Reviews

The Midleton distillery's 12-years Redbreast bottling is bottled annually in cask strength batches in addition to the 40% strength bottling. The cask strength bottling is also triple distilled in copper pot stills and matured in a combination of bourbon matured American oak casks and oloroso sherry matured Spanish oak casks before being bottled with no added colouring and non-chill filtered. Did you know? The robin is one of the few small birds that also winters in Ireland. The bird species is the eponym for this Irish whiskey.

Since 2015, The Hielan 8 Years has been the entry into the standard range of single malt whiskies from the Glendronach distillery. By the way: Hielan is a Scottish word that refers to the mountainous part of Scotland that lies to the north and west of a line that runs roughly from Dumbarton via Ballater and from there to Nairn.

The Laphroaig Brodir Final Batch is a limited edition, named after the Viking term for "brother", and is the final batch in a series of special bottlings honouring the distillery's heritage and connection to the island's Viking history.After several batches, this Laphroaig, matured in ex-bourbon casks and finished in a port cask, is now discontinued. The Scotch does not bear an age statement.

The Black Grouse Alpha Edition is a peated version of the Famous Grouse. As it is a blend, the barley used specifically for this whisky was not peated, as is the case with a single malt. Instead, they took fully matured Islay whisky and blended it with the standard Famous Grouse. We suspect it will be Caol Ila, as is so often the case.

Tomintoul's single malts are known to be among the lighter, smoother - and, as some would say, old-fashioned and boring - Speyside malts. Perhaps because of this and the high demand for intense and powerful Scotches, the distillery flies under the radar of most people.

Although Blair Athol is not a small distillery, its Single Malts are not among the best known. Over 90% of the production goes into Bell's blended Scotch. Today we have a 10-years independent bottling of a single Blair Athol cask from Douglas Laing's Provenance series in the glass.

Matured in port casks and finished in Amarone casks, this 8-years single malt whisky from the Glenglassaugh distillery in Scotland was bottled by the German independent bottler "The Cask Wizard" at cask strength, uncoloured and unfiltered. As there are only 63 bottles, we assume that a barrel-share was bottled here, but we are still very happy to own one of the few bottles.

The Balvenie 15 Years Madeira Cask is a Travel Exclusive bottling from the distillery located in Speyside, Scotland. Not much is really known about the bottling - there was no press release or anything like that. The bottles just turned up. Most of the time, the single malt was matured in ex-bourbon casks before it was decanted into Madeira casks from the Portuguese sunny island of the same name for the finish.

Everyone knows the supermarket Jack Daniel's Old No. 7, but if you look a little further you will find a number of exciting bottlings from the same distillery. Besides the Single Barrel Select, which we have in the glass today, there are other Single Barrel bottlings, Bonded, Triple Mash and many more.The Single Barrel Select is the entry into the Jack Daniel's distillery bottlings that whisky lovers can take seriously and also enjoy neat.

Islay? Obviously peated Single Malt. At least that was the expectation when we first heard about Bruichladdich The Classic Laddie. It turned out to be just the opposite. After we had entered the batch code of the bottle on the Bruichladdich homepage - thanks to transparency - we received a list of detailed information about the casks used, the barley processed and the year of bottling. Even though the whisky comes without an age statement, this can be roughly calculated.

The Glen Keith 21 Years is a single malt Scotch whisky that is matured exclusively in oak casks. It is produced by the Glen Keith Distillery, which has been located in the Speyside region of Scotland since 1957.The single malt, which has been matured for more than two decades, comes in the typical packaging style of the distillery.

The Observatory 20 years is from the signature series of the bottler of the same name. Belonging to the Bacardi Group, this Single Grain Scotch whisky was created by the master blender of the Aberfeldy distillery Stephanie Macleod.It is believed that the single grain was distilled at the MacDuff distillery in the Scottish Highlands near the lighthouse in Banff Bay. The whisky was stored for 20 full years in ex-bourbon and ex-sherry casks. The long storage period is said to make the whisky particularly soft and pleasantly complex.