Brian Kinsman is malt master for Glenfiddich , and also looks after the Grant’s range of blended whiskies and works with his mentor David Stewart on the Balvenie range. I caught up with Brian a while ago to learn more about his work and see if he’d drop a few clues as to what might be coming next. The success of the first two releases in the  Glenfiddich Experimental Series  – Glenfiddich IPA and Glenfiddich XX  – has led to rumours that the next release is imminent.

How do you keep Glenfiddich interesting when it is one of the biggest and...

The launch of the 2017 edition of the Diageo Special Releases is imminent. While they’re one of the biggest and most prestigious annual whisky launches, every year we receive the same question: what are they?

In the beginning

It all started at the turn of the millennium. Diageo had appeared a few years earlier – created by the merger of Grand Metropolitan and Guinness – and the whisky world was a very different place. The Rare Malts Selection , a collection of cask-strength bottlings from across Scotland, first bottled in 1995, was on the shelves. The prices were incredibly reasonable...

Last week was London Beer City, a week-long celebration of beer in the capital. Purely for research reasons, I threw myself wholeheartedly into the festivities, stopping in at the London Craft Beer Festival for a taste of the new, and the Great British Beer Festival for something more traditional. Talking with beer fans and brewers through the week, a few things popped up over and over again – here’s what I found.

The Wheel of Styles is still spinning

Recently, we have seen an explosion in the number of new breweries in the UK, and with that has come lots...

Our latest monthly focus is all about the Highland and Speyside regions : the two key whisky areas in Scotland. A lot of whisky guides talk about them having their own distinct style, but we think it’s rather misleading, mainly because of the huge diversity of whisky styles found in both regions.

Many people talk about ‘rugged’ Highland malts – well, I’d give them a glass of floral and grassy Inchmurrin . And if others try to tell me that Speyside is all about elegance and soft fruit, I’d suggest they try something meaty and full-bodied from Craigellachie or Mortlach...

This week saw the inaugural Whisky Exchange Whisky Quiz of the Year. Five intrepid teams gathered in our Covent Garden shop to do battle for the honour of being crowned as the first champions.

The quiz in full flow…

Across six rounds, complete with ‘guess which whisky is in your glass’ as the final task in each, our teams put up a valiant fight against quizmaster and shop assistant manager’s Chris Bolton’s occasionally very hard questions and even worse jokes. In the end, while ‘Glenlivet Let Die’ walked away with a bottle of Glenfarclas 15yo for the evening’s best team...

Last month, I finally got the chance to visit the  Cognac  region in France. My destination?  Hine . Although I’d seen pictures of this tiny part of south-west France before, nothing prepared me for the beauty of Jarnac, the smaller of the two main towns in the Cognac region. The Hine house and cellars sit next to the river, and with a clear sky, the views (both of the house and from it) were stunning. As we headed into the vineyards, many of the fields were filled with sunflowers, planted on the edges of the rows of vines to improve...

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...

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...

I’m sure you’ve all heard of the big four Cognac houses – Martell , Rémy Martin , Hennessy and Courvoisier – but what about the other 271? With so much diversity on offer, Cognac is the perfect spirit to explore. Here are five must-try Cognacs to start your journey.

PAUL GIRAUD TRES RARE COGNAC

Paul Giraud only releases its Cognacs as single-vintage bottlings (not blends), which means that you’ll get variation from year to year, which is actually a good thing! The house relies on traditional techniques such as hand-picking its grapes, and doesn’t use chemicals or pesticides. If you’re...

Britain is positively awash with whisky. While most distilleries are located north of the border, and Wales’s Penderyn has been making waves for years, England is now rapidly filling up with whisky makers.

Back in the 19th century, there were a few whisky distillers across England – enough that Alfred Barnard’s seminal work on the country’s producers of the time is called ‘ The Whisky Distilleries of the United Kingdom ‘ rather than just Scotland – but they had all closed by the early 1900s.

The past decade has seen a resurgence in English whisky making, with The English Whisky...

To non-whisky drinkers, Scotch and bourbon are the same thing. A dark spirit, made with the same ingredients and aged in the same barrels. Right? Wrong. The two drinks have a lot in common but there’s also a world of difference, which we’ll explain for you.

Location

Scotch : No prizes for guessing this one: Scotch whisky must be made in Scotland. Not only that, to use the term ‘Scotch whisky’ on the label, the whisky must be bottled in Scotland, too (with the exception of blended whisky ).

