In the cocktail world, it’s white rum that gets all the love: lightly flavoured and with no colour to muddy the other ingredients, it’s an ideal pick (most of the time). However, if you want to taste the rum in your drink, dark rum is the way to go. Here are some of my favourites that showcase dark rum as the king of cocktails.

Old Fashioned

We’ll kick off with both the simplest and (potentially) most complicated cocktail in the world: The Old Fashioned. At its core, it’s simple enough to barely be a cocktail: spirit, sugar, bitters. However, your...

It’s the middle of februari and our first big event of 2018 approaches – my favourite weekend of the year: The Whisky Show Old & Rare .

On 24 and 25 februari, we’ll be moving north to Glasgow and putting on a show. As the name suggests, it’s a showcase of old and rare whisky, focusing on the weird and wonderful bottles that we’ve become well known for finding over the years.

It’s a bit different to The Whisky Show in London , working instead like a big bar: we’ve got more than 460 whiskies confirmed, and they’ll all be...

Last month, I wrote a blog post about my most memorable whisky story – my first trip to Islay. It prompted several of you to share your own whisky stories, and here’s our favourite. Thank you to all of you who took the time to reply, and please keep sending your whisky stories to us – we’ll be publishing more of our favourites over the coming months.

by Edward I was backpacking in Asia with a good mate of mine. One night while walking the streets of Saigon, Vietnam, we decided to make it our mission to find a fancy...

Dr Bill Lumsden and Brendan McCarron introducing their latest creation – Glenmorangie Spios

Glenmorangie ‘s Dr Bill Lumsden – director of distillation and whisky creation – likes to experiment. While some of the distillery’s Private Edition releases – his yearly chance to showcase the whiskies he has been tinkering with over the past 20 years – have been weird and wonderful, some of the most successful have been based around a simple idea. The latest is definitely one of those: what happens if you use casks that used to hold American rye whiskey to mature Glenmorangie Original? The answer: Glenmorangie...

Valentine’s Day is not far away, and if you haven’t picked a romantic gift yet, don’t worry. Champagne is one of the safest options – I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t appreciate a glass of good fizz – and we have a great selection.

We’ll be covering the world of Champagne in more detail on the blog this year, with in-depth guides covering how Champagne is made, which foods to serve with it and much more – let us know if there’s anything in particular you want to know. In the meantime, take a look at our top tips below...

Champagne, according to Moët Hennessy ambassador Lucy Warren’s declaration at a recent Whisky Exchange tasting, is ‘wine that’s supposed to make you happy’. Funny, then, that it was also known as ‘the wine of the devil’, after Dom Pérignon discovered, time and time again, that 70% of his stock had exploded in the cellars. (As with all stories about the infamous DP, however, take that avec un petit pinch of salt…)

‘Zut alors! It’s going to explode!’ – Dom Pérignon

The notion of Champagne bringing happiness is certainly one many of us buy into around Valentine’s Day, normally while frantically...

If there’s a Diageo Special Releases tasting, then you know that whisky ambassador Colin Dunn will be involved. For our Whisky Exchange tasting in London, as well as pouring some fantastic drams, Colin passed on some of his substantial knowledge of the industry, shedding light on the lesser-known distilleries in Diageo’s portfolio and sharing 10 pearls of whisky wisdom:

1. ‘Before 1955, there were no American oak barrels in the UK. You could buy Talisker aged in sherry, Cognac, Armagnac or wine casks – but not bourbon’

2. ‘99% of Glen Elgin goes into our White Horse blend. It’s the...

Burns Night is upon us. Expect the internet to be filled with pictures of steaming haggises, triple tartan outfits and more kilts than you can wave a sgian-dubh at. Here on The Whisky Exchange blog, I usually offer suggestions of how to break out of the traditional Burns Night mould, but I’ve recently been hit by a wave of nostalgia for Burns Nights of yore, and this year I’m sticking with the classics.

Burns Night 101

Burns Night is a celebration of Robert Burns and takes place on his birthday. He was a Scottish poet (and songwriter, farmer, political commentator,...

Karuizawa is an almost unobtainable whisky. I’m incredibly lucky in getting to try it from time to time, but I hold a strange opinion that gets me strange looks from whisky fans: I think bourbon-cask-matured Karuizawa is better than its sherry-cask equivalent.

Karuizawa’s warehouses back in 2012. Now long gone

Karuizawa has become a cult distillery over the past 10 years, with bottle prices soaring into the thousands of pounds and releases becoming more infrequent. It’s understandable, with the distillery not only closed for almost 20 years, but now also demolished – there will be no more whisky from Karuizawa, barring...

All whisky drinkers have a story to share, whether it’s a visit to their favourite distillery or perhaps the day they opened a life-changing dram. We’d love to hear your whisky stories and we’ll be publishing our favourites – tell us all about them here . To set the scene, Stuart recalls his first trip to Islay…

Ardbeg is one of a trio of whisky producers on Islay’s south coast, along with Laphroaig and Lagavulin, collectively known as the Kildalton Distilleries

‘Stu, Ardbeg is launching a new whisky. Fancy going up to Islay for a couple of days?’  I remember...

