Archive For May 24, 2015
Day two of the Fèis Ìle takes us to Bruichladdich, where master distiller Jim McEwan will be retiring in July after 52 years in the whisky industry, a major part of them with Bowmore. He’s been with Bruichladdich since 2000, and has made the idea of terroir his signature. I’ll be seeing him in a masterclass together with…
Last year’s Lagavulin festival bottling was probably the best of the Fèis Ìle crop last year. A sweet sherry bomb, this is a great sipper. As I mentioned in another post, Lagavulin has the most limited core range of all distilleries, holding a single expression: the 16 year old. Other regular bottlings include a yearly release of a 12…
Yes, I know…we’re right in the middle of a Talisker series that will still include the 18, 25 and 30 year old expressions. But Fèis Ìle is here, and I got together all of the festival bottlings from last year to taste on each distillery’s open day. This is a concept pioneered by my colleague and…
Talisker Dark Storm is the new travel retail expression, going along with the trend of NAS duty free exclusives. The problem is, how do you create another new expression with enough merit to stand on its own? The solution found on Skye was to use heavily charred casks with spirit that is very close to…
Talisker Storm is, in many ways, the exact opposite of the Skye (reviewed here). While the Skye is meant to be a soft and gentle introduction to the Talisker lineup, the Storm (and by extension also the Dark Storm) is extremely maritime and smoky, and definitely conjures up images of a storm. This isn’t the…