Whisky Magazine August 2020

We face uncertain times,” “The future is going to be different,” or “Who knows where this is all going?” Are just some of the new, already worn phrases you hear in the media, both printed and social, and this got me thinking a little as the world slowly lifts its restrictions due to the coronavirus. One thing I think is certain: the world has changed. Various industries have been decimated by the last few months, and that’s all it has taken…a few months. I saw a very glib, but accurate, comment the other day about how you can ask people not to travel because it is affecting the climate and they say no, but throw a virus in there and pretty much everyone decides to stay home and the airline industry…

WHISKY LIVE In the year 2000 Whisky Live was born – Tokyo in February and London in September. You could taste the excitement of bringing whisky lovers together with distillers, in two such extreme parts of the globe. However, in 2020 this has been tested as country after country brought in rules that meant, for now, we could no longer meet, greet and be sociable. Throughout the inevitable uncertainty we know that great whisky continues to be distilled, and the long wait for its maturation will be worth it. In the meantime we would like to dedicate this page to the brands and companies, individuals and groups, who have made Whisky Live possible – a huge thank you to you all. A. D. Rattray Amrut Angus Dundee Annandale Appleton Estate Rum Ardbeg Aroma Auchentoshan Bain’s Balblair Balcones Beam Suntory Belmont Farm Ben Nevis Distillery BenRiach Berry Bros.…

Cask finishes should no longer be classed as innovation. Having dominated new releases for the past decade or so, with everything from wine and beer and now Tequila being used to impart flavour, they’ve certainly added complexity and variety to the whisky landscape. But are they really all that innovative anymore? Let’s face it: Balvenie, Glenmorangie and Diageo were playing with cask finishes back in the 1980s. We’re now 40 years on, and have exhausted almost every cask type. Let’s reserve the word ‘innovation’ for creations that are truly progressive. That was my argument when discussing the most exciting developments in Scotch whisky with Scott Adamson, brand ambassador for Tomatin, on his Softer Sessions video series. We covered a variety of subjects, but it was one of Scott’s folow-up questions that…

I write this from my desk in New York City on the 36th Day of Quarantine. It is Tuesday, but that seems irrelevant. At some point soon, some authoritative body will declare that there are now officially three days to the week – yesterday, today and tomorrow. Within a few days, I’ll likely forget how to apply liquid eyeliner. It seems certain that at some point, global leaders or the UN or a scholarly association will have to formally bestow a name on our new normal. If I may offer some input, I suggest rendering the BC and AD eras one and the same, and christening the time after stay-at-home orders are lifted ‘MITH’ (Made It Through. Hallelujah.) Or for the sake of simplicity, perhaps just ‘AP’ (After Pandemic) will do.…

Almost everything about our daily lives has changed since the last time this magazine was published. The pandemic has swept across the world, leaving us scrambling to combat it while still retaining some semblance of normalcy. Those still working are either doing so remotely, or have taken on a certain level of danger in order to work in-person. In the global whisky community, bartenders and brand representatives alike have found themselves out of jobs, at least temporarily, as bars and certainly large gatherings of whisky lovers have been deemed too unsafe. Distilleries across the world have shifted gears to meet the global demand for disinfectants, particularly hand sanitiser. Stateside, we are also reeling from police brutality and reckoning with generations of inequality that have erupted into nationwide protests, and distilleries are…

Captain William Bligh’s reputation as a cruel and petty disciplinarian saw him suffer the indignity of not one mutiny, but two. In both mutinies, whisky played a pivotal role, either in precipitating the mutiny or bringing it to a fateful end. Bligh’s second mutiny transpired in Sydney on January 26th, 1808 bringing his term as the fourth Governor of New South Wales to an ignominious end. Half a century later an abolitionist Quaker inaccurately designated this the Rum Rebellion; in fact, its causation had its origins in a whisky altercation. The grievance that originally set this mutiny in motion was the illegal importation of a pair of pot stills from London to distil whisky. Bligh’s antagonist was the equally mercurial and autocratic junior military officer John Macarthur, who arrived on the…