Whisky round-up: awards, auctions, new releases, and more

Peter Ranscombe unwraps a bumper round-up of light-hearted news, releases, and more from the world of whisky.

ANNANDALE distillery is toasting a brace of prizes from the Scottish Enterprise Awards.

The Globe Inn on Dumfries’ high street, which the distillery took over in 2019, was named as the “best fine dining restaurant in South West Scotland”.

The distillery itself, which reopened in 2014 following a £10.5 million refit, took the “best single malt whisky distillery in Scotland” title.

Lee Medd, group marketing manager at Annandale distillery, said: “This is amazing news, and we are extremely proud of the work of our teams.”

News of the awards came as The Globe Inn revealed that its 1610 restaurant will also feature in the new Michelin Guide.

One of only 150 of the 500ml bottles filled from The Intrepid – the world’s largest bottle of whisky – will go under the hammer on Monday at an online sale hosted by Prestige Whisky Auction.

As well as the 500ml bottle and its wooden display case, the lot also includes a boxed miniature of the malt and a set of 12 autographed and framed digital prints by Sarah Crawley.

The prints – of explorers including Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, and Felicity Aston – featured on the label of The Intrepid, which sold for £1.1 million at an auction in May.

Prestige Whisky Auction believes its lot is the only one to include the prints, with bidding closing on 2 October.

He’s been at it again – Bill Lumsden, director of whisky creation at Glenmorangie, has come up with another unusual way of making Scotch.

Lumsden has revived the tradition of using botanicals when kilning the barley for his Highland single malt.

The result is “A Tale of the Forest”, which has juniper, pine, and wood smoke notes, and follows in the footsteps of “A tale of cake”.

Lumsden explained: “Every time I go into the woods where I live, I notice something new, be it the fragrance of last night’s rainfall or the sound of leaves rustling a particular way – I began to imagine how we could bring the forest to life in a whisky, by kilning barley with materials from woodland, the way our ancestors did.”

Shhhh… don’t mention the C-word…

Whisky features prominently this year in posh department store Fortnum & Mason‘s £250 spirits and liqueurs Advent calendar.

There are eight-year-old single malts from Blair Athol and Dailauine, plus a five-year-old Scotch from Caol Ila.

The Secret Garden distillery in Edinburgh also features with its honey and violet gin and its… oh no… CHRISTMAS gin.

Och well, we’ve dropped the C-bomb now, we may as well push on with some other new releases – including bottler Douglas Laing’s Big Peat Christmas edition blend from four Islay distilleries and Scallywag winter edition, which aged in oloroso and pedro ximinéz sherry butts.

The bottler has also unveiled a cask-strength limited-edition version of its Campbeltown malt Scotch whisky, The Gauldrons.

Peat is also on the mind of Billy Walker, who has concluded his trilogy of whiskies to mark his 50th anniversary in the business with his distillery’s first peated whisky – The GlenAllachie four-year-old future edition.

Meanwhile, over in the United States, bottler MaltyVerse has launched Agent W, a limited run of 550 bottles, each accompanied by a comic – the 30-year-old whisky comes from the defunked Cambus distillery.

Read more news and reviews on Scottish Field’s food and drink pages.

Plus, check out Blair Bowman’s whisky column in October’s luxury issue of Scottish Field magazine.