Established in 1830, Talisker distillery is located on the Isle of Skye in the Inner Hebridean Scottish Isles. Owned by the global drinks conglomerate, Diageo, Talisker is a featured player in their "Classic Malts of Scotland" collection as it represents the somewhat amorphous "islands" whisky-making region. "Made by the sea," Talisker is well-known and loved the world over for it's balance of peppery sweetness and peat smoke. The 10 year old expression is bottled at 45.8% ABV and commonly appears on the whisky lists of bars, restaurants and lounges the world over. 

It's worth remembering that ubiquity does not always mean boring or dull flavours in the whisky world. Sometimes, when a product is well-crafted, it's common availability is reflective of the universal human demand for greatness. It was this impulse that guided my hand when perusing the shelves at the Gothenburg Systembolaget, the Swedish liquor commission, to select a gift box trio from the "Classic Malts of Scotland" collection that contained Caol Ila 12 year old, Clynelish 14 year old and Talisker 10 year old. With this selection I was looking for not only a great deal, but also to get re-acquainted with whiskies that I'd loved before.

Upon my return, I poured a healthy dram of Talisker and then fired up the blog to compare my current tasting notes with what we wrote about it only to be confronted with a "No results found" message. Perhaps, I'd mispelled it...again, no results. I had it right the first time; somehow we'd overlooked this benchmark bottle in our reviews. A blindspot, no doubt, that I shall now remedy.  

The duty free shopper is a hotly contested demographic for distilleries. Given the restrictions faced by many travellers on the dollar value of duty free purchases and their home country's attendant alcohol import limitations, many travellers will only be able to select one 1L bottle of spirits to bring home and avoid paying duty. This creates a very competitive space for distilleries who must attempt to attract the attention of the harried, jet-lagged, and "baggage-weight conscious" traveller in an international airport. In recent years, whisky advertising in duty free has gone from quiet rows of bottles to floor-to-ceiling banners along terminal walls, to flashy kiosks, to interactive displays and exclusive "nosing" lounges within duty free locations. Along with the uptick in marketing dollars spent to attract affluent global travellers, producers have created a line of bottles unique to the duty free market that have supported and, in some cases, supplanted the shelf space previously dedicated to the traditional core range.

As an Ontario-based whisky blogger one of the giddiest pleasures of international travel is the liquor selection of the airport duty free shops. There's always the chance of finding a great deal on an old favourite or being exposed to something that you missed in the LCBO when it came through. Perhaps even more tantalizing is happening upon a mystery expression from a loved distillery that's been made exclusively for travel retail. Evaluating the options; looking at the rows of bottles in the duty free, is a bit like playing "Let's Make a Deal." You can only bring one back into Canada without paying duty so, do you go for the tried and true or do you take a gamble and go with the tube of mystery liquid? 

In my travels, these tubes, cartons, or boxes of mystery spirit all bear a similar sounding pitch; this bottle is exclusive and premium and if you buy it so are you. Words like: "premium," "luxurious," "exclusive," or "reserved solely for the discerning traveller," and "collectable" adorn the packaging and inform the messaging of the supporting terminal dominating advertisements. Coupled with this high status language has been the removal of age statements from the packaging. While non-age-statement offerings are becoming more common across the industry for a number of reasons, in the travel retail market it's another missing piece of information when trying to decide what to buy. Pressed for time, limited by import restrictions, snowed by marketing, and unable to sample the wares, it seems that the traveller is set up to make a choice that's best for the distilleries but might not be right for the buyer or the recipient. To me, there's something ill-fitting about the ubiquitous claims of luxury and prestige when combined with the vagueries of product information and tasting notes that generally accompany travel retail bottlings. 

But I digress. On a trip to China in March of this year, David and his partner Jason brought us back 2 bottles from Bowmore's new travel retail range: Black Rock and Gold Reef. Purchased at Pudong Airport in Shanghai for nearly $100 CDN each, the 1L bottles are reduced to 40% ABV and 43% ABV respectively. The new range takes it's inspiration from "the magical and remote island of Islay" and the trio includes the aforementioned bottles along with the White Sands 17 Year Old. We sampled them side by side and found it to be a helpful way of assessing these two non-age-statement releases.

