Category: Review
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Blind Black Friday
What better symbol for the age of consumerism than Black Friday, unironically taking place the day after Thanksgiving. Sadly, my contribution to this sacred shopping spree was very minimal in 2024. In my defence I already have pretty much everything I need—but perhaps that’s missing the point. Except… whisky, one can always get some more…
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Le Ben du Nevis
Cheeky me brought some Ben Nevis samples for my three-week trip to Paris. Can’t count on the Parisians to offer a anything other than fermented grape juice for a reasonable price. What to mention about this distillery that I didn’t already? Maybe that around 1/3 of Ben Nevis’s new-make spirit is shipped to Japan to…
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100th post / 100 proof
Historically in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, a spirit that was just at the threshold of being able to be set ablaze was defined as 100 proof, although the alcohol strength to which this threshold corresponds depends a lot on temperature. Less variable, though not precisely reproducible, is the strength of spirit that gunpowder can…
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WC sniff & sip 2025 (Part 1/2)
No, no, I’m not taking a samples out of my toilet, but from my Whisky (advent) Calendar of 2024. Of the many calendars that one can find online, very few focus and small batch and single cask samples, but among those that do, none compares to the one from Brühler Whisky house. The 2023 totally…
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Bottle kills of 2024
The year is heading towards its end, and so are quite a few bottles that have long occupied the top shelf of my drinks cabinet where all the open bottles live a crowded life. It is indeed a good time to make room for the new immigrants that will be cracked open in 2025, so…
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Ghost Safari – Imperial strikes back
Today I’m back where it all started for me with the closed distilleries: Imperial. Nothing new to say, so I’ll just take chance in this intro to review my hitherto progress of the ghost safari tour. Distillery Region Closing year Safari status Caperdonich Speyside 2002 🟡 sample acquired Imperial Lowland 1998 🟢 tried & reviewed…
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Belgravia Barley from Glencraigs Farm
One Springbank’s most anticipated (and hence hardest-to-get) annual releases is the Local Barley: The Local Barley is an annual release made from barley grown in or around Campbeltown. Each year a local farmer is commissioned to grow barley on our behalf to continue producing this ‘grain to glass’ limited edition. SB The last two editions…
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Sampling the Whisky Loch
The story goes that the whisky boom in the 1960s and 70s lead to an overproduction of Scotch, a veritable “Whisky Loch”, but with changing economics and consumer preferences in the 1980s, the industry had a hard time, with many now-revered distilleries like Port Ellen and Brora closed or mothballed. If market logic holds, one…
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October Black Box — Nourishing Nc’Nean and nineteen seventy-nine
From my “Black Box” of identity-masked and forgotten sample bottles, here come the blind reviews collected in the dreary month of October: Nc’Nean | “Huntress 2024 – Orchard Cobbler” | 4yo (2019) | 48.5% | Official 🌐 Scotch single malt 🪵 66% STR red wine, 31% ex-Bourbon, 3% ex-Sherry 🔆 unchillfiltered & natural color 💲…
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Ghost Safari – Brora, Port Ellen
Brora and Port Ellen were among the many casualties of the deadly year of 1983, within the period of whisky-bust in the 1980s. In the last couple of decades, they became iconic and coveted among enthusiast (and traders), as mature casks of the old stock came into circulation. In the present whisky boom, both distilleries,…
DuckDrams 