores of Loch Indaal, and you can feel the sea in everything we do. I love seaweed, this is a local ingredient we massively underuse in this country as a food source. This is a selfish take on my favourite cocktail, a Gibson martini, which is garnished with a pickled onion. I used

a dulse infused Manzanilla sherry instead of dry vermouth and garnish with some pickled seaweed. You get a beautiful savoury depth from the seaweed in the Martini, which I think works really well with The Botanist. Scotland is so abundant with flavours we have been disconnected from – we’re trying to get people back to the abundant wild larder we have here on our doorstep. long islay ice tea When working with The Botanist foraging is in our DNA, it’s how James collects our 22 islay botanicals, and it is something I’ve really embraced since I began working with Bruichladdich. I like making drinks with plants

people hate and from an early age we are told (or we learn the hard way) that nettles are bad, when in fact the positives to nettles are endless.

They’re a great source of iron, vitamins and minerals, and abundant in protein, making them a common food source in many other countries.

Historically they were known to be used to treat rheumatism, arthritis and hayfever amongst other ailments. They are often commonly used in cheese and beer making. Also they can be woven into material, rope or used to make fabric dye. They are essentially a great survival plant!

One of the best things about them is they are abundant most of the year. When made fresh, the cordial turns bright pink and tastes like apricot, and when dried tastes like peach ice tea.

So this drink is a tall and refreshing ice tea style drink, and it can be had without the gin also – but where's the fun in that? Nettle is a plant I have been playing about with for 3 years now and always a staple in my wild larder. I'll stop talking about nettles now! peachy green Pandan was an ingredient that was introduced to me when our friend Vijay from Native came to Islay and brought something foraged from his home in Singapore. As soon as I tried it I have been looking for ways to use it in a drink.

Its smells like freshly cooked rice with a bit of a vanilla type thing going on, and its bright green...

The Classic Laddie has a beautiful sweet barley

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flavour with a wee hint of salinity from the Islay maturation that goes really well with the pandan, and peach is generally great with whisky. This is like a tall, fizzy peach crumble with a kick.

respect your aelders Port Charlotte 10 Year Old is our new expression of heavily peated malt, and one of my favourite day-to-day drams. It’s made and watched over for it's full life on the shores of Loch Indaal. I like the idea of using a heavily peated whisky in drink that would normally be associated with a very different spirit, with this one being the classic gin bramble. Port Charlotte 10 Yer Old again lends itself beautifully to being mixed as it has a hugely diverse flavour profile, and although it is a heavily peated Islay single malt (peated to 40ppm) the flavour is so unique to the Port Charlotte liquid. It’s a very different style of peated whisky – the smoke is beautifully balanced throughout the liquid, giving you more of a bonfire finish. You get delicious sweet barley flavours, mixing with the tart citrus and sweet honey and then a wee kick from the elderberry liqueur. It's a bit like drinking a jammy dodger...

The Aelder elderberry liqueur is made by one of our friends Rupert of Buck and Birch and is

delicious, I try and use it as much as I can.

It's again about reconnecting people with the land and making delicious liquid.

octosmores Octomore is not something we tend to see in cocktails so much, but it actually lends itself to them really well due to the intense nature of the flavour and the high ABV. Being the most heavily peated whisky in the world (this one is 156ppm) may be off-putting in theory, but the flavour of Octomore is always so well balanced it mixes extremely well. Flavours in this drink are inspired completely by my friend Ally Kelsey, the champion of the banana! He once mixed them together for me and I've never looked back. The flavours of the drink remind me of toasting marshmallows on a fire hence, the smores reference in the name, with the chocolatey biscuit notes from the barley.

There's a hint of sweet tropical indulgence from the banana and the coconut, but in an old fashioned style drink. As the 8.1 is 5 years old, there is youthful exuberance that works really well with tropical flavours.

Knowledge Bar Our line up this issue, from Remy Cointreau Cocktails: Main images, previous page: Octosmores Clockwise from top: Peachy Green; Respect Your Aelders; Marinetini; Long Islay Ice Tea Bottles, clockwise from top: 1 Port Charlotte 10 Year Old Heavily Peated 2 Octomore 09.1 Dialogos 3 Bruichladdich The Classic Laddie 4 The Botanist

Abigail Clephane – Brand Ambassador Bruichladdich UK. For more inspiration and to follow the Bruichladdich Distillery stories, head to Instagram: @abigailclephane @bruichlassieuk @Bruichladdich @The Botanist Gin

— 60ml Botanist gin 10ml Manzanilla sherry — Method: Stir all ingredients over ice and strain.

Garnish: Pickled seaweed Glass: Coupe

Mixing It Up

Marinetini

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— 50ml Bruichladdich The Classic Laddie 15ml Pandan syrup 5 Dashes peach bitters Soda top — Method: Build over cubed ice Glass: Highball Garnish: Peach or nectarine

Long Islay Ice Tea

— 50ml The Botanist gin 35ml Nettle cordial Soda — Method: Build over ice Garnish: Bunch of lemon balm Glass: Highball

Mixing It Up

Peachy Green

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— 50ml Port Charlotte 10 Year Old Heavily Peated 20ml Lemon juice 15ml Honey water Drizzle aelder liqueur — Method: Shake all ingredients apart from the liqueur and double strain over cubed ice, drizzle over aleder liqueur — Glass: Tumbler Garnish: Bramble and mint.

Octosmores

— 50ml Octomore 9.1 15ml Banana liqueur 15ml Coconut water 3 dashes spiced chocolate bitters — Method: Stir all ingredients over ice and strain over block ice Glass: Old fashioned/ rocks glass Garnish: –

Mixing It Up

Respect Your Aelders

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If the caps fit…

Ahead of the 2019 Guinness Six Nations, we caught up with Edinburgh and Scotland back-row, and recent Scotland Captain, John Barclay, to find out what it takes to become a rugby legend.

—

Photography: Brian Sweeney Assitant: Fabio Rebelo Paiva Stylist: Vixy Rae

My Whiskeria

My Whiskeria

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Scottish rugby seems to be rapidly gaining in popularity over the last few years, with Glasgow and Edinburgh both attracting bigger audiences. Why do you think that is?

The popularity and quality of performance and success are directly related in my opinion.

Both pro teams have taken strides in recent years, and the quality and professionalism of the squads at Edinburgh and Glasgow has allowed this to happen.

How did you get into rugby?

I began playing rugby in Hong Kong, with the backdrop of the Hong Kong Stadium where the Hong Kong Sevens is played each year. My dad helped coach the mini’s, so it was only a matter of time before I joined in.

Was it difficult to leave Scotland when you moved to Wales?

Yes and no. No in the fact that there was no opportunities for me in Scotland at the time, and yes in the way that I had firm friends and was settled in Scotland. I felt that moving to Wales was the best thing for my career at the time, and I learned an extraordinary amount about myself and about my rugby.

Was playing for the national team always an ambition for you?

At a young age, and certainly growing up at school, the prospect of playing for your country seemed more of a pipe-dream. But playing rugby for Scotland became a real ambition of mine once I embarked on my professional rugby career.

What age did you start playing, and when did you decide to pursue it professionally?

I began playing rugby at the age of five and went professional when I left school at the age of 17. I decided to delay going to University, as I had changed my mind about studying law. A while later, I attempted to get in to study medicine through clearing, but it was too late, so I delayed it for a further year. Fast forward 15 years and it’s still on hold!

Tell us about your time playing in New Zealand on scholarship – was it hard at such a young age?

The Macphail Scholarship was great for me. I had been thrust into the Scotland squad at the age of 18 and there was a lot of pressure on me, whether I wanted it or not. Very quickly I began to not enjoy my rugby and became jealous of my friends who were enjoying their years at University. My form deteriorated as I attempted to transition from schoolboy rugby to adult rugby; going to New Zealand on the Macphail Scholarship was an escape and allowed me to remember why I enjoyed playing in the first place.

