May Update: Treasure seekers
Treasure seekers….members have been snapping up these precious and rare gems..

1) 121.59 Vanilla candles on a polished table
14yo Refill ex-bourbon barrel, £49.40
14 available…  Buy

2) 1.171 Orchids in an old wardrobe
28yo Refill ex-bourbon hogshead, £88.30
24 available…Buy

3) 59.43 Caramel Swirl Ice-cream
29yo 1983 30th Anniversary Bottling, £137.20
33 available…Buy

4) 4.175 Suspicious skulkers on the cat-walk
13yo First-fill ex-bourbon barrel, £58.80
16 available…Buy

5)  7.83 Fresh, airy and sherbety
19yo Refill ex-bourbon hogshead, £69.10
13 available…Buy     
    
Pearls of WHIS-DOM
Tasty TRIO: 53.184, 64.43 & G7.4 for £184
10 available…Buy

Island PAIR: 53.184 & 4.175 for £118
10 available…Buy

Packing CASE Offer: TRIO + 77.32, 7.83 & 3.198 for £364
4 available…Buy 
    
May Outturn

The Scotch Malt Whisky Society, The Vaults, 87 Giles Street, Leith EH6 6BZ Contact: sales@smws.com or call 0131 555 2929 (Mon-Fri 9am-4.45pm). Visit the Society at http://www.smws.co.uk/memberships for your chance to join and to take advantage of their great offers.

The Whisky Lounge London Festival & Dram and Jam

This year is, for us, the year of whisky festivals. Along with our own Whisky Show, which is shaping up to be even more impressive than before (which was pretty impressive already), we’ve also been the official retailer for Whisky … Continue reading >>

New Arrivals

Scotland – Single Malt Scotch

• 1995 Mortlach 17 Year Old The Exclusive Malts Single Barrel Cask Strength Single Malt Whisky 750ml – 5 available ($129.99)

Scotland – Spirits Pre-Arrival

• 1989 Isle of Jura 23 Year Old K&L Exclusive  Signatory Single Barrel Cask Strength Single Malt Whisky 750ml (Pre-Arrival) ($99.99)

Back in Stock

Canada – Rye

• Whistle Pig “Triple One” 11 Year Old Straight Rye Whiskey 750ml (cannot ship) – 6 available ($119.99)

Scotland – Blended Scotch

• Johnnie Walker Double Black Blended Scotch Whisky 750ml ($44.99)

Scotland – Single Malt Scotch

• 1988 Littlemill 24 Year Old The Exclusive Malts Single Barrel Cask Strength Single Malt Whisky 750ml – 7 available ($159.99)

• Springbank 15 year old, Distillery Bottling Single Malt Whisky 750ml ($91.99)

United States – Bourbon and Rye

• Peach Street Colorado Straight Bourbon Whiskey 750ml – 6 available ($62.99)

K&L Wine Merchants
http://www.klwines.com
Phone: 877-KLWines (toll free 877-559-4637)
Email: wine@klwines.com
San Francisco, Redwood City, Hollywood CA

The Rye is spicy and complex, with the signature smooth finish unique to the Bulleit Brand. Bulleit Bourbon is high in rye content, it has a bold and spicy character with a distinctively smooth, clean finish.

Special D&M Pricing $21.99 each Learn More!

Cloud hosting from iomart lifts World Whisky Day spirits

Global whisky event toasts website support from UK cloud company

UK cloud services company iomart Group plc (AIM:IOM) has come to the rescue of World Whisky Day after the website set up to celebrate Scotland’s most famous export crashed on launch day last year.

iomart has placed the World Whisky Day website on its Cloudsure platform to ensure that it enjoys 100 per cent uptime and can be accessed through all time zones for this year’s event which takes place on Saturday May 18.

Aberdeen University student Blair Bowman set up World Whisky Day after realising there was no designated day to celebrate the iconic spirit. He set up a website and asked people to post their events and messages but it crashed under the weight of interest from supporters across the globe.

Blair Bowman explained: “When I rang up the hosting company we were using in California they couldn’t even find my details. They said it would take 48 hours to fix and I said it can’t because it’s World Whisky Day today! I ended up manually inputting hundreds of events myself. Thankfully iomart have come to the rescue so the website won’t crash again. ”

Phil Worms, marketing director for iomart, added: “Blair got a fantastic response to his launch of World Whisky day last year, it was even trending worldwide on social media, but he wasn’t able to capitalise on this because the website was on a server that couldn’t take the spike in traffic and the hosting company’s support staff weren’t responsive enough. We’ve put the website on our Cloudsure platform so that it has the scalable and reliable hosting plus round-the-clock technical support to ensure that this year’s event is the toast of the world whisky community.”

iomart Group provides secure and bespoke cloud and manage hosting through seven fully owned and managed UK data centres connected via a high speed fibre network.

