Lockdown savings on winter warmers

Stock up and stay home: we’ve slashed prices on a selection of winter warmers to see you through the next lockdown.

Whether you’re replenishing your whisky cupboard after Christmas, or sending a friend a ‘thinking of you’ dram – we’re offering a selection of your favourite whiskies at a fraction of the price, delivered safely to your door.

Grab these prices before they go!

Shop our Whisky Sale ›

Known as “Scotland in miniature’ for its diverse environment and stunning scenery, The Isle of Arran has become one of Scotland’s most popular destinations for whisky enthusiasts. This remote island was once home to over 50 illicit distilleries that lay beyond the reach of the exciseman. The Island’s whisky industry was revived with the construction of the Arran Distillery which officially opened in 1995.

Arran is one of Scotland’s last remaining independently owned distilleries, producing whisky that is typically unpeated, sweet, smooth and fruity. A diverse portfolio includes a wide range of cask finished whiskies, higher age statement bottlings, cask strength releases, and peated whisky bottled as Machrie Moor.

Arran – Single Malt Scotch 10 Year Old Whisky
46% ABV | 70cl

Arran’s signature whisky. The multi award winning 10 Year Old Arran showcases the rich, sweet, fruity aromas and flavours that are characteristic of whiskies from this exceptional Island distillery. Matured primarily in ex-Bourbon casks, with a smaller proportion on 1st fill and refill Sherry hogsheads.

£39.95

SHOP OUR FULL ARRAN RANGE AT HTFW

ralfy review 858 – Whisky for 2021 – Arran 10yo @46%vol:

Whistle Pig “Homestock” Crop No. 004 Blend of Rye, Wheat, and Barley Whiskey (750ml) (Elsewhere $75) $39.99 View

The 4th Farmstock release is an incredible project born of quarantine. The final blend was composed by thousands of fans tasting and blending at home. 3 different whiskies were provided and through trial and error a wondreful whiskey laden with vanilla and orange zest and showcasing a ton of spice and fruit on the palate was produced. The final product – Homestock – a blend of 45% 4 year old Rye, 30% 5 year old Wheat, and 25% 5 year old Barley. Truly a whisky that is a product of our times.

Smooth Ambler 5 Year Old “Old Scout” K&L Exclusive Barrel #23890 Indiana Straight Bourbon Whiskey (750ml) $49.99 View

Clear Creek McCarthy’s Hardwater Exclusive Single Barrel Cask Strength Oregon Single Malt Whiskey (750ml) $89.99 View

Whistle Pig 12 Year “Old World Finish” Rye Whiskey (750ml) (ships as 1.5L) (Elsewhere $125) Price: Hidden View

Whistle Pig’s experimental project is one of the most exciting barrel-finished American whiskeys on the market. This is a blend of cask-finished rye at 12 years. It contains 63% Madeira cask, 30% Sauternes cask and 7% port pipe.

Making it to the Whisky Advocate Top 20 list four years in a row, what an honor!!!!

Why is this such a great honor you might ask?

Well, their “Top 20 is a selection of whiskies worthy of your attention. The list includes great values that might otherwise be overlooked, whiskies that are best in class for their style, and highly accomplished bottles you should be looking for. Most importantly, each of these whiskies generates excitement and marks a highlight across a year of tasting.”

“An important step in gauging the true merit of these whiskies is blind tasting review by a panel of international reviewers. The review panel tasted the eligible whiskies in a series of blind tasting flights to arrive at the final list. The panel did not know the identity of the whiskies being tasted—not their producer, country of origin, age, nor price. The average rating from the blind tasting panel supersedes the original Buying Guide rating. The individual reviewer rating will remain noted in the Buying Guide for the record. The final decision for placement considers average score, price, and availability.”

This flagship bottling from the core range of M&H Distillery has been turning heads since its launch.  This 46% abv expression truly is an instant classic.

Tomer Goren, head distiller at Milk & Honey Distillery in Tel Aviv, excels at warm climate Single Malt production under the intensity of the Mediterranean sun. His ethos is beautifully captured within this kosher-certified flagship bottling, matured in Bourbon and shaved, toasted, and re-charred (STR) casks. It exudes a nose of golden syrup, vanilla, marshmallow, jasmine, dried apple, nutmeg, cinnamon, and pepper. Flavorful and juicy, the palate has satisfying depth, with caramel, vanilla, shortbread, honey, and orange, daubed with vivaciously spicy black pepper. —Jonny McCormick

We also wanted to take a look back at our amazing whiskies that made it to their list the last few years.