My favourite moment has to be winning the Guinness PRO12 (now PRO14) with my old club, Scarlets. It was the culmination of years of hard work with some great men.

My favourite moment has to be winning the Guinness PRO12 (now PRO14) with my old club, Scarlets. It was the culmination of years of hard work with some great men.

Have there ever been any moments of self doubt?

Plenty! The older you get however, you learn that you cannot be everything to everyone, and you learn to accept that. Once you acknowledge that, then you can concentrate on your strengths and on the qualities that contributed to your selection in the first place. Don’t try to be a player or a person that you’re not.

You’ve done some pundit work lately – do you see a future in that post-playing?

Apart from the obvious, how does it What about the coaching side of things differ between playing at club and after retirement? international level? Are there different Life after rugby is still up for debate. I have emotions involved when you’re enjoyed the media side of the game, much to the representing your country? amusement of my fellow players. Coaching is Everything at international level is something that interests me also. Time will tell. intensified. Bigger crowds, bigger emotion, and the game itself is played at a ridiculous Do you encourage your sons to pace and intensity now. play mini rugby?

I would love my kids to play sport. Whether that’s rugby or not is up to them. Sport, and not just rugby, affords you so many opportunities and team sports in particular have given me the foundations and values I hold close.

You do ‘Scarecam’ – where you hide on players and give them a fright during camp.

Who’s next on the hit-list for upcoming 6N? Hoggy. Only Hoggy. (Scotland full-back, Stuart Hogg)

W “Everything at international level is intensified. Bigger crowds, bigger emotion…”

My Whiskeria

You’re at an amazing point in your career, joining your the Edinburgh side after claiming Scotland’s Six Nations win over England last season as team Captain, lifting the Calcutta Cup for the first time in in a decade. How did that feel?

Lifting the Calcutta Cup was one of the proudest days in my rugby career. The rivalry between Scotland and England is historic and fans and players feed off its emotion.

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My Whiskeria

Knowledge Bar John Barclay's Quickfire Questions

Best player you’ve ever played with?

James Davies (Scarlets / Wales) Best player you’ve ever played against?

Richie Mccaw (All Blacks) [retired] If you could play alongside anyone, past or present, who would it be?

Jonah Lomu If you could make any new rugby law, what would it be?

Nobody is allowed to tackle me What’s the best stadium for atmosphere?

BT Murrayfield on Calcutta Cup day Where has the most intimidating atmosphere?

Principality Stadium, which is equally awe-inspring Best stadium showers?

BT Murrayfield Best post-match teas?

I struggle to eat after games so would have to ask one of the front row lads. Stuart McInally (Scotland and Edinburgh teammate) packs the food away after a game so you’re better asking him!

What’s been your most memorable celebratory night? (Good or bad!)

Pass – to answer this would really be setting myself up for a proper slagging from my team mates! They have enough dirt on me without answering this…

What about other sports - who do you admire?

Individual sports players – they have incredible dedication to their craft without the camaraderie of their team mates to lean on.

If it wasn’t rugby, what do you think you’d be today?

Doctor Is there a sport you’re really bad at?

Too many to name!

Top tip for young players wanting to forge a career in rugby, or any advice you’d want to pass on?

The cream always rises to the top – don’t get hung up on selection or non-selection. If you’re good enough, you’ll get picked. And make sure you enjoy it. Life gets serious pretty quickly.

W “…if they give me a script of questions I’m never going to stick to it, I’ll go off on my own tangent”

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My Whiskeria

Knowledge Bar Glen Moray & Edinburgh Rugby

Glen Moray is the Official Whisky Partner of Edinburgh Rugby.

John Barclay and teammate Damien Hoyland have worked with the brand to select and release Edinburgh Rugby Single Cask Private Edition Whisky.

You’re working with Glen Moray – do you remember when you became a whisky drinker?

Around about the time of my wedding. There was lots of whisky around and I had no option but to drink it!

You’ve visited the Glen Moray Distillery and met the manager there, Graham Coull. How was that experience?

Awesome. The tour was incredibly interesting without being too complicated.

W Team sports in particular have given me the foundations and values I hold dearly.”

Spring has sprung!

PURIT Y IS A R ARE THING – WORTH STRIVING FOR Since Sir Alexander Ramsay established the distillery in 1824 we’ve been going to extraordinary lengths to capture the purest expression of our whisky’s character. Located in the foothills of Scotland’s Cairngorms, we don’t just use crystal clear mountain water as an ingredient, we drench our stills

DISTILLED AND BOTTLED IN SCOTLAND THE FETTERCAIRN DISTILLERY COMPANY FETTERCAIRN KINCARDINESHIRE AB30 1YB

Enjoy responsibly

with it, cooling the copper so only the finest vapours rise.

Browse the best bottles for every big occasion, including Valentine’s gift inspiration, St. Patrick’s Day drams, Mother’s Day treats, and a selection of whiskies that pay homage to the Spirit of Speyside and Feìs ìle festivals. And of course, you’ll find all of our Customer Favourites here, too.

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The Whisky Shop Exclusives We’re proud to stock a selection of whiskies exclusive to The Whisky Shop. From limited edition bottlings to old and rare whiskies, single cask single malts to singularly superb blends, these whiskies are for our customers only.

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Maker’s Mark Private Select The Whisky Shop Batch 002

The GlenDronach 1993

Inchmurrin 2001 Single Cask

Kilchoman 2007 Private Cask Release

Highland Park The W Club Exclusive

70cl | 55% VOL | £85

70cl | 51% VOL | £210

70cl | 54.1% VOL | £85

70cl | 56.5% VOL | £140

70cl | 67% VOL | £95

The second whisky created by The Whisky Shop staff in the UK’s first ever Maker’s Mark Private Select session, this expression is matured using a different and entirely unique combination of differently-treated oak staves, resulting in a highly desirable and intriguing bourbon.

Described by Charles MacLean as a “superlative example of sherry cask maturation” when released, this impressive dram is an excellent example of The GlenDronach’s ‘big sherry’ house style. The profoundly rich aroma is followed by a voluptuous texture and equally rich flavour.

The latest single cask exclusive from the Loch Lomond Group for The Whisky Shop customers to relish! This expression hails from Loch Lomond Distillery, representing the lighter unpeated spirit that is just one of the various styles produced there, named after Inchmurrin Island on the loch itself.

Distilled on 20th July 2007, this whisky matured in bourbon cask #150/2007 for almost 11 years before bottling on 11th June 2018. It hails from ‘Islay’s farm distillery’ where they use local peat cut the traditional way, slowly distil by hand, mature in traditional dunnage warehouses, and bottle on site.

The very first single cask exclusive selected by the W Club members, for The W Club members, since the club was relaunched in 2016. Drawn from a first refill American oak sherry puncheon, this bold dram boasts light wood, fragrant smoke and maritime scents, followed by an initially sweet and fruity palate and dry finish.

∆ › New exclusive › Find Charles MacLean’s review in New Releases › Oaky; sweet dried fruit; spice

∆ › 25 years old › Sherry matured › Xmas cake; dried fruits; dark chocolate

∆ › Cask strength › Refill ex-bourbon barrel › Fresh and fruity; grassy; spicy

∆ › Cask strength › Just 238 bottles produced › Tropical fruits; butterscotch; peat smoke

∆ › Cask strength › Drawn from cask #2132 › Maritime; sweet; dry

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Chinese New Year Officially begun on 5th February this year, the Chinese New Year commences with the 11-day Spring Festival, followed by a four-day Lantern Festival. With the rise in whisky’s popularity amongst the Chinese population, it’s becoming more common to see our favourite spirit included in the celebrations.

Here we list our top recommendations for toasting the new Year of the Pig.

