In the office, I’m known as the vermouth fan. It started off innocently, trying different sweet vermouths to see which would make a good Negroni, but soon I was taste-testing them on their own and even branching out into the world of Dubonnet . These days I’ve reined it in a bit, and have settled on a few go-to bottles. For the times when I want something rich and weighty, I reach for Punt e Mes .

Punt e Mes was first produced in 1870 by the Carpano family, the people behind the first sweet red vermouth and the ever-popular...

In case you hadn’t noticed – from the barrage of emails, TV adverts, junk mail, inappropriate Facebook suggestions and blog posts – this Sunday is Father’s Day. This short public service announcement is to let you know that time is running out to place an order that will arrive by Sunday.

If you’re in the UK, then you have a few options. We’ll be doing next-day delivery until Thursday at 2pm , and we also offer Saturday and Sunday deliveries: just order by Friday at 2pm and select the correct delivery day at checkout.

The one thing you’ll need to...

I’m well known in the office for my love of grain whisky. While single malt is the spirit that dragged me into the world of drinks, I’m fascinated by both the technical side of grain distillation and the difference in character from other types of whisky. However, almost all of the grains I’ve had a chance to try are from Scotland – one of the few from elsewhere is from Ireland: Kilbeggan 8 year old .

The folks at Cooley make a few different kinds of whiskey…

It’s only just been rechristened, having appeared years back as Greenore . It’s grain...

Father’s Day is just over a week away on Sunday 21 juni, and it’s one of our busiest times of the year – you all seem to like buying drinks as presents for your dads. As usual, we’ve got a whole range of special offers, great gifts and tasty spirits that fit the bill, so we thought we’d do a round-up to take the difficulty out of the present-buying process.

Our first suggestion is a personalised bottle . With our shiny laser-engraving machine, we can engrave even more bottles than ever before, from Jack Daniel’s Gentleman Jack to Don Julio Tequila...

Gin is far from a simple beast. As a whisky geek, I looked down on white spirits for many years until I started looking into how they are actually made. Making a distilled gin – especially London Dry, where you are legally not allowed to add anything apart from water after it’s left the still – is technical distilling at its most technical: once your spirit has come out of the still, you don’t have much scope to fiddle with it before goes in a bottle. You have to get it right first time.

Gin? SCIENCE!

That’s where the vast...

Despite the distraction of World Gin Day tomorrow, we’ve not been slacking here at TWE HQ, and have been beavering away to put together even more Father’s Day deals. In addition to all of our other offers , we now have a range of Father’s Day packages , including tickets to The Whisky Show 2015 .

Here’s what happened last year

Our yearly Whisky Show is shaping up to be the best yet, with a new venue, more exhibitors and a whole host of great things planned. Our first masterclass – a tasting with writer Dave Broom, Bruichladdich’s Jim McEwan,...

It’s that time of year: World Gin Day is rapidly approaching – Saturday 13 juni. Yet again I’m using it as an excuse to tell you about some of the weird and wonderful new gins that have appeared over the past year.

Things have calmed down a bit, with fewer new releases popping up on our website than in recent years. The focus over the past 12 months has been on small producers making their own gin, rather than the previously more common approach of taking a recipe to a large producer and having them make it. As more gin fans...

Glendronach ’s no-age-statement Cask Strength series has reached its fourth bottling , again aged in sherry casks, a combination of oloroso and sweet, sticky Pedro Ximénez. Glendronach has traditionally used sherry casks to age its whisky, and after a  brief period in the 2000s when bourbon became the preferred option, Glendronach is back in all their sherried glory.

Glendronach do sherry-cask whisky rather well – they must do, seeing as they won The Whisky Exchange’s Whisky of the Year award for their  15 Year Old Revival  – so it’s always interesting to try a new bottling.

This new expression has...

Knockdhu is a strangely anachronistic distillery. Founded in 1894, at the time it was a thoroughly modern facility, with a steam engine, railway sidings, and all mod cons. However, not much has changed since then, with a single pair of stills producing spirit in an old-fashioned way.

Some casks, chillin’

When I visited a few years back , the first thing I noticed was the clash between the approach at the distillery and the more modern way in which it was packaged. From the whisky’s name – anCnoc rather than the more traditional sounding Knockdhu – to its almost monochromatic...

