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Day 4 - KWM 2024 This Is Not An Advent Calendar – Ardnahoe 5 Year Inaugural Release

Posted on December 4, 2024

Day 4: Ardnahoe 5 Year Inaugural Release

By Evan

It isn’t every day that you get the opportunity to taste the first official release from an Islay Distillery.

Ardnahoe is the youngest of 10 currently operating distilleries on Islay to have released whisky. There are currently 10 operating Whisky Distilleries on Islay.

Here are the currently operating Islay Distilleries as of December 2024, listed based on founding date:

Bowmore — 1779
Ardbeg — 1815
Lagavulin — 1816
Laphroaig — 1820
Caol Ila – 1846
Bunnahabhain — 1880
Bruichladdich — 1881
Kilchoman — 2005
Ardnahoe — 2019
Port Ellen – 1825 / 2024

Port Ellen has yet to have whisky releases from its newly (re)built operation, though you can find some of their pre-1983 closure 40+ year old Single Malt Scotch around if you have the money for it… Perhaps the Port Ellen story is one we will get to delve into on a future KWM Not an Advent Calendar Tasting blog post a few years from now.

Not listed, but hopefully soon to be finished construction is Portintruan Distillery. This Islay distillery was expected to begin production in late 2024. Unfortunately, the construction company in charge of the build for this new Islay distillery entered receivership in September 2024 which has put at least a temporary wrench in the works. Hopefully things will get sorted and back on track for Portintruan soon.

Let's get back to Ardnahoe. The distillery resides on the North East Coast of Islay. It is about a 10-minute drive North from Caol Ila distillery and also the Port Askaig ferry landing. Bunnahabhain distillery is a 5-minute drive away to the North. The Isle of Jura and its famous Paps can be seen from Ardnahoe Distillery on clear-ish days, lying just to the east across the Sound of Islay; the straight of seawater that separates Islay and Jura.

Ardnahoe Distillery is owned by indie bottler Hunter Laing – a company which has an interesting history.

Hunter Laing was founded in 2013 by chairman Stewart Hunter Laing and his sons Andrew and Scott. Hunter Laing came to being from a dividing of assets owned by the company Douglas Laing & Co, which Stewart and his brother Fred Laing Jr. had operated together since Fred Laing Sr. – their father passed away in 1984.

(Stewart Laing (middle) with his sons' Andrew (left) and Scott (right)).

Brothers' Stewart and Fred Jr. quietly – or not so quietly – didn’t really along, which is what led the two to go their separate ways in 2013. Stewart Laing took with him some brands created at his former company such as Old Malt Cask and Old &am...

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Day 3 - KWM 2024 This Is Not An Advent Calendar - Boutique-Y Blended Grain 30 Year Old

Posted on December 3, 2024

Day 3: That Boutique-Y Whisky Company Blended Grain 30-Year-Old

By Evan

Day three is here, and already there may be cracks showing in the lineup order for our first five-day recap tasting! We started with a 55% ABV big and bold peated sherry bomb, then went for a softer 21-year-old bottling with a creamy hit of peat and salt and fruit. Is now really the time for a 30-year-old unpeated grain whisky? It sure is!

Say hello to That Boutique-Y Whisky Company Blended Grain 30-Year-Old!

You can blame me for this one. I championed this bottle being part of our Advent Calendar Whisky tastings because it showcases three big points for me:

It is a well crafted whisky. Pretty much every bottling from That Boutique-Y Whisky Company that I have tried has been.
It is a great value. This is 30 Year Old Scotch Whisky that sells for under $150!
It comes in a full-sized bottle! One thing that has turned many off from That Boutique-Y Whisky Company’s releases in the past is that they are only available in smaller 500ml bottles. This 30-Year-Old Blended grain is part of a series of regular releases from TBWC that bucks that trend.

I could be wrong, but I think this is the first Blended Grain Scotch we have ever featured in an Advent Calendar Tasting. We have had some Single Grain Scotch and Blended Whiskies from outside of Scotland in the past though. We usually feature them because they represent great value while also offering flavours and even textures different from your typical Single Malt. The reason for that is all about the grain used to produce it, and all about the still that makes it.

