Inbox - February 3, 2012

Inbox is our weekly round up of whisky news and PR material that has found its way in to our email inbox. It was created as we cannot write full articles or do justice to every piece that we receive. It features items from around the world of whisky and is published by us each Friday.

Within Inbox we write a few lines detailing each press release/piece of news/PR event that we have received and provide links, where possible, for you to find out further information. This week again includes our new feature - Tweet of the week. This is our favourite piece of news or information that we have seen on Twitter recently. Here we go with this week's news ...

Dalmore - The one and only Zenith
The north Highland distillery of Dalmore, who are well known for their very old, rare and limited premium releases, have announced the launch of a single bottle whisky.  Named the Dalmore Zenith, it has been crafted from three very old whiskies distilled in 1964, 1951 and 1926.  These were brought together and married for a period of time in an ex-Oloroso sherry cask.  The Zenith is presented in a bespoke crystal decanter and a cabinet made from English oak and rosewood.

The sale of the Zenith is also unique as it is being auctioned exclusively through The Whisky Shop - the UK's largest specialist whisky chain.  The reserve price is £50,000 and sealed bids are currently being invited, with a closing date of 31 March 2012, and 10% of the final price will go to a nominated charity.  The decanter is currently traveling around The Whisky Shop's 18 UK stores on a national tour and you can follow its progress on the new Twitter feed - @dalmorezenith. If the full bottle is out of your league, then the chain are running a competition to win a 5cl sample bottle of the Zenith. For further information on the Zenith or to enter the 5cl competition - click here.

Glenfiddich - Rare 55 year old whisky for sale
Another auction of a rare old whisky is taking place next week on Friday 10 February.  The whisky is a bottle of the Janet Sheed Roberts Reserve, a 55 year old single malt that has been released to celebrate the life of Janet Sheed Roberts.  She is the grand daughter of Glenfiddich's pioneering founder William Grant and last August she celebrated her 110th birthday, making her the oldest person in Scotland.

There are only 11 bottles available of this whisky, one to signify each decade of Janet's life, and they are being sold individually at auction.  This will be the second bottle to go under the hammer, with the first one going for £46,850 late last year.  All proceeds will go to the charity Walking With The Wounded.  The exceptionally rare whisky is presented in a bespoke hand blown bottle in a silk lined leather presentation case.  It is hoped that the final price will be greater than that of Bottle No.1 when the auction takes place at The Honourable Artillery Company, London. For further information and tasting notes of the Janet Sheed Roberts Reserve - click here.

Glenmorangie - Scores a hole in one
The famous north Highland distillery of Glenmorangie have announced a three year partnership with The British Open golf tournament, starting with this year's event at Royal Lytham St. Anne's between 15-22 July.  The iconic event pulls in crowds of over 200,000 and is watched by an estimated worldwide audience of 450 million.  Glenmorangie will be 'the official whisky of the championships'.  Both the distillery and the tournament have proud histories dating back over 150 years and the pairing is being billed as 'the perfect partnership of two icons'.

Paul Skipworth, the President of The Glenmorangie Company, says, “Glenmorangie is proud to become a part of this amazing Championship, which will see our whisky showcased at each Open. Like The Open itself we believe in going the extra mile in the pursuit of perfection.”

The Whisky Round Table - Jan/Feb
The latest edition of The Whisky Round Table is now out.  The WRT is a group of whisky bloggers from around the world, of which we are delighted to be part.  Each month one of the bloggers plays host and asks a whisky related question to which the others reply.

This month's meeting is hosted by Keith Wood, who writes the excellent,  informative and incredibly in-depth website Whisky Emporium in both English and German.  Keith asked us for our thoughts on whisky festivals, which ones we plan to visit and what we look to get out of them.  To read the full question, plus our reply and those of our fellow Round Tablers - click here.  As from next month the Whisky Round Table will have a new format, but more news of that will follow on that shortly.

Tweet of the week
@TheBalvenieUK - A few videos featuring our very own @BalvenieNP talking to Patricia Richards about how to make scotch & The Balvenie. Watch - click here.

Inbox > December 17, 2010

Inbox is a weekly round up of whisky news and PR type material that has found its way in to our email inbox. Sadly, we cannot write full articles or do justice to every piece that we receive, so Inbox has been born! It will feature items from around the world of whisky and will be published by us each Friday. Within Inbox we will write a couple of lines about each press release/piece of news/PR event that we have received and provide links, where possible, for you to find out further information if you want to.

However, with most PR and marketing departments winding down for the Christmas and New Year festive season, news and information have been in short supply this week. As a result, we have decided put Inbox in to hibernation for a couple of weeks until things pick up again. We are planning the next Inbox for Friday January 14 2010 (news permitting!).

