Gruesome greetings, everybody! Today is October 31, which means that the ghosts of All Hallow’s Eve will pay us a visit and demand a tribute. Against contrary believe, the best gift you can get them is neither a chocolate bar nor a bag of sweets. It is a whisky! (more…)
The first-ever independent bottling from tiny Dutch craft distillery Cley is absolutely brilliant. The company responsible for it, The Barrel Baron, picked a top-notch cask and presented it in a very classy way! (more…)
The driving forces behind the new indie bottler The Liquid Madness are two well-known whisky mavens from Germany, namely Tilo “The Caskhound” Schnabel and Sebastian “The Spirits Alchemist” Büssing. The two self-proclaimed “spirit adventurers” have joint forces (more…)
Earlier this year, Glaswegian indie bottler North Star celebrated its fifth anniversary. So, before I continue, here is a little insert: “Happy Birthday, Iain and team! Keep up the stellar work!” And now, on with the text … For my latest review here at BarleyMania, I have spent some quality time (more…)
In recent months, The Scotch Malt Whisky Society released a couple of bottles with the identifier 24 on the label. All of ’em got sold out within minutes, if not seconds. The reason for this: In the bottle code system of The SMWS, the number 24 stands for The Macallan (more…)
Over the years, Burg Scharfenstein – a medieval castle in the federal state of Thuringia in Germany – had many owners. Since most of them did not really know what to do with the place, they did not give it the attention it needed and deserved. Luckily, this changed in recent years (more…)
When I met Fary Lochan’s CCO and Chairman Thomas Smidt-Kjærby in Hamburg last Saturday, he told me something that really lightened up my heart: After a lengthy corona break, the distillery has meanwhile opened its doors to visitors again. And the drammers in Denmark (more…)
The Isle of Raasay is located in the northwest of Scotland, adjacent to the Isle of Skye. It is also from there that the only ferry to Raasay departs; it starts in Sconser and lands in Inverarish about half and hour later. Whereas the island has a long history of illicit distilling, (more…)
When speaking about Waterford Distillery on the Southeast shore of Ireland, one inevitably has to speak about terroir, too. The team around founder and visionary Mark Reynier (formerly of Bruichladdich) strongly believes in the impact of soil conditions, microclimate (more…)
Often when I utter the term “fruit bomb”, I use it to describe a slightly older dram that has spent – let’s say – 16 or more years in the cask. That is because it usually takes a certain amount of time before those full-on fruit notes reached the climax of their development. (more…)
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