March 2026 - part 2 <--- April 2026 - part 1 ---> Current entries

April 5, 2026

Cognacs for Easter

In short: cognacs. For this Easter Sunday, we decided to return to a few cognacs, some of which we hope may prove rather spirited. And so we begin with this traditional little apéritif from days gone by…

Since we’re in VSOP territory…

We should bear in mind that these VSOPs are still young. It’s much the same in whisky or rum, when you see “old” or “vieux” on a label, it generally indicates that the liquid is in fact quite young. On we go…

Right, let’s move on vertically, but first, we welcome a guest…

One last little one, we’ll come to the older vintages, much older ones, next time…

Au revoir, Joyeuses Pâques, stay tuned.

Check the index of all cognacs we've tasted

April 4, 2026

Interview

So what’s Mike ‘Lagavulin’ Nicolson up to these days?

On 25 May 2024, we put back up on these pages an interview with Mike Nicolson, originally done in 2004, just after the retirement of the legendary former Lagavulin manager and host of the Malt Advocate Course at Royal Lochnagar. We’ve kept in touch since, and as the man’s never short of a word, we thought we’d throw a few extra questions his way. Not necessarily linked, mind, so please take what follows more as a loose collection of questions than a proper, neatly structured interview.

Mike, for our younger readers, or those whose memory’s been wiped out by a few too many no-age-statement malts finished in Mizunara+Zinfandel, could you remind us, in a few words, who you actually are?

Well, a man from another time, I guess. Someone lucky enough to have spent nearly sixty years in and around malt whisky. Someone whose earliest childhood memory is being left by his holiday bound parents at the home of the manager of Glenlossie Distillery, my Grandfather. Must have been 1950 maybe 51? To the surprise of some, myself included, they came back, and carried me home to Glen Elgin, not a million miles away, where Paw was manager. Having presumably prospered in malt distillery management he crossed the great divide into grain whisky as the manager of Cameron Bridge in Fife and later Port Dundas in Glasgow, where I was brought up, which probably explains both my “conservative” attitude to financial matters and my bad attitude. Fast forward nearly twenty years and employment was secured with the entity that morphed into the Diageo of today. Their training allowed me to spend time at a large number of their units and ultimately led me to manage five of them, Glenkinchie, Blair Athol, Caol Ila, the mighty Lagavulin and Royal Lochnagar. Thirty-six years in total but it seemed like ten. A fortunate man methinks, to have the good luck to have a rich, varied and fulfilling career making my homeland’s signature liquids.

With a career like that, 14 distilleries over 36 years, you must have a whole bagful of stories, each more colourful than the last, as well as a few deeper reflections you’ve picked up along the way…

Oh, Serge, couldn’t I have a question that I can respond to with a pithy one-liner? Of course, there is an endless list of memorable incidents like ‘the yellow whisky”, the great flood” or alternatively, “the water’s run out”, or “the still that wouldn’t boil” but the most memorable thing by far is the people who helped me make it. In addition to their production duties folks that were in other lives, thieves, amateur psychologists, folk singers, owners of Divinity degrees (not too many of them), psychiatric cases, teachers, fishermen, policepersons, crofters, students of human nature, former explosive experts, people who wished they were doing something else like gamekeeping or running a scrap metal yard. The Frenchman with no toes, the one-eyed sparkie, someone called “W” and singled out for special mention, is the head Maltman who saved my life one morning. My list is small and inadequate, but how many people do you meet in nearly forty years? What I find remarkable is the tolerance that allowed, usually in groups of no more than thirty, us all to get on and get the job done.

Speaking of jobs, how does one become a Master Distiller, the job that might just be the most prestigious after being Dua Lipa’s personal assistant? And, in fact, how did you end up in that role yourself?

Absolutely no idea. There was no test, no interviews, no investitures in hallowed halls, no TV appearances, nothing. It was simply that after a significant period of time, people in my organisation started calling me it. Maybe everybody else died, or perhaps it had something to do with not getting caught. Hard to tell.

Right then, so for the past twenty years or so, you’ve been retired from Diageo, the biggest spirits company in the world.  But I know you haven’t completely stepped away from the whisky trade…

Ah, yes, retirement was the idea, but to be honest, I have been “dabbling”. I’ve been lucky enough to commission four distilleries since then. Two on Vancouver Island, Shelter Point and the award-winning Macaloney’s Island Distillery, Himalayan Distillery in Nepal and the curiously named Ceilidh Distillery in Longyan, which is in Fujian Province, China, and whose spirit I have high hopes for.

