Thompson Bros 8YO Blended Malt, 44.5%
A combination of Clynelish and Glen Ord for below £40 a bottle? Plus, it has a vintage supermarket themed label. Sign. Me. Up.
This is my first Thompson Bros bottle (don’t @ me) and I couldn’t be happier about it. I’m not one for marketing emails, but as soon as I saw this, I bought it!
The Thompson Brothers are the owners of the Dornoch Distillery, and having released some young stock, their indie bottlings of single malts, blended malt, and blended whiskies are some of the most looked for and awarded styles of whisky in the modern world.
The combination of Clynelish and Glen Ord in this bottle is truly wonderful, easy, summer drink that has reams of nostalgia attached to it for anyone who has ever lived in the UK.
Join Adam and Taryn as they once again introduces us to another epic set of SMWS releases at The Strath. Check out the SMWS page on The Strath’s webstore, where you can buy bottles and tickets to upcoming events – http://strathliquor.com/smws
The SPEY Trilogia, 46% ABV
I’m ashamed to say that I haven’t tried much from The SPEY distillery. Between chasing bourbon unicorns to open, strange Scotch bottles, indies, and all that stuff, this passed me by. But thankfully not anymore!
A combination of three of their own single malts, married together in a finish of first fill Tawny port, with that little bit of peat smoke ruminating throughout it. This is quite a bottle for the summer, and a refresher on the idea of port casks for me. I’ve rarely gotten on with them, besides rum casks, they’ve always been my ‘this never really works’ in the whisky world.
Anyway, this is a limited release of just 6,000 bottles, which for a distillery this small and under the radar is quite a small amount of anything.
Have you tried anything from SPEY before? Is there something I should pick up?
The Good Dram show is on hiatus during the redecoration of the set and will return in a few weeks.
In the interim please visit the site to catch up on previously published reviews
Mark’s Whisky Ramblings 531: Woodford Reserve Double Oaked
Mark Dermul, Belgian whiskyblogger, tries a nice bourbon. Brief introduction: The Woodford Reserve Distillery is located in Versailles, Kentucky, on the spot where historians believe Elijah Pepper began distilling whiskey in 1812. This is where the sour mash was used for the first time. The distillery was first called Oscar Pepper Distillery (1838), then renamed Labrot & Graham Distillery and was sold in 1941 to Brown-Forman, who closed it in 1968 and sold it in 1971… but bought it all back in 1993 and launched Woodford Reserve in 1996. Since 2000, the building has been a National Historic Landmark. In the glass is the so-called Double Oak, where the bourbon was finished on a ‘New Heavily Toasted, Lightly Charred Barrel’ after a regular maturation.
I WON A BOTTLE OF LONGROW!
Longrow 2024 Pinot Noir, 57.1%
Well, I entered a ballot and won the opportunity to buy it…and here it is!
The 2024 release of Longrow Red has been matured for four years in ex-bourbon casks, then transferred into single estate French Pinot Noir casks for three years.
Bottled at 57.1%, natural colour and non chill filtered, this is first cask strength Longrow that I’ll ever get to work with in a bottle. Seeing how it develops and opens over time. When it was first cracked it had no sweetness at all, thankfully it has gained some nice red fruit and caramel notes – with the smoke playing a rather subtle role further back on the palate.
Check the video out and tell me what you think about this years release. Is it better or the same, or worse as others?
Big thanks to Royal Mile Whiskies for putting on a ballot so I could get this!
Cheers!
