Mark’s Whisky Ramblings 311: Vital Spark 5 Year Old 2013
Mark Dermul, Belgian whisky vlogger, tries an undisclosed Ileach. Vital Spark is a release from the Meadowside Blending Co, which we are familiar with because of their releases of The Maltman and The Grainman. While it is not mentioned as such on the label, it is a public secret that this third batch is a single oloroso sherry cask of my beloved Caol Ila (which is not necessarily true for batch 1 and 2!). Oh, will you look at that color…
A short lived history: 1957-1992, the latter was a good year for me but not for Lochside. Buried in the eastern Highlands close to Montrose, Lochside was one of the few distilleries in its life that could produce a Single Blended Whisky. Shutting its door twenty-eight years ago, it is rarely seen and pretty hard to come across a sub-thirty year old expression now.
Welcome to this weeks episode of the show. It’s been some time, 5 months to be precise since my last Springbank review, so it’s about time I did another!
Mark’s Whisky Ramblings 310: Ardbeg Corryvreckan
Mark Dermul, Belgian whisky vlogger, tries and older Ardbeg. The Ardbeg Corryvreckan is named after the world’s second largest whirlpool, just north of Islay in the North Sea. It’s a standard release from Ardbeg, always available. And while some batch variation does occur, they are always very good. I will try a release from 2009. The Ardbeg Corryvreckan is always bottled at 57.1% ABV and contains some whisky that matured on French wine casks.
Welcome to this weeks episode in which I’ll be looking at some new and auld releases from the independent bottling company Duncan Taylor.
Port Ellen! The one, the only, the infamous Islay. I’ve tried two in the past, three now; as to be expected, they’re all very good. Not life-changing but still extremely good whisky that shouldn’t be allowed to disappear before you get to try it. Samples are expensive, as indeed are measures at a bar, but I’d say its worth doing to tick off that box and be able to make up your own mind as well.
Mark’s Whisky Ramblings 309: Scarabus Islay Single Malt
Mark Dermul, Belgian whisky vlogger, tries another undisclosed Ileach. Hunter Laing & Co, the company that runs the new Ardnahoe Distillery on Islay, jumped on the Feis Ile bandwagon in 2019 with the release of this single malt dubbed Scarabus. Mark will have you know there is a Scarrabus (with double ‘r’) Farm very close to Bridgend. Writings show that there was even a pot still there between 1817 and 1818, but apparently it was never operational. This still does not offer us any clue as to the contents of this bottle. But we can all agree, Mark feels, that the bottle looks stunning.
Welcome to this weeks episode of the show. Today it’s time for some American stuff, including my go to Bourbon for beginners!