I had expected some domestic resistance to this behaviour, but it turns out that the Duchess is of the opinion that ‘it gets me out of the house’ which is a good thing, apparently.

We know plenty of enthusiasts and commentators would love to get taken on by distillers, or even work in a distillery. Back when you were in charge, how did you go about recruiting your staff, to hire the right people?

To hire the right people? Generally, I have found it best to let other people do it.

It was my habit to take a walk down to the canteen around lunch time, have a cup of tea and casually mention (like they didn’t already know) that we needed a mash man. Then, I’d Walk back to my office and wait for the phone to ring. Shortly thereafter, a small number of likely candidates would get in touch, and we would proceed to a conclusion.

In often small, rural communities who would know best of suitable candidates? Well, the people that live there surely, my boys in particular. Candidates would therefore come to me pre vetted in terms of skills, personality, motivation and in particular, how the “newbie” would fit into the existing crew, a worrisome aspect of recruitment for the boss.

They were rarely wrong.

Comforting too to know that we could achieve successful results without disturbing the Human Resources department from their jig saws and Pokémon.

The really mythical thing at Diageo, beyond the blue-chip distilleries, was the ‘Malt Advocate Course’ at Lochnagar. What was it, exactly? Was it really the place where you could drink Malt Mill to your heart’s content?

The Malt Advocate Course was an enlightened and groundbreaking initiative of Diageo’s Malt Whisky Marketing Team. An immersive, four-day course on Malts. The difference between this course and others was that they would tell the truth. The course content was designed by in house experts from the fields of production, maturation, quality control and sensory evaluation, focusing on how to make it, the reasons that malt whiskies taste the way they do, the differences, and how to maintain them. Held at Royal Lochnagar, occasional distillery visits and access to some superior casked whisky supported the “booklarnin’ “. The attendees were Diageo folks from all over the World, whisky writers, retailers, and those with influence in our World of Malt Whisky.

As host and contributor, this meant the opportunity to work with, amongst others, notable whisky persons including Charlie MacLean, Dr Nick Morgan, Dave Broom and Dr Jim Beveridge, the only downside being in the sleep deprivation department. The course’s success went beyond happy customers. With the passage of time, it was noticeable that the language in the “public square” progressively began to contain words and ideas not completely different from course content. We thus moved on from the “it’s that way because they never clean the cobwebs” school of thought.

About fifteen years ago, after loudly proclaiming that age statements were essential, right up to Chivas Bros’ famous ‘Look for the Number’ campaign in 2010, everyone suddenly started hiding the ages of certain whiskies, admittedly younger ones, though not always. Have age statements officially become overrated?

Not very comfortable with the “overrated “word Serge. If you think back to a time when Scotch Whisky was only known to the World as blended, then the age of the youngest component must have been big for the customer and the producers. For the consumers it would allay anxieties about quality and consistency in a world that gave them no way of measuring the liquid, up to that point, other than it came in a tartan box. The producers could enjoy these benefits in a commercial sense to promote customer loyalty and as a weapon to combat competing spirits whisky or otherwise. It’s one of the reasons we got so big. If we could go back to 1940 I’d be surprised if you could find me someone who thought age statements were a bad idea. It’s probably the reason that we’re not all drinking Tequila at New Year.

However, things are different now. Customer knowledge has increased exponentially, and questions are asked, properly, about the value of age statements in this day and age.

If I could reduce it to personal terms, you might ask me do you drink NAS? My answer would be, certainly. Why? Because I know, and I never hear this discussed, how much better blenders have become. Over the last thirty years there have been enormous scientific developments in research deepening our understanding of what exactly is going on in there, the cask that is. Couple that with the blenders expertise and experience means that it comes as no surprise to me that a composed liquid can be offered at younger age than once was the case

So, I feel less tense about no age statements than I used to, and I would encourage others to feel the same. Don’t get me wrong though, I still use numbers, they still have value for me. If I am considering spending two hundred (expletive deleted) dollars on a bottle of Lagavulin I need to know that it’s the sixteen and not the eight!

Times are clearly a bit tougher these days, yet barrel investment schemes still seem to be going strong. What do you make of them? What are your feelings about them?

Well as part of the problem really, directly or indirectly making contribution to price elevation. Pushing the price of Malt Whisky into the stratosphere, I have been reminded, has been good for my pension and I don’t wish to sound ungrateful but at the current levels it must give younger, perhaps new, consumers reason to pause and reconsider where the value is for them. If we believe what we read then, fairly imminently, the horizon is going to become dark with the advancing swarming hordes of young potential consumers on their electric bicycles clutching their digital wallets in their hot little hands and we should get ready.

