I’m too busy with work and big life projects, so there wasn’t much activity on the blog, so a big apology to you my readers. In the meanwhile, until load is back to normal (sometime in september), I’ll probably stick to quick reviews and tasting notes posts.

The Port Charlotte Islay Barley was released last oktober and is a logical next step after the very successful and liked Scottish Barley version which I reviewed here . This time it’s pure Islay product.

Bruichladdich Port Charlotte Islay Barley 2008 (50%,  £54.95 / €55.95 )

Nose : Starts with a strong peat note...

Last years post on the Feis Ile 2014 bottles was a smash hit so it’s time for a repeat with a new post on the 2015 Islay Festival Feis Ile bottles!

Like last year, the festival will run from 23rd to 31st of maj 2015 and with two prominent distilleries, Ardbeg and Laphroaig, celebrating their 200 year since (official) foundation year, its bound to be a very interesting and exciting festival.

This post will detail all the available information on the festival bottlings and I’ll update it each time more details will be revealed.

If you look for the full festival...

It’s been a while since I last said it so it’s time for a repeat: Gosh I love the whisky community on the internet!

I was gifted a few Irish whiskey samples from a mate as I have to expand my Irish whisky knowledge. When I opened the package, to my delight I found another sample tucked in and on the label there was only one character: ?

Ah..a blind dram! Obviously I didn’t have enough of blind drams lately :-P so I set out to try it. My first thoughts were it’s a young whisky yet it felt quite complex....

As part of the recent boom of new craft (and large) whisky distilleries, we’ve also seen new distilleries pop up in major urban centers. There’s a new distillery in London and a new distillery in Glasgow – the first one in many decades. As with other new distilleries, they already produce Gin and whisky will be produced soon as well.

To celebrate the rebirth of the first Glasgowian distillery in ages, they acquired a batch of aged single malt Speyside whisky casks and the first one was released recently, a 26 years old whisky from unknown Speyside distillery branded Prometheus.

It was laid down...

Again too busy with work so today, again we’ll have to be content with a  quick whisky review. This time: Macallan Select Oak from the 1824 series. Upon release it was destined at the Travel Retail market, exclusively at first although now you can find it in many online stores.

The Select Oak is a combination of first-fill European oak casks seasoned with oloroso sherry, and American oak casks seasoned with oloroso sherry or bourbon.

Macallan Select Oak (40%, £55.99 / €54.95 )

Nose : Sweet sultanas, whiffs of young spirit, lots of malt, vanilla, toast, weak nutmeg cinnamon, sourness of unripe...

A quick review today as I’m quite busy today. After the elections yesterday, it seems that lots of people around here do needs something strong and sweet to cover up their bitterness from the results, so I picked this review from my notes archive: Amrut Portonova Batch 3.

This whisky was matured in new American oak and ex-bourbon barrels, then it was transferred to port pipe barrels and then finally transferred back to ex-bourbon casks.

Amrut Portonova (Batch 3) (62.1%, £68.9 / €79.9 )

Nose : Sweet cherries jam from the port pipes, very bitter dark chocolate and a touch of burnt...

After yesterday’s review of the Tobermory, let’s review another bottling from the Whisky Broker, this time a 24 Year old Linkwood.

Linkwood distillery is owned by Diageo and most of what it produces goes into their blends, most notably Johnnie Walker (The JW green contains 15yo Linkwood) & White horse.

This was bottled from Hogshead #3540, distilled 30.04.1990 and bottled 25.11.2014, so without further ado, let’s try it.

Linkwood 24 Year Old (Whisky Broker) (51.7%, 293 bottles)

Nose : The distillery floral trademark is very evident here along with light honey sweetness, meadow flowers at sundown. baked pie dough. It’s very...

Time to divulge into a distillery I’m not too familiar with: Tobermory Distillery from the Isle of Mull. I’ve recently tasted and reviewed their official 10 Year Old bottling (see here ), but there aren’t too many officail bottlings to help exploring the distillery. They provide only 10yo and 15yo so we have to resort to indie single casks releases (Yeah, sad thing, I know… ;-) )

Let’s check a 20 Year old offering from the relatively unknown (yet a favorite of mine) Scottish bottler Whisky Broker.

The whisky comes from Hogshead number 188063, it was distilled 14th juni 1994 and...

Craft whisky is one hot buzzword and many small-scale distilleries pop-up around the globe producing said craft whisky.

Today I’ll review an american single malt whiskey from Lost Spriits comapny, the brainchild of Bryan Davis, the second batch of their Leviathan whisky, formally known as Leviathan II.

What we have here is American malted barley, peated with Canadian peat to a 110 ppm, distilled in  a wooden pot still and filled into Semillon (Late harvest Californian wine) casks and bottled at pretty young age.

Wow, that’s a very ambitious and mind boggling whisky, ain’t it? So many unfamiliar variables are involved here.

The peat is from a Canadian evergreen...

Last month I participated in a blind tasting competition. Yeah, again. I know, I should see a shrink about this but I don’t have spare $$ for it as I spend the money on whisky. Besides, if I stop buying whisky in order to save the money for the shrink, The problem will naturally get dissolved and I won’t need it so why bother? ;-)

Anyway, the competition was held here locally in Israel and contained 14 blind drams ranging from Glenlivet 12yo to Talisker 18yo with a few oddballs thrown in. Naturally I had many failures but too many revealed whiskies made...

Talisker distillery is restless and so it released another new release – Talisker Skye. It’s the fourth new release in the last two years. Yes, your eyesight is perfect. Read it again, it ain’t no mistake: four new Talisker NAS releases in the last two years.

For a distillery that used to have a very thin yet muscled core line-up, this is quite a big change, doubling their lineup offerings from four whiskies to eight. So what’s the reasoning of releasing yet another (NAS) whisky (beyond the growing demand for single malts)?

This time it looks like they are trying to target a new audience...

Just mention Glendronach Distillery to any whisky aficionado and there are good chances the words ‘Sherry Casks’ will popup in the discussion quicker than you can say Jack Robinson. After all, Glendronach are recognized for the fabulous work they do with Oloroso and PX sherry casks, either with the OB bottlings or with the single casks batches.

But it’s not a catholic marriage as Glendronach do Squint sideways  and ‘sin’ with different cask types and finishes. There are port finishes (like the 15/18yo I reviewed here ) and wine finishes. Lately Glendronach releases a few new interesting non-sherry finishes: Sauternes and marsala wine finishes...