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Johnnie Walker Blue Label Year of the Pig

Kavalan Sherry Oak

Platinum Old & Rare The Macallan 26 Year Old

70cl | 40% VOL | £TBC

70cl | 46% VOL | £94

70cl | 55.2% VOL | £1840

Each year Johnnie Walker releases a limited edition bottling of its iconic Blue Label, designed not in honour of the Gregorgian ‘New Year’, but of the Chinese. The 5th February 2019 signals the beginning of the Year of the Pig, which is celebrated in this beautifully decorated bottle.

An adaptation of the awardwinning Kavalan Solist Sherry, this single malt has been diluted to an easy-drinking 46%VOL using Kavalan spring water.

Clean and complex, the nose is nutty marzipan, vanilla and spice, leading to a well-balanced palate and long, elegant finish.

One of only 60 bottles filled from a single sherry butt on 25th May 2018, this Speyside single malt was distilled in the original Macallan distillery in 1991. Matured for almost three decades, it is a highly limited independent bottling from Hunter Laing’s aplty named Platinum Old & Rare range.

∆ › Limited edition › Classic Blue Label whisky › Deep richness, smoke, incredibly smooth

∆ › Distilled in Taiwan › Adapted from award-winning Solist Sherry › Marzipan; vanilla sweetness; dried fruit

∆ › Cask strength › Collectible › Smooth and sweet; cream sherry; oak spice

Whiskeria

Valentine's Day If you know someone who is passionate about whisky or gin, they’ll be tickled pink with a Valentine’s gift from The Whisky Shop. We’ve got plenty to choose from, including personalised presents, delectable gins, and whisky subscriptions that will remind them of you all year long.

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Zymurgorium Sweet Violet Gin Liqueur

Victoria's Rhubarb Gin 20cl Gift Tin

50cl | 18.7% VOL | £30

20cl | 40% VOL | £20

What’s better than flowers for Valentine’s Day? How about a deliciously floral violet gin liqueur created with a unique combination of natural violet flavouring and 20 botanicals at Manchester's first gin distillery, Zymurgorium. It’s great on its own, mixed with lemonade or tonic, added to ice cream, or even used in home baking.

A thoroughly English gin, created using Warner Edwards Harrington Dry Gin, blended with the juice of rhubarb from a crop originally grown in the kitchen garden of Buckingham Palace during the reign of Queen Victoria.

This is the gift that quite literally keeps on giving. Prove you’re in for the long haul with a 3, 6 or 12 month whisky subscription that takes your loved one on a voyage of whisky discovery.

Two 10cl bottles are delivered each month, supplying enough to compare, contrast… and share! Perfect for sharing

∆ › Made with natural violet flavouring › From Manchester’s first gin distillery › Sweet; floral; botanical.

∆ › Beautiful presentation tin › Best enjoyed with tonic & ice › Voluptuous; sweet; tangy rhubarb

∆ › 3, 6 or 12 month subscription › Two 10cl bottles – perfect for sharing › Delivered direct to their door

Explorer Safari 2x10cl, monthly | £various

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St. Patrick’s Day Alternatively called ‘The Feast of St. Patrick’ this celebration of Ireland’s patron saint demands merriment in all its guises – so much so in fact, that Irish Catholics are excused from Lenten restrictions on 17th March.

Raise a glass alongside them – here are our favourite drams from the Emerald Isle to inspire you.

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Redbreast 21 Year Old

Tullamore D.E.W 12 Year Old

Slane Irish Whiskey

Yellow Spot

Jameson Black Barrel

70cl | 46% VOL | £175

70cl | 40% VOL | £61

70cl | 40% VOL | £32

70cl | 46% VOL | £89

70cl | 60% VOL | £49

Winner of a Liquid Gold Award in Jim Murray’s 2017 Whisky Bible, this is the oldest and richest expression of the Redbreast style ever produced. The 21 year ageing process introduces more depth of flavour, creating an inherently complex, and ultimately rewarding, whiskey.

A triple distilled blend of all three types of Irish whiskey but with a high proportion of pot still and malt whiskeys, matured in a combination of bourbon and sherry casks, for 12 to 15 years.

A very fine aged whiskey with great complexity.

Created by the Earl of Mountcharles, this blended Irish whiskey is produced at the iconic Slane Castle just outside Dublin. Slane unusually uses a triple cask blend to add complexity, with a Virgin American oak cask, a seasoned freshly drained American whiskey cask and an Oloroso sherry cask.

Yellow Spot Whiskey was last seen in Ireland in the 1950s and 60s but recently reintroduced.

Created and sold by Mitchell & Son Wine and Spirit Merchants, this 12 year old single pot still whiskey is made using three different cask types - American bourbon barrels, Spanish sherry butts and Spanish Malaga casks resulting in a superbly complex whiskey.

A tribute to the cooper's method of charring barrels, this Irish whiskey is a triple distilled blend of small batch grain and traditional Irish pot still whiskeys in twice charred casks.

The result is intensified vanilla sweetness and burnt caramel enhancement to the classic Jameson style.

∆ › Oldest Redbreast expression › Single pot still Irish whiskey › Sherry; rich plummy fruit; nutty

∆ › Created at the new Tullamore Distillery, opened 2014 › Named after Daniel E. Williams › Creamy vanilla; sherry; sweet fruit

∆ › Find out more in Gavin Smith’s Distillery Visit › Unusual triple-cask blend › Banana; oak spice; sweet fruit

∆ › Recently re-introduced to market › Unusual triple cask blend › Stewed fruit; caramel; cereal spice

∆ › Triple distilled › Matured in twice-charred casks › Sweet vanilla; toasted oak; spicy fruit

Distillery Visit Slane 48

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Mother's Day Make your mum’s day with a gift she can enjoy as she sits back, relaxes and puts her feet up. Choose from our range of special gift sets, miniature selections, beautiful glassware and personalised items to really make her day.

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Silent Pool Gift Set

GlenKeir Treasure TBC

70cl | 43% VOL | £67

20cl | 40% VOL | £TBC

with personalised engraving Various cl | Various % VOL | £Various

A beautiful gift set from Silent Pool Distillers featuring a full 70cl bottle of the awardwinning Silent Pool Gin and two copa style glasses, decorated with gold foil and a distinctive aquamarine coloured stem.

Our unique GlenKeir Treasures range is exclusive to The Whisky Shop. We pick the most interesting casks we can find to offer a selection of styles from across Scotland – including both single malts and blends.

Each bottle can be personalised with a handwritten message of your choice.

∆ › Full bottle and two glasses › Award-winning gin › Fresh florals; earth citrus; honeyed finish

∆ › Personalisation available › Range of different styles › Exclusive to The Whisky Shop

with personalised label

Johnnie Walker Blue Label Jack Daniel's Single Barrel Loch Fyne Botanical Gin

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The Dalmore 15 Year Old Glass Pack

Glencairn Whisky Glass & Water Jug Gift Set

Compass Box Mini Pack

Glencairn Glass & Auchentoshan Miniature Gift Pack

70cl | 40% VOL | £95

£45

3x5cl | various% VOL | £25

5cl | 40% VOL | £16

What better way to remind your mum how much you appreciate her than with a personalised gift? You’ll find a fantastic selection of whisky and gin – including Johnnie Walker Blue Label, Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel and The Loch Fyne Botanical Gin – available at The Whisky Shop, ready to engrave with your own bespoke message.

Just when you think The Dalmore 15 Year Old couldn’t get any better – it already boasts 12 years in ex-bourbon casks followed by three in a trio of sherry woods, not to mention Customer Favourite status – you discover it can be purchased along with two beautifully engraved tumblers, all presented in a luxurious gift box. Win.

A splendid combination featuring two award winning Glencairn crystal whisky glasses accompanied by a stylish Glencairn water jug – perfect for a special whisky tasting occasion, or simply sharing a dram with your mum.

