Billy's Booze Blog

The lovely people of Qype, especially organisatrix extraordinaire SianySianySiany, have looked after me again, this time be helping with one of my missions for the year: learning more about vodka – somehow I managed to wangle may onto one of Bob Bob Ricard‘s rather exclusive vodka tastings. At first I felt this rather strange as [...]

I am a big fan of gimmicks, even if I try not to give them too much credence, but when I heard about Macallan’s latest it gave me a kick to go and find somewhere that could demonstrate it – The Ice Ball Serve… Basically, serve Macallan 10 yr old over ice, but instead of [...]

The treasure trove of my one of my local shops is running dry – I’ve now drunk pretty much every beer they’ve got and they don’t seem to like changing the range any more. So, this is the last of the bunch – Dębowe Mocne. As usual despite my polish heritage I have no idea [...]

Being someone who likes to talk I’m jealous of those lucky folks who get paid to wander around and talk about whisky. So, in an effort to get at least part of that I invited an exclusive posse of people around to my flat to have a bit of a whisky tasting. The intention was [...]

During my recent sojourn in Scotland my chalet buddies humoured me with a final day of driving around, following brown tourist signs and making an occasional stop at a distillery. We popped in to Cardhu, where we missed a tour, and ended the day at Glenfiddich (which I may write about at some time in [...]

A couple this week, but first something that isn’t a tasting – I live on the site of the old London Guinness factory, which has since been knocked down and replaced with flats (including mine), some offices (including Diageo, the makers of Guinness) and a park with a lake in. It looks like either we’ve [...]

I like big butts and I cannot lie… My week up in Scotland recently not only introduced me to Benromach whisky, but also to the idea of putting whisky in new casks. Now, this may not sound like a particularly wild idea, but the majority of whisky is matured in casks that have already held [...]

Dark Star Hophead – I rather like hops so this was pretty much always going to be a favourite. I grabbed a pint at The Wenlock Arms the other night, while popping in briefly for a meeting (meetings in pubs are the best). It’s light and golden with a bitter hoppy taste that doesn’t get [...]

After 25 years of visiting Aviemore, one of Scotland’s biggest skiing resorts, it still surprises me when there’s enough snow to ski and not so much that you can’t get up the mountain. This year, however, we were treated to the most perfect snowy weather that I’ve heard of in Scotland – good powder on [...]