A 48% abv 92 point peaty palate pleaser from Japan, this Matsui marched into the mainstream like a great wave.

The 2018 Kilchoman Loch Gorm at 46% abv earned 91 points and this praise from Gavin Smith:

Penderyn Celt at 43% abv earned 91 points and these words from Jonny McCormick

Scoring 90 points, this 42.8% abv rice whisky from Japan got this review.

But why and how does Whisky Advocate choose the whiskies that make the list?

In their own words:

“Each year, Whisky Advocate Buying Guide reviewers collectively sample hundreds of whiskies. These include rare and extremely limited releases, as well as new and emerging labels that will find their way to shelves across the nation. To determine our Top 20, we begin by looking only at whiskies that rated “outstanding” (90 points or higher on Whisky Advocate’s 100-point scale). However, the Top 20 is not simply a collection of our highest-rated whiskies, because many of those are so limited they would be impossible for most readers to locate or purchase. Therefore, in addition to quality (based on score), our selection also prioritizes value (based on price) and availability.”

Now back to this year…

We couldn’t be more excited about M&H Classic making it to the Top 20 for 2020!

Notably, since the core range launched earlier this year we have seen quite a few amazing mentions in publications across the US.

12/8/20 Liquor.com “Everything You Need to Know About Kosher Spirits”

12/1/20 Insidehook.com/Yahoo Finance “Expand Your Horizons with 7 Great Bottles of New World Whisky”

12/1/20 RobbReport  “9 Superb Whiskies Made in Unexpected Places, From Mexico to India”

11/16/20 Departures.com (AMEX)  “The World’s Lesser-Known Whiskey-Producing Regions You Need to Know About”,

11/5/20 Imbibe 2020 Holiday Gift Guide

November 2020 Hemispheres Magazine (United Airlines) “Holy Spirits”

10/12/20 Jewish News of Northern California “Israeli Whisky comes to Bay Area”

9/7/20 New York Times Front Burner “A Nip for that New Year’s Toast”

9/6/20 David Broza and Friends Live from NYC The Bowery Electric Concert

9/2/20 The Nosher “Israel’s First Single Malt Whisky is Now Available in the US”

September 2020 New York Beverage Media “Whiskey: What’s New”

8/7/20 RobbReport/Yahoo Life “Israel’s First Whisky Is Coming to America”

Here is Tomer and Tal going through the other Milk & Honey expressions, in case you are curious about the magic they make.

And since you stuck around so far, here is a little teaser for you!  They are coming out with their Apex series (hitting US soil in Q1 2021), which is all about crazy combinations and delicious innovation.

We are so excited to see what these folks will produce next!

Will it make it to next year’s Top 20?  Only cask-aged time will tell.

If you have any questions or would like any additional information, please don’t hesitate to email us at office@ImpExBev.com.

A Delicious New Take on Japanese Whisky
St. George “Baller” Single Malt Whiskey (750ml) ($69.99)

NOTE: Our walk-in retail locations are currently closed. We have curbside pickup and low cost (often free) delivery options available in ZIP codes where we can ship lawfully, including anywhere in California. We can also include any new or existing will call orders in your delivery batch. Choose local delivery at checkout to learn if you qualify.

Leave it up to our friends at St. George to come up with such a unique and inspired take on Japanese whisky. St. George “Baller” Single Malt goes through a regimen of aging in bourbon and French oak barrels before being finished in Ume plum liqueur barrels. While that might have a few scratching their heads, the result is nothing short of exquisite. A delightful riff on the whiskies found in bars throughout Tokyo; this floral-driven expression plays more on nuance and delicacy than raw power. As such, this is the perfect dram to sip on its own or as the base for similarly elegant cocktails. If you enjoy tropical notes in your whiskey (and, really, why wouldn’t you?), you must give this compelling single malt a spin. There’s not a lot of this idiosyncratic bottling to go around, so we put a cap on the number of bottles you can buy. Even with that, we still expect our limited allocation to disappear in no time. For those looking to broaden their whiskey drinking horizons, you won’t find a more pleasing malt.