Bourbon : Contrary to popular opinion, bourbon does not have to...

One of the lesser-known spirit categories is eau-de-vie . Most people will have tried one, and often without realising as various countries’ national drinks are classified as eau-de-vie, such as raki from Turkey and European slivovitz. Here’s our guide to all you need to know, including what iT is and how to enjoy it.

Common types of eau-de-vie include slivovitz, pálinka and Sri Lankan arrack

What is it?

Confusingly, eau-de-vie (French for ‘water of life’) is a term used in French to mean ‘spirit’. But in English-speaking countries, it refers to brandies made with fruit other than grapes. Not all...

Loch Lomond distillery can be found a mile or so to the south of the eponymous loch, and has been quietly making whisky since 1964. For most of its life, the distillery has focused on producing blended whisky but the past couple of years has seen some big changes.

The History

It’s not the prettiest distillery from the outside, but inside is where the magic happens

One of the challenges of making blended whisky is sourcing enough grain whisky. Producing grain maj be cheaper by the litre than single malt, but building a grain distillery takes a huge amount of...

In the run up to Black Tot Day at the end of juli, we’ve been scouring our shelves for great rums. With so many producers, the number of rums out there can be overwhelming. So, we’ve pulled out 10 of our favourites you might not have heard of.

You’ll have heard of  Bacardi  and  Captain Morgan , and probably even El Dorado , Diplomatico and Plantation . But these are rums that seem to fly beneath the radar – they should be known by all rum fans.

1.  Barbancourt

An incredible rum producer with a long history – it is not...

Richard Seale, master distiller at Foursquare Distillery in Barbados, believes that the rum category needs clearer definitions so that the consumer knows exactly what they are buying. In this exclusive post for The Whisky Exchange, he explains why change is essential s o that rum gets the same recognition enjoyed by the likes of whisky and Cognac.

Richard Seale, master distiller at Foursquare rum distillery in Barbados

‘ No other drink spans such a spectrum of colours and flavours ’ says the The Whisky Exchange (TWE) in its descriptive panel on rum.

Rum is surely the most diverse of all spirits. It is...

Oh Canada. You make lots of great whisky but haven’t sent much of it to Europe…until now.

For years, the only Canadian whiskies you’ve been able to find in Europe are the really big names: Crown Royal and Canadian Club . But with the arrival of Pike Creek , Lot 40 and Wiser’s 18yo in the UK just in time for both Canada Day and Canada’s 150th birthday, now’s the perfect time to explore Canadian whisky. But what is it?

The Basics

Firstly, the spelling: unlike other North American whiskeys, there’s no E in Canadian whisky. Head over to our...

When it comes to drinks with history, rum has packed more into a shorter time than most. Despite only appearing in something approaching its current form in the 17th century, the past 400 years have been intertwined with the explosion of international trade and colonisation of the Americas.

But first – Rum and Rhum: what’s the difference. Simply put, the spelling. Rhum is a French variation of the word rum, and it’s used by many of the producers based on the French islands in the Caribbean. It normally hints at the style of rum being made, but to work out...

Our lovely head buyer Dawn Davies knows more about wine than 99% of people on the planet. She’s a Master of Wine (MW), a qualification so tough there are only 350 people in the world allowed to have those initials after their name. If you want to know about wine, talk to Dawn. Dawn held a beginner’s guide to wine tasting at our London shop , an evening packed full of handy hints and tips to wow your friends with at your next dinner party. Here are Dawn’s five tips to look like a wine pro:

Dawn Davies MW

1....

We get a lot of questions at The Whisky Exchange, but the most common is simple: ‘Should I drink this bottle or sell it?’ Several times a day, someone who’s found a bottle hidden in a cupboard or at the back of an off-licence shelf will drop us a line and ask our opinion. It’s a hard question to answer, as we buy loads of old bottles and sell them on our website , but it cuts to the core of one of the things we try to do at The Whisky Exchange: we want people to drink great whisky....

When you think of food and whisky pairings, cheese, chocolate and meat maj come to mind, but cupcakes? Elements of Islay international brand ambassador Mariella Romano hosted a whisky and cupcake evening for our Covent Garden shop ’s Ladies Night tasting.

Mariella Romano from Elements of Islay was our guide for the evening

Believe it or not, those bundles of spongy, iced goodness are a very good match with whisky. Mariella paired a variety of cupcakes with Elements of Islay whiskies, a range of single malts from Islay packaged in laboratory-like bottles. This is what we tried:

Elements of Islay...