One of the nice things about getting samples from whisky mates, is that you sometimes get additional stuff you never expected. this one is just like that. A cask strength release of 2000 vintage Caol Ila. This is a marriage of two casks which have been matured in first fill Sherry butts, before being bottled on June 2012 by G&M. …

Another one from the latest batch of single casks from Wemyss this time an Islay, from Caol Ila, 16 year old, and from the name you can expect it to be lemony and smoky, and so it is…

Lemon Smoke, 16 yo Caol Ila , vintage 1996 , 46% ABV,£68.95
Nose:  Lemon pie, mixed with peat reek, leather, smoke, sweet peat and …

one more single casks bottled for the “Archives” single casks collection by whisky base ,the younger brother of the 1982 vintage, I have yet to try but have heard great things about… let’s give this one a try, shall we?
Caol Ila 2000, 59.1 %, € 59.95 “Twin Peat”
so, a young CI, what can one expect? a lot of peat reek, …

A couple of month ago Wemyss released 5 new single casks to their Single cask collection, and continuing their recent trend, they do disclose which distillery is behind the lovely name and descriptions. I really like how they name their expressions, with descriptive names, although not as fancy and posh, and some might say over posh names given to some …

Another SMWS bottling this time from the Region of Campbletown which once was one of the biggest whisky regions and is now reduced to only 3 operating distilleries (Springbank, Kilkerran and G.Scotia). I’ve tasted a few GS’s in recent months (Indie bottling by Kintra of NL and another 19 year old I’ve yet to review, and will do soon). I …

In the next couple of days I am going to post a few tasting notes of Exclusive bottling for The Whisky Barrel,which had a few such bottling made public to celebrate the new look of it’s website. The first is this Caol Ila, Old Malt Cask bottled by Douglas Laing which was matured for 27 years in a sherry hogshead, …

Kintra whisky is a small IB based in NL, and we’ve had the pleasure of sampling quite a few expressions bottled by it in the past, always with satisfaction. In October 2011 Erik (proprietor of Kintra) released 6 new single cask bottlings in the “Single Cask Collection” Series. A young Coal Ila which we’ll review shortly, a 26 year old …

Glen Scotia is the lesser known distillery in Campbeltown, and is often shadowed by the more popular and well known Artisan distillery of Springbank.  It’s also fairly small with an output of about 150,000 litres per year, having only 3 employees making whisky… For me this was my first Glen Scotia ever , and it’s not really surprising sine they …

This is the first Kintra bottling tasting note, with more to follow. This one was distilled in 1984, Aged in an Ex-Bourbon Hogshead , Cask # 5395 for 25 years and bottled in 2010. Only 60 bottles were available). I’ve recently tasted a 30 year old CI bottled by MOM and it will be interesting to compare both.
Caol Ila 1984, …

It was only a question of time until  Diageo’s turn to hop on the NAS bandwagon, and release an expression with a nice Gaelic sound to it, wasn’t it? So, it’s here, the new Caol Ila ‘Moch’ (meaning: dawn in Gaelic).
It’s not everyday that Caol Ila releases a new OB and this one got good reviews from bloggers and whisky …