This taster pack from Scotch whisky maker Compass Box brings together three 5cl bottles of blended malt expressions from the signature range: The Peat Monster, The Spice Tree and The Spaniard.

The miniatures are presented with a unique take on the corresponding 70cl bottle's labels, each renowned for their artistry.

The perfect token of affection, this 5cl miniature of incredibly smooth, triple-distilled Auchentoshan 12 Year Old Lowland whisky, presented alongside the classic Glencairn whisky nosing glass, is brilliant for whisky novices as well as mums who are single-malt savvy.

∆ › 16 different products available to personalise › Includes Scotch, world whiskies and gin › Online orders only

∆ › Customer Favourite at The Whisky Shop › Presented with two engraved whisky tumblers › Christmas pudding; rich marmalade; dark chocolate

∆ › Presented in a stylish gift box › Iconic Glencarin crystal › Perfect for whisky tasting

∆ › Beautifully designed labels › Three 5cl bottles › Unique flavour profiles

∆ › 5cl Auchentoshan 12 Year Old › Famous Glencairn whisky glass › Toasted almonds; toffee; malt

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Mother's Day Make your mum’s day with a gift she can enjoy as she sits back, relaxes and puts her feet up. Choose from our selection of special gift sets, miniatures selections, beautiful glassware and personalised items to really make her day.

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The Loch Fyne Gin & Liqueur Taster Pack

The Loch Fyne Whisky Taster Pack

Penderyn Glass Pack

Roku Gin

The W Club Membership Luxury Gift Box

Stylish Whiskies Globe Decanter

Bruichladdich The Classic Laddie Gift Pack

3x5cl | various% VOL | £22

3x5cl | various% VOL | £25

2x5cl | 46% VOL | £20

70cl | 43% VOL | £35

5cl | various% VOL | £39.99

£TBC

70cl | 50% VOL | £52

A trio of products from The Loch Fyne range of delicious whisky liqueurs and gin, presented in an attractive gift box – the perfect present for mums who love their craft spirits, and relish exploring new and exciting flavours.

A chance to sample The Loch Fyne range of delicious whiskies, including the seminal Loch Fyne Blend, plus two expressions from the intriguing The Living Cask collection of whiskies, drawn from casks that are never emptied and instead topped up with a marriage of single malts in a solera style process.

Two miniature bottles of multi-award winning Penderyn Single Malt Madeira Finish, a handcrafted Welsh whisky, are presented with a specially commissioned Glencairn nosing glass – great for mums with Welsh heritage, or those who like something a little different.

This Japanese gin takes its name from the Japanese for 'six', representing the six uniquely Japanese botanicals that set it apart: yuzu peel, sakura flower, sakura leaf, sencha tea, gyokuro tea and sansho pepper. Harvested in accordance with 'shun', the moment of peak flavour, they’re then blended together with eight traditional gin botanicals.

Introduce your mum to the joys of whisky, and a community of other whisky lovers, with an annual membership to The W Club. This luxury box includes Jim Murray’s 2019 Whisky Bible, a miniature, and Glencairn glass to complement the membership, which includes monthly local tastings, exclusive discounts, Whiskeria subscription and more.

Think the world of your mum?

Show her how you feel with this elegantly designed globe decanter. A real centrepiece for any whisky collection, and a real talking point, it comes on an elegant wooden stand with four gold-rimmed glasses.

Ideal for sharing a dram with friends or family.

The signature bottling from the distillery and the definitive Bruichladdich, made from 100% Scottish Barley, trickle distilled and matured for its entire life in premium American oak casks by the shores of Loch Indaal. This gift pack includes a full bottle plus two beautifully crafted whisky glass emblazoned with the Bruichladdich logo.

∆ › A 5cl bottle each of The Loch Fyne Botanical Gin, Honey & Ginger Liqueur, and Chocolate & Orange Liqueur › Inspired by customers of Loch Fyne Whiskies, Inveraray › Scottish botanical gin/honey and ginger/Terry’s Chocolate Orange

∆ › 5cl bottles of The Living Cask 1745, The Living Cask Batch No. 4 and The Loch Fyne Blend › Award-winning whiskies › Smooth blended Scotch/ Islay smoke/bourbon flavours

∆ › Awarded first place at the 2012, 2013 and 2014 World Whisky Awards › Two 5cl miniatures and a Glencairn glass › Banana; honey; oak

∆ › Made by The House of Suntory › Six unique Japanese botanicals › Green tea; cherry blossom; black pepper

∆ › Luxury gift box with miniature, book and glass › Year-long membership › Perfect for novices and aficionados alike

∆ › Unique globe-shape decanter › Four glasses included › Pre-filled with 350ml Highland whisky

∆ › Full 70cl bottle › Includes two whisky tumblers › Malt biscuit; vanilla; honey

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Spring Picks Spirit of Speyside Each year, Scotland’s biggest whisky-producing region welcomes thousands of visitors from across the globe for an insight into the people and processes behind their worldrevered whiskies. Whether you’re seeking a memento from your time there this year, or want to enjoy the experience vicariously, these drams are just the ticket.

Knowledge Bar Spirit of Speyside Festival

• Established 1999 • Over 500 whisky-inspired events over 5 days • Takes place across the Speyside region, the largest whisky-producing region in Scotland • Includes distillery open days, tastings, historical events, coopering displays and more • Attracts visitors from across the world • The Spirit of Speyside Awards is sponsored by Forsyths, the company responsible for building most pot stills used in the industry.

• Held 1st – 6th May 2019 Speyside

• A sub-region of the Scottish Highlands • Defined as its own region by The Scotch Whisky Regulations 2009 • Broadly speaking, it is the area around the River Spey • Home to some of the biggest names in whisky including The Macallan • There are 84 working distilleries in Speyside • The latest distillery in the region is Roseisle Distillery • Speyside has the greatest concentration of distilleries in any region, and accounts for more than 60% of Scotland’s single malt whisky production

SPEYSIDE

SCOT L A ND

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Aberlour Casg Annamh

Benromach 10 Year Old 100° Proof

Glen Moray 25 Year Old Port Cask

The Glenlivet 15 Year Old

Fettercairn 12 Year Old

The Macallan 12 Year Old Triple Cask

The Balvenie 21 Year Old PortWood

70cl | 48% VOL | £57

70cl | 57% VOL | £57

70cl | 43% VOL | £175

70cl | 40% VOL | £60

70cl | 40% VOL | £50

70cl | 40% VOL | £70

70cl | 40% VOL | £135

This limited release – batch 0001 – befittingly takes its name from the Gaelic for ‘rare cask’.

These casks are a mixture of European oak ex-sherry and two varieties of American oak, resulting in an exceptional Speyside whisky with a big sherry character.

This expression of Benromach’s ‘classic Speyside single malt’ is aged for ten years before bottling at a higher strength of 100º proof – now more commonly known as 57% ABV. Boldly flavoured, the expected sherry taste is accompanied by a noticeable smoky note, typical of ‘old style’ Speyside whiskies.

A limited edition aged for 25 years and finished in port casks sourced from some of Portugal’s finest port houses. Each bottle is individually numbered and presented in a beautiful wooden display case with a certificate of authenticity. Ideal as a special gift for Speyside whisky fanatics.

Glenlivet Distillery was one of the first to use French Oak – a technique since imitated across the industry – to produce a more intensely flavoured, creamier finish. This whisky’s distinctive character is the result of selective maturation, with a proportion of the spirit matured in a selection of French Oak casks so as not to overpower the final result.

Hailing from the village of the same name comes Fettercairn whisky – which describes itself as ‘exceptionally refined single malt’. The village and distillery name translates as ‘foot of the mountain’ and it is the crystal clear mountain water that gives the whisky its pure character.

Crafted using a trinity of spirits that are matured individually in European and American sherry-seasoned oak casks, and American ex-bourbon casks, before being expertly married to create an extraordinarily smooth, delicate yet complex whisky.