Every country has its national spirit. Some are better known: the Caribbean has  rum , England has gin , and Poland and Russia have vodka ; others are lesser known: Unicum  in Hungary and soju  in Korea. China’s is baijiu .

Crockery jars of locally produced baijiu in Hainan province. Photo by Anna Frodesiak via Wikimedia.

The world’s bestselling spirit, with more than seven billion bottles sold in 2013 (but almost all consumed in China), baijiu has been produced for more than 1,000 years. Recently it has become more widely available in the west (partly due to new rules on corporate gifting causing a sales...

Now, stick with me – this is going to sound a bit weird: I like Jack Daniel’s Honey . That’s not the sort of admission you’d expect a whisky geek to make, but after extensive sampling of whisk(e)y liqueurs, it’s my favourite.

One of the perks of working for a website selling lots of great spirits is that sometimes you need to try them. Not quite as often as people assume, but we do need to check that we know what things taste like, especially if they sell as well as JD Honey does. So, one afternoon we sat down and...

Kilchoman has launched the fifth edition of its 100% Islay bottling, with all barley grown on its own farm

It’s the youngest distillery on Islay, but Kilchoman ’s history has now reached double figures. Established in 2005, the distillery has made its mark on the island by keeping things local – and with Rémy Cointreau snapping up Bruichladdich in 2012, Kilchoman is now the only independently owned distillery on Islay .

Kilchoman’s latest release is the fifth edition of its 100% Islay bottlings, made with barley grown at the distillery and peated to about 25ppm, half the level of other Kilchoman...

To conclude our Islay -themed week, we’re delighted to announce that the next batch of bottlings from Speciality Drinks Ltd’s Elements of Islay series will be available next month. The spring 2015 releases number five, including a first for the range: an Oc.

For those unfamiliar with Elements, each bottling is named with a code indicating the distillery, with few other clues as to the contents. Every batch is signed by a whisky legend, and this time we have not one but two! The Oc and Pl are signed by former Bruichladdich CEO Mark Reynier and the others by one of...

The Whisky Exchange’s Malt of the Month for juni is Bruichladdich Scottish Barley  (also known as The Classic Laddie but different to Laddie Classic ) – we’re offering £4 off for the whole of the month.

Sitting on the western shore of Loch Indaal on the island of Islay , Bruichladdich  distillery was established in 1881, and having endured some troubled times, was reopened and revitalised by independent bottler Murray McDavid in 2000. Current owners Rémy Cointreau took control in 2012 and today the distillery produces three single malts: super-heavily peated Octomore , smoky Port Charlotte and Bruichladdich itself, which unusually for Islay whisky,...

George Clooney developed Casamigos Tequila with long-time friend Rande Gerber

George Clooney is now very much the country gent, following his marriage to a British barrister and recent house-hunting expedition in the English countryside. But when it comes to drinking, he hasn’t quite acquired a taste for gin fizz and Pimm’s on the lawn – he’s still very much a Tequila kind of guy. Clooney’s signature can be found on every bottle of Casamigos Tequila  – a new brand for the UK that the Oscar-winning actor and director part-owns along with friends Rande Gerber and Mike Meldman.

All three expressions of...

This year’s Islay Festival is one of anniversaries and milestones. Along with Kilchoman’s 10th birthday and Jim McEwan’s retirement there are a pair of big-number celebrations: the 200th anniversaries of the founding of both Ardbeg and Laphroaig. We’ll have more about Ardbeg tomorrow, but for now we’re going to focus on Laphroaig.

It’s no secret that I’m a big Laphroaig fan. In fact, if you’re reading this on the day that it hits the blog – Tuesday 26 maj – I’m probably at the distillery and almost certainly drinking Laphroaig. While I’m partial to a dram or two of their whisky, it’s...

Ardbeg Day approaches. The final day of the Islay Festival, it’s become the biggest celebration of the week thanks to the distillery’s unique approach: don’t only have a party on the island. This year is a big one, so they’ve gone all out: it’s the distillery’s 200th birthday.

Moments after this photo was taken, I almost fell into the sea. Writing for TWE is more dangerous than people think…

All around the world, local Ardbeg distributors, shops and fans are throwing parties of varying levels of intricacy and silliness. Here in London we’ve got the UK celebration, with a lunch...