Coldorak's whisky blog.
It’s been quite some time since we last reviewed a Longmorn, so today we’ll be looking at two expressions from this Speyside distillery. First, we’ll start with the now-retired official Longmorn 16-year-old, followed by a licensed bottling from Gordon & MacPhail, distilled in 1983. These two whiskies represent both official and independent releases, offering a look at different sides of Longmorn.
Read more
Behind the fourteenth window of That Boutique-y Whisky Company’s 2019 Advent Calendar we will be reviewing each day until the 24th of December was hidden a psychedelic looking Irish Single Malt 13yo batch 2, bottled at 48.4% abv by that Boutique-y Whisky Company. The psychedelic label for this undisclosed Irish single malt is a no subtle at all reference to the Lovely Horse from Father Ted, and I absolutely love it. Though the distillery is undisclosed, there is probably very little choice as it’s a single malt and not a single pot still: it’s very probably either Bushmills or Cooley. This Irish Single Malt 13yo batch 2 TBWC is sold for the quite modest price of £59.95 on Master of Malt.
Read more
Behind the twelfth window of That Boutique-y Whisky Company’s 2019 Advent Calendar we will be reviewing each day until the 24th of December was hidden a Longmorn 10-year-old batch 3 single malt (it’s almost only batch 3s in this calendar!), bottled at 48.3% abv by that Boutique-y Whisky Company. Another distillery from the Speyside region, Longmorn is owned by Chivas Brothers (Pernod Ricard). It was founded by John Duff, George Thomson and Charles Shirres in 1893 and the production started in December 1894, but in 1897 John Duff bought out his partners and the next year he built another distillery, Longmorn 2, now known as BenRiach, before going bankrupt. The bank then sold the shares to James R. Grant. In 1970, Grant merged with The Glenlivet & Glen Grant distilleries, taken over by Seagrams in 1978, and themselves bought by Pernod Ricard in 2001. Longmorn currently produces about 3M litres of pure alcohol per year with a capacity of 4.5M litres. This Longmorn 10yo batch 3 is, like the Speyburn before, sold at a very expensive price: £76.95 on Master of Malt for a 50cl bottle, that means almost £108 for a full bottle! I sure hope it’s worth it, let’s find out!
Read more
Early september, I discovered there was events where you could taste SMWS whiskies as well as cigars – and boy what that an excellent discovery.
This time around, the French ambassadors reached out to me and asked me whether I would be interested in an “exclusive” session where we would taste a whisky selected just for France – SMWS 7.217 – Joie de vivre. This session would again be at Gentleman 1919, which I’m starting to love more and more.
Obviously, I accepted – and I can only thank them for that as I missed the Whisky Live due to friends having the bad idea of having their wedding that week-end. This was then the occasion for me to forget about the sheer pain it caused and soothe my broken heart by downing some drams.
Read more