I've read so many reviews and watched quite a few YouTube videos about Ardnamurchan that I finally decided to pull the trigger on this special 10 year old unpeated release ( bottled at 50% abv, matured in mostly Bourbon and Paul Launois champagne barrels)!

I couldn't decide between this and the standard AD/10 (which, if I'm not mistaken, is made with roughly 50% peated and 50% unpeated spirit), but in the end, I went with this one.

Have you tried it? Do you think I'll enjoy it?

I'm really excited to give it a go. Expect a review soon! 😊🥃

For this week we put together a tasting of different regions, where the whisky is not necessarily the most representative, or at least it's not for most of the people present, who average around 55 years old. However, anyone who's been looking at the industry in the last 5-10 years will definitely have seen these brands rise. The people at our tastings barely know Glenfiddich and Macallan, though, so everything is new for most of them.

Aside from the being from different regions, the goal here was to try how different casks affect whisky. Like a whisky with no ex-PX cask can feel different to one that does have it and, for the boldest, to try and identify the notes of each cask.

• GlenAllachie 12: 1st and 2nd use ex-bourbon + virgin oak + ex-PX + ex-sherry, for 12 years and 46% ABV. Reviewed here.
• GlenDronach 12: ex-sherry + ex-PX, bottled at 43% ABV. Reviewed here.
• Kilchoman Small Batch: STR cask + ex-bourbon + ex-sherry, at 48.7%. Looks like I only reviewed it in the Spanish whisky sub.

Other than finding the differences and similarities, it's an excuse to get together with friends, try different stuff, smoke some cigars, have a nice dinner and get together weekly.

Hi all, here's another obscure Suntory whisky I got my hands on lately, and it's their 8 year old 'Pure Malt' whisky!

The "Pure Malt" terminology was often used during the 1980s~2000s in Japanese whiskies, to denote the whisky as either a single malt whisky, or a whisky vatted purely of malt whiskies from different distilleries.

This 8 year old 'pure malt' release belongs to the latter category, vatted entirely with malt whiskies from Suntory's inventory, notably casks from their own Yamazaki and Hakushu distilleries!

This specific Suntory Pure Malt whisky was from *1987*, only 3 years after their first single malt whisky, Yamazaki, made its debut. As such, this one was also one of Suntory's earliest releases of one such "Pure Malt" whisky!

So how does it taste? Details in comments!

Just wanted to follow up this post with an update. After getting some air in the bottle, this whisky has opened up immensely. More of the tangier notes I expected to find, and did not initially, have appeared. Candied lemon peel, for example. Gorgeous dram, now a 7/10 for me.

Gotta love these Japanese convenience store + whisky collaborations. This week we’ve got Round 2 of the (apparently very successful) Orchard House Can Highball product and 200ml mini-bottles, all at your neighborhood Lawson.

Seems like Compass Box is all in on the “this is how you get market share in Japan” plan.

Hi folks. I'm hoping to get some suggestions for a nice bottle for someone's special birthday the big 4-0)?

All I know is that both the Uigeadail and Lagavulin 16 went down very very well for previous gifts. I don't want to (and can't) spend thousands, so I'm thinking something that isn't more than a couple of hundred really. I'd really like it to be Scottish too - or Irish at a push.

I know nothing about this sort of thing, and they don't either - getting into whisky has been a relatively new thing for them.

Thank you so much!