Billy's Booze Blog

Having done Islay whiskies last month the Whisky Squad chaps decided to go to what is traditionally the other end of the spectrum for this meetup – summer whiskies. Rather than the peated beasts, supped by the open fire as the darkness draws in (waiting, as we all do, for the ultimate inevitability of death…), [...]

True to my word I did indeed spend the last three days camped out at Earl’s Court enjoying this year’s GBBF. The plan was simple but elegant – drink on Wednesday, work there on Thursday and do some more drinking (maybe with an insider’s perspective) on the Friday. The plan, as they say, worked perfectly.
On [...]

Ardbeg is a bit of a strange distillery. They’re small but scarily well known, with fanatical fans (although I suspect that’s a tautology), scarily high prices for some of their bottlings and the backing of a big corporate. I’ve only recently started learning about them and haven’t really tried any of their whiskies since I [...]

Tequila is much on my mind in recent times. I went to a tasting down at The Whisky Exchange and since then have started noticing it more and more in bars. Bartenders love it, extolling the virtues of their favourites at the drop of an interested hat, friends of mine have recommended me places that [...]

I rather like The Rake. Not only do they have many interesting beers on tap, but they’ve joined forces with Melissa Cole to put on tastings of interesting beverages under the banner of lovebeer@borough. It surprised me how few booze tasting there actually are in London that are available for regular consumers and lovebeer@borough is [...]

It’s incredible how important one’s sense of smell is when tasting things. I have, of course, heard from numerous people (including my anosmic mate John) about how taste is predominantly smell, with the tongue painting in wide strokes while the nose adds the detail, so it was rather annoying to discover the actual extent to [...]

The name of The Whisky Lounge seems a bit of a misnomer – rather than a loungey bar somewhere it mainly seems to be a guy called Eddie. He organises events up and down the country based, around tasting whisky and having a good time. I went along to his show in London this year, [...]

The Whisky Exchange’s (mostly) monthly program continues apace, this time bringing the manager of the Pulteney distillery, Malcolm Waring, down from far-off Wick to lead a tasting of the Old Pulteney range.

Old Pulteney is distilled in Wick on the coast in the far northeastern corner of Scotland, making it the most northerly distillery on the [...]

Again, the internet doth provide. I saw a post on Judith Lewis’s Mostly About Chocolate blog the other day that Macallan were doing a whisky and chocolate tasting, and that she had some tickets to give away. I’ve been to quite a few whisky tastings in my time but as yet I’ve managed to avoid [...]

Tequila is a much maligned drink. While the vast majority of tequila drinking experiences in the UK end in drunken debauchery, blood loss and the wearing of foolish hats, there is a whole world outside of girls with bottle holsters and shooter glass bandoliers. Dylan Moran’s words should normally be taken as gospel and his [...]