Coldorak and Ainulindalë's blog about whisky.
Aberlour is a distillery that is well appreciated in France. You can find several core range releases in every hyper- and supermarket, and they’re the first single malt distillery in terms of sales in France, with back in 2018 a turnover of 40 million euros, while the number 2 in sales, Cardhu, was far behind at 25.9 million euros and the third, Glenfiddich, at 24.5 million euros. But before tasting a few Aberlour whiskies, let’s talk a (lengthy) bit about the distillery itself.
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Kininvie is a quite young Speyside distillery owned by William Grant & Sons. Created in 1990, the first expression of a Kininvie single malt had to wait until 2006 to be released, under the name Hazelwood, named that would later be reused for a blend. We reviewed one of those a few months ago with the House of Hazelwood 18yo. Let’s introduce Kininvie a bit more before reviewing their 23yo single malt, this time wearing the distillery’s name.
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Just as I have finished writing about a previous (and excellent!) Tweet Tasting, time for another one! The life of an amateur whisky blogger (it may sound pompous but well, I do have a blog about whisky so I guess that’s what I am?) is really hard, I know. This time, we don’t follow a specific distillery nor a specific bottler, but something new again: a person! Indeed, our guest was Gregg Glass, from Whyte & Mackay, as we tasted four whiskies he was deeply involved in creating or bottling. So as I said, time not for a distillery Tweet Tasting, but a Gregg Glass Whisky Tweet Tasting!
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As I had the chance to do many times before, I participated in a Tweet Tasting organized as usual by Steve Rush from The Whisky Wire on Wednesday the 23rd of September. This time, it was not a distillery, but a “new” indy… No, not Indiana Jones. As I was saying, this time it was not a distillery, but a quite new Independent Bottler called The Whisky Cellar. We received a really nice package with five samples, a notebook and a beautiful pen made with oak from a cask stave by Andrew from miawoodcrafts. By the way, if you didn’t know what he does, go check him out, what he makes is brilliant. I do already have a pen made from a Glenfarclas stave and I love it. But let’s get back on track and talk about today’s subject: The Whisky Cellar Tweet Tasting. And let’s start by having a chat with Keith Bonnington to know more about The Whisky Cellar!
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In 2011, William Grant & Sons released a first expression under the Hazelwood brand called Janet Sheet Roberts 110th Birthday Edition in 2011 (that’s a mouthful!), after William Grant’s granddaughter name. Mrs Roberts died in 2012 as the oldest woman in Scotland, aged 110 as the name of the first release suggested. Four years later in 2015, William Grant & Sons announced a new trio of whiskies under the House of Hazelwood brand, three blends aged 18, 21 and 25 years old, to be released first in the travel market early 2016 before general availability.
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Wow, the blog is almost one year old, and later in this post we’ll have our 100th review. Time flies. We started this blog with Julien ‘Ainulindalë’ in early August 2019 and had started discussing about it shortly after our trip together in Scotland to the Spirit of Speyside Festival earlier that year, as we went with two other people to celebrate my 40th birthday.
What was still a recent passion for me became almost the only thing I think about (not sure if it’s before or after my wife and children. Though the children can be really good at making me thinking immediately about needing a dram as soon as possible.), and I guess it was a revelation for Julien, who was mostly into beer, both as a brewer and a drinker (note from Julien: yes it was!). After thinking about a good name (‘veni vidi whisky’, its variant ‘veni bibi whisky’ and ‘whisky or not to be’ were other name candidates, the former being dropped as a silent twitter account but that name already existed unfortunately), I bought the domain name, the hosting and started creating the blog and the design probably in July 2019. Read more
Glen Spey is an important producer of whisky used in the world-famous J&B blended Scotch whisky. J&B is the 3rd biggest (not best, biggest) blend in the world, with a mind-blowing 6 million cases sold worldwide each year, though in decline from 64 million bottles in 2008. Glen Spey, located in Speyside in Rothes, is also one of the most anonymous distilleries in Scotland, as there are almost no single malt offerings. In 1878, James Stuart & Co founded the distillery and it became under English ownership in 1887 as it was bought by W&A Gilbey. Then in 1962, W&A Gilbey combined with United Wine Traders to create International Distillers & Vintners (IDV). Finally, a few changes of ownership later, Grand Metropolitan bought IDV and in 1997, Guinness and Grand Metropolitan merged to form Diageo. With a 1.4 million lpa capacity, Glen Spey is the third-smallest distillery from Diageo, only followed by Royal Lochnagar and Oban.
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Earlier this year, the famous Islay distillery Ardbeg announced a new addition to its core range with the Ardbeg Wee Beastie. Unfortunately, the pandemic happened around the launch. That and a surprising launch calendar. Some European countries (Germany and Netherlands) got it first back in March, while it only arrived a week ago in the UK. And for my great sadness, it is still unavailable in France except for a few eligible cocktail bars. Not even my usual whisky bar is eligible (they’ve confirmed me that earlier this week). Why this surprising way (to stay polite) of getting a new release out to the hordes of peated whisky fans? Beats me. But since it’s the first official Ardbeg releases we’re reviewing here (we’ve reviewed a couple SMWS), as usual, let’s introduce the distillery first. After that, we’ll do an Ardbeg Wee Beastie vs Ten review.
The Spice Tree is a famous blend made by Compass Box. John Glaser, Compass Box Whisky Company‘s founder, is a man who spent many years in the wine trade. Younger, he wanted to become a wine merchant or a winemaker. After joining Diageo to work in the marketing department of Johnnie Walker, he learnt blending next to JW’s master blender Jim Beveridge. While at first he intended to slide over to Diageo’s wine department, things worked out differently and he fell in love with Scotch Whisky. Later, he decided to go back to his ambition: create. But this time, to create whisky, as he saw the idea of blending whisky as a creative art. So he decided to become not a winemaker, but a “whiskymaker”. And in 2000, he founded Compass Box Whisky.
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Whisky is not a simple drink, at least for many people. For many of us whisky amateurs, this is a social drink. Sure we drink whisky alone more or less often, by ourselves, in our home, be it because we’re a whisky blogger or just someone who enjoys a good dram. But we crave for drinking whisky with friends, having the same passion, or at least the same interest. Drinking with friends, sharing a dram, that’s what makes whisky alive. And that’s what makes us alive too. In these strange times of pandemic, confinement and isolation, pubs are closed, clubs cannot organize their usual whisky tasting sessions (and the whisky club I’ve founded with a couple friends had to cancel its… second tasting, we had just started with difficulty and already we have to stop, at least for now!), and so the social side of whisky must be on hold as we need to stay home to stay safe. But whisky fans are obstinate. We can’t drink in the same room? Pff, hold my glass: we’ll do it online. And for that, we can count on Steve Rush to organize even more Tweet Tastings. And so, on Wednesday the 25th of March, we were two dozen people to join Steve and the Cù Bòcan team to taste their range for this Cù Bòcan Tweet Tasting.
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