Whisky Live Paris is held this week-end and La Maison du Whisky has announced some of its new releases, three of which are bottled for the 60th anniversary of the company:

Compass Box Whisky de Table is the first exclusive bottling. John Glaser selected specific casks at the Buffalo Trace distillery which he filled with new make spirit from four Scottish distilleries. After three years he created this light, fruity (and lightly smoky) blended malt, presented in a traditional wine bottle. Available for € 42.

Wolfburn A Little Something Different is a composition of 18% sherry casks and 82% bourbon....

Glenfarclas will soon releases a 1979 single cask #8818 selected by Eiling Lim and her husband Luc Timmermans from the traditional dunnage warehouse n°8. It was a “plain oak” cask so without the classic sherry character of Glenfarclas. Instead we can expect tropical fruits, mint and vanilla. Only 188 bottles are available, with a wooden box, for around € 420.

anCnoc has announced its first ever single cask bottling, to mark the 60th anniversary of La Maison du Whisky . This anCnoc 2005 cask #427 has been matured for over 11 years in a first-fill American oak...

How long has it been since we’ve seen new Lochside on the market? The distillery was closed in 1992, demolished in 2005, and it seems most of the available casks have been bottled. A couple of premium releases in the last couple of years but that’s all.

Let’s keep the memory alive with this Lochside 1987 in the Perfect Dram series from The Whisky Agency.

Lochside 21 yo 1987 (62,4%, The Perfect Dram 2008, ex-bourbon hogshead, 199 btl.)

Nose: starts rather austere, closed, with lots of grassy notes, then mint and oak. After a while the fruity notes...

Here’s part 2 of the Tweet Tasting organised by The Whisky Wire. Check out the previous reviews of Glen Moray Peated , Glen Moray Sherry Cask finish and Glen Moray 15 Year Old .

We also tried two distillery exclusives .

The first one is a 1994 single cask , first matured in a first-fill bourbon barrel and then finished in a first-fill Oloroso sherry butt since december 2010. Master distiller and distillery manager Graham Coull explained that after the transfer, the bourbonny notes were initially masked by the sherry but gradually returned as the sherry was more integrated....

A Glenrothes 1989 from the latest batch of Single Malts of Scotland bottlings. You can save a few bucks if you’re quick.

Glenrothes 26 yo 1989 (52,5%, Single Malts of Scotland 2016, cask #18173, 255 btl.)

Nose: nice combination of aromatic, syrupy fruits (peaches, tinned pineapple) and greener, more grassy aromas. Green apple. Hints of Panettone. Fruit gums. Also a slightly fragrant hint of rosewater Lokhum. Beautiful. Mouth: same mix of sweet, almost tropical fruits (melons, berries, pineapples) with other elements, this time bittersweet grapefruit, a green oaky note and some pepper. Apple skin. Finish: medium long, with...

This is the new BenRiach Peated Quarter Casks , launched in juni 2016, an expression distilled from peated malted barley and matured in tiny quarter casks .

These smaller casks (1/4th of a butt, around half of a hogshead) encourage greater interaction between the spirit and the oak. Younger whisky, quicker maturation – a concept that has been used by Laphroaig for many years now.

BenRiach Peated Quarter Casks (46%, OB 2016)

Nose: a slightly dry peatiness with lots of hay and ashy herbs rather than the medicinal Islay peat. A little gravel. Cereal notes. Underneath we find...

I hope you’re not getting bored of all these undisclosed 1970s Speysiders. I certainly can’t resist trying as much as I can. The latest on the market is this Speyside 1975 from Maltbarn .

Speyside region 41 yo 1975 (48,7%, Maltbarn 2016, sherry cask, 159 btl.)

Nose: this one has some of the typical fruitiness of the others, but much more intense beehive notes (pollen, honey) and waxy notes (waxed oak, a little turpentine). Mandarins and lemons. Williams pears. Pink grapefruit and apricots. Eucalyptus. Some hints of cedar wood too, with very light whiffs of patchouli. Very aromatic. Mouth:...

Kilkerran 12 Year Old is the first core range product from the newest, old distillery in Campeltown (considering Glengyle was founded in 1872, closed down in 1925 and restarted in 2004 as a sister distillery of Springbank).

After a whole list of Work in Progress releases, it has now come to age – an eagerly awaited milestone bottling. Kilkerran 12 Years is lightly peated (12-15 ppm) and composed of a mixture of cask types: 70% matured in bourbon casks and 30% in sherry casks.

Kilkerran 12 yo (46%, OB 2016)

Nose: slightly austere start, on dry heather, minerals,...

I’ve said it before, but the Mo Òr Collection didn’t really get the attention it deserved. Of course the pricing strategy was one of heavy premiumisation. They came too early perhaps (2009-2010) especially since we didn’t realize back then that all these great 1960s-1970s whiskies would dry up entirely three to four years later.

With hindsight it was a great series and I wonder where all these bottles have gone – they weren’t selling well and they didn’t show up in auctions either. All part of this World Whisky Index now?

Anyway, let’s keep the memory alive with this Glen...

The other day I was part of a Tweet Tasting organised by The Whisky Wire. Always a nice opportunity to get acquainted with some of the offerings of a distillery, in this case Glen Moray . I have to say I had tried some excellent 1950s – 1960s – 1970s Glen Moray but none of their recent production.

Glen Moray distillery is located in Speyside, in the outskirts of Elgin. When started in 1828 it was originally a brewery, but it was converted in 1897. It was part of the Glenmorangie / LVMH group and sold to La Martiniquaise...

