Here we are again, once more dipping our toes into the rich, bubbling pool of silliness provided to us by the wilder elements within the world of drinks.

Looking for something… distinctive, this Valentine’s Day? Well, whether you’re proposing to your partner or just having a night in with your bestie, we’ve got bottles aplenty to introduce a little interest to your evening.

Fallen Angel Spiced Rum

There are certain drinks which, as long as they continue to look as they do, are doomed to appear in every Novelty Bottles post I might write to which they are even...

Valentine’s Day  is fast approaching, and since all things pink have become the symbol of the season, we thought we’d choose some of our favourite fizzes.

Billecart-Salmon Brut Rosé Champagne

This is a perennial favourite, and one that will never disappoint. The house was founded in 1818, when Nicolas François Billecart married Elisabeth Salmon, and the family have continued to make wine for seven generations. This was the first rosé I listed by the glass when I was a sommelier, and it is still the rosé I go back to time and time again.

Billecart-Salmon Brut Rosé  has  a beautiful...

Over the last two decades the rise in popularity of rosé, in all forms, has been phenomenal. Now everywhere you turn drinks are turning pink – pink gin, pink wine, pink sparkling. I have even seen the odd pink whisky…

So why has this colour become so popular and how has its fortune changed?

Pink bubbles begin to rise

At the end of the 90s, no City boy would be seen dead drinking bubbly rosé. It was all about claret and good Burgundy, with not a drop of pink in sight. Pink Champagne was seen as inferior, and at the...

Modern Scotch whisky is at an interesting point. Whisky makers are torn between two poles of thought – tradition and innovation – with regulations governing both pushing them to choose their paths carefully. When it comes to carefully respecting the past while looking to the future, no one quite walks that fine line as well as Glenmorangie’s Dr Bill Lumsden with his yearly Private Edition bottling. This year sees the launch of the 10th release in the series, and it’s his geekiest experiment yet: Glenmorangie Allta .

The Glenmorangie Private Edition range

Each entry in the Private Edition range showcases...

The last year has been a very busy one for The Whisky Exchange when it comes to exclusive bottlings. We’ve put out more than 30 exclusive whiskies and a rum, with many more to come over the next 12 months. However, one of my favourites is a whisky that I poured at The Whisky Show back in september – a mysterious Speyside 1973 bottled by The Whisky Agency .

Mysterious 1973 Whisky

There have been a few 1973 releases from Speyside recently. They are listed as blended malt whiskies and with little information about them, other than that they are...

We’re kicking off the new year with a brand-new exclusive release – please welcome our Kavalan Vinho single cask , freshly arrived from Taiwan.

Kavalan – Taiwanese Malt

If you’ve been reading the blog for a while, you’ll know that I’m a bit of a Kavalan fan. I first tried the distillery’s whisky back in 2010, before I started working in the whisky world, after a long search to find any in the UK. In 2012, it finally landed at The Whisky Exchange – here’s my gushing blog post – and since then it’s grown to be hugely popular.

Kavalan...

Since its very beginnings, The Whisky Exchange has had a focus that sets us apart from other whisky shops: we love old and rare whisky. Co-founder Sukhinder started as a collector of old bottles and that grew into The Whisky Exchange – we’ll be celebrating our 20th year online later in 2019, and he’s been collecting even longer.

Why old and rare?

Whisky is far from static. Over the centuries of production, the spirit has changed hugely. From uisge-beatha, an unaged spirit infused with herbs – a proto-gin – it has gradually become the oak-matured whisky that we know and...

januari is a time of hibernation and restoration, a month to lay the foundations of the year. And, perhaps, to also recover from the excesses of the festive period. It’s time for Dry januari .

The days of alcohol avoidance meaning fizzy, sugar-laden drinks or fruit juice are behind us, and there are now loads of tasty alternatives. Here are a few ideas to last through januari and into the year beyond – proof that good drinks don’t have to contain alcohol.

Spirit Replacements

A few years back, the idea of a soft drink replacing a spirit in a cocktail...

At the end of the month is one of the biggest dates in the Scottish calendar. When it comes to excuses for a party, at least. Less than a month after Hogmanay and it’s time for another night of celebration – 25 januari is Burns Night .

Who was Robert Burns?

For those who don’t know the work of Robert Burns, he was a Scottish writer, who was born on 25 januari 1759 – hence the date of Burns Night – and died in 1796. In his time he was a not only a writer and poet, but also a...

Happy new year everyone. With a simple transition from Monday to Tuesday, the falling ball of fate has been triggered and it’s time for the yearly TWE Blog round-up of the year.

A Good Year for the Roses

While 2018 has been “interesting” for many reasons, in the whisky world things have rolled on as usual. Macallan opened its shiny new distillery, Jura , Glenrothes and Old Pulteney relaunched their entire ranges, our friends at Elixir Distillers announced their plans to build a distillery and Daftmill *finally* released a whisky.

Expect the next releases from Daftmill very soon…

Here at...

