Whisky's new world order

Ten years ago, whisky was something old men sipped by fires, made almost exclusively in Scotland by people who claimed to have been making whisky the same way for 20 generations.

Flash forward to 2010 and the whisky industry has been invigorated by a host of whisky distilleries springing up in the most unlikely places. Much to the chagrin of the Scots, a surprising number of these whiskies are extremely good, and we should know - we’ve been working with one of the most established brands, Penderyn, for a good few years now. We never get bored of seeing someone’s face light up when they take their first sip of Aur Cymru – that’s ‘Welsh Gold’ to you and me.

However, for all the good things the experts say about Penderyn, we still find people need to taste it for themselves. To make this easier, we’ve been putting free bottles of whisky behind some of London’s best bars to keep Londoners warm, but we recognise that there’s still a mistrust of world whisky in general, which is why we decided to put on an event with the best whiskies from around the world to challenge those perceptions.

Firstly, we invited renowned whisky expert and author of The Whisky Bible, Jim Murray to host the event. As someone who takes a truly unprejudiced view of the whisky world, Jim is ideally placed to extol the virtues of our guest whisky brands. When it came to the guest whiskies, we made sure that the invited brands were not only exceptional in their own right, but also held in high regard by Jim Murray. Amrut, from India, presented their ‘Fusion’ expression, a whisky that has been awarded 97 points in The Whisky Bible; and we were also joined by the Belgian Owl, whose Single Malt Spirit aged 44 Months expression, with 95.5 points, is everything you’d expect of the finest scotch but comes in modern, cool packaging.

When someone’s really passionate about something, people watching can’t help but become enthusiastic themselves, and the lucky journalists and bloggers (including writers from Imbibe Magazine, Bar, Love Food Love Drink and The Arbiturian) were captivated by Jim, and, of course, the whisky. Despite Jim’s insistence that we spit the first few we tried to really appreciate the flavours, I doubt anyone left completely sober at the end of the evening...

So, it went very well. So well in fact that there’s already talk of us doing one next year. If you want to come along, drop an email to luke@welsh-whisky.co.uk and we’ll see what we can do...