In exactly one week, Whisky Love Tel-Aviv 2018 will be in full swing. I’ll be there and I hope my Israeli readers will visit this great exhibition too. But what is an exhibition without a commemorative bottle? Of course there’s one but Tomer Goren, the man behind the event decided to bottle a special whisky for Whisky Live and what a special whisky it is: a 37 Years Old Port Ellen.

Yup, this is no mistake. We have a Port Ellen bottling for the Whisky Live show. It was distilled in 1979 and bottled in 2017 after it spent 37...

When 2018 has started, I had a few new resolutions for the new year and one of those was related to the blog: To review in 2018 some of those beginners and entry level whiskies I tasted and had in the early stages of my whisky journey (and surely before I started this blog). Now we’re in early mars and it’s time to gear up and do something about this.

So today I’ll be reviewing Dalmore 12 Year Old, a whisky I had many times in the past but not in the last few years, so I sourced a sample...

Two weeks ago I reviewed a 10 Years Old Kilchoman bottled for the Whisky Exchange which disappointed me . In hindsight, I now understand that another 10 years old Kilchoman I tasted a few weeks before the TWE one, The fifth Kilchoman Club Edition, the first official 10 Year Old whisky from the distillery was a major reason for that disappointment.

Back in november 2016, Anthony Wills the managing director of Kilchoman, picked two casks from their first full year of production in 2006: one first fill oloroso sherry butt and one fresh bourbon barrel. Those 10 year old casks were vatted...

© The Islay Festival of Music and Malt

Yeah, it’s this time of the year, the time for the annual post of the Feis Ile Festival bottles, especially when we finally see some information out there.

This year, the festival will run from late maj into juni 2018 (25th maj to 2nd juni 2018).

This post will detail all the available information on the festival bottles and I’ll update it each time more details will be revealed.

If you look for the full festival information, go to the Festival site at islayfestival.com and you can find the full Islay Festival...

The Single Cask Tobermory 1994 (22 year old) 59.1%

Cask A394/ Dist: Mar 1994 Btl: Jan 2017/ Tasted: Nov 2017

Dusty, mature and quite spicy on the nose with subtly, sooty peat, thick malt, dark honey and slightly marc-like note. It becomes quite earthy with time and a light manurey note appears. For an old ‘mory, it’s very impressive.

The palate opens with some delicate dark honey, malt and mature oak. Now that’s a sentence I never expected to write about an old ‘mory! Hints of milk chocolate, peat, sweet barley and liquorice follow. It’s not 100% clean as there...

Gleann Mor ‘A Rare Find’ Royal Brackla 2006 (10 year old) 59.8%

Refill Sherry?/ Dist: Nov 2006 Btl: Jun 2017/ Tasted: Nov 2017

Pungent aromas of toffee and honey with hints of barley, vanilla and what feels like subtle herbal Oloroso dried fruit and spice notes. It develops some lovely baked fruit notes and feels a little older than 10 years.

The palate opens with a lovely barley’d intensity, followed by hints of dried fruit and bitter spice. A touch of honey balances the bitterness and hints of vanilla and pepper appear on the middle. A little masked on the...

Gordon & MacPhail Private Collection Ledaig 2005 (11 year old) 45%

Hermitage Cask Finish/ Dist: Sept 2005 Btl: Aug 2017/ Tasted: Nov 2017

A serious sulphur overload! Yes, there are hints of syrup coated red fruit, peat and manure, but by god I haven’t smelt a whisky so sulphur ruined like this in ages!

The palate is, funnily enough, sulphur tainted with hints of dry peat and syrupy red fruit. A touch of coffee and dark chocolate come through on the middle but the finish is tart with the sulphur lingering. Whether the sulphur is cask or spirit derived I...

Bareksten Botanical Gin 46%

Distilled at the Oss Craft Distillery in Norway from Potatoes

Batch 0018/0757

Botanicals: Juniper, coriander, blueberries, grains of paradise, cardamom, angelica root. nutmeg, rose root, lemon peel, orris, rhubarb, lime peel, lavender, orange peel, chamomile, fennel, cinnamon, caraway, aniseed, red clover, lingonberries, elderflower,mint, arnica flowers, rose flowers.

Tasted: Nov 2017

Intense, but very fresh, slightly bitter juniper with pine-like notes, rose, berries, earth, bark, cinnamon and a subtle floral note. The citrus and salt sit in the background adding to the freshness.

The palate is full and slightly starchy with sweet juniper, orange, fern/ pine along...

Mackillop’s Choice Balblair 1997 (20 year old) 55.2%

Bourbon Cask 124/ Dist: maj1997 Btl: Sept 2017/ Tasted: Nov 2017

A lovely, mature nose of oxidised baked fruit along with hints of lime, barley, manuka honey and aromatic American oak. The oak becomes quite buttery with time and the barley becomes wonderfully fragrant.

