Ardbeg Twenty One

Ardbeg. That wonderful Islay distillery with a cult following so devoted, over 120,000 fans from over 130 countries have pledged their allegiance to ensure the distillery never closes its doors again.  Again?  Yes, Ardbeg has quite a tale to tell…

Ardbeg has a weight, a brand, a persona, that is bigger than itself. It has a reputation for huge, bold, peaty whiskies, and its name travels so far and with such reverence that you could be forgiven for thinking it’s the biggest distillery on Islay.  In truth, it’s actually the second smallest!  With just one pair of stills churning away, its potential annual production capacity is just a trickle over 1.1 million litres.

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Lagavulin 8yo Launch

As is widely known across the whiskysphere, 2016 sees the Lagavulin distillery celebrate its 200th Anniversary. No one celebrates a 200th birthday lightly, and Lagavulin has been widely praised for the release of its limited edition (but widely accessible and affordable) celebratory 8yo in honour of the occasion.  Whisky & Wisdom had an early taste of this, and wrote up a piece about the distillery and the whisky back in April.   You can read that piece and the review on the 8yo here.

However, more recently – and closer to home – the 8yo had its local launch in Australia just a few weeks ago. Held at The Wild Rover in Sydney’s Surry Hills, the launch was not just the unveiling and tasting of the whisky, but it was also an incredible virtual reality (VR) tour of the distillery.

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Johnnie Walker Select Casks – Rye Cask Finish

Keen to learn more about Johnnie Walker’s Select Casks range and the new Rye Cask Finish?  Read on…

Keen observers of the malt whisky industry will have noted the kaleidoscope of ever-expanding and diversifying product portfolios amongst the various brands.   The days of a distillery featuring just a 12yo and an 18yo bottling are long gone…today it is de rigueur for serious distilleries to offer an entry-level NAS, a peated NAS, a 10yo with a wood finish, a 12yo, a 14yo port wood, a 15yo cask-strength, an 18yo sherry wood, a 21yo, a 25yo that no one can afford, and finally a release with a fancy gaelic name that will be mispronounced around the world.

Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is subjective, and there are pros and cons on both sides of the argument.  The marketing departments argue that they need more bottles on the shelf of liquor stores and bars so that the brand stands out.  It also gives the warehouses and blenders flexibility with stock.  And, for the consumer, the range of choice, variance, and price points forever increases.  My personal view is that the industry is self-generating a consumer base that becomes increasingly fickle and with a shorter and shorter attention span, but that’s a piece for another day.

In the meantime, it’s been interesting to observe that the same pressures and marketing ideals have extended to the blends.  Even the most traditional blends are having to come out with variations and new expressions to maintain interest and keep up with the Joneses.  Or, in this case, the Johnnies.

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The Australian Malt Whisky Tasting Championship, 2016

{This is an older post from the 2016 Championship.  See our newer post following the 2022 event}

The Australian Malt Whisky Tasting Championship is a bit like the internet.  It’s something you might think is a relatively “new” thing, when the reality is that it’s been around for decades longer than you gave it credit for.

In actual fact, the Australian Malt Whisky Tasting Championship has been around since 1989!  As the name suggests, it is a tasting competition, and had its origins in Adelaide, South Australia.  The competition’s principal format and structure has remained largely unchanged over the years: Competitors are presented with eight whiskies pre-poured before them, and supplied with a list of nine possible whiskies – in other words, the eight whiskies that are on the table, plus one red herring.   Competitors are then given 30 minutes to identify which whisky is which and to write their answers on the answer sheet.  Of course, having a list with all of the possible contenders in front of you makes the exercise seem a little easier, but the challenge is also in establishing which whisky of the nine on the list is not on the table!

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Ardbeg Dark Cove

If you’re here just to read the review on the Dark Cove release, scroll further down.

Ardbeg Day is just around the corner again, which means it’s time to shake off the Autumn blues (or dust off your Spring hat if you’re in the northern hemisphere) and gear up for all the fun and excitement of Ardbeggian delights.

