Side by side: Lochlea Single Estate Core Range

Commissioned in August 2018 Lochlea Distillery was built in an old piggery in the middle of Lochlea Farm in Kilmarnock.

Featuring barley grown on the farm, the distillery has grown from strength to strength.

#BTC61 #BlindDrams Tasting Notes

These are my tasting notes and results from the Blind Tasting Consortium's 61st #BlindDrams evening.

These drams were picked by Cliff @CliffMann

Titanic 9yo Single Grain

A new distillery for me, but as with a lot of Irish distilleries all is not as it seems and it turns out it is from a distillery I know!

An unusual combination of rye, muscatel, and madeira cask finished grain whiskies.

Auchentoshan White Port Distillery Exclusive

Due to my wife's broken ankle our trip to Glasgow Whisky Festival didn't quite go to plan and I found myself at Auchentoshan distillery with Mike & Sam for what turned out to be a great tasting!

Whilst there we bought a bottle of the Distillery Exclusive White Port finish!

Retribution Chestnut Cask finish

I had a really interesting chat with Richard Lock from Retribution Distilling at Kendal Whisky Festival in December.

I tried a couple of his drams and he allowed me to take an sample of a Chestnut cask matured dram home to review!

Review of my whisky Year - 2025

Firstly thanks to all of you who have read my blog (c437,000 up from 296,000 last year) and follow me on social media.

This blog has been going for 9 years now and this is the 810th blog post! In that time I've reviewed over 2,190 whiskies! Let's review 2025!

Auchentoshan Distillery Visit

You'll find bottles of Auchentoshan in just about every supermarket, and you may have bought 1 or 2 when you started your whisky journey.

But at 40% it's unlikely you'd buy another, unless you visit the distillery!

#BTC60 #BlindDrams Tasting Notes

 These are my tasting notes and results from the Blind Tasting Consortium's 60th #BlindDrams evening.

These drams were picked by Mike @WhiskyWithMolly & Sam @WhiskyWithMolly

Claxton's 4yo Holyrood

This year's Kendal Whisky Festival was, as usual, a brilliant event, there were 3 or 4 drams that stood out for me. A trio after their brand ambassador called me over saying "Brian - I've something for you to try"

We've all heard this and the results aren't always good! For 3 drams in particular they were good and and I managed to get samples to try in a more relaxed atmosphere. The second was Claxton's 4yo Holyrood.

Henstone Red Range Batch 2

This year's Kendal Whisky Festival was, as usual, a brilliant event, there were 3 or 4 drams that stood out for me. A trio after their brand ambassador called me over saying "Brian - I've something for you to try"

We've all heard this and the results aren't always good! For 3 drams in particular they were good and and I managed to get samples to try in a more relaxed atmosphere. The first was Henstones' new Red Range bottling.