We would also like to take this opportunity to publicly congratulate two friends and supporters of Whisky for Everyone since our early days - Keith Wood and Oliver Klimek - who this week became members of the elite group of Malt Maniacs. The Maniacs are a small group comprising members, who are all whisky fans and/or journalists, from all around the globe and their website is a 'must read' for all whisky drinkers - visit www.maltmaniacs.org for more details. We eagerly await the first contributions of Keith (who runs the incredibly detailed Whisky Emporium website) and Oliver (who writes the excellent dramming.com whisky website) to the Malt Maniacs. Check out both of their great sites if you haven't already.

The Whisky Round table - October 2010

The latest edition of The Whisky Round Table is now available for all to read. The subject of this month's meeting is the whether whiskies age when in the bottle and is hosted by Keith, who writes the excellent and informative whisky website Whisky Emporium. Keith's site is one of the most in depth whisky resources around (hence its place in Our Top 10 Whisky Websites list!) and if you haven't found it already, then you should. We are delighted to be one of the founder members of The Whisky Round Table, so hope that you will join us and our colleagues for this edition. To read the October sitting of the Whisky Round Table - click here.

The Whisky Round Table is the brainchild of Jason Johnston-Yellin, who is the author of the 'must read' whisky blog Guid Scotch Drink. His idea was to gather together 12 whisky bloggers from around the world and get them to discuss a whisky topic once a month. The hosting of The Round Table is passed around the 12 members, with each host setting the question for each month. The October edition is the fifth offering from The Round Table and the subjects have been wide and varied to date. Links to the other four articles can be found by clicking here.
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The Whisky Round Table is also now on Twitter, so you can follow what is going on @WhiskyKnights. If you haven't found us already, then feel free to start following us and send us comments, questions or DMs. All 12 of us hope to see you there!

Our Top 10 whisky websites

The number of whisky blogs and websites on the internet has risen massively over the last couple of years and each one contributes to a lively and vibrant whisky community online. The beauty of this online community is that there is enough room for everyone's voice, their style of site and their opinions. The fact that each website is written and programmed by different people, in different styles and with differing opinions is what makes the community so interesting.

Blogs can offer immediacy and short sound bites of information, whereas the benefit of a website is that it can offer more in depth information and be used more as a permanent reference resource. To this end, we started our website – www.whiskyforeveryone.com - about a year ago as an extension of our blog. This has allowed us to share much more information than is viable on a blog post, covering subjects such as whisky basics, detailed distillery profiles and interesting facts and figures. If you haven’t visited it already, then please click the link above and let us know what you think.

Here, we have decided to champion some of the best whisky websites that we have discovered since we first joined the community less than two years ago. We have made many friends and acquaintances along the way and this Top 10 is a tribute to each one's work. It would be unfair to rank these, as each offers something unique and which you may prefer is ultimately up to you, so we have listed them in alphabetical order. Recently, we produced a similar list of our favourite whisky blogs – to view this list, click here.

Ardbeg
www.ardbeg.com
Almost every whisky brand, distillery and independent bottling company have a website these days and while most are functional and ‘do the job’, there are few that truly stand out. Ardbeg is one of these and has taken the genre of the ‘distillery website’ to a different level. They combine innovative graphics, plenty of customer interaction and informative text in a stylised and impressive website. The ‘style’ of the website is carried through to their equally innovative marketing material. The site also includes a shop that allows you to buy Ardbeg whisky and other associated products. The only down side is that the site tends to crash dramatically when large numbers of people go on it at the same time to try and buy a limited edition release! Other well branded websites include Monkey Shoulder and Smokehead.

Aspiring Gentleman
www.aspiringgentleman.com
This is a cracking site that is not just about whisky, but all things for the ‘aspiring gentleman’. Whisky plays a major part on the site, with regular reviews, detailed tasting notes and relevant talking points and news. Cigars play the other major part on the site and there are excellent reviews and tasting notes of the products. However, these whisky and cigar articles are placed alongside others covering all manner of subjects such as cigarettes, tailoring, shaving, beer, other drinks and spirits, etiquette, male grooming and accessories. All articles are extremely well written and make easy reading for beginners to these subjects. We have learnt a lot, especially from the cigar reviews. There is also a store section that allows you to purchase related items, including a decent range of whisky books.

Connosr
www.connosr.com
This is a whisky social networking site that allows you to post and compare whisky reviews with other users. The site is the brainchild of Jean-Luc and Pierre Thiebaut - two whisky enthusiasts and web designers, who decided to combine their day job and hobby in order to create Connosr. There is not another site like Connosr that is purely led by its readers and contributors and it is a valuable source of information and opinion. In addition to posting your own whisky reviews, it allows you to speak with other users, rate whiskies using a star system, create your own whisky wish list, cabinet and history and much more. Connosr has been going for just over a year and is extremely popular, with over 3000 members already. Another more traditional style of forum worthy of a mention is WhiskyWhiskyWhisky.

