By Richard Thomas Edrington, the drinks company that owns The Macallan and The Famous Grouse, will close its Perth office and establish a new headquarters in Glasgow. The move will involved transferring some staff currently working out of the company’s existing facility in western Glasgow, as well as moving staff from the closed Perth office. However, the closure and transfers ...

By Richard Thomas When it comes to whiskey and wood, the world has three basic models. The American model relies heavily, although not exclusively, on new oak. The Irish and Scottish model relies heavily, although not exclusively, on used barrels. Finally, the Canadians are a heterodox lot who use both new and used barrels. Yet it’s the Irish and Scottish ...

By Richard Thomas Contrary to reports of a single malt shortage coming from Hong Kong investment firms, sales of Scotch whisky in East Asia have not lived up to their hype. First sales slumped in China due to a round of belt-tightening that targeted luxury imports, a development that was widely reported in the mainstream media. Receiving much less attention ...

Talking With The Scotch Blender-Bottlers And Future Islay Distillers By Kurt Maitland Early this year, Hunter Laing, the independent bottler of brands such as Old Malt Cask, Old and Rare and Douglas of Drumlanrig, announced that it would break ground on a new distillery on Islay. This interest had been hinted at in an extensive earlier interview I had with ...

By Richard Thomas Twenty years ago, if you were a genuinely devoted fan of a particular type of whiskey—Scotch, Irish, bourbon, what have you—you could acquaint yourself with most offerings in your field of choice in just a few years. One of the points of evidence that so undermines the shortage claims is how much this has changed: there are ...