Archive For The “Official Bottling” Category
BenRiach came back to life just over a decade ago, after being mothballed by Pernod Ricard following Seagram’s colossal implosion in 2001. Billy Walker bought the distillery in 2004 backed by South African business people Geoff Bell and Wayne Kieswetter. The distillery sells about 60% of it’s annual production to Chivas Bros. for their blends. Currently,…
My fascination with vatted malts is something I have written about before, and John Glaser at Compass Box has really taken malt vatting (or malt blending, as it should be officially called) to an art form, combining breakthrough production methods with tenacious talent (which in blending is probably 95% methodical experimentation an patience) and great whisky sourcing…
In Gaelic, taghta means “the chosen”, and they mean chosen by the people. It started out by Dr. Bill Lumsden choosing three casks: Grand Cru Burgundy, Grand Cru Bordeaux and Manzanilla sherry, opening a website with Bill Lumsden’s video tasting notes for the “Glenmorangie Cask Masters”, which is the distillery’s official fan club and membership…
One of the most popular dream drams at the London Whisky Show was the 1966 Glenfarclas aged in Fino Sherry casks, and no wonder, as you don’t get to see Fino Sherry coming out of Glenfarclas every day. The official story is of long forgotten casks, which then had to be traced back to diaries kept by…
Until last month, my oldest Highland Park was a 22 year old Society bottle (Cask 4.190) which I reviewed here. Then, in a span of a few short weeks, I tasted two 30 year old Highland Park whiskies, one is the official distillery bottling and the other is a Gordon and MacPhail 1985 bottling (dating…