Malt Maniacs
www.maltmaniacs.org
Where to start? Put in simple terms, Malt Maniacs is one of the most comprehensive and informative whisky websites and resources around. It is also one of the oldest whisky sites, having been started in 1997. As a result, there is a vast back catalogue of articles, tasting notes and reviews of over 10,000 whiskies! Malt Maniacs is unusual as it has contributions from a select group of ‘friends’ who are located all around the world. These include a number of the whisky glitterati, such as Charles Maclean, Dave Broom, Mark Gillespie, Ulf Buxrud and Serge Valentin (in fact, Serge’s popular blog Whisky Fun started life as an offshoot to Malt Maniacs and contains regularly updated tasting notes). The founder, Johannes van den Heuval also writes his own side project called Malt Madness, which focuses on whisky news and distillery information.

Royal Mile Whiskies
www.royalmilewhiskies.com
Royal Mile Whiskies is a retailer who have two stores – on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile (unsurprisingly!) and in London – and they have an excellent website, from which you can purchase the wide range of products that they stock. It is not for that reason that the website has been included in this Top 10, but because it is also one of the biggest resources for finding whisky tasting notes, distillery information and industry news that is available. This site has become one of our first ports of call for us when we look for any whisky related information and is where we have learnt so much. It is especially good and user friendly for the beginner, explaining things in layman’s language. Other good retailer sites that offer plenty of information are Gordon & MacPhail and La Maison du Whisky.

Scotch Whisky.net
www.scotchwhisky.net
This website markets itself as ‘the definitive online guide to whisky’ and in our view, it is not far wrong. The site contains a vast amount of information on all aspects of whisky. The distillery information profile pages are a particular highlight as they supply concise bullet pointed info and facts. These are split in to general information, distillery history, images, comments and available bottlings. The format is very easy to read and user friendly. In addition, numerous other sections are laid out in a similar way. These include information on different whiskies (single malts, blends and grain), whisky retailers and bars around the world, independent bottling companies, whisky history and manufacturing techniques and food/cocktail ideas. An excellent resource and a great site for beginners.

Single Malt TV
www.singlemalt.tv
Single Malt TV is a channel devoted to the world of whisky. The concept was formed in 2006 and it soon grabbed the interest of both whisky connoisseurs and beginners alike. The channel is internet based and operates with 24 hour programming. It was also the first channel (internet, terrestrial or satellite) to be shot exclusively in the Hi-Definition format. Single Malt TV contains everything from full length feature programmes to snippets of clips lasting less than a minute. It covers all manner of subjects to do with the world of whisky – tasting reviews, distillery visits and profiles, food and whisky matching/recipes, interviews with interesting and relevant characters from within the industry and basics guides to whisky production. Well worth a visit and before you know it, you will have been watching for hours!

Whisky Cast
www.whiskycast.com
This is one of the pioneers of the whisky podcast. Whisky Cast was started in November 2005 by journalist Mark Gillespie, when he decided to create and use the podcast as a tool for his own whisky education. The show is produced once a week and can be downloaded from the Whisky Cast site or iTunes. There are currently over 240 editions of Whisky Cast and they are all available in an extensive back catalogue. The podcasts include whisky hot topics, interviews with influential people within the industry, whisky tastings and notes, news, forthcoming events around the world and competitions. There are also archives of photographs and whisky tasting reviews/ratings, as well as a shop stocked with a selection of items including whisky books, glasses and hipflasks.

Whisky Emporium
www.whisky-emporium.com
The Whisky Emporium is an excellent website that is run by Keith Wood in Germany. The self-proclaimed ‘Bavarian exile’ has constructed one of the finest whisky resource sites around and it is packed with information. The main body of the site is the Tasting Notes section, where Keith combines distillery information with the tasting notes of any of that distillery’s whisky that he has sampled. The distillery/tasting list is extensive and you can find yourself reading through the well written notes and then wondering where your time has gone (we speak from experience!). There are other sections worth mentioning such as Dram-atics (Keith’s personal whisky blog), information on collecting and tasting whisky and a shop where you can buy 5cl samples from Keith’s collection.

Whisky Sites Directory
www.whiskysites.com
This is a simple yet effective site that offers links to numerous other whisky websites and blogs. The directory gives links to many of the whisky distillery and brand websites, with many of the Scottish, Irish, American and Japanese brands being placed alongside some lesser known producers from around the globe. There are also links to the multitude of whisky information websites and whisky blogs that are available on the web. As we say, it’s a simple site but one that is easy to use and concise, providing a valuable resource for whisky enthusiasts and beginners alike.

Please note - all logos and images are taken from the original sites.