When it comes to revivals, Glenglassaugh has had one of the more impressive crawls back from the dead in recent years. A decade of stuttering resurrection has been rewarded with the dawning of a new era for the distillery, with a future that’s still to be decided.

The distillery is a few miles to the east of the Highland/Speyside border, on the coast at Sandend. Rather than the more maritime spirits that many coastal distilleries produce, Glenglassaugh focuses on old-school fruity flavours. While that fruitiness is reminiscent of sister distillery Benriach ‘s famous character, Glenglassaugh has a more modern feel...

It was a busy year, 2017. Lots of new things to drink, lots of tastings to attend and lots of new posts on the blog. So, before we properly commit to 2018 (it’s only a day old, and we’re not sure of it yet) here’s what happened last year:

Jim Murray…in januari?

It’s no secret that our annual posting of Jim Murray’s picks for the whiskies of the year is one of our most popular posts. But last year we got a triple dose of Jim, with an exclusive two-part interview popping up in januari. It gave us an insight...

The Whisky Exchange’s head buyer, Dawn Davies MW, spends more time than most seeking out new and exciting drinks. Here are her picks for the top trends of 2018…

2018 is a year for change. Whether it’s spent discovering a new drink or going back to an old favourite, this is a year where we re-evaluate our drinking habits.

Miniature madness

They say the best things come in small packages – this seems to be true for drinks as well, because miniature sales have never been so strong. People want to experiment and try new things and the miniature is...

Blending whisky is hard. It takes master blenders years to hone their skills, working up slowly through the ranks to take on the creation of new whiskies. However, that shouldn’t stop you having a go yourself at home. One of the easiest ways of examining this facet of the world of whisky creation is to make yourself a never-emptying infinity bottle – whenever it gets low, top it up with some more whisky.

I’ve currently got four different blends on the go: Speyside, Highlands and Islands, Islay and ‘Misc’. The final one is my longest running and I have a notebook...

As we head into 2018, it’s time to look back at some of the best bits of the past 12 months. The Whisky Exchange blog team has chosen its favourite moments of 2017, including memorable whiskies, fact-finding trips and interesting encounters. We’ll see you in 2018…

Stuart

The year started well – I interviewed someone I had wanted to speak to for some time: Jim Murray . He didn’t disappoint: he talked about his career, how he fell in love with whisky and the lengths he goes to when it comes to tasting for his annual Whisky Bible .

Another...

Brendan McCarron is Head of Maturing Whisky Stocks for The Glenmorangie Company – makers of Ardbeg and Glenmorangie – and heir apparent to the company’s whisky creator, Dr Bill Lumsden. We spoke to him at the launch of Ardbeg An Oa , his first addition to the Ardbeg range.

How did you get involved with the whisky world? I did chemical engineering at university and I started out making drugs on the south coast of England but my girlfriend was homesick and wanted to move back to Scotland, so I went to Diageo to work on a project in kiln...

It’s been a busy year at The Whisky Exchange and the blog team is ready to wind down and enjoy the festive season. Here’s what we’ll be drinking this Christmas…

The TWE blog team (not pictured)

Stuart

I don’t associate one particular drink with Christmas – I use it as an excuse to pull out some great bottles and try them (not that you need an excuse to drink delicious wine and spirits). With Christmas dinner – which I have the dubious pleasure of cooking this year – I’ll start with fizz to accompany some smoked salmon, perhaps something from...

I recently spent some time with Bruichladdich’s production director Allan Logan, learning about how they make the fabled Octomore – including Octomore 8.3 , the world’s peatiest whisky. Allan, part of the two-man team that took over the distillery when Jim McEwan retired , is exceptionally passionate about provenance and peating, as well as and making great whisky. Here’s what I learned from him about making a peat monster… don’t try this at home?

Distillery Manager Allan Logan and Head Distiller Adam Hannett

How are peat levels measured?

As humans, we’re pretty sensitive to peat and can detect its smoky, meaty,...

One summer, years ago, in the early days of my obsession with drinks, I went away for a long weekend in Portugal and came back a changed man: a few summery days in Porto are enough to convert almost anyone to the delights of the country’s national drink. As I write, it’s the middle of the afternoon and it’s dark outside. The street lights are on, the sleet has subsided and my thoughts turn to warming drinks: it’s time for some port.

David Guimaraens: master blender for The Fladgate Partnership and my port guru

While we covered the basics in...

Whisky of the Year has gone global! For 2017 we opened up the awards to any bottle from across the world, provided it was not cask strength, below £60 and an ongoing release. Despite my repeated suggestions that we should hold the final somewhere warm and exotic to celebrate this momentous development, the event was once again held in The Rooms at Brown’s , just a hop and a skip from our Covent Garden shop .

On arrival we warmed up with a Claymore – not the Scottish two-handled sword, but rather the winning cocktail from the 2017 Speciality Drinks...