 

In the world of independent bottlers there are many names and labels, but few are more recognizable or reliable than Gordon & MacPhail. One of their most recent releases to hit LCBO shelves was a "Distillery Label" edition of single malt Scotch whisky from one of Speyside's old guard distilleries, Glen Grant. The Distillery Label series is a testament to the enduring relationship between Gordon & MacPhail and the industry. In the past, they partnered with distilleries to "officially" bottle the whisky under license and used a unique distillery label for each client. Today, these relationships with distillers allows Gordon & MacPhail to bottle whiskies at various ages, strengths and vintages that may differ from the "house range;" with each bottle bearing their traditional label design from those early days.

Bottled at 40% ABV, the whisky was distilled in 2003 and then matured in ex-bourbon casks until 2014. With this bottling Gordon & MacPhail have produced an expression that is more or less in line with Glen Grant's house style but, at an atypical 11 years old, it exists outside of the distillery's core age ranges.

With Father's Day less than a week away on Sunday, June 21, 2015 we at ScotchBlog.ca have compiled our yearly Father's Day Gift Buying Guide with a list of suggested gift bottles. But, before we get going, please allow me to offer some advice on what not to buy: whisky stones. Every year whisky drinkers the world over are gifted these cubes of soapstone meant to provide cooling effects to glasses of whisky without diluting them. While the intent of the product is admirable, their usefulness is highly suspect as we have written about before; and to top it all off, if your intended recipient has been drinking whisky for more than a year or two, the odds are quite high that they already have several sets from previous well-wishers. Please don't buy your Grandfather, Dad, Step-Father, or Father-in-law whisky stones this year. I'm sick of... I mean they probably already have a set or three.

Prior to embarking on your shopping trip, examine your intended recipient's existing collection. What types of whiskies occupy the shelves? Blends, single malts, bourbon, Canadian whisky? This will help you avoid duplicates (unless you've already been given a clear signal to buy yet another bottle of the fave) and will lend some context to your decision-making. 

For Ontario readers, make use of the embedded links to check stock (look for the hyperlinked price!) before heading out to your local store. It is important to remember that as one of the last redeeming features of its existence, the LCBO does provide for free inter-store transfers of bottles, though delivery times will vary from 3 to 7 days depending on distance between your store and the store of origin. So you may not need to drive several hours to get a bottle. Lastly, for any locations showing one bottle of something, be sure to phone the store confirm availability. 

Those of you lucky enough to reside elsewhere, there will be links provided at the end of the article to other shops in select cities that will likely offer these bottles, and in the event that the specific ones listed are not there, their whisky knowledge is sound enough to provide a viable alternate. Should you not have the most educated personnel at the ready in your location, please do not hesitate to reach out to us in real time on Twitter, via email by using the address supplied to the right, or any other form of communication you feel will be effective. We are always here to help! 

We've tweaked the format a bit this time around and have forgone the price bracket approach in favour of grouping our "best-bets" by a broadly defined categories of "whisky-drinking Dad." If your Dad, Step-Dad, Grandfather, or Father-in-Law enjoys whisky you likely have some sense of what type of whisky he enjoys and his level of engagement with his dram. This year's format offers up 3 different whiskies for each "Dad-type" ranging from: Dads who rock the CC and Cola, to brand loyalists, to the backyard barbecue grillmaster, to those who prefer a single malt with the company of a cigar, to smoke-loving peat freaks, and those with a serious collection.

As always, every attempt has been made to ensure that all whiskies listed herein are available in the LCBO at the time of publication. With many of the whiskies listed, the title links to a full write up of the bottle if we've reviewed it, so if you need a little more detail please click away.

Ok, enough of the preamble. Are you ready to get started? Close your eyes, take a deep breath and think about your Dad. What's your Dad like?

Ardbeg distillery witnessed its 200th anniversary on May 30th and as in years past, Ardbeg Day was celebrated around the world with a new commemorative whisky. Released on the final day Islay's annual Feis Ile, Perpetuum is the result of Whisky Creator Dr. Bill Lumsden's inspiration from the differing styles of whisky his predecessors have created over the last 200 years. The whisky contains a blend of spirit, some from as far back as the 1970s, the standard 10 year, and a healthy dose of sherry cask and re-fill cask matured whiskies. Non chill-filtered, it shows natural colour and is bottled at an unconventional 47.4% ABV. 

Last week I had the good fortune of sampling Perpetuum and revisiting the brand's current product line at Ontario's first and only Ardbeg Embassy, The Caledonian in Toronto. Still decked out in Ardbeg Day related regalia, the tasting room was full of tongue-in-cheek futurism, from the magnetically levitating Ardbeg branded whisky glasses, to the Space Pod which held one of the vials of Ardbeg "space whisky" sent to the International Space Station as part of a zero-gravity maturation experiment, to the Ardbeg "Haar," or cold mist, generator that vapourized Ardbeg for guests to inhale through a straw, all overshadowed by the vaguely sinister 200th anniversary banner depicting two hands and forearms - a human and some sort of robo-Celt-bot - poised in an act of Slainte!  