About iomart Group  

iomart Group plc is one of the UK’s leading providers of cloud and managed hosting services. By owning and managing its own infrastructure and fibre network, iomart offers world-beating levels of service to its customers. iomart Group operates through subsidiaries: iomart Hosting, Melbourne Server Hosting, RapidSwitch, Easyspace and iomartcloud. www.iomart.com

Famed Islay Distillery Names Latest Whisky “Ardbog” 

— World leading single malt celebrates peaty roots with new expression — 

— Launch to take place at Islay Festival on “Ardbog Day” – 1 June 2013 – where activities will include bog welly tossing, peat-tasting and organoleptic orienteering tasting —

The famed peat bogs of the Hebridean island of Islay are set to be celebrated after it was announced Ardbeg, the Ultimate Islay Malt, has named its new whisky…Ardbog.

Ardbog follows the highly acclaimed 2012 Limited Edition Ardbeg Galileo, which scooped the ‘World’s Best Single Malt’ at the World Whisky Awards 2013.

Ardbeg – the world’s peatiest whisky* and four-time winner of World’s Best Whisky awards– will launch the single malt on 1 June, named “Ardbog Day” this year in a nod to Ardbeg’s latest release.

Ardbog Day is set to take place at Ardbeg’s distillery on the south coast of Islay. And Ardbeg is calling on its 85,000 fans from 130 countries worldwide to visit Scotland and compete in such eclectic events as bog welly tossing, peat-tasting and even organoleptic orienteering tasting.

The Islay Festival of Malt and Music (the Feis Ile) – of which Ardbog Day marks the culmination – runs from 26 May to 1 June 2013. It has become a key date in the calendar of malt whisky aficionados around the world, with thousands of them making the trip to the Island of Islay annually.

The Ardbeg Distillery is also organising ‘Ardbog Day’ parties around the world for those who cannot make the annual pilgrimage to Islay and their favourite distillery, with gatherings taking place from San Francisco to Sydney to the centre of London.

Distillery Manager Michael Heads said: “Every year we welcome hundreds of Ardbeg fans from all over the world to the distillery to have a lot of fun, and we’re hoping this year will be no different.

“Bog welly tossing we’ve done before, but organoleptic orienteering tasting – where participants use their navigational skills to find the manager and his team at each control point and savour some extraordinary drams – now that should be interesting!”

The Limited Edition Ardbog will be launched at Ardbog Day. It is bottled at 52.1% ABV and will be available from www.ardbeg.com.

Dr Bill Lumsden, Director of Distillation and Whisky Creation, explains: “The overall combination of effects in Ardbog truly conjures up the impression of ancient, primeval, salty peat bogs, but reassuringly this is combined with some classic, intense Ardbeg notes of leather, toffee and smoke.

“As with all Ardbeg it is about getting the balance of many flavours right so others such as mocha coffee, cloves and even anchovies play their part!”

Ardbog is matured for ten years in traditional American oak ex-bourbon barrels and rare ex-Spanish Manzanilla sherry butts. This gives Ardbog a distinctively salty texture accentuating the salty, briny flavours already prevalent in the whisky.

Dr Bill Lumsden continues: “Every year we try to come up with something interesting and enticing for our Ardbeg fans, and we have for years laid down a range of experiments which may or may not see the light of day!

“Ardbog is one such experiment in that it combines two different styles of maturation to create a new flavour experience.

“At its heart our hallmark smoky yet fruity and floral spirit has been matured in Spanish ex-Manzanilla sherry casks for ten years, which has then been wrapped with traditional Ardbeg of the same age that is matured in American ex-bourbon oak casks. The Manzanilla maturation weaves salty flavours through the whisky which is then balanced with the maple syrup creaminess of the first-fill ex-bourbon casks.”

“This dichotomy of savoury and sweet flavours underlines Ardbeg’s status as the most complex of all the Islay Malts.”

In recent years Ardbeg has spread the word about its annual celebration through its worldwide fan club, the Ardbeg Committee, which today numbers over 85,000 members in 130 countries. To sign up to become a Committee member, log on to www.ardbeg.com 

Notes:

Ardbog and Ardbog Day

Ardbog is non chill-filtered for extra texture and mouth feel.