This expression is created using a marriage of rare Balvenie transferred to port pipes, where it is then carefully monitored by The Balvenie Malt Master until it has achieved the perfect balance of port character. This is the point when greater complexity and depth is imparted to the spirit, whilst still preserving the original characteristics.

∆ › Limited release › Exceptionally balanced big flavours › Honeyed malt; sherry; cinnamon spice

∆ › Bottled at 100º Proof › A classic style Speyside single malt › Smoky; sherry; chocolate

∆ › Individually numbered › Limited edition › Vanilla fudge; barley sugar; fruity

∆ › Beautiful example of French Oak maturation › Matured in Limousin oak, typically used for fine wine and cognacs › Oak spice; chocolate; stewed fruit

∆ › Matured in American white oak ex-bourbon casks › Relaunched in 2018 › Vanilla; stone fruits; soft spice

∆ › Part of the Triple Cask range › Formally known as The Macallan Fine Oak 12 Years Old › Vanilla; citrus; toasted

∆ › Made using rare Balvenie spirit › Pipes previously held only the finest port wines › Dry cherry; plum; nutty

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Spring Picks Feìs ìle The Islay Festival of Music and Malt is as intriguingly unique and alluring as the island’s distinctive whiskies themselves, and draws an international audience to the tiny Hebridean isle each year.

For those who can’t make it, we’ve curated a taste of Islay via five stand-out single malts from the region.

Knowledge Bar Fèis ìle

• Evolved from the Gaelic Drama Festival, established by islanders in 1984 to revive Gaelic language and culture • Known as ‘The Islay Festival of Music and Malt’ • Includes traditional music workshops and performances alongside whisky events • The festival’s first official whisky tasting was held in 1990 • Distilleries became involved in 2000, introducing

their now-famous open days and ultimately their special Fèis ìle whisky • The Fèis ìle is a charitable organisation, and the volunatary committee works closely with distilleries and musicians to showcase their island • Islay’s population triples during the week of the festival Islay

• Islay is the southernmost island of the Inner Hebrides • The island is known as ‘The Queen of the Hebrides’ • Although only 239square miles, Islay is currently home to active distilleries • The ninth distillery – Ardnahoe – was opened in 2018 under the eye of distilling legend Jim McEwan • ‘Lost’ distillery Port Ellen is now set to be reopened • Islay is generally known for its peaty whiskies

SCOT L A ND

ISLAY

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Bunnahabhain 18 Year Old

Bowmore 18 Year Old

Octomore 9.3 Dialogos

Laphroaig Lore

The First Editions Laphroaig 2006

70cl | 46% VOL | £110

70cl | 43% VOL | £109

70cl | 63% VOL | £175

70cl | 46% VOL | £89

70cl | 46% VOL | £143

Bunnahabhain bucks the Islay trend toward peated spirit, instead using unpeated malted barley and pure spring waters that have run away from the peaty moorlands to craft their whisky. This is an excellent example of their unusual ‘fruit and nut’ house style, with a subtle hint to the distillery’s location at ‘the mouth of the river’.

A perfectly balanced, longaged Islay single malt, matured in Bowmore’s famous No.1 Vaults – the oldest maturation warehouse in Scotland.

One of the rarest whiskies in the Bowmore core range, Production Director Andrew Rankin has chosen the very finest mix of casks for this expression.

An uber-provenance single malt, crafted with barley from one field, one farm, and one vintage. Distilled in 2012 and matured for five years in a combination of ex-American, virgin, bourbon oak, Rivesaltes and Syrah casks, this Islay single malt from Bruichladdich is peated to a whopping 133ppm.

Since 1815, each Laphroaig Distillery Manager has been the custodian of the craft to make the richest single malt in the world. Over the years, each has passed on their skills and traditions to the next generation to continue this legacy.

∆ › Atypical Islay single malt › Multi-award winning › Dried fruit; spiced toffee; hint of sea salt

∆ › Matured in the No.1 Vaults › Classic Islay malt › Peat smoke; chocolate; caramel

∆ › Limited edition: just 18,000 bottles › Cask strength, heavily peaked single malt › Smoky; malt biscuit; vanilla

∆ › Limited release › Exceptionally balanced big flavours › Honeyed malt; sherry; cinnamon spice

In honour of this, Laphroaig Distillery Manager John Campbell has created Lore, the richest ever Laphroaig.

Drawn from a selection of casks including first-fill sherry butts, smaller quarter casks and precious stock.

Released in Hunter Laing’s First Editions range of youthful single cask malts, this expression was distilled at Laphroaig in 2006 and matured in a single refill sherry butt for 11 years.Bottled in 2017, is is limited to just 592 bottles, and free from chillfiltration and artificial colouring.

∆ › Single cask Islay single malt › Limited edition: only 592 bottles › Bonfire ash; peaty; medicinal

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Customer Favourites The whiskies our customers love provide a happy hunting ground for shoppers. From the smoky Islays to sumptuously sherried drams and everything in-between, there is something here for everyone.

We’ve grouped these whiskies by flavour profile, to help you find your favourites from the range.

L IGHT / FLO RA L

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anCnoc 12 Year Old

Balblair 2005

Balblair 2000

Glen Moray 12 Year Old Elgin Heritage

Loch Lomond 12 Year Old

Auchroisk 10 Year Old

70cl | 40% VOL | £44

70cl | 46% VOL | £56

70cl | 46% VOL | £80

70cl | 40% VOL | £43

70cl | 46% VOL | £45

70cl | 43% VOL | £48

A whisky whose name isn’t taken directly from its home distillery, anCnoc comes from the Highland Knockdhu Distillery. Established in 1894 as the perfect embodiment of a modern distillery, Knockdhu lies on the border of Speyside and produces light, intriguing, forward-thinking whisky.

Matured in a combination of ex-bourbon, sherry and second-fill American oak casks, this expression is delicate yet complex, smooth yet challenging, and universally loved for it!

The first release of the 2005 expression from Balblair – who mark themselves out by bottling by vintage rather than age.

Matured in ex-Bourbon casks, there’s definite honey and vanilla present in this delicately sweet dram. The nose is all oaky vanilla and citrus with a suggestion of fragrant cut flowers. The palate is reminiscent of citrus and orchard fruits that lift the intense sweetness and lead to a delectably long, spicy finish.

Something of a ‘millennium baby’, this whisky was matured for 12 and a half years in American ex-bourbon oak before four years in first-fill Spanish oak butts.

Bottled in 2017, free from chill-filtration and artificial colouring, it promises a nose rich in seasoned oak, baked apples, fruitcake and vanilla, with some ripe tropical fruits.

The palate introduces spices and old hardwood, building to pineapple, orange peel and honey, before emerging sweetness heralds a creamy, dark chocolatey finish.

This Speyside single malt is aged in the finest American oak for 12 years, lending it a delicious toasty character.

Look forward to rich floral notes and vanilla toffee on the nose, with berry fruits and freshly cut herbs. The palate has toasted oak and more sublime summer fruits for a mellow sweetness, before a sweet, subtly oaky finish.

An eponymous whisky from the innovative distillery on the bonnie banks, where different stills are used to create a stunning variety of single malts.

This core range expression – bursting with orchard and citrus fruits, cereal and biscuit sweetness, then wood smoke and a peaty tang – has already enchanted the taste buds of Jim Murray, who claimed he’s “never seen spice quite like it, or such a sublime balance with the fruity malt”. High praise indeed.

The Auchroisk 10 year old is part of Diageo’s Flora & Fauna Series, which consists of 26 different Scotch single malt whiskies from their lesser known distilleries – typically those which predominantly supply liquid for blends, rather than single malt releases.

Auchroisk itself is a relatively young Speyside distillery, built in the 70s, and draws naturals waters from Dorries Well to produce smooth, subtle whisky.