The palate opens with fresher barley and citrus before the mature, baked fruit arrives. Buttery and toffee’d oak follows and the mid palate is incredibly granity with building lime and lemon notes, which adroitly balances the oak. Mouth-watering citrus finish with a touch of coffee, anise, sweet barley,...

Mackillop’s Choice Dailuaine 1998 (19 year old) 57.7%...

Mackillop’s Choice Macallan 1998 (19 year old) 53.8%

Bourbon Cask 154/ Dist: Feb 1998 Btl: Sept 2017 /Tasted: Nov 2017

Dense and dusty aromas with barley, apple, apricot, pear, rye-like herbal notes and a good dollop of what appears to be first fill Bourbon. Nutty and malty with developing honeysuckle. With time the barley becomes very floral in character and intertwines with the oak wonderfully.

The palate opens with some dusty pollen-like barley and barley husks. Slightly grippy but sweet tannins follow along with hints of apricot, apple, cinnamon sticks and ginger. Vibrant and juicy middle as the citrus really...

Mackillop’s Choice Bowmore 1990 (23 year old) 52.2%

Bourbon Cask 185082/ Dist: Apr 1990 Btl: juli 2013/ Tasted: Aug 2013

A beautiful, multi-layered nose of toffee coated apples and cinders with hints of bbq sauce and dark pickles. Hmm, this is a serious food fest of a malt! Hints of old, medicinal seaweed, treacly-peat and light brine. Quite earthy and malty with a developing dark honey/ camp coffee/ chicory note. With time it becomes a little floral and a hint of violet appears. A seriously complex nose which takes some time to unwind!

Soft and toffee’d to start with a...

Mackillop’s Choice Glen Grant 1989 (27 year old) 51.7%...

Mackillop’s Choice Longmorn 1988 (28 year old) 60.8%

Bourbon Cask 14357/ Dist: Oct 1988 Btl: Sept 2017/ Tasted: Nov 2017

A big hit of ‘Bourbony’ oak with dark rye-like herbal and spicy notes. Hints of pepper, wood shavings, vanilla, nutmeg and light treacle. Yep, it’s a serious oak fest!

The palate opens with dry, dusty tannins, malt and rye-like spices. Hints of treacle, moist raisinated fruit, violety spice and alcohol follows. The finish is not surprisingly masked and dry, but the sweet vanilla and treacle add some balance. Sweet pepper, cinnamon and ginger notes in the after-taste. Damn that must...

The Irish coffee hits all the marks of a great whiskey cocktail: delicious, beautiful, and easy to make and customize according to your taste. There are many variations, from using flavored coffee to serving it on ice, but in the end, the perfect Irish coffee is the one you like best.

The basic recipe for Irish coffee is simple: Add 2 teaspoons demerara sugar to a warm mug or Irish coffee glass. Add 4 to 6 oz. hot coffee and stir well to dissolve sugar. Add 1½ oz. Irish whiskey and stir to combine. Float whipped cream on top by...

The biggest new release of the week is Johnnie Walker’s female-focused The Jane Walker Edition, a special package for Black Label. I had some thoughts about how Diageo missed the mark with this one— and a suggestion for what they could have done to promote women’s representation in whisky instead .

Apart from this limited-edition bottling, there are many other new whiskies to try. Woodford Reserve is releasing a new annual special edition: Woodford Reserve Batch Proof. The whiskey is a higher-strength version of its core bourbon. It will be available in limited quantities for $130, and the proof will...

The world’s speediest oyster shucker has a long-standing love of bivalves and whisky.

The proprietor of Toronto’s Ceili Cottage and Guinness World Record holder for the most oysters opened in a minute—39—Patrick McMurray was still developing his shucking skills when he asked whisky writer Michael Jackson to autograph one of his books. On learning that McMurray worked in an oyster bar, Jackson appended his signature with some good advice: “Have Oban whisky with oysters.”

“That’s what first got me thinking about whisky and oysters,” says McMurray. Many years later, when the shucker visited Scotland’s Isle of Skye , he followed...

WhiskyFest Chicago is right around the corner—the first WhiskyFest of 2018 takes place on mars 23rd at the Hyatt Regency, in the heart of Chicago’s Loop. With hundreds of whiskies on offer, there will be no shortage of amazing pours to try, from scotch to Irish to Japanese whisky. And if you’re a bourbon lover, you’re in for a treat—WhiskyFest Chicago will have dozens of great bourbons, including rare and highly aged offerings and the latest batch of Whisky Advocate’s 2017 Whisky of the Year . Here’s where to get started.

These offerings are just the beginning—be sure to check...

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While Loch Lomond Distillery’s partnership with The Open is set to include a host of new whisky releases, we’ll have to wait until this summer for the first one to be revealed. In the meantime, there are plenty of other new releases to tide over thirsty whisky lovers.

The whiskey word of the week is bonded .  Heaven Hill Distillery —maker of Whisky Advocate’s 2017 Whisky of the Year, Elijah Craig Barrel Proof —is about to debut the first in a series of limited-edition Old Fitzgerald bottled in bond bourbons. Every spring and fall, Heaven Hill will roll out a...