Ardbog Day will be celebrated at the distillery on Saturday 1 June 2013 and at participating Ardbeg Embassies around the world. For full details go to www.ardbeg.com

Ardbog Taste Notes

Aroma

Deep, enticing waves of pecan nuts, salty toffee & caramels combine with fudge, leather and with a distinct whiff of herbs, lavender and violets. The smoke is soft and aromatic, and is interwoven with salty, savoury notes, such as Iberico ham and olives.

The addition of water brings forth herbal, perfumed notes, smoked rhubarb, aged balsamic vinegar and some salty, ‘graphite’ notes reminding you of the Manzanilla cask element.

Taste

A full, oily/tingly mouth feel leads into a powerful, salty, savoury burst of flavours including salted cashews and peanuts, clove, aniseed flavoured toffee, green olives and a curious hint of anchovy.

Finish

A long, lingering aftertaste, in which the classic Ardbeg sweetness (like a hint of maple syrup) is kept in check by oak tannins, clove and coffee grounds.

About Ardbeg

Ardbeg prides itself on being the ‘Ultimate Islay Malt Whisky’. Established in 1815, Ardbeg is revered by connoisseurs around the world as the peatiest, smokiest and most complex of all the Islay malts.

Despite its smokiness, Ardbeg is renowned for its delicious sweetness, a phenomenon that has affectionately become known as ‘the peaty paradox’.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Ardbeg suffered from an uncertain future and it was not until the brand was purchased by The Glenmorangie Company in 1997 that the Distillery was saved from extinction. Since then, the Distillery has risen like a phoenix and today Ardbeg is well established as a niche, cult malt, with a passionate following. The legacy of the whisky was safeguarded by the formation of ‘The Committee’ in 2000 from thousands of Ardbeg followers across the globe keen to ensure, “the doors of Ardbeg never close again.”

Ardbeg was voted ‘Scotch Whisky of the Year’ three years in a row by Jim Murray’s Whisky Bible and was awarded ‘World’s Best Single Malt’, ‘Best Islay Single Malt’ and the ‘Global Icon Visitor Centre Manager of the Year’ at the World Whisky Awards 2013.

Peat – de-composed vegetable matter – is the fuel that has long been used on Islay to dry the barley during malting, thus giving a distinctive smoky aroma to the whisky.

*With the phenol level of the peat in Islay-based Ardbeg measured at an average 55-60 parts per million, Ardbeg is by far and away the peatiest malt whisky in Scotland. It manages to balance this smoky intensity with an intriguing sweetness derived from its distillation that makes for a malt of famed complexity.

Ardbeg Embassies

Ardbeg Embassies are a network of Ardbeg customers who love Ardbeg and have agreed to profile Ardbeg to their consumers; most are independent premium whisky stores.

Responsible Drinking

Ardbeg and The Glenmorangie Company advocate responsible drinking and suggest that drinkers savour Ardbeg in moderation and in line with recommended daily guidelines for alcohol consumption.

Inspired by the highly anticipated release of Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic ‘The Great Gatsby’, Harrods have recreated the lavish entertaining and unmistakable glamour of the Roaring Twenties, with the launch of their Great Gatsby Cocktail Bar. Harrods has transformed their Tasting Room and Wine Shop into an opulent art-deco pop-up experience, inviting customers to revisit the Jazz Age and reinvent some of the classic pours from this glitzy era, including The Macallan Blood and Sand made with Amber from the new 1824 Series.

The luxurious underground cocktail pop-up lounge area can be visited throughout the day (9^th – 20^th May) and theatrical cocktail-making sessions will take place from the main bar of the Harrods Wine Shop.

NEW Glendronach Batch 2

Following the popularity of Glendronach Cask Strength Batch 1, which was released towards the end of 2012 and is now sold out, we are delighted to advise that Batch 2 is now available!

PURCHASE NOW – £49.99

Blendologie’, Part I 

Hello,

My colleagues in France have developed an excellent program of events called ‘Blendologie’. Launched by our Master Blender in Scotland last year and supported by a dedicated website, blendologie.com aims to educate French-speaking whisky enthusiasts on the various skills needed to create exceptional blended whiskies. Last year started gently with simple online videos and interactive challenges for…(please clock on the link below to read the remainder of the article)…

THE LINK

Kind regards,

Ludo