Some quick background for you: when a label says Single Malt Scotch, that means three things. Well, four things actually:

It was made at one single distillery.
The only grain used to make it was Malted Barley.
It was all produced using pot stills for the distillation.
It was distilled, matured, and bottled entirely in Scotland.

How does a Blended Grain Scotch differ, then? Let’s break it down:

Blended: It is a blend of whisky from different distilleries.
Grain: cereals other than Malted Barley can be used. Wheat and Corn or the most often used grains in this type of whisky production, but others can be used as well.

Like Single Malt Scotch, Single Grain and Blended Grain Scotch has to be distilled, matured, and bottled in Scotland.

One other thing that differentiates grain from malt is the still type used for distillation. Single Grain Scotch is mostly distilled using a column still which is a much more efficient method of distillation than pot stills. I believe you could technically make Grain whisky by running it through a Pot Still, but that isn’t frequently done in Scotl...

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Day 2 - KWM 2024 This Is Not An Advent Calendar - Benromach 21 Year Old

Posted on December 2, 2024

Day 2: Benromach 21-Year-Old

By Evan

It is hard to believe, but this may be the first time we have had a bottling of Benromach in one of our Advent Whisky Calendars or Advent Whisky Calendar tastings. We may have had the Benromach 10 Year mini bottle in the KWM Whisky Advent Calendar way back in 2014 or 2015, but that was before my time at KWM and I cannot find record of it. Even if we did feature a Benromach way back then, not having done so since is a pretty glaring omission that we are well overdue on correcting.

Benromach Distillery was originally founded in 1898 by the Benromach Distillery Company. The distillery did not actually start production until 1900 due to lack of funds, and then shut down again later that year. It also suffered a closure between 1931 and 1937, but beyond that, it was in relatively steady operation other than changing hands sporadically ownership-wise. It did not survive the Great Distillery Cull of 1983, when it was mothballed by then owners DCL. That would have been all she wrote for the distillery, but a decade later things got really interesting. In 1993 Benromach Distillery was purchased by independent bottler Gordon & MacPhail.

While G&M wasn’t the first indie bottler to get into operating a distillery of their own, this move now seems like an early look at what we have now seen from many other indie bottlers. Having your own distillery allows you to diversify and have a little more control over your own destiny. It gives you an ongoing supply of spirit and whisky that you can bottle yourself and/or trade with other companies for other whisky stock to use in your own indie releases and blends. Oddly enough, few indie bottlers that also operate a distillery seem to want to share their own whisky…

The purchase of Benromach wasn’t the first time Gordon & MacPhail attempted to get into the distilling business. 40+ years prior in 1950, G&M company head John Urquhart placed a bid to purchase the highly regarded Strathisla Distillery. That bid apparently lost by one thousand pounds to Seagram's. Imagine how different the whisky world would be if had managed to purchase the venerable Strathisla Distillery at that time? The distillery is one of, if not the most important component in Chivas Regal which is the third best-selling Scottish Blend in the world behind only Ballentine’s and Johnnie Walker.

Enough of that, though. After purchasing Benromach in 1993, G&M spent 5 years carefully revamping the distillery to their standards before finally reopening it in 1998. G&M’s intent from day one of purchasing the distillery was to make the style of Benromach’s spirit and whisky are a throwback to a bygone era. Much of this is managed with the use of a lightly peated malt for their whisky production. Benromach is one of the ...

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Day 1 - KWM 2024 This Is Not An Advent Calendar - Signatory Orkney (HP) 18 Year Old

Posted on December 4, 2024

Day 1 - Signatory Orkney HP 18 Year

By Evan

Here we are! It is finally time to break into our stripped down (for your pleasure) 2024 KWM This is Not An Advent Calendar! After months of trials and tribulation and assorted nonsense with getting this all put together and built, we can now start tearing all of this hard work apart. Our KWM staff put a lot of work in rushing to get these all ready - so thank you to Harmony, Sammy, Curt, Nataliia, Shawn, Chris, Terry, Andrew, Eli, Geoff, Hannah, Marnie, Connie, Marty, and Rachael for making this happen. Andrew as always put in a lot of hours in sourcing the graphics and bottles and making this all happen, and Harmony did a tremendous amount as well in making sure it all was built to spec.

