New Products & News

New Distillery Manager for Talisker

Diageo last month announced a new manager for its world-famous malt whisky distillery, Talisker, on the Isle of Skye.

Willie MacDougal will take over later this summer from Charlie Smith, who is retiring after a long and distinguished career in the whisky industry including spells as manager at Dufftown Distillery, Cardhu and Glenkinchie before spending three years at Talisker.

Willie spent six years at Oban then in 2006, after a brief spell outside the company, he moved to Blair Athol Distillery in the picturesque town of Pitlochry, while actually living at Dalwhinnie, the Highland distillery in the Classic Malts Selection.

All of us here at the Whisky Exchange would like to wish Charlie a long and happy retirement and thank him for some great whisky.  We would also like to congratulate Willie and wish him the best of luck in his new role.

You lucky people - it's a whole heap of new malts in our famous 'Single Malts of Scotland' range!!  We have definitely got something for everyone with these new releases, with malts from every region in Scotland. 

If you like your heavily-sherried Speysides, check out the Aultmore, Linkwood and Glenlivet;  for the Islayphiles, well, where can I start?  We have new bottlings of Bunnahabhain, Caol Ila, Bowmore & Laphroaig - and peat fans should definitely take a look at our Ardmore, it's a beauty. 

On top of all that, we've released three more of our famous Clynelishes - and there's the small matter of a forty-year-old Balblair too.  Oh, and Rosebank, Sprinkbank and Highland Park.  Phew!

Welcome to our New Products & News page!

Here you can see all the hottest new lines as they arrive in our warehouse.  We will also be using this page to keep you up to date with all the latest news in the whisky world, so if you have any exciting info you want to share, let us know.

We're kicking off this page in style with a load of recently released indies from our friends at Douglas Laing.  In the Old Malt Cask range there's a raft of releases from less well-known distilleries (as well as the obligatory new Port Ellen).  These include a terrific Dufftown 1977 which is well worth a look.

Also from Douglas Laing we have some new Platinum Selection releases. Brora, Port Ellen, Highland Park, Caol Ila - quite a line-up (and all very old too), and with a very interesting-looking aged Imperial as well, you can see why we're getting hot under the collar down at TWE central.  Click on any Platinum Collection product on the left for tasting notes supplied by DL.  You'll also find our tasting notes for the Brora and the Caol Ila. 

Tasting notes are going to be a new feature on the TWE website, and we'll be adding more and more as time goes on.  They could be from ourselves, the producers, bottlers, independent commentators - or even from you!  All customer reviews submitted for any of our products will be considered for inclusion on the site, so if you know a great product (or a rubbish one), get onto TWE and tell the world.  Try not to swear too much, though - we can't use anything pottymouthed.

Finally, we have trio of new bourbons.  Aficionados will be well aware of Four Roses, this new release is a Small Batch version, vatted from a hand-picked selection of four 'original and proprietary Bourbons' according to the blurb.  Not sure if that means four casks only, but we're sure it'll be good.

Along with the brand new (to us), great value Joshua Brook 8yo, we also have a real treasure:  George Dickel Barrel Select.  This is a vatting of ten casks picked by Distiller John Lunn at Tennessee's 'other' distillery and, given that the 'normal' George Dickel No.12 is absolutely beautiful in its own right, this stuff should be amazing.