This 10 Year Old expression is pleasantly light, with a balance of delicate sweetness and fresh flavours before a short finish.

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Customer Favourites The whiskies our customers love provide a happy hunting ground for shoppers. From the smoky Islays to sumptuously sherried drams and everything in-between, there is something here for everyone.

We’ve grouped these whiskies by flavour profile, to help you find your favourites from the range.

R IC H / SW EET

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Arran 10 Year Old

The BenRiach 21 Year Old

Benrinnes 15 Year Old

Blair Athol 12 Year Old

The Dalmore 12 Year Old

The Dalmore 15 Year Old

Glen Moray 15 Year Old Elgin Heritage

70cl | 46% VOL | £45

70cl | 46% VOL | £139

70cl | 43% VOL | £52

70cl | 43% VOL | £67

70cl | 40% VOL | £50

70cl | 40% VOL | £70

70cl | 40% VOL | £55

The classic expression of the Arran Malt, this 10 Year Old captures the fresh and unique island style of the western isle's eponymous distillery and is a multi-award winner, taking gold at both The China Wine & Spirits Best Value Awards 2014 and San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2012. Rich vanilla sweetness gives way to cinnamon on the nose, with a soft and sweet texture that takes on a spicy edge. The palate is sweet with apple and citrus against a background of oak.

Matured in a combination of bourbon barrels, virgin oak casks, red wine casks and Pedro Ximénez sherry casks for a minimum of 21 years, Expect layers of spicy fruit and warming oak aromas spiked with zesty tropical fruits on the nose, followed by a sherrydriven palate with chocolate and raisin accompanied by lemon zest and shortbread.

The finish is long with hints of rye and sweet caramel.

Great for landmark birthdays!

Another expression from the Flora & Fauna series, this whisky hails from a long-established Speyside distillery with a tumultuous history. Despite fire, flood, world wars and financial issues, Benrinnes has survived to produce a style of ‘sultry’ Speyside whisky that is always well-rounded and intriguing. This fantastically sweet, smooth 15 Year Old example is packed with estery characteristics subsumed in its dark aromas.

Established in 1798 in picturesque Pitlochry, Blair Athol is one of Scotland’s oldest working distilleries, and produces the signature malt of the famous Bell's blend.

This is one of only a few official bottlings ever produced from Blair Athol, and part of The Flora & Fauna series: a collection highlighting the diversity of Scotland's whisky regions.

Walnuts and sherry on the nose lead to cinnamon and orange-citrus on the palate, with the richness of fruitcake completing this delightful dram.

It’s not surprising that our former Whisky of The Year retains its status as a firm favourite amongst The Whisky Shop customers. To recap for those who haven’t yet dipped a toe into The Dalmore portfolio, this single malt is a Highland triumph displaying signs of sherry wood maturation: full-bodied, thick, sweet and ‘muscular’. Leathery notes and a long spicy finish add finesse and make this popular dram an absolute must-try.

Matured for 15 years in a trio of ex-sherry casks, as well as exbourbon barrels, The Dalmore’s 15 Year Old is another core range whisky for your bucket list. A stylistic evolution from The Dalmore’s famous 12 Year Old and just as popular, you can expect a similarly varied profile of chocolate orange sweetness, gentle spice and rich warmth.

It’s a true testament to the distillery’s creative and ambitious approach.

Unquestionably Speyside in character, Glen Moray’s Elgin Heritage Collection showcases carefully matured, complex and well-rounded whiskies influenced by the unique Elgin climate. This 15 year old single malt is aged in a combination of sherry and American oak casks, which impart hints of spice, heady dried fruits and dark chocolate flavours. Expect sherried oak and butter toffee on the nose, followed by an indulgent full-bodied palate with sweetly spiced dark chocolate and fine wine.

The finish is long and rich.

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Customer Favourites The whiskies our customers love provide a happy hunting ground for shoppers. From the smoky Islays to sumptuously sherried drams and everything in-between, there is something here for everyone.

We’ve grouped these whiskies by flavour profile, to help you find your favourites from the range.

R IC H / SW EET New to Customer Favourites Old Pulteney 15 Year Old 70cl | 46% VOL | £75 This 15 year old is one of the most balanced single malts in Old Puletney’s new core range, released last year.

Matured in American oak ex-bourbon casks and finished in Spanish oak, spice and sweetness combine with the refreshing coastal notes expected from the distillery. The nose has rich dried fruit, ripe apples and citrus, with honey sweetness and a generous chord of creamy vanilla. The palate brings fragrant spices and Christmas cake, before toffee and chocolate mingling with sea salt in the finish.

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Glen Scotia Victoriana

The GlenDronach 12 Year Old

The GlenDronach 18 Year Old Allardice

The Glenrothes 12 Year Old

Highland Park 18 Year Old Viking Pride

Jura Seven Wood

Oban Distillers Edition

70cl | 54.2% VOL | £73

70cl | 43% VOL | £46

70cl | 46% VOL | £95

70cl | 40% VOL | £45

70cl | 43% VOL | £110

70cl | 42% VOL | £59

70cl | 43% VOL | £79

This Campbeltown single malt has been relaunched from February 2019 at a slightly higher strength, better reflecting the whiskies created there in the Victorian era, and which have inspired this decadent dram. It is finished in deep charred oak before bottling straight from the cask, with subtle wood and vanilla combining beautifully with a full-bodied spicy fruit aroma.

The nose is elegant, with oak and créme brûlée leading to caramelised fruit and polished oak. The palate is sweet and concentrated with blackcurrant jam, subtle wood and vanilla, while the finish is clean and sweet with cocoa tones.

A signature single malt from the distillery famous for its richly sherried offering, and an awardwinning expression at that; no wonder The GlenDronach 12 retains its status as a favourite amongst our customers!

Matured in both Pedro Ximénez and Oloroso sherry casks, it is imbued with an indulgent portfolio of flavours – stewed fruits, jam, marmalade, nuts and brown sugar all vie for attention – with a faint charcoal smokiness weaving through over time.

Created using waters from the Dronac Burn, this a superbly complex single malt made in the characteristic big sherry style. An ode to James Allardice, who founded the distillery and produced the very first drops of ‘guid Glendronach’, this expression has been matured in the finest Oloroso sherry casks. Rich and dark, it promises remarkable depth of flavour with stewed fruits and allspice.

A new addition to our Customer Favourites, this 12-year-old expression is billed as the classic ‘house’ Glenrothes style, and is matured exclusively in ex-sherry casks. Light-yetseductive aromas of banana and vanilla are followed by more banana on the palate, joined by lemon, juicy melon and a little sweet cinnamon. The finish is long and sweet with subtle spice. A solid example of the typical Speyside style.

One of the most awarded whiskies of all time, the Highland Park 18 year old demonstrates harmony, refinement and complexity.

Layers of honeyed sweetness and delicious hints of chocolate-coated cherries are joined by a subtle top-note of aromatic peat smoke. The beautifully balanced flavour is down to Highland Park’s five traditional keystones of production, and it is a real favourite amongst our staff!

Part of the new core range from Jura, Seven Wood was launched through The Whisky shop in March 2018. Crafted with a combination of seven cask types – American white oak exbourbon, Vosges, Jupilles, Les Bertranges, Allier, Traonçais, and Limousin barrels – it opens with light peach and a hint of smoke on the nose. The palate is balanced with a great depth of flavour; liquorice and candied orange emerge, before a subtle smoke descends in the finish.

A seriously complex whisky of the highest order. Each expression of Oban Distillers Edition undergoes 'double' maturation in casks that have previously held a fortified wine.

The distillery’s entrepreneurial founders – who specialised in importing ‘in demand’ goods –would’ve approved of the Spanish influence brought to bear in this Montilla Fino cask wood finish, which boasts a signature salty smokiness along with walnut, orange citrus and a identifiable, crowd-pleasing sherry character.