St. George “Baller” Single Malt Whiskey (750ml) ($69.99)

Whisky Advocate: “Hugely floral and perfumed on the nose, with rose petals, violet candies, and dried orange peel. This is the Gewürztraminer of American single malts—sweet lychee, laced with sachet aromas that explode as if opening Grandmas dresser drawer. The palate is more tropical; dried pineapple, canned peach syrup, and spice. This could be polarizing, but it’s utterly captivating and worth a try. (JL, Fall 2017)”

K&L Notes: St. George’s new single malt release is described by Master Distiller Lance Winters as a California take on Japanese Malt. Initially aged in used bourbon and French oak barrels for 3-4 years, then finished in St. George Ume plum liqueur barrels. The result is an absolutely unique twist on the American single malt, namely that is was designed specifically to be drunk in highballs—Tokyo style. Of course it is ultra-limited, so grab it while you can.

William Grant and family started building his distillery in 1886 and named it Glenfiddich which is Gaelic for ‘Valley of the Deer’. Towards the end of the next year the first drop of spirit fell from the copper stills. During the prohibition in 1923, Glenfiddich was one of only 6 distilleries still running in Scotland. In the later half of the fifties, Glenfiddich built its own cooperage and in the early sixties came up with their recognisable triangular bottle design.

In 1963 Glenfiddich was the first Single Malt to be promoted outside Scotland – previously consumers were only used to drinking blended whisky. Glenfiddich has gone from strength to strength and is now the world’s best selling Single Malt Whisky and has won more awards than any other Scotch Whisky distillery.

Their best selling 12 year old single malt is soft, fresh and delicate, and a classic example of a gentle Speyside Single Malt Whisky. Older expressions typically use a higher proportion of ex-Sherry casks, becoming richer and more complex with age.

Shop the range at HTFW

BALBLAIR 12YO, ORDER NOW AND RECEIVE A FREE MINIATURE OF 15YO

We’ve teamed up with the amazing people at Balblair to offer you this deal, order the Balblair 12YO and we’ll send you a 5cl Miniature of the 15YO to sample at your leisure!

Balblair 12YO

With free 5cl Miniature of 15YO, a perfect opportunity to taste the flavoursome older sibling!

Balblair 15YO

Never mind the sampling, dive right in and order the 15YO today!

Explore the Balblair Range

The Green Welly Stop
Tyndrum
CRIANLARICH, PERTHSHIRE FK20 8RY
United Kingdom

The Whisky Exchange Blog Review of 2020

Well. That was definitely a year. But hidden in among the various trials and tribulations of 2020 there were a load of excellent drink-related things, and, optimists that we are here at The Whisky Exchange, it’s time to celebrate them. So, without further ado, it’s time for the now-traditional (even if we did miss last year) TWE Blog Review of the Year – 2020 edition.

A quiet start

The beginning of 2020 was rather sedate, with a focus on low and no-alcohol alternatives (as well as some great alcoholic classics) in our excellently/questionably named No-Low-Status Quo feature. Burns night appeared towards the end of January, as it does every year (keep an eye on the blog for this year’s tips, coming soon) and we rolled quietly into spring. This year’s Rosebank Rose – Grace – (still three more to come) appeared on the website and disappeared just as quickly, with a St Patrick’s Day themed Irish Whiskey focus following in March.

Then things went a bit weird.

Lockdown Blues

With the UK’s pandemic lockdown beginning in late March, things changed very quickly for us at The Whisky Exchange. With most of the team working from home – with the majority not having been back to TWE HQ since – we started looking into ways of bringing our drinks family from across the UK and around the world together.

The Specialty Drinks packing team got to work filling boxes with supplies for drinks industry people struggling during the pandemic.

First, we turned to the bars of London. Since The Whisky Exchange started, we’ve been making sure that they’ve had the best spirits available at all times, and with their business disappearing overnight when they were forced to close, we decided to help. With many staff furloughed or laid off, Speciality Drinks – our trade wing – joined forces with Edrington-Beam-Suntory to create wellbeing packs for folks in the drinks trade who needed a helping hand: boxes of staples to fill gaps in their cupboards. This carried on through the year, wrapping up – for the time being – in November 2020, with more than 6,500 packs sent around the UK.