Suppressing anxieties of the coming Singularity, my thoughts returned to the flight of Ardbeg in front of me: would Perpetuum appeal to those beyond the Ardbeg Committee fan club members and collectors or was this an instance of "all sizzle and no steak?"

Located on the northeast coast of the isle of Islay, Bunnahabhain distillery (pronounced 'Boon-a-havin' and meaning "foot of the river" in Scots Gaelic) was established in 1881 and has been producing whisky ever since. The village of Bunnahabhain and its distillery are accessible by following a single track road north from Port Askaig with the Sound of Islay dropping away on one side and green rolling hills rising on the other. Venturing out to this relatively remote and picturesque distillery, with the Wyre Majestic wrecked and rusted upon the rocks of the harbour, you have the unmistakeable feeling of travelling back in time. 

Bunnahabhain's latest release 'Ceòbanach' harkens back to an earlier time in Islay's history. Pronounced 'kyaw-bin-och' and translating as 'smoky mist' in Scots Gaelic, the name is a reference to a time on the island in the 1800s when the air was thick with foggy sea air and smoke from the peat fires that warmed people's homes. Inspired by this sense of place and time, Ceòbanach is Bunnahabhain's latest small batch experiment with making a peaty whisky. Matured in ex-bourbon casks for over 10 years, bottled at 46.3% with natural coulour and non chill-filtered, this expression is a departure from Bunnahabhain's typically un-peated house style; itself a rarity on Islay, the land of peaty whiskies!

Tùsail is the latest addition to Glenmorangie's award-winning "Private Edition" collection. The brainchild of  Dr. Bill Lumsden, the Director of Distilling and Whisky Creation, Tùsail (pronounced to-SAIL and meaning "originary" in Scots Gaelic) is an experiment to explore the role of a distinctive variety of barley's influence on Glenmorangie single malt.  A carefully-selected parcel of Maris Otter barley was floor-malted by hand using traditional techniques, distilled, aged in first-fill ex-bourbon barrels and then bottled, non chill-filtered, at a respectable 46% ABV.

It's been a big year for the "now-rare" strain of  two-row "winter" variety of barley as both Glenmorangie and Brittany distillery Glann ar Mor have released single malt whiskies showcasing the grain's rustic and nutty flavours. Originally bred at Cambridge University in 1965, Maris Otter is a cross of "Proctor" and "Pioneer" barleys and was developed for use in brewing. Over time Maris Otter's popularity was eclipsed by higher yield strains and the once ubiquitous varietal fell into disuse. By the late 1980s, uncertified seed and cross-pollination had put Maris Otter at risk of extinction. This greatly alarmed some in the brewing industry, who still depended on its unique flavour to produce

When Dr. Lumsden heard of their efforts the rest, as they say, is history. He explains: "When we heard the story of those determined to preserve such a flavoursome grain, their ethos - and the barley itself - seemed the perfect match for a Glenmorangie single malt. I knew its deep flavour profile would provide an intriguing contrast to Glenmorangie's more delicate house style, creating a whisky to enchant connoisseurs. The result pays homage to the Maris Otter variety, with rich, rustic flavours of nut toffee, sweet barley malt, ginger, cinnamon, molasses, and dates, complementing the more familiar Glenmorangie notes of peaches, oranges and smoked pears."

Aged 14 years in ex-bourbon casks in the traditional manner,  the liquid is then finished for up to 12 weeks in new European oak before spending six weeks in new American oak and bottled at 40% ABV. This is a significant twist on Glenfiddich's finishing process which typically has the spirit finish in an ex-"something" casks, e.g. sherry, bourbon, port, or wine. In fact, this is the first virgin American and European oak double finished whisky in the world.

Imagine my surprise seeing a bottle of Grant's labelled with a sticker bearing the words "A Travel Exclusive," that I had yet to try, on the shelf of a Duty Free kiosk at the Siem Reap airport in Cambodia?

With corn making up the bulk of the mashbill, the single grain whiskey is distilled through a column still and, in a bold move, is fully matured in ex-Cabernet Sauvignon red wine barrels sourced from California. After an unspecified period of maturation, the non chill-filtered whiskey is bottled at 46% ABV.