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Customer Favourites The whiskies our customers love provide a happy hunting ground for shoppers. From the smoky Islays to sumptuously sherried drams and everything in-between, there is something here for everyone.

We’ve grouped these whiskies by flavour profile, to help you find your favourites from the range.

SM OKY New to Customer Favourites Inchmoan 12 Year Old 70cl | 46% VOL | £50 Part of Loch Lomond Whiskies' peated Island Collection, born of a unique combination of spirit from a traditional swan neck pot still, and a straight neck pot still, resulting in an unconventional peat character marrying smoke and spice. Sweet vanilla from re-charred American oak and refill bourbon casks complement the soft peat style. The nose has smouldering peat with vanilla syrup and cracked black pepper, while the palate is sweet with medicinal peat, smoked bacon, roasted coffee beans, cloves and star anise, developing to fruity green apple and pear. The finish is long with waxy peat and gooseberry citrus.

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BenRiach 10 Year Old 'Curiositas'

Talisker Port Ruighe

Caol Ila Distillers Edition

Ailsa Bay 1.2

Bowmore 15 Year Old

Jura 18 Year Old

Port Charlotte 10 Year Old Heavily Peated

70cl | 40% VOL | £47

70cl | 45.8% VOL | £55

70cl | 43% VOL | £75

70cl | 48.9% VOL | £60

70cl | 43% VOL | £67

70cl | 44% VOL | £75

70cl | 44% VOL | £62

A Speyside peated malt may seem curious, but this BenRiach actually represents a return to original 19th century Speyside form. Peat richness is accomplished by using malted barley dried in the traditional way over peat infused kilns, achieving the optimum balance of peat-bittersweet and oak infusion after 10 years’ maturation. The undoubtedly peaty nose also promises fragrant honey, while the palate boasts peat smoke followed by a complex mix of heather, nuts, oak wood and spice.

The whisky gurus at Talisker Distillery have taken their seminal Isle of Skye malt and finished it in ruby port casks to create the fantastically rich and fruity Port Ruighe. The nose moves from sea-spray to waxy aromas with a little sweetness.

This is mirrored on the palate, with Talisker’s classic maritime character being rounded off and dramatically sweetened by the Port finish. The finish includes cocoa and oak, with even a hint of citrus.

A stylish, richly flavoured and complex expression from Islay’s much-loved Caol Ila Distillery. Following many years maturing in oak casks, this whisky has then been ‘double matured’ in Moscatel cask wood, hand-selected to complement the whisky’s sweetly fruity, smoky intensity.

Expect cinnamon layered with orange and apple freshness, sweet malty biscuit flavours, and waves of classic Islay peat smoke.

Version number two of the unique single malt distilled at Girvan, overlooking Ailsa Craig in the Firth of Clyde. It’s the only Scotch to undergo a micromaturation with spirit first filled to small ex-bourbon casks for intense rapid maturation, before being transferred to virgin, first-fill and refill American oak for several years.

The nose has wood smoke and heather with sweet vanilla oak and candied orange peel. The palate is a perfect balance of peat and vanilla sweetness, with fruit and toffee emerging.

The finish has sweet oak balanced with drying peat.

Matured in an inspired combination of both bourbon and sherry casks at the saltysea-air infused Bowmore warehouses, it's the final three years spent in Oloroso sherry casks that gives Bowmore 15 Years Old it’s sumptuously rich, deep colour. Exuding the aroma of delicious dark chocolate, sun-dried fruits and a characteristic wisp of Islay smoke, it is full-bodied, rich and complex, and a no-brainer for Islay whisky fans.

The oldest new addition to Jura’s signature range, this 18 year old expression has been matured in American white oak ex-bourbon barrels and enriched by Premier Grand Cru Classé red wine barriques, and is bottled at 44% for optimal flavour. The nose boasts sweet toffee and cinnamon spice. The palate is rich and full-bodied with Black Forest fruits and some smoky notes, before a bitter chocolate aspect and fresh espresso to finish.

The flagship release in Bruichladdich's heavily peated range, is distilled, matured and bottled on Islay, and is crafted using first-fill and second-fill American whiskey casks plus a proportion of second-fill French wine casks. The nose has characteristic Port Charlotte smoke, with sweeter caramel, fudge and vanilla custard alongside ginger, cloves and nutmeg. The palate is soft with a loose smoke and sweet coconut, vanilla, sherbet lemon and oak notes coming to the fore, with smoked oyster and sun-baked salty sand. The finish is smoky with banoffee pie, mango, apple and sweet malt.

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Customer Favourites Introducing a selection of The Whisky Shop customers’ top expressions from outside of Scotland! Hailing from across the globe, our International Customer Favourites not only represent an increased curiosity in non-Scotch drams, but also the growing trend for whisk(e)y distilling the world over.

INTERNATIONA L New to Customer Favourites Kavalan Concertmaster 50cl | 40% VOL | £TBC One of the most awarded Asian whiskies of all time, presented in a 50cl bottle (ideal for those who like a little taste of something different). It is distilled in Yilan, North Eastern Taiwan, using the cold pure spring water that flows through the Snow Mountain, and matured in American oak before finishing in port barriques for fantastic smoothness. The exceptionally pure airs and a sub-tropical climate around the distillery contribute to this single malt’s uniquely light and fruity flavour – tropical notes mix with cinnamon spice, vanilla and cream, and finish on luscious dark fruits.

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Maker’s 46

Redbreast 12 Year Old

Green Spot

Bulleit Bourbon 10 Year Old

Roe & Co

The Chita

Tullamore D.E.W. 14 Year Old

70cl | 47% VOL | £45

70cl | 40% VOL | £50

70cl | 40% VOL | £44

70cl | 40% VOL | £49

70cl | 45% VOL | £35

70cl | 43% VOL | £58

70cl | 41.3% VOL | £57

A ‘totally new kind of bourbon’, Maker’s 46 is crafted with seared French oak staves and matured in the coolest part of the beautifully situated Maker’s Mark Distillery, Kentucky.

Named after its origin as the 46th recipe explored by its creators, this exceptionally smooth bourbon is an evolution from the standard Maker’s Mark expression, and a masterpiece of natural caramel, vanilla and spice flavours.

The first official reference to the brand name 'Redbreast' appears in August 1912, when Gilbeys were selling "Redbreast" J.J. Liqueur Whiskey 12 Years Old. The name 'Redbreast' itself refers to the bird, Robin Redbreast, and is attributed to the then Chairman of Gilbey's, who was an avid bird-fancier.

This modern 12 Year Old expression is a single pot still whiskey full of aroma and flavour, benefitting from a strong contribution of distillates which have matured in Oloroso sherry casks, giving it its trademark Christmas cake character.

A non-age statement single pot still Irish whiskey comprised of pot still whiskies aged between seven and ten years old. It has been matured in a combination of new and refill bourbon casks as well as sherry casks. The nose is fresh with aromatic oils, spice and orchard fruits on a background of toasted wood.

The flavour is spicy and fullbodied, with a hint of cloves and the fresh fruity sweetness of green apples, along with further toasted oak leading to a lingering spicy, barley finish.

Billed as ‘Tom Bulleit’s selected reserve’ this sublime whiskey was first aged in charred American white oak, before select Bulleit Bourbon barrels were set aside to age for a further 10 years. The result is a very special expression that promises a rich, deep, incredibly smooth-sipping experience. Deep russet in colour with rich oaky aromas, you can expect a consistently smooth taste with vanilla and dried fruit, before a long, smoky finish.

A premium blended Irish whiskey marrying single malt and single grain liquid in American oak ex-bourbon casks, a high percentage of which are first-fill. Developed

by Master Blender, Caroline Martin, Prototype 106 was chosen to hold up in cocktails, as well as be enjoyed neat.

