Archive For May 30, 2015
Ardbeg, masters of marketing hype that they are, have attempted (and are reasonably successful) to make the Fèis Ìle open day into something more global than just the festival on Islay. Despite being a rather small operation (1.3 million liters per year, smaller than Bruichladdich and about a third of Laphroaig). How was this done? The…
In 2014 (and 2015), Bunnahabhain released two festival releases, one is the “normal” festival bottling and another is an older “exclusive” bottling, priced accordingly. This year, there is an 11 year old called Rubha A’ Mhail (pronounced ‘rooaval’) that was fully matured in Manzanilla sherry butts, and an 18 year old Moscatel finish, kept in Moscatel wine hogsheads for two…
Bowmore open day is today, and we honor the self proclaimed oldest distillery on the island with a dram of the 2014 Fèis Ìle bottling. This was a particularly good selection of casks, which shine even through the relative youth of the whisky. The Bowmore Small Batch seems to be of a similar age, but doesn’t…
Laphroaig is one of the most popular distilleries on Islay, and the Càirdeas releases have an almost religious following among aficionados. Officially, this is a Friends of Laphroaig release which to the best information I have is an 8 year old, having spent seven years in ex bourbon casks and was finished for one year in Amontillado…
It seems that for 2015 Diageo decided to make another use of their Distiller’s Reserve casks and do a triple maturation: First standard casks, then using the DE casks (PX for Lagavulin and Moscatel for Caol Ila) for a second maturation and “old oak puncheons” for a third gentle maturation. I’m not really sure what…