Been too busy in the last few weeks to work on new posts (except for the news items), but I hope to be back on track now and we’ll start with a 24 Year Old Longmorn bottled by Signatory.

This Longmorn was tasted in last month meeting of the MMI whisky club  and as the theme was “Ex-bourbon whiskies from Speyside region”, this is indeed an ex-bourbon Longmorn as opposed to the sherried Longmorns I’m more familiar with. It’s a vatting of two casks, distilled on 15/06/1990 and bottled in juli 2014 for 398 bottles at 55.6%

Longmorn 1990 24 Year...

There are fundamental moments when a whole industry takes a turn, and if you look at the whisky industry, you can surly peg the Macallan 1824 series release as the first large (large? huge!) harbinger of the NAS trend that has been sweeping through the whisky industry in the last few years. I remember being in shock back then in september 2012 when Macallan announced the 1824 series. Seriously? Ditching the age statement core line up and instead bring a new line up that use colors to represent taste (and to some degree, age too)?

Well, it wasn’t a full line up replacement when the 1824 series was unleashed...

It’s not like we need an excuse to publish a review but hey, it’s Thursday and the weekend is in sight so why not use this paltry excuse to review the recently released Benromach 35 Year Old?

35 years is a lot of time and it means that it was distilled under the previous ownership around 1980 (or a tad earlier earlier), just a few years before the distillery was mothballed in 1983.

Since Benromach was revived by G&M at 1998, it means that an equivalent aged expression under GM& ownership (with different production methods, yeasts and barley variants), sometime around 2034, will be...

Glendonach is one of the rising stars in the hearts of whisky fans as it’s gaining a positive image, brand recognition and of course lot of admirers and whisky fans.

The core line up of sherried whiskies, along with the successful single casks batches were the reason for this success but Glendronach also dabble in other casks finishes, using casks with whisky that was distilled before the distillery was mothballed in 1996. The old sherry casks were used for the single cask releases and the premium releases (recherche and grandeur comes to mind), but what of the other casks? This is where the...

The Elements of Islay are a range of whiskies from Speciality Drinks, a sister company to the known The Whisky Exchange shop, that represents different Islay distilleries. Each Islay distillery is represented with a symbol, a chemical element like code, like Lg for Lagavulin, Lp for Laphroaig and so on, and the whiskies are bottled either as single casks or as small batches (5-20 casks).

But now there’s a new addition, and it’s not representing any new Islay distillery, although I’m sure we’ll get to see Gartbreck and Ardnahoe in the future. This time it’s a blended malt (or vatted malt for old time’a...

After breaking out the news on the forthcoming Lagavulin 8 Year Old , I thought it would be fitting to follow up with a Lagavulin review, especially when I really wanted to drink some Lagavulin after the news broke out and the excitement that rose up following it. And what’s more fitting than reviewing another limited edition Lagavulin which is also a youngster (comparing to the 16 Year old), the Special Releases Lagavulin 12 yo 2015?

This is not the first appearance of Lagavulin 12 on Whisky Gospel, as the 2012 edition was thoroughly reviewed , twice in fact, with the conclusion...

Although we’re only in februari, a special event in London was held earlier this month to nark the start of the 200th anniversary celebrations of Lagavulin Distillery. From what was revealed on the internet, they had a taste of a new, special but non Feis Ile bottling which was told to be very good, but no further details were revealed till now due to embargo.

However, a new Lagavulin label was revealed on the American Federal TTB site – a 8 Year Old Lagavulin, presumably bottled at 48%:

It’s an interesting choice to release a less than 10 Year Old bottling,...

The Glenlivet Rare Vintage series is one I’ve been keen to taste for years as they had so many old (and expensive) vintages in this series, with even some whiskies from the turn of the 20th century!

And finally I get to taste a vintage from the series, courtesy of G&M and their “The Wood Makes the Whisky” campaign. This time it’s a Glenlivet 1974 vintage which is a vatting of whisky from refill American & refill Sherry casks.

Rare Vintage Smith’s Glenlivet 1974 (43%)

Nose : Relaxed, fresh, dried fruit with sultanas and figs, some eucalyptus, nutty, furniture varnish, getting...

Yesterday it was The Deveron 12 turn and today it’s the older brother turn, The Deveron 18 Year Old. I had the opportunity to taste an advanced sample of Deveron 18 during Whisky Live Tel-Aviv, directly from visiting Bacardi ambassador Lomond Campbell. Luckily I saved some of it for later and deeper tasting so it made sense to compare the sample to the final commercially released whisky.

Advanced sample on the left, final Deveron 18 on the right. Notice the color difference.

As can seen from the picture above there’s a slight color change with the final version boasting a darker...

Last week we completed reviewing the new Royal Brackla line-up and now it’s time to tackle yet another distillery that went through a big change as part of Bacardi “Last Great Malts” series, Glen Deveron whisky which is actually distilled at Macduff distillery (No, there’s no Glen Deveron distillery).

The official line-up from Macduff was previously known as Glen Deveron and upon the re-launch on september 2015 it was rebranded as The Deveron. But it wasn’t only a re-branding, the whisky changed too as the old Glen Deveron expressions were ditched and instead we get a new line-up with three standard expressions (10, 12...

