News ... The Boutique Bar Show 2009, London

We attended The Boutique Bar Show 2009 in London the other day and in between sampling lots of quality whisky and other spirits, we found out a couple of interesting pieces of whisky news. We have not seen these interesting bits of news anywhere, so thought that we would share them.

Glenrothes, the large Speyside distillery owned by the Edrington Group, are to shortly replace their 1985 vintage with a new 1988 vintage. They select a vintage, rather than a fixed age (eg. 12 years old), as they believe in bottling a whisky when it reaches the optimum level of maturity. The 1988 will sit alongside the current whiskies in the core range - the Select Reserve, 1991 and 1994 - and was pitched as being rich, smooth and full of dried fruit, citrus and spicy notes. Unfortunately, there was none available to sample :(

The lady promoting Black Bottle, the popular smoky blended whisky, told us that they have some whisky from the new Kilchoman distillery maturing in a warehouse and that it is to be included in the blend from next year onwards. Black Bottle has the claim of 'including whisky from each of Islay's distilleries', so as from next year this will again be true. She also confirmed that Lagavulin is to remain in the blend, despite some industry rumours to the contrary.