Fragrant and rounded with soft spice, mellow spun sugar and warm, woody vanilla, the balance is immediately evident on the palate, with a velvety texture and sweetness including spiced pears and vanilla, then creaminess lingering in the finish.

The result of 40 years’ excellence in distilling, this single grain whisky hails from Japan’s revered House of Suntory. Traditionally used as the ‘dashi’ or broth that enhances Suntory blends, Chita has finally achieved a level of sophistication that allows it to take centre stage. Expect crème brûlée, cardamom, acacia honey and rose blossoms on the nose.

The palate is mild and smooth with subtle mint amidst a deep honey character. Clean and clear spiced oak with subtle bittersweet notes complete the finish.

An Irish single malt triple distilled and matured in exbourbon casks for the majority of its life, before being finished in a selection of four specially chosen casks: bourbon, Oloroso sherry, port, and Madeira. The nose is fruity, with citrus, apple and mango atop rich honey and vanilla. The palate has fresh green fruits, toffee, cinnamon, nutmeg and a touch of ginger.

The finish brings malty notes with some milk chocolate and a touch of spice.

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Whiskeria

Spring 2019

001

Last Drop Headline Knowledge Bar The Last Drop

Established by James Espy OBE, Pter Fleck and Tom Jago in 2008 Their most limited ever release was a 32-bottle run of 1961 Dumbarton single grain whisky Their portfolio encompasses both single malt and blended Scotch, American whiskey, port and brandy Rebecca Jago and Beanie Espy have taken over the firm from their fathers in recent years

(cask 16207)

It returned to Edrington ownership in May 2017.

These expressions are from The Last Drop Distillers Ltd., a company founded in 2008 by three legends in the Scotch whisky industry.

James Espey O.B.E., the company’s Chairman, was responsible for the launch of The Classic Malts when he was deputy Managing Director of United Distillers, among many other pioneering achievements. Tom Jago (who sadly died last year) created Bailey’s Irish Cream and Johnny Walker Blue Label. Peter Fleck was responsible for the phenomenal growth of such brands as Chivas Regal and Smirnoff vodka in South Africa.

Together the three of them invented Malibu.

They had been friends and colleagues for years and after retiring from full-time employment, decided to pool their knowledge of fine spirits and contacts in the spirits industry to seek out extremely rare casks of whisky and cognac. In 2014 the founders were joined by two of their daughters, Beanie Espey and Rebecca Jago (now joint Managing Directors).

The company does not limit itself to whisky: since its foundation, The Last Drop has released two cognacs, from 1950 and 1947, and a duo of tawny ports from 1870 and 1970.

The Last Drop Glenrothes 1969 (cask 16203)

Speyside Single Malt Scotch Whisky

70CL

Speyside Single Malt Scotch Whisky

70CL

Age: NAS

£85

Age: NAS

£85

Vol: 45.7%

Pale amber in hue, the mellow nose is of ripe tropical fruits (mango, papaya), with sandalwood and tablet toffee in the middle, on a faintly waxy base. Classic aromas from long maturation in American oak. A smooth texture, teeth coating, a sweet and sour taste and a long, warming finish.

Charles MacClean subheader

This venerable Glenrothes – actually, the name was rendered Glen Rothes until 1994 – was produced in the distillery’s 90th year, having gone into production on 28th December 1879, the night of the terrible storm which brought down the railway bridge over the River Tay. Having started with two stills, a second pair was added in 1896, when the distillery was expanded to designs by Charles Cree Doig of Elgin, the leading distillery designer of the Victorian era. Unfortunately a fire destroyed much of the work before it was completed, and six years later another fire broke out, in spite of the owners having installed Doig’s patented appliance for preventing explosions in the millroom! Fire struck again in 1922, when Number 1 warehouse was engulfed and vast quantities of spirits flowed into the Rothes Burn, to the delight of the locals…

The malt’s popularity with blenders – it has long been ranked Top Class – led to further expansions in 1963, 1980 and 1989 – today the distillery has ten stills – but the make was only available as a single malt from independent bottlers (mainly Gordon & MacPhail) until 1987. That year the distillery’s owner, Edrington, licensed the brand to the distinguished London wine & spirits merchant, Berry Bros. & Rudd.

The Last Drop Glenrothes 1969

97

Vol: 45.7%

Pale amber, with pale green lights; refill American oak. The aromatic profile is similar to 16207, but drier and less fruity, with snuffed candle at base. The waxiness is there in the mouthfeel; the taste is sweeter and less sour and the long finish more spicy.

Expert Tasting

Expert Tasting

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Spring 2019

Dear Uncle Ether

Uncle Ether Foreshot, whisky’s primary problem solver, helps three more troubled tipplers.

Dear Uncle Ether, My good friend and neighbour, Theodore, has asked me to print some labels. He claims he can put them on bottles of our local Schnapps and sell them for a small fortune. Money for old rope, he says! My question is should we go for a Macalfred 62 Year Old or a Glenfritzen 70 Year Old whisky?

Does age make a difference?

Johannes Gutenberg A little town in Germany

Dear Uncle Ether Dear Uncle Ether

Over the Festive Holiday I enjoyed working my way

I am planning to serve Scotch with

through The Whisky Shop’s 12 Drams of Christmas

every meal after Brexit, as I expect

and I must compliment them on this lovely gift

that there will be no wine in any of our supermarkets. Which Scotch

idea. However, I note with some displeasure that there is nothing equivalent for Easter. I mean, how difficult would it be to do ‘Finger Lick’n

goes with fish?

Drams’? Or even ‘Single malts for Single Bunnies’?

Rick, Padstow

Mary M. Iona

Dear Johannes You know, I take my hat off to the ingenuity of German engineering. Who would have thought of such a simple plan? A good printing press, some ink a paper “et voila!”

– as they say in Hanover, you have a brilliant money making scheme. I am so sorry that we Brits are bailing out of the EU. Now to the point in question, when it comes to a good single malt, put into oak cask and laid down to mature over numerous seasons of the Scottish climate, age does matter. But when you get to ages over 40 years, then the result is variable. Some whiskies thrive and others perish. Macalfred and Glefritzen are undoubtedly excellent names and probably stand up well to the test of time, but there are no guarantees; it all depends on the cask and the conditions in the warehouse.

However, it’s good news for you. With the plan you have in mind, there is “hee-haw” of a difference. Don’t stop at 70 years, go for the ton! A bottle of 100 year old Scotch whisky at auction will be in all the front pages! Good Luck, or “viel gluck”, as they say here in Blantyre.

Ah Ricky boy!

How things change. From your wee fortress down in the left hand corner of the Duchy you feel the winds of change. The cool chill of reality has descended and I am not so sure you welcome it. Here in Scotland we’ve been drinking whisky with food for generations. Of course, here in Scotland, we don’t cow tow to other nations – we take no lessons! We saw this coming years ago. We gather around our haggis once a year, we stab it with a knife ( just for show) and slap a dram on top for good measure. It slips down a treat! For your fish, you’ll be wanting something light and fruity – a wee anCnoc from the side of the Spey? Or if it’s more fruit you’re after, say for lobster, a GlenDronach for sure. But you can source locally. There’s Healey’s in Truro who make cider and distill whisky. Give it a shot, you never know!

Dear Mary I can see where you are coming from. Oh yes, and I don’t mind admitting that you have got my creative juices flowing! I can just see a splendid yellow box of golden drams, decorated with Easter chickens and bunnies, perhaps even a tasting scene where the bunnies are checking out the Islay malts.

How can The Whisky Shop be so blind to the opportunity? But you know, there’s a serious side to Easter. In the scramble for chocolate eggs the Christian message can get lost. On Easter Sunday the resurrection of Jesus Christ is celebrated. Serious minded Christians should be asking ‘what would Jesus want?’. I have little doubt that having gone to all the effort of rolling back that big stone, he would want a wee dram. Perhaps an Auchentoschan? I mean, wouldn’t anyone?