A couple of months ago Sansibar bottled a ‘very old’ blended Speyside malt for the Swedish Whiskyklubben Slainte . Even if that name doesn’t ring a bell, then perhaps the names of the driving forces Magnus Fagerström and Hasse Peters will.

It’s a semi-private bottling – some bottles found their way to certain whisky stores.

Speyside blended malt ‘very old’ (45,3%, Sansibar for Whiskyklubben Slainte 2015, sherry butt, 554 btl.)

Nose: a little less elegant than all these wonderful 1970s undisclosed Speysiders. Also less sherried than some of the XO bottlings (see this or this ). Some yellow fruits,...

Bruichladdich is one of the leading experimenters when it comes to cask finishes and wine casks in particular. I must admit that I’m generally not a fan, so I was slightly wary when I read this Bruichladdich 2005 bottled by Claxton’s was fully matured in a Rioja wine cask .

Bruichladdich 11 yo 2005 (57,2%, Claxton’s 2016, Rioja wine cask #1605-1052, 320 btl.)

Nose: no need to stick your nose into the glass, really, the red berries and wine gums will come right at you. Prunes. Hints of Spanish PX-matured brandy. After that, it turns towards tobacco notes,...

Tomatin has launched a series of travel retail expressions, now available in airports across Europe. This is the range:

• Tomatin 8 Year Old , from bourbon and sherry casks (40% – € 35)
• Tomatin 12 Year Old , from bourbon and sherry casks, a 1 litre version of the normal expression (43% – € 42)
• Tomatin 15 Year Old , matured in North American oak (46% – € 55)
• Tomatin 40 Year Old , matured in Oloroso sherry casks (43% – € 1250)

In addition to the Tomatin malts, the new range also includes a 1 litre bottle of...

Ardmore 25 Year Old was released in 2010. Originally a travel retail exclusive, it could also be found in regular stores later on. Like the Ardmore 30 Year Old, it was phased out with the recent branding makeover.

Ardmore 25 yo (51,4%, OB +/- 2012)

Nose: pleasantly gentle, with soft smoke but also sweet apples and a hint of vanilla biscuits. Dried berries. Some marzipan. Also a slightly sharper side, like pickled peppers. Earthy notes. Vague meaty touches. Mouth: same duality. Vanilla roundness and creamy fruits, then moving towards leathery notes and herbs or dried grass, including a...

This Craigellachie 1997 was bottled by Gordon & MacPhail in 2014, but it can still be found in stores. After all the distillery doesn’t have a sexy image and I guess most bottles are bought by insiders or as an impulse purchase?

Craigellachie 1997 (46%, Gordon & MacPhail Connoisseurs Choice 2014, refill hogshead & bourbon barrels)

Nose: very fruity and summery. Green apple (skin), green tea, hints of kiwi. Soft mineral touches. A little vanilla. Nice and light but it’s not entirely clean, there’s something of used matches and a kind of butter milk note that I find...

In 2010 the Belgian whisky shop TastToe presented six whiskies from the 1960s, bottled under their own label to celebrate a new logo and restyling of the shop:

None of the bottles has a bottling date, nor an age statement, and as there were only 24 bottles of each, it’s safe to assume they were shared casks. While researching this Glenrothes, I stumbled upon a Peerless series from Duncan Taylor . One of their batches has exactly the same whiskies, all bottled at exactly the same strengths, with more details:

• Bowmore 40yo 1968 , cask #3824 (42,3%)
• Glenrothes 40yo...

This Longmorn 1969 ‘Book of Kells’ is one of the benchmark (sherried) Longmorns and I’m quite excited to try it.

This bottle comes with two different back labels. Bottles n°001 to 192 are bottled for The Mash Tun & Kask Tokyo , while n°193 to 460 are bottled for Japan Import System . We’re trying the JIS version.

When I see the name Japan Import System , Longmorn is my first association. They also bottled 1969 cask #5293 in the same year – and several more legendary Longmorns from 1964-1965-1966- 1967 .

Longmorn 39 yo 1969...

The cheapest option in the Fortuna Merita Collection from The Dalmore (see The Dalmore Luceo that we tried earlier). The Dalmore Regalis was finished in Amoroso sherry casks.

The name Amoroso isn’t allowed on the labels of sherry bottles any more (you have to call it Medium or Cream now, depending on the amount of sugar), but González Byass and The Dalmore insist on using it for their sherry casks. Anyway it is an Oloroso sweetened by adding a bit of Pedro Ximénez.

As a side note: González Byass used to call its Amoroso sherry Bristol Milk , as a...

The Syndicate is synonymous to a series of Lagavulin expressions bottled in the 1990s and 2000s. There are several 14yo, 15yo, 20yo, 25yo, 30yo…

The Syndicate was a group of gentlemen who selected casks they liked and then had them bottled by their friends from the independent bottler Murray McDavid which in turn was related to Bruichladdich, until it was sold in 2013 to the whisky broker Aceo Ltd. The Syndicate’s bottlings are well respected and widely considered to be of very high quality.

There’s also an earlier (1993-1994) version of a Lagavulin 15yo with the same strength but a slightly...

Sister distilleries Glen Scotia and Loch Lomond will launch seven expressions in the travel retail market. Prices range from around € 35 to € 90, and it’s quite an untraditional list of whiskies, if you ask me:

• Loch Lomond Single Grain (distilled with malted barley)
• Loch Lomond Signature , a blend produced in a 100-cask solera process
• Loch Lomond 12 year old , a single malt which contains spirit from two types of stills
• Loch Lomond Inchmurrin Madeira , a second single malt which comes exclusively from their pot stills with the rectifying head
• Glen Scotia Campbeltown 1832
• Glen Scotia...