Now it is up to you and I to take up the incredibly gruelling task of discussing and tasting all of these drams!

But first, let's start with a brief overview of the whisky calendar tasting kit series in front of you. Its creation is a bit of a long story, which I will attempt and fail to make short due to my love for words and an inflated self-importance over the things that I write. Here is a bit of background:

For the 2022 Whisky Calendar and those we had built in years prior to that, we had chosen to select and source pre-made mini bottles of whisky from a variety of whisky companies and importers. We curated the lineup, but we could only include whisky that was available in this format.

Last year, for our 2023 Whisky Calendar, we broke the mould that we had used for nearly a decade. We did something we had started doing during Covid. Back in December 2021, the AGLC published rules which allowed for sample bottles to be poured and used for tasting purposes. It limited the size of sample poured to a maximum of ½ oz or 28ml poured in the case of spirits. That was fine by us, because that was the amount we poured for in store tastings, and it allowed us to start offering virtual tastings on the regular. We decided to build our 2023 Whisky Calendar into a tasting set because of this as well. We already had been doing 5 day recap tastings since the 2022 whisky calendar anyhow, so there was no change there. Pouring our own tastings samples for the Whisky Calendar allowed us to fully take the reins on what we sourced for the Calendar as well. We no longer had to rely on what was available or could be filled by companies into the mini bottle format, making it a completely KWM curated list of whisky.

That went incredibly well, up to the point where we received flack for the 2023 Whisky Calendar being a product and not a series of tastings. Back to the drawing board for 2024 then!

And here we are. There is no doubt what you have in front of you is Not an Advent Calendar. It is a series of tastings. It even says so on the box. So, hopefully you are here to ...

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Welcome to the Kensington Wine Market 2024 This Is Not An Advent Calendar - The Full Monty - All 5 Whisky Advent Tastings

Posted on December 9, 2024

*NOTE: If you have one of our Not An Advent Calendar Tastings set or kit and did not receive the email for the Day 1-5 Virtual Recap tasting that took place on Thursday, December 5th, please let us know.

Evan's Blog posts:

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
YouTube Video — Not an Advent Calendar Five Day Recap Tasting set #1
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9

If you are looking to purchase KWM's 2024 This Is Not An Advent Calendar tasting set, please go here to purchase, or read on below for more information.

Welcome to the Kensington Wine Market 2024 This Is Not An Advent Calendar

- The Full Monty -

All 5 Whisky Advent Tastings

Each of the 5 boxes is its tasting kit, for events we will be hosting over Zoom as well as livestreaming on Facebook, December 5, 10, 15, 20, & 27, at 7 PM MT.

The tasting kits show the date and time of the respective tasting, as well as a QR code to link directly to the tasting on Zoom. We will also be emailing the links to the purchaser the day before the tasting as a reminder. For those who don’t use Zoom, you will also be able to view a livestream on the Kensington Wine Market Facebook page. The tastings will also be loaded on to our YouTube page a day or two after the event. The first tasting is December 5th at 7 PM MT.

Inside each box, you will find five 28ml bottles filled with whisky from Scotland, and around the World, labelled #1 to #5. The name and age of each whisky is redacted to preserve an element of surprise. If you can’t wait for the tastings to learn about the whisky, there are several ways to find out which whisky you are sampling:

By checking our Instagram & Facebook pages.
By checking the KWM Blog every day, December 1st to 25: you can follow along as we share each whisky’s distillery information and tasting note on our blog: www.kensingtonwinemarket.com/blog
By scanning the QR Code on the bottle.

In this first tasting kit there is also a KWM This Is Not An Advent Calendar Discount Card, valid now through the end of 2025.

We encourage comments and feedback, and would love for you to share your thoughts and photos with us via social media:

#KWMNotAnAdventCalendar

Instagram: @kwmwhisky & @kensingtonwm

Facebook: @kensingtonwinemarket

We hope these whiskies lift your spirits this season, and that you enjoy what we like to call 25 Days of Dram Fine Whisky!

Slàinte!

Andrew Ferguson

Kensington Wine Market

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