By Richard Thomas Rating: A For any brand that is revived and reintroduced during my career as a food, drinks and travel writer, I’m always amazed when the lot count reaches several or (especially) a double digit number. Inevitably I find myself thinking “Has that newcomer really been around that long? Is it actually a …
By Alex Southgate Rating: B I’m having a month of returning to particular whiskies, and this is continuing with a return to the Ardmore Distillery. In this particular case, I am taking on a 22 year old expression bottled back in 2000, bottled by Whisky Sponge. I seem to remember enjoying my last experience with …
By Richard Thomas Rating: A- Having reached the apogee of the Isle of Skye ladder of blended whisky, I’ll not repeat the details of the brand or the maker, Ian Macleod Distillers. If you want those tales, you can go back and review the previous installments in the line. There are five of them, and …
By Richard Thomas Rating: A In an intersection between car nerdom and whisky enthusiasm, Bowmore began a collaboration with luxury/supercar-maker Aston Martin. James Bond might prefer Macallan (in the movies anyway; in the Fleming novels he is partial to Jim Beam), but the folks who sometimes make his armored spy cars are working with Bowmore. …
Updated February 14, 2023 By Douglas Fraser Average Rating: A- Redbreast Irish Whiskey prides itself on staying true to the traditional pot still whiskey style that has been a signature of Ireland for decades. Using copper pot stills, all Redbreast whiskey is distilled from a wort of malted and unmalted barley three times to perfection, …
By Andrew Graham Rating: B+ Bushmills released the second installment of its renowned Rare Cask series in May, nearly 20 months after the inaugural Rare Cask expression was released in October of 2020. It’s worth comparing the specs on this expression with those of the first Rare Cask installment. Whereas the first Rare Cask release …
By Richard Thomas Rating: B If you like Scotch and have never heard of Auchroisk, don’t feel ashamed. This Speyside distillery was founded in 1973, making it one of those late 20th Century foundations. This is purely anecdotal, but I have often found that distilleries started in the late 20th Century lack both the hype …
By Richard Thomas Rating: A- The Tomatin-Glenlivet Distillery is named for the village of Tomatin, plus the common practice 19th Century of tying the name Glenlivet onto things. If you making a study of distilleries in Scotland in 1897, when Tomatin was founded, you would have found quite a few this-Glenlivet and Glenlivet-that distilleries, and …
By Richard Thomas Rating: B Grain & Barrel Spirits, the company behind the revival of the Chicken Cock brand, and some of the sourced releases under that title have been quite excellent. In particular, I was quite fond of the Chicken Cock 15 Year Old Bourbon. The news that the company was bringing out a …