One more young whisky from G&M in the “The Wood Makes the Whisky” campaign, but this time it’s a whisky from a powerhouse distillery that all but ditched the age statements from their main OB expressions: Macallan.

Luckily, we have independent bottlers to enjoy age labeled Macallans but even those are pretty rare and hard to find, that is, unless you’re Gordon & Macphail. I bet there’s some prior contract that supplies G&M with fresh casks from Macallan and so we can enjoy the Speymat range, from the expensive old to the young and affordable vintages.

As befitting the tone of...

While we’re on a roll from last week, let’s check another young and low ABV whisky. Today it’s a 8 year old Glenrothes from Gordon and Macphail, another entree in the “The Wood Makes the Whisky” campaign, that was matured for 8 years in a combo of refill Sherry hogsheads and refill bourbon barrels before bottling back in 2011.

Macphail’s Collection Glenrothes 8 Year Old (43%,  £31.95 )

Nose : Malty and creamy coconut, vanilla with a touch of honey, oak wood spices, develops some green apples at the background with a surprising briney note and then slowly some weak sherry impact shows up: chocolate, nutmeg...

Beinn Dubh is a whisky that is marketed as ‘The Black Single Malt Scotch Whisky”. I must admit that for me, the honor of having the “Black Whisky” title belonged to Loch Dhu (which was distilled in Mannochmore distillery) but it’s not produced anymore and instead we have on the market two candidates for the Black whisky title but as both are coming from the Speyside Distillery (which of course resides in the Speyside region), I supposed that the torch did move on to them. The first one is  ‘Cu Dub’ which is more or less a recreation of Loch Dhu and the other one...

Amid all the rising whisky prices and the growing NAS segment, we’ve seen another trend going strong lately: independent bottlings of young whisky, from 5 year old up to 10 year old.

It shouldn’t surprise us as whisky casks prices has risen too, for both new make and aged spirit barrels. The reasoning is simple: bottle it at younger age, majbe even bottle at lower ABV and so it’s cheaper and you can extract more bottles from each cask.

Today’s Bunnahabhaim from Van Wees The Ultimate brand is a classic example of such whisky, distilled 26/06/2006, aged in cask 2127,...

Following the reviews of the Royal Brackla 12 & 16 Year old, it’s time to try the high end expression, the Royal Brackla 21 Year Old. I liked the lower age expressions despite their flaws, can we hope that the 21 is better?

Royal Brackla 21 Year Old (40%, £135 / €139.75 )

Nose : Unlike the 12 & 16, the 21 Year Old starts with a grassy tone instead of the floral one, a lot of meadow grass and hay notes but slowly the floral notes crawl back. White chocolate, honey, dry but less so than the younger siblings, sweet golden...

A couple of months ago I reviewed the entry level expression from Royal Brackla distillery which is part of the Last Great Malts series from Bacardi. It’s time to move up in the line up and review the higher level expressions from this new line up.

Today we’ll check the mid level expression, the Royal Brackla 16 Year old and the next post will review the high-end offering, the Royal Brackla 21 Year Old.

Looking back at my review of the 12 Year Old one, it seems that I liked it as it sports a unique profile of dry, lightly fruity,...

This past week was the coldest one of the winter. It was so cold and freezing that we avoided a snowmargeddon only because we didn’t have precipitation at the same time. Usually such weather calls for heavy-weight whisky, peated or sherred, but this time I opted for a dram that celebrates the midwinter time and it did feel like midwinter here last week.

Glenmorangie A Midwinter Night’s Dram is a limited edition (like all of their releases in the last few years) that celebrates a Glenmorangie tradition of bottling a special whisky for the sixteen men of Tain by the...

lately I’ve been beating the TR market and the late trends it’s going through. But not all new TR exclusive whiskies are bad. Macallan has been doing some good TR exclusive releases for a while but even those come with issues of their own.

For example, the Macallan Rare Cask Black lacks transparency big time. The bottle itself is opaque and you can’t gauge how much whisky left in the bottle and also lacks transparency for the liquid inside – we don’t know much about the whisky. Yes, it’s somewhat peated (either the result of peated malt or usage of casks that held sherry and peated...

In the last few years I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon regarding whisky releases from independent bottlers.  Once every few months, a plethora of new independent bottlings from a specific distillery and year floods the market in the form of single casks (and sometimes a vatting of two casks), and all casks numbers are within a very small and definite range.

I assume that a stock of said casks were released from bond and independent bottlers rush, select and bottle a few casks within a short time period. In the last few years we’ve seen such waves of Laphroaig 1998, Longmorn 1996, Glen Keith 1992, Tamdhu 2004 and many...

Not long ago I tried the Laphroaig Brodir which is a Port finished peated whisky. It wasn’t a successful experiment so we gonna try similar whisky from the lesser known member in the Beam Suntory protfolio: Ardmore.

Ardmore is under a strong marketing and branding push in the last few years, a process which intensified under Suntory Beam hands. A couple of new releases were released in 2015 and the latest of them is the one we review today, the Ardmore 12 yo Port Wood Finish.

This whisk was matured in American oak ex-bourbon casks before finished in Port Pipes....