By Richard Thomas Where does the line between Scotch enthusiast, someone who enjoys a dram of fine single malt and knows something about it, and the Scotch geek, or the person who devotes a large and probably growing segment of their lives to the “Water of Life,” lie? To borrow a page from Jeff Foxworthy, you might be a Scotch ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ Laphroaig’s 10 Year Old might be the entry-level expression of that Islay distillery, but it’s the Quarter Cask Single Malt that I hear the most buzz about when it comes to the affordable end of their range. The expression has been around for more than a decade now, and has quite the following. The irony ...

Why Fine Single Malts Should Be Your Alternative To Pappy Van Winkle Fever By Kurt Maitland The annual outbreak of Pappy Fever has come and gone, and if you haven’t acquired a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle whiskey yet it will likely cost you dearly to do so. January is the time of the doldrums, of having come up empty ...

By Kurt Maitland Rating: A- The world famous Lagavulin distillery is located on Islay, and officially dates from 1816, that first peaceful year for Britain after the end of the Napoleonic Wars and War of 1812. Its name means “hollow by the mill” in Gaelic. It, along with Caol Ila, are Diageo’s current pair of distilleries on the island. It ...

World Whiskey’s Five Worst Industrial Calamities By Richard Thomas Industry is prone to accident and calamity, and the whiskey industry perhaps moreso than most. This is due to the salient fact that it is an industry dealing in a highly flammable substance, namely concentrated alcohol in its vaporous and liquid forms. The history of the world whiskey business is replete ...