My first reaction to this scenario is to remind myself that most of the swarming hordes live in other people’s basements so, I hope the business, in marketing terms, is looking after the basement owners because it’s going to be that way for a while. These young persons, we are told are different from we malt afficionados in that they crave variety, you know, raspberry today, tomorrow perhaps pineapple. They may well have been conditioned by the unrivalled success that the craft beer business has become, as evident by the large increase in vacant commercial property in my neighbourhood.

It's plain that significant change is required although I remain to be convinced that putting dragons on the box is the way to go. Nor am I greatly surprised that in spite of there now being orange on the label of my beloved Talisker10, it tastes exactly the same!

My concern is that, in what will doubtless be a mighty marketing effort, we lose sight of the dignity of our liquids which, to my mind, has played a critical role in how the business has developed and expanded over the last hundred years or so and will be lost at our peril. As for the “flexibility” of malts I’m reminded of that little Fischer Price plastic toy that provided hours of parental amusement watching junior try to hammer the star shape into the square one.

Blended whisky is another matter. For generations we have enjoyed the fruits of the modern-day wizards that we know as blenders who have provided us with a huge range of quality liquids at reasonable price. Change, innovation and professionalism are not strangers to them. It seems to me that there lies opportunity. Designing liquids, in the blended form, agreeable to the advancing hordes doesn’t seem too unreasonable to me without trashing the history, craftsmanship and success of our forefathers.

Quite a few distilleries, especially the newer ones, have built visitor centres, even if some are shutting them just now, at least temporarily, like Clynelish. But really, what makes a great visitor centre?

The people in it. Tour guiding is to my mind a greatly undervalued discipline. There can’t be many industries where the producer can walk out into the yard and meet the customers, every day. What an opportunity! It doesn’t really matter if your visitor centre is immaculately dressed with the right branding messages in all the right places, people will remember, above all else, who showed them round. Being able to recite the tour guide training manual has got little to do with a memorable tour experience. It’s the manner of delivery, involvement, personality and approachability of the guide that makes it. The Human Resources Department has yet to come up with a manual for that. Even if they did understand what I was talking about. Oh, I’m sorry, did I mention them before?

I hired a junkie once. This young man, in spite of his affliction, had a gift with communication in this arena and gave me two years of great work until, inevitably, things had to come to an end. My belated thanks to the many fine folks that helped me with this important but poorly managed function.

Everyone’s talking about AI, high tech, and enhanced production methods, but we also know that distilleries are full of little inherited quirks that can make all the difference. Do you remember that story about the method used to keep an eye on coal, for instance?

Ah well, that story pre-dates me a bit, but it endures, going back to the days when malt distilleries' energy source was coal, and they operated a five-day week. Back then, times were a lot tougher, wages were poor, and pilfering was endemic. The story concerns the lengths employees would go to avoid being selected to “paint the coal”.

Picture this: it’s Friday afternoon, and everyone is cleaning up in anticipation of the weekend. Since the distillery was in a quiet and often remote place surrounded by the workforce’s cottages it’s perhaps understandable that the manager might feel some anxiety about the security of his coal stacked in such a large pile in the yard, unsupervised, for the whole weekend. The answer? Select somebody, give him a bucket of lime and water mixture and instruct him to paint the coal, all of it.

Changing the colour of the coal mountain from the familiar black to white is interesting. What does it mean? It means that when the Manager shows up on Monday, and the coal heap is not completely white, then he can be pretty sure that some of his coal is not where it’s supposed to be, and an investigation can begin.

It’s curious to note that these days, when Corporations earn millions of dollars dispensing security advice, once upon a time, an effective security system was as simple as a coat of whitewash!

Just one last question, Mike: I imagine you’ve got some new, galaxy-scale plans and projects up your sleeve. Can you tell us a little about them, or is it all top secret? I promise neither the FSB, the CIA, nor Mossad are reading Whiskyfun, but careful, I can’t guarantee that the SWA or various other well-meaning AIs aren’t skimming it.…

Well, it might seem to be an ultimately hopeless endeavour to most people but, the majority of my energies these days, seem to be focussed on out living Keef.

April 3, 2026

Tremendous bourbons like you’ve never seen, the BEST BOURBONS IN THE ENTIRE WORLD!!!