It’s 2019, day 4. Realisation has hit that the past couple of weeks have seen some indulgence. The temptation to succumb to dry januari is strong, but we have another suggestion: Tryanuary .

When it comes horrible portmanteaus, Tryanuary is up there with Brangelina, jazzercise, chillax and advertorial, but I thoroughly support the idea behind the word. januari as a time of calm and lack of excess is an excellent idea: it’s time to drink sensibly and try new things. After a month of festive fun and familiarity, it’s time to head out into the new.

Each year, I try...

Ahhh, Christmas : a time for family, food, good cheer and annoying singing Santa… ornaments? Are they ornamental? Are they toys? Singing Santas, anyway. And somehow all the silliness only contributes to the overall atmosphere of loveliness. It’s like being hugged (hygged?) by the world.

Christmas is also a time for great drinks. We gift them to each other, we get them in specially and we drink them together. With that in mind, we’ve compiled a list of the silliest and festive-est bottles we could find to help you get the absolute most out of your Christmas drinking. Brace yourselves…...

For the past few years, there’s one annual whisky release that we’ve received more questions about than any other. It’s not the Port Ellen from the Diageo Special Releases or even the Glenmorangie Private Edition – it’s the next in the Rosebank Roses collection.

The Rosebank Roses will be a set of seven whiskies from the late, lamented Falkirk distillery bottled by our friends at Elixir Distillers. Two have been released son far, with the remaining five appearing one at a time each februari until 2023. Each is named after a facet of the world of romance – the first...

december has arrived, and with it a new pair of whiskies exclusively available at The Whisky Exchange. Bottled for us by Gordon & MacPhail as part of the Connoisseurs Choice range, we’re proud to introduce our  Glenlivet 2003 and  Glenturret 2004 .

Gordon & MacPhail

Founded in 1895, Gordon & MacPhail started as grocer in Elgin in the heart of Speyside – the shop is still open at 58-60 South Street. John Urquhart joined the business shortly after and worked with James Gordon as a buyer, including purchasing whisky from the local distilleries. However, both James Gordon and John Alexander...

Imagine you were asked to take one of the world’s most famous blended whiskies and create a limited edition that paid homage to one of the world’s most revered lost distilleries. Where would you start? How would you do it justice? And how many times would you wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat?

It all sounds impossibly daunting, unless, in a masterpiece of nominative determinism, your name is Beveridge, Jim Beveridge, and you’ve spent almost 40 years immersed in the world of whisky making. Here, Johnnie Walker’s talented master blender tells us about how...

Black Friday is upon us again. When we decided to join in with the festivities of the day a few years back, we decided we’d make things simple: offer a single great whisky at a great price, and try to bring some joy to the world of internet shopping.

Rather than adding another special offer to our already-long list , we’ve bottled a whisky just for the occasion – a great tasting dram that’s incredibly good value and makes Black Friday worth waiting for.

Last year we did our first special Whisky Exchange exclusive Black Friday bottling and it sold...

In a bust-up for the dubious honour of ‘most mysterious and least-known major whisky-producing nation’ it is, by my reckoning, a straight-up two-way tussle between India and Taiwan –  Japan and  England  having now backed away into relative repute and thus, safety.

And so it is that I leapt at the opportunity to fill one of the many gaping holes in my whisky knowledge and attend an Amrut tasting with famed brand ambassador Ashok Chokalingam.

So, Indian single Maltwhisky, huh?

The first thing to note, we are told, is that India has more distilleries than Scotland, and that the...

American whiskey is on the up. While Irish whiskey maj be the fastest growing in the world, the USA is gaining ground as the connoisseurs choice. Whiskeys like the Van Winkle range are snapped up in seconds and appear at auction for thousands of pounds, but there are still loads of great-value special releases, many of which are now making their way to the UK. We’re very please to have grabbed one for ourselves – a single-barrel release of Eagle Rare 10 Year Old .

Eagle Rare is one of the many whiskeys produced by the folks at Buffalo Trace...

It’s a year for celebrating big anniversaries. Not only has legendary independent bottler Signatory Vintage just turned 30, but it was also the 10th instalment of The Whisky Exchange Whisky Show .

To begin the celebrations, Signatory has bottled some very special whiskies for The Whisky Show’s birthday – all exclusively available from The Whisky Exchange. We’ve worked with the team at Signatory for years, and have chosen sister casks of three of our favourite whiskies that we’ve released with them previously – a Clynelish , a Glenlivet and an Edradour .

You can find more on our Exclusive Signatory...

It’s that time again: Jim Murray’s Whisky Bible 2019 is landing imminently and Jim’s picks of the world’s top whiskies are in.

After a few years of controversial choices, with Scotch whisky bouncing in and out of the top three, and Japanese and Canadian whisky making headlines around the world, we’re back to safer ground with the most traditional set of results since 2014.

To grab all the results you can grab your own copy of the bible from our website , but in the meantime…

The winner of Jim Murray’s award for 2019 World Whisky of the Year is:...