Discover Whisky

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.

In the course of research for my new Scottish Books website I came across a forthcoming book that’s likely to be of interest to many readers of this blog and particularly the Islay drinkers.

Whisky Dream is the story of the resurrection and development of Bruichladdich distillery and the impending revival of the long-closed Port Charlotte. It relates the efforts of Mark Reynier and his team of partners who made it all work, including Jim McEwan formerly of Bowmore, and their myriad adventures on the way, including the initial approaches to the multinational corporation who owned the distillery, the financial negotiations to raise the necessary capital, various unusual encounters along the way, the first new production runs of the distillery, and the battle to re-establish the brand in a competitive world marketplace.

There is a Youtube hosted video related to the book which can be seen on both the Whisky Dream book detail page on Books in Scotland or the publishers site - Birlinn - where you can place an order for it if you wish. It’s due out in July and priced at £9.99 and I’ll be reviewing it as soon as I can lay hands on a copy.

I was reading today at the Scotch Blog about the whisky glasses from Glencairn crystal. I don’t have any of these but am going to have to go and get some asap.

But it got me thinking about whether there is a real benefit to using a whisky tasting glass against using a traditional “tumbler” (a glass). I have a small collection of glasses including some for Bruichladdich that I somehow came by. But my favourite is a tasting glass for Rum that I got in St.Kitts whilst watching the cricket (Scotland didn’t have the best of time unfortunately). The tasting glass came with a bottle of the 23 year old Zacapa rum which is distilled in Guatemala.

In honour of this great little tasting glass we’re going to include a review of some rum in next couple of months. I’m thinking of maybe doing the El Dorado 15 year old which is a personal favourite.

Due to the joys of our local council I’ve been without a web connection for about ten days at home - someone cut a cable and being with Virgin Media that causes us some problems. Duly we’re a little behind in terms of posting schedule. So just to let everyone know we’ll have everything back up to date in about two weeks.

My review of the Ancnoc will be going up on Sunday and the Glenmorangie ‘Qunita Ruban’ on Thursday.Sorry for any confusion from all of us at Discover Whisky.

On a cheerier note I’d like to say a big thanks to Ralph Warth - not only did he blog roll us over at The Whisky Investor, I’m getting better with this online lingo, but he also joined our wee whisky network. I’ve had a wee read of his blog and it’s looking good - some of it’s in German so I may have to work up to reading these dictionary in hand.

Everyone is welcome over at the Scotch Whisky Network. We are trying to set up a group on Facebook also so keep ‘em peeled for when this goes live.

This week there have been a few things going on about whisky - I’m glad to say. Below are some of the highlights from our point of view.

Australian Court Case over Naming of Whisky

Down under the court has been deciding in the case between ‘Glenn Oaks’ and the Scottish Whisky Association (SWA). The SWA petitioned the court that the use of the word ‘Glenn’ in the name of this Australian Whisky was alluding to the Whisky being from Scotland as is used in brands such as Glenfiddich, Glenmorangie and Glenlivet.

The court ruled in favour of the SWA - full discussion can be found here (you need to scroll down a bit to get to this ruling).

The Wild Scotsman

Fantastic name for a site about Whisky- the Wild Scotsman. Until this week I’d never heard about it. Steadily over lunch this week I’ve been having a wee wander round the site and I’ve picked out a few of my favourite pieces:

• The Night Before Xmas - Retold
• A review of a distillery in Sweden

Whisky Blog Post of the Week

Dr Whisky is again doing reviews of whiskies at an alarming rate of knots! It’s probably just jealousy on my part more than anything :p The Dr Whisky review of the Benromach Organic Whisky has made me want to go out and buy some of this for a friend’s birthday - seems right up his street.

Slainte

Yesterday I got a nice email from Mark Reyner over at Bruichladdich. I’d been trying to use their website contact system for a while to get in contact but had been stopped due to the system of ‘pop up’ windows that are generated when you select who you want to contact. My web development conmpany got the email for me.

Anyway part of the email I received was about the Bruichladdich Blog - I didn’t even know that they had one. It can be found at http://web.mac.com/realmalt/Site/Blog/Blog.html. They have an RSS feed here too which makes it really easy to get updates to your inbox.

Slainte

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