Right. Well, indeed it was probably about time we once again sampled a little wheelbarrowful of American whiskies, picked at random from the stock. Starting with what may well be a bit of a joke. Slipknot? That heavy metal band that wears masks?

Important update: you should rather call that nu metal rather than heavy metal. Thanks Thomas.

Now then, here’s a bottle we’ve always loved, without ever having actually tasted it…

We’ll round off this little transatlantic journey by heading right to the far end of the West Coast, if that suits you…

Well, it was the oddly flat Old Crow that sort of came out on top, which still surprises us a little. Perhaps good old OBE shows through more clearly in a flat bottle, indeed? In any case, one can’t help wondering whether, with the current glut, quite a few people shouldn’t be rushing to re-rack into inactive casks, cognac-style (refill casks / fûts roux). Assuming, of course, that would be legal… Very active casks (and low ages) may well start to become a thing of the past… (and frankly, we’re not complaining!)

(Also, vielen Dank for the 'flat' one, Sebastian!)

Check the index of all American whiskies we've tasted

April 2, 2026

A Talisker Apology

It seemed only right that I should try to make amends for our rather pitiful April Fool’s joke yesterday, about which I am absolutely certain no one was taken in… were they? If that did happen to be the case, I offer my sincerest apologies to WM Cadenhead, to Diageo and Lagavulin, to any auction houses that may have been contacted in the meantime, as well as to the former workers of Malt Mill, assuming there are still a few of them alive and kicking!

In any case, the Talisker that follows is very much real, rest assured. In fact, it is being released onto the market today.

Check the index of all Talisker we've tasted

Serge's favourite recent bottling this month:
House of Hazelwood 36 yo ‘Queen of the Hebrides’ (43.4%, OB, The Legacy Collection, Islay blended malt, 274 bottles, +/-2024) - WF 92

Serge's favourite older bottling this month:
Balvenie 1965 ‘Over Proof’ (2.0 over proof, Robert Watson of Aberdeen, 26 2/3 fluid ozs., +/-1975) - WF 90

Serge's favourite bang for your buck this month:
Talisker 12 yo 2011/2024 (48.4%, Douglas Laing, Old Particular, Fanatical about Flavour, L19637, 150 bottles) - WF 91

Serge's favourite malternative this month:
Caroni 24 yo 1996-2019/2024 (62.4%, Velier, Rum Paradise #6, Trinidad, heavy, cask #5619, 115 bottles) - WF 93

Serge's thumbs up this month:
Auchroisk 34 yo 1991/2025 (44.4%, The Maclean Foundation, virgin oak, cask #572002, 248 bottles) - WF 90

Serge's Lemon Prize this month:
The Ileach ‘Ruby Port’ (48.5%, OB, for Germany, cask #25/0032) - WF 65

April 1, 2026

Tasting Malt Mill,
once more

Well, this is rather something. One had thought that the era of miraculous old-whisky discoveries, dusty Springbanks behind coal bunkers, pre-war blends under chapel stairs, forgotten flagons in Highland solicitors’ cupboards and the like, was now largely behind us.
And yet, here we are. A full case of six bottles of Malt Mill 1959 has just been discovered in the cellar of an old pub in Aberdeen, closed for at least thirty years and, one suspects, not exactly maintained in expectation of future archaeological interest. Quite how the case survived untouched for so long is anyone’s guess. Perhaps nobody knew what it was. Perhaps everybody knew exactly what it was. In whisky, both explanations are equally plausible.

The condition is nothing short of remarkable. The labels are beautifully preserved, the twist caps reassuringly intact, and while the levels are a little low (roughly top shoulder) one would be inclined to call that entirely honourable for bottles of this age. Frankly, if they had all been into the neck, one might have started worrying for entirely different reasons. Now, the truly delicious part: there are increasing indications that this Malt Mill 1959 may never actually have been commercially released. Not “very rare”, not “hard to find”, not “only seen in Japan in the early 1980s”, but possibly never released at all. Which would place it in that most dangerous of categories: whiskies that make collectors weak at the knees, auctioneers strangely lyrical, and otherwise sensible adults start using words such as “unicorn” without irony.

The story, as relayed by the heirs of the late publican, is that the case had lain undisturbed in the pub’s lower cellar for decades, in the company, one imagines, of mouldy ledgers, dead spiders, a few heroic cobwebs and perhaps the occasional regrettable bottle of 1970s advocaat. One bottle was eventually opened, and one can only hope this was done with the appropriate combination of reverence, greed and panic, and a sample was sent forthwith to Whiskyfun for evaluation. And naturally, we sprang into action with our usual sense of selfless amateurism. Some burdens one simply has to bear.