We then turned to the bars themselves, and, working with a selection of the UK’s finest establishments, put together a selection of make-it-at-home cocktail packs and ready-to-drink cocktails to let you recreate their signature drinks in your own kitchen – Bring the Bar Home. We had 13 packs complete with recipes and videos from bars ranging from the classic Rules and Blue Bar at The Berkeley Hotel, to modern London institutions like Trailer Happiness and Laki Kane, as well newcomers like Coupette and Kwānt. With a share of the proceeds from each pack going back to the bar who created it, the scheme helped out while the bars pivoted into running their own at-home deliveries.

You can watch it all on Tv

Having worked with our industry friends, our attention turned to our customers – you. With lockdown in full force, we wanted to find a way of continuing to share our love of great drinks, and jumped feet first into the virtual world.

It started with our virtual tastings. Every week from May to October, with a couple more in December, we ran an online tasting, with tasting packs available to buy from The Whisky Exchange website, and an interactive Zoom room open for anyone who had one.

Rum By Flavour was our first tasting, back in early May…things have come on a long way since then.

We also streamed them live on Facebook, so that anyone could join in. You can find 23 of them on YouTube in our Virtual Tastings playlist, and there are even a few packs left on the website if you want to join in.

But it didn’t stop there…

A Virtual Whisky Show

With an in-person Whisky Show impossible, we went online. And then expanded things. And then expanded things again. In the end, our plan for a 2.5 day show bloomed into a week long event with more than 400 talks and tastings, all delivered online.

The hosts

Hosted by a three-headed hydra of booze – Bubbles, barley and beer: head buyer Dawn Davies, writer Dave Broom and me – with assistance from WhiskyCast‘s Mark Gillespie, we covered everything from sustainability to inclusivity, with stops at distilleries around the world, chatting with the people behind the drams. And we drank some great whiskies, available as tasting packs to try at home – we even still have a few left if you want to join in.

Exclusive Drinks

We started the year by wrapping up our 20th Anniversary with a final selection of exclusive birthday bottlings – we had more than 50 special bottlings through our big birthday year.  Anniversary over, we continued to put out great whiskies, rums and more, all exclusive to us.

Each bottle from this year’s Whisky Show releases had a unique label, part of a larger design created for each of the three whiskies.

From the increasingly legendary Redbreast 1989 30 Year Old Port Cask – still a few bottles left, but it won’t last long – to our Whisky Show bottlings – Whisky: An Ever-Changing World – and a whole host of great whiskies.  We’ve got more coming in the new year, and the first bottlings are already arriving…watch this space.

Along with the exclusives, we also launched our own new line of whiskies – The Whisky Exchange Single Casks. Specially selected by co-founder Sukhinder Singh, they give us a chance to showcase some of the best casks he has hiding in warehouses across Scotland.

Anything else?

Lots…

We kicked off our Meet the Maker series with interviews across the worlds of whisky.

We celebrated World Whisky Day with a day of interviews with whisky makers around the world, all streamed on Facebook – you can catch up with our World Whisky Day playlist if you missed it.

The launch of Waterford caused a stir in the whisky world, with founder Mark Reynier – formerly of Bruichladdich – and his terroir-forward approach inspiring debate. I jumped in with my take – Waterford: Terroir and Teireoir, and the first releases shot off the shelves.

..and we announced our Whisky of the Year – thank you to everyone who helped out by voting. The awards will be back in Autumn.

What next?

After the weirdness of 2020, we aren’t sitting still in 2021.

Our virtual tastings will be back soon – keep an eye on the blog for updates, as we’ll have a full program appearing over the coming weeks. On top of that, expect virtual Whisky Show: Old & Rare, and a combination of physical and virtual fun (government guidelines permitting) for and Whisky Show. Planning for Whisky Show is in full swing and tickets are on sale now – head to the Whisky Show website to find out more.

We’ve put 2020 to bed, and 2021 is ripe for filling with great drinks and fun times. We’ll hopefully see you all soon, either in person or online. Either way: Happy New Year.