It should come as no surprise to you, gentle reader, that we at ScotchBlog.ca are very fond of Forty Creek and it's ever-innovative whisky maker, John Hall. Since launching his distillery in 1992 he's brought new life to the Canadian Whisky landscape and has arguably been responsible, in large part, for its renewed interest among consumers.  His whisky even caught the attention of global drinks giant Gruppo Campari who purchased Forty Creek outright for a whopping $185.6 million with the condition that he stay on as Chairman and whisky-maker. In short, if you're not drinking Forty Creek whisky yet: what's wrong with you?

Fans of the brand are likely familiar with the Barrel Select and Double Barrel Reserve editions, but what about the Copper Pot Reserve? According to John Hall, "it's made in the same style as Barrel Select  but it's 'amped' up in flavour, delivering a bolder and richer taste profile."  The Copper Pot Reserve begins it's life as component grain spirits.  Corn, rye and barley spirits are distilled separately in a traditional copper pot still and then each spirit is aged in white oak barrels for a minimum of 3 years. After sufficient maturation it's time to mix and marry the blend. It is in the selection and blending of these separately aged barrels that this first generation whisky-maker's versatility and artistry shine. 

In addition to the "amped up flavours",  the Copper Pot Reserve also boasts a higher ABV of 43% compared to the other two, which are bottled at 40% ABV.

I received this bottle of GlenDronach 15 year old Tawny Port Finish as a birthday gift from the SB crew. They know my tastes well, so when one of them saw the label notes describing a "fruit laden whisky to enliven the tastebuds" and dessert flavours:dried fruits, fine dark chocolate, "fruit shortcake drenched in vanilla custard;" there was no doubt that this would be my b-day bottle.

Released in 2011, this version was designed to replace the 20 year old variant and, as of last year, was replaced by the 18 year old edition. Suffice to say, there's been some experimentation with this finishing technique. Matured in European oak and finished in "the finest tawny port casks," the whisky is non chill filtered, of natural colour, and bottled at 46% A.B.V..

Since 1826, GlenDronach has produced scotch whisky in Forgue by Huntly near continuously with just a short, 6 year, break between 1996-2002 despite changing ownership half a dozen times. In 2008, the distillery was acquired by BenRiach whose Master Blender Billy Walker now performs double duty for the two distilleries. 

This past Saturday, January 24, 2015 I attended a Robbie Burns Day celebration hosted by Johnnie Walker at Toronto's majestic modern-day castle, Casa Loma. Upon arrival, guests were treated to 2 varieties of Johnnie Red-based cocktails with an inspired collection of hors d'oeuvres. Just before dinner, a pipe band struck up a tune and lead the procession of guests to the dining room where we were entertained by a troupe of Highland Dancers. 

As Emcee for the evening, the knowledgeable Mortlach Brand Ambassador Georgie Bell introduced each course and provided some tasting notes on the whisky pairing. Before long, the haggis was piped in followed by a toast to the "bard" and more dancing. We finished off the evening with a decadent chocolate course paired with my personal favourite of the Johnnie range, Gold label. 

I had a great time revisiting the Johnnie line, mingling with guests and, as you can surely tell from the pictures, the food was delicious. Thanks to Amy at North Strategic for the invitation.

 

During a three month period early last year, I'd been stopping by my local Liquor Control Board of Ontario store weekly, waiting patiently for new whisky releases. Each time I surveyed the shelves I was let down, finding that not only were there no new products to be found, but also that the shelves under the large words "single malt" were slowly becoming bare.

These sad few months inspired me to embark on a quest to understand why we in Ontario have the dubious honour of both paying some of the highest alcohol prices in the world as well as being unworthy of having year-round accessibility to unique and interesting whisky products. Let me start by saying that the results of my investigation have left me fuming over the disadvantaged position Ontarians are in.

While the LCBO is proud to show off the upsides of having a crown corporation provide booze to the citizens of Ontario, there can be no argument that consumers are losing out; both regarding the money from their pockets, and the products on the shelf. Full LCBO privatization is not something that any government has been receptive to. As such, the solutions presented within this article are focused on working with the current system to build and improve upon it.

To illustrate this, let's compare LCBO operations to those of privatized specialty alcohol retailers in other markets. I recently had the fortune of interviewing Andrew Ferguson, Co-Store Manager and Whisky Expert at Kensington Wine Market (KWM) in Calgary. As a private retailer, he has much less clout in the industry than a behemoth like the LCBO would, yet KWM outshines even the best LCBO store in numerous ways.