That strange whirring noise you can hear is old Scots stillmen spinning in their graves. A Japanese whisky has been named Malt Whisky of the Year by Whisky magazine. Yoichi 20 year old from Hokkaido succeeded last year’s winner Talisker 18 year old to become the first ever overseas winner. It’s £150 a bottle so I don’t anticipate sampling it anytime soon, but it apparently tastes of smoke and blackcurrant.
Just to pile on the agony Suntory Hibiki won the best blended category. Excuse me while I go and cry into my Caol Ila.
P.S. I would have included a link to Whisky Magazine, but any site in this day and age that tells you that you have to use a particular browser to view it doesn’t deserve one. As a web designer I won’t be visiting it again.
As part of our whisky news articles I thought that I would put up some quick links to things that we’ve found interesting over the last week or so.
The Drammies
Spencerfield Spirits have been nominated in this years drammie awards - so congratulations to Alex & co. They’ve been nominated in the underrated whisky category.
On the downside I have been reading some news that Diageo tried to over influence the drammies this year. This is disappointing. It would appear that they over-zealously voted for themselves - it was the fact that the email addresses they used were from Diageo’s web address that may have given them away.
It’s also good to see Dr Whisky in as nomination for a blog too, so well done to them too.
Changes to the Website
In the recent months we’ve been working on developing a news facility for the website The news system is going well, cheers to all who helped, we should have this public in the next few months and everyone can go on and bookmark their favourite whisky news stories/blogs/etc. at this point. Just need to get the design right and we’re good to go.
We’ve also started changing the header image more and more - we’re now booked up for the next couple of months. There is no charge to have your image up at the top of this blog so if you have an image of your favourite whisky we’re happy to listen to any suggestions just use our contact form and we’ll see what we can do.
Up and coming news
Bill and I will be taking Discover Whisky on the road in March - otherwise known as Bill and Mike go to a carefully selected public house to sample some whisky. We’re planning on going to Edinburgh so if anyone has any suggestions of where to go or fancies coming along let us know in the comments below.
That’s all for this week - Bill has an Islay whisky review on Thursday so we’ll see you all then.
Slainte
While checking through my email yesterday I noticed a great little competition from Bowmore. Ok so its not quite so small. By signing up online you will be entered into a competition to win one of only 827 bottles of Islay whisky valued at £2,000.
Each of these bottles comes from a cask, that was set down, on the 5th of November 1964 and comes hand numbered and in a special presentation case. The competition is part of a larger campaign by Bowmore to launch a website called “The Bowmore Way” - which by the sounds of it is going to have forums, videos and more competitions. I don’t see a blog mentioned here but I’m sure they’ll have one so we can all keep up to date with the goings on up at the Bowmore Distillery.
To enter the competition to win this whisky - I’m assuming its a damn good bottle of spirit as it costs £2,000 a bottle - visit Bowmore Distillery website.