Casks of Malt Mill being loaded onto the puffer 'Pibroch' in the late 1950s or very early 1960s. Screen capture from a stunning documentary from Scottish Television. Check ' Islay Whisky Island Documentary' on YouTube.

As for the five remaining bottles, it would be foolish to pretend that one could estimate their market value with any serious confidence. Ghost distillery, 1959 vintage, immaculate provenance, possible unreleased status, and a story involving a shuttered Aberdeen pub? Frankly, the only honest valuation at this stage is: too much. Still, do keep an eye on the auction houses over the coming months, where one suspects these survivors may soon reappear beneath flattering lighting, breathless catalogue prose and estimates designed to make one briefly reconsider the utility of internal organs.

But all that can wait. The important question, as always, is not how much it might fetch under a hammer, but whether the old beast still has it where it counts. Let’s see.

With water: utterly majestic. Water does not diminish it; it liberates it. The smoke becomes more mineral, more chiselled, more coastal. Wet slate, crushed oyster shells, kippers in a silver dome, old engine oil, beach bonfire ashes, and a little coal dust. One also finds lanolin, sheep wool, and old tweed drying near a peat hearth. It gains a stunning “old Islay library” profile, if such a thing exists, and if it does, one would very much like the keys. Mouth (neat): oh, this is monumental. The arrival is dense, oily, and almost shockingly alive for such an old spirit. It doesn’t so much land on the palate as march across it in military boots dipped in tar. Enormous peat smoke, naturally, but not simple phenolic aggression, rather an old-world, resinous, earthy, medicinal peat, with astonishing tertiary depth. Tar liqueur, bitter herbs, black tea, old Pu-erh, cough syrup, liquorice root, clove cigarettes, pine resin, walnut skin, and salted liquorice all arrive in waves. Then come salted lemons, anchovy paste, bouillon, tobacco leaf, cracked black pepper, old leather, and smoked game. One keeps expecting the old age to have sanded away the structure, but no, it is still standing ramrod straight, like an elderly admiral who can still outdrink everyone in the room. And then, because whiskies of this sort are never content with one register, it begins to show little flashes of fruit and nobility: quince jelly, dried apricot, blood orange, over-steeped bergamot tea, and perhaps a touch of mango chutney gone gloriously savoury. There’s also a faint earthy sweetness, molasses, dark honey, pipe tobacco, but every time sweetness threatens to become central, the smoke returns and politely but firmly restores order. With water: a total old peat opera. It broadens and deepens, becoming even more saline, earthy, and medicinal. Camphor, eucalyptus lozenges, smoked tea, coal smoke, dried seaweed, and old-style herbal bitters. There is also a glorious umami side now, mushroom stock, game jus, smoked soy, marrow broth. One could almost eat this with a spoon, though that would probably be sacrilege. It also turns more “mechanical” in the noblest old-whisky sense: copper coins, mineral oil, old toolbox, warmed Bakelite, and a suggestion of antique machinery in a damp warehouse by the sea. Which sounds preposterous, but there it is. Finish: very long. In fact, almost suspiciously long, as if it had no intention whatsoever of leaving. The peat persists in dignified, old-fashioned layers: ash, coal smoke, tar, black tea, salted liquorice, menthol tobacco, and embers dying slowly in wet wind. A little citrus bitterness remains too, grapefruit pith, marmalade, preserved lemon , along with walnut oil and a final whisper of medicinal herbs. The aftertaste is gloriously old-school: smoky, dry, oily, slightly bitter, faintly salty, and profoundly aristocratic in its refusal to flatter. Comments: this is not simply a great old smoky whisky. It is one of those spirits that seem to have escaped from another civilisation altogether, one where malt was dirtier, peat was louder, warehouses were colder, and nobody had yet thought to make whisky “approachable.” It is gloriously uncompromising, deeply tertiary, and utterly haunting. There is a kind of grandeur here that modern peat almost never reaches: not just smoke, but old smoke, layered with waxes, oils, herbs, medicines, salts, books, cellars, and all the glorious detritus of age. A whisky that smells and tastes like memory set on fire. Not for everyone, naturally. Which is exactly why it is so wonderful (Serge!).
SGP: 478 - 97 points.

Check the index of all Malt Mill we've tasted

March 2026 - part 2 <--- April 2026 - part 1 ---> Current entries