At Whisky Live I got Jordan, and after being told off for saying I wanted to make a “cheap tasting” whisky, settled on something with a heavy perfume and hint of smoke – heavy on the speyside with a body of grain and a hint of Islay at the end. To be eligible for a full refund you must contact us to inform us of any issue within 24 hours of receipt.

This was fine but nothing earth shattering and maybe a little light in flavour for my liking, although I liked it much more on my second tasting (finishing the other half of the 50ml sample when I started writing this blog entry). Their core range includes a number of aged and no-aged expressions, as well as some cask experimentation. The Trace is a solid bourbon, smooth enough to go either in cocktails or be drunk on the rocks (something that I’ve done a bit too much of since picking it up). It seems they weren’t one-off releases as some of them are still available for a reasonable cost, including this one – one of the only distillery bottlings of Linkwood available (although they are much loved by independents). I deservedly didn’t win that time, the honour going to Nicole Kidman, but my team picked up the accolade at Milroy’s with our sumo wrestler whisky – big and heavy with a slap at the end.Also sign me up for newsletters so I can get special offers, recommendations, and expert advice to my inbox! The first Crested release came in 1963, with Jameson beginning to bottle their own whiskey (rather than selling to bonders) and it’s known to have a healthy proportion of pot still whiskey as well as a high proportion of Sherry casks used for maturation (bourbon barrels are also used). This made Aerstone the cheapest 10yo single malt on the market, even when the Aberlour 10yo is on offer.

The range has an Islay, Highland and Speyside regional expressions and each being a single malt, have come from a single (but undeclared) distillery. They experimented with using local barley but it didn’t work particularly well, leading to their initial importing of pre-ground unpeated malt from the mainland.

Both Burns and whisky are global Scottish icons and we aim to promote this new bottling around the world. To taste it had a dry sweetness to start, quickly becoming fruity and syrupy before tailing off into a spicy wood finish.

There’s ginger, black pepper and star anise, as well as background notes of caramel and toffee, a dried orange finish and some mellow smoke. When making an Old Fashioned, you want a whisky with a touch of honeyed sweetness, notes of orange zest and plenty of complexity. I’d spoken briefly to Céline at The Whisky Lounge London event, Arran being the first stand I went to, and was rather taken by her excellent scots/french accent so was keen to wander along to hear more and also learn about one of my favourite distilleries.I will hopefully have a copy of Dominic’s book appearing early next year as a thankyou for signing up for the regular sets and there are tales of bonus drams making their way out as well – I’m looking forward to seeing what happens. This is part of a limited run of 6300 bottles, but the cask finishes they tried was so popular that they’ve decided to compliment the growing Arran range with 3 of them as regular bottlings – Port, Sauternes and Amarone (a wine that I’d not heard of, made using partially dried grapes to concentrate the flavour).