I’ve written much about Ardbeg’s history, the Ardbeg Committee and Ardbeg Day in the past.  So rather than fill up space by repeating it all on this page, you can re-visit those pieces here (Ardbeg Day 2015 report), here (Perpetuum review) and here (Ardbeg Day 2014 & Auriverdes review) if you need to fill in any blanks.   For the purposes of a concise read, let’s cut straight to the chase and get stuck into Ardbeg Day and the annual release for 2016.

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The Cask-Strength Blues

If you’re a fan of cask-strength whisky, or you simply want to learn more about the pros and cons of cask-strength whisky, then this article is for you.  However, we first need to give due warning: In deep TV announcer voice-over tone: “The following article contains drug references.  It is intended for mature audiences.  Whisky & Wisdom advises reader discretion.”

I’m reliably informed that alcohol is a drug.  (Stay with us, this will have relevance and make sense in a moment).  People use it, abuse it, rely on it, swear by it, and at it.  It alters our mental state and makes us do things we might not otherwise have done if we were sober or clear-headed.  For example, the other day, with a few single malts under my belt, I found myself drinking a blend.  Fortunately, there were no witnesses…

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40% ABV whiskies – friend or foe?

I recently read an online review of a whisky that was written by a blogger.   There were a number of comments and references in the review where it was evident the writer was criticising the whisky for being 40% ABV.  Having such a mindset is a slippery slope – reviewers & commentators need to be careful to distinguish between “I would have preferred to have seen this whisky bottled at a higher strength; I believe it would benefit from being at a higher proof” and criticising or faulting the whisky merely for being 40% ABV, as though it were a flaw or fault in production.

It raises a few interesting points.  There is no doubt that many of us prefer whiskies at higher strengths.   Cask-strength whiskies – which only as recently as 20 years ago were still relatively scarce and harder to come by – are now as common as nude shots of Britney Spears, and once you become accustomed to the higher ABV whiskies, I certainly acknowledge and agree that 40% malts have to work a little harder to keep our tastebuds entertained.

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The highs and lows of Macallan

Malt whisky drinkers around the world tend to fall into one of two camps:  Those that like Macallan and those that remember what it used to be like. So has the whisky changed? And why is Macallan so expensive these days?

Now before you leap to conclusions and dismiss this piece as a Macallan-bashing article, I can give you my golden promise that it’s not.   Stay with us

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The Last Drop – 48yo whisky

The Last Drop Distillers is a brand you may not have heard of, much less seen a bottle of at your local liquor outlet.  If not by design, then this is certainly by necessity – for this is a label that deals with whisky that is both scarce and small scale.

The story of the company itself is a wonderfully rich, dare I say, romantic tale:  Three gentlemen, all long involved in the whisky and drinks trades, had remarkable and successful years and careers in the industry.   Between them, they were behind the creation and development of brands such as J&B Rare, Johnnie Walker, Chivas Regal, The Classic Malts range, Baileys and Malibu.

And so, despite reaching that time in life when retirement beckons, these gentlemen instead decided to team up in 2008 and form a new force:  A company that focussed on the world’s finest, rarest, and most exclusive spirits.  The Last Drop Distillers Limited is thus not a distillery, nor a single malt, but a brand and label that sources, bottles, and releases exceptionally old and rare spirits.

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Paul John – Indian whisky gets serious

Paul John whisky ?  Well, I’ll come out and say it up front:  I’d not previously been a fan of Indian whisky, having tried numerous expressions of Amrut over the years.  Early experiences (2009) were very forgettable; several return visits between 2011 and 2013 left me wanting, and even when I tried some of the more recent releases of Amrut at The Whisky Show earlier this year, I struggled to get enthused.  But you cannot dismiss an entire country’s single malt production on the basis of one distillery.

So when the good folks at Paul John got in touch with me from India after their recent Australian visit and offered to send me their core range for critical analysis and review, I was happy to have my Indian whisky experiences challenged and changed.  And if you want to read the Executive Summary, here it is:  This is good whisky!

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