Independent bottler Douglas Laing & Co. has announced plans to build a new distillery in Glasglow, Scotland. The £10.7 million (around $14 million) project will enable the company to produce its own single Maltwhisky for the first time in its nearly 70-year history. Douglas Laing’s current brands include single cask bottlings from a number of Scottish distilleries, as well as blended malts like Timorous Beastie, Rock Oyster, Scallywag, and Big Peat, and the Clan Denny blend. The new distillery will lead to the creation of entirely new brands, which will help the company expand its domestic and export sales....

A couple months after its launch at Fèis Ìle , Laphroaig Cairdeas 2017 is available stateside. The cask strength version of Laphroaig’s Quarter Cask expression will retail at a recommended price of $80. There’s more maritime scotch to be had, as Douglas Laing & Co. (which recently announced plans to open its own distillery in Glasgow ) is releasing a sherry cask version of its Rock Oyster blended malt. Meanwhile, Hirsch has launched an 8 year old bourbon with a high-rye mashbill, and there’s a new single grain Irish whiskey from the Egan’s brand. Plus Hamilton Distillers in Arizona is...

Pitt Cue – London’s barbecue pioneers

When it comes to pairing a meal with drinks, wine and beer are still winning. However, one corner of the culinary world has had a long connection with spirits: American barbecue. While the stereotypical image maj be of guys with beards gathered around a grill drinking cans of light beer, spirits have long been a key ingredient in many dishes. More recently, they have been found much more frequently in a glass rather than a marinade.

Pitt Cue

At the forefront of barbecue in London is Pitt Cue. Starting as a food truck on...

Compass Box No Name

A parcel of mature, massively peaty American oak casks from Ardbeg is at the heart of a new Compass Box No Name . It’s smokier than their Peat Monster, they say, although it is slightly tempered by the addition of a little Caol Ila, a bit of fruity Clynelish and a small portion of undisclosed whisky finished in French oak casks.

Compass Box No Name will be available soon and limited to 15.000 bottles.

BenRiach Rarus 21 Years

This is a new peated expression from The BenRiach . It is matured in four oak...

The Lost Distillery Company recently added a modern-day expression of Campbeltown malt Dalaruan to its portfolio.

Dalaruan was founded in 1825, active until 1922 and sold at auction in 1925. It used to produce triple-distilled whisky but I’m not sure they used any to create this new interpretation.

Dalaruan (43%, Lost Distillery Company ‘Classic Selection’ 2017)

Nose: smoky, and rather oily, but also very new, with lots of hints towards new-make spirit. Pear drops, a little roasted pineapple. Hints of new plastics. Subtle coastal notes. Mouth: sweet and mellow, with the same young fruitiness and hints of young...

The race by big wine and spirits companies to acquire small whiskey brands continues. 3 Badge Beverage Corporation has sold the Masterson’s rye and Bib & Tucker bourbon brands to Deutsch Family Wine & Sprits for an undisclosed price. Deutsch also owns Redemption Whiskey —which it bought from founders Dave Schmier and Michael Kanbar in 2015—and a number of wine brands, including Yellow Tail and Josh Cellars. 3 Badge Beverage retains its other spirits brands, which include Uncle Val’s Botanical gin and Kirk & Sweeney rum.

Like Redemption, which comes from MGP Distillery in Indiana, both Masterson’s and Bib &...

We’re passionate about whisky education around here—see Whisky 101 , for example. And WhiskyFest , our national event series, is equal parts enjoyment and education. That’s why each WhiskyFest event includes a range of seminars on trending whisky-related topics. Sure, you can walk the floor the whole time, trying whiskies and getting more than your money’s worth of incredible drams. But if you’re attending WhiskyFest, sitting in on an evening seminar is an opportunity you won’t want to miss.

5 Reasons to Attend a WhiskyFest Seminar

1. They’re free!

Access to all seminars is included in the cost of your...

The WhiskyNerds in Holland will soon present their next bottlings, two Inchmurrin 2003 single casks that are actually part of a trio called Trias Usquebaugh . One of them was matured in a first-fill bourbon cask, the other one in a sherry cask. They’ve given them nicknames: Law and Order .

Part of both casks was kept apart for an Executive vatting that is marrying as we speak. So in due time they will bottle this as well and see if the marriage was successful. Great idea.

Inchmurrin spirit comes exclusively from Loch Lomond’s straight neck pot stills. It comes...

This classic tiki recipe has been adapted by Chicago’s...

Originally created at Trader Vic’s in Oakland, California, in the 1950s, this classic tiki recipe—which uses bourbon or rye instead of rum—has been slightly modified by...

How do you drink whisky on a tropical island? Try a tiki cocktail. An Americanized hybrid of ancient Māori mythology and the motifs of the Polynesian islands, the tiki movement kicked off in 1933 with the opening of Don the Beachcomber in Hollywood. Back then, tiki culture was all about tropical flavor profiles built atop rum bases, and cocktails like the Mai Tai and the Zombie ruled menus across the country. A friendly rivalry between Don the Beachcomber and his Oakland-based rival Trader Vic, who opened Hinky Dink’s (later Trader Vic’s) in 1937, helped birth a flourishing trend—though later in...

Even when a whisky is already fully mature and perfectly delicious, some distillers decide to give it extra time in a different barrel. The practice is called finishing, also sometimes known as secondary maturation. While it’s commonly done today in Scotland, Ireland, the U.S., and elsewhere, it first began in 1983 when Balvenie master distiller David Stewart put some fully-aged whisky into sherry butts for around a year. The result was Balvenie Classic, now known as DoubleWood. Starting in the 1998 at Glenmorangie, Dr. Bill Lumsden used his love of wine to become one of the biggest innovators in finishing:...

Did you know there are palm trees on some Scottish islands? Take the tropical vibe all the way with this tiki cocktail, created at...

New York City bar...

Our latest TWE shop tasting featured Irish whiskey producer Teeling , a distiller known for its skill in maturing and ‘finishing’ its whiskey in a variety of casks – some well known, some more obscure. What is finishing? It’s when a distiller decides to age a whisky in a different type of cask to the one it has spent most of its life in. The classic example is a bourbon-cask-matured whisky that has a second maturation in ex-sherry barrels, which typically adds rich notes of dried fruit and spice, but the whole gamut from the drinks world has been tried...