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1 week ago | 
jancisrobinson.com | Dave Broom
The lights came on in sequence, each strip illuminating a further recess of the arched brick cellar. Two parallel vaults, both empty. Brick and mortar dust, faded chalk scrawls. We were in Dublin’s Fitzwilliam Lane, under a medical centre. The tunnels ended on the fringes of Merrion Square, once the most fashionable address in the city. If you want to know about the rise and...
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1 month ago | 
thewhiskymanual.uk | Dave Broom
Musician James Yorkston runs a series of gigs called ‘Tae Sup Wi’ A Fifer’. The title is taken from the saying ’it takes a lang spoon tae sup wi’ a Fifer,’ meaning that you need to be on your guard when dealing with folks from the Kingdom. It’s always struck me as somewhat harsh as I’ve always found them to be extremely generous folks.
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Dec 9, 2024 | 
jancisrobinson.com | Dave Broom
Our whisky specialist argues that what’s needed is something genuinely different and quality at a sensible price – and offers suggestions for brands that deliver.
On the face of it the news isn’t good. In 2023, the Scotch Whisky Association export figures showed Scotch’s major markets in decline – the US down 7%, France falling by 3%, figures that came with a firm warning of ‘significant challenges’.
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Oct 29, 2024 | 
thewhiskymanual.uk | Dave Broom
I received a mail from one of my editors recently. She’d kindly sent me details of an expensive whisky (no names), wondering if I might like to cover the story. It was followed almost immediately by a PS, ‘Trying to get my head around how this can be worth $25k…’ The ellipsis says it all.
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Sep 26, 2024 | 
jancisrobinson.com | Dave Broom
Many a whisky drinker loves peaty flavours, but peat is implicated in global warming. How can the industry hang on to peaty whiskies in the face of a forthcoming ban on peat for gardeners? Above, the kiln filled with peat smoke at Highland Park on Orkney.
It’s the aroma that gets you first, that comforting, fragrant, weirdly floral smell which the Scottish novelist Neil M Gunn described as ‘the smell of home’.
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Sep 20, 2024 | 
thewhiskymanual.uk | Dave Broom
Whisky has always moved in waves, a giant swell of peak and troughs, a pattern that repeats at 20 year intervals. In the ‘60s it was the ascendency of blends and satisfying the demands (in volume and flavour) of the US market. By the ‘80s, distillers were having to deal with a crash in sales and how attract new drinkers. By the turn of the 21st century you see the rise of single malt, tapping into the desire for provenance, a widening of the flavour palette, and premiumisation.
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Jul 29, 2024 | 
jancisrobinson.com | Dave Broom
Savouring the Auld Alliance in liquid and stimulating form. Above, a Demptos cask, one of many types used to mature whisky at Maison Lineti in Bordeaux.
‘French whisky?’ The eyebrows shoot up. You can tell the thought process already underway. The French make Cognac, Armagnac, Calvados, fruit eaux-de-vie. Why on earth would they make whisky as well? The answer is surprisingly simple. Because they drink it.
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May 30, 2024 | 
jancisrobinson.com | Dave Broom
Another, historic, grain is giving barley a run for its money. John Letts is pictured above, courtesy of Fielden, where he is head of farming.
It’s got a certain swagger to it, rye. It’s not the sweetness of corn, the gentle fruit and nuttiness of barley. Rye crackles and fizzes, it smells of allspice and clove, is peppery and acidic. Sip a rye and you believe that you are tapping into what American whiskey must have tasted like in its earliest days.
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Apr 26, 2024 | 
thewhiskymanual.uk | Dave Broom
Time plays tricks on you when a new distillery starts up. It opens, then often does the gin thing while laying the whisky down. Meanwhile you wait and watch and, if lucky, have a wee sample every so often to see how things are getting on. But time drags. Fingers and feet tap. Three years seems a long time, then it stretches to four, then five. Behind the scenes it’s planning – bottle design, distribution, positioning, laying down more stock, finding the right blend of casks. Frantic paddling.
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Apr 15, 2024 | 
thewhiskymanual.uk | Dave Broom
I Islay. Out there, the geese are flying north. Hundreds of them, black against the yellow and blue of the setting sky. Leaving. What happens in the silence after they’ve gone? The memory of the skeins caught in that bright yellow line. We wait for the return. The memories of the distillery scroll in some sort of time-lapse: lights going out, roofs sagging, brickwork crumbling, the demolition team moving in leaving only the skeletal frames of the pagodas as a reminder.
