Day one of our trips to Scotland started as usual, with us getting on the boat from IJmuiden to Newcastle. A rather rough night at sea but somehow we got some sleep and arrived semi on time at the harbour in Newcastle. Quickly off the boat, we headed West onto the boring A69. At the…
Category: stills
No Guts, No Glory – Wagging Finger distillery
On the brink of our latest adventure into Scotland, we decided to visit the youngest distillery in the Netherlands. In Deventer – one of the oldest Hanseatic cities in the Netherlands, the Wagging Finger distillery is put together with a lot of experimenting, love and passion, is already operational and bottling their first batch of…
Just act normal, that’s crazy enough… – Kalkwijck distillery
The Netherlands. According to some, cradle of the modern spirits. Aged and unaged Jenevers, Gins, Corenwines, Maltwines, Vieux and sweet liquors, and for almost two decades already, there are also some quite decent Dutch whiskies on the market. Discovering the world of whisky, we – as many whisky enthusiasts, started with Scotland to explore…
Swords and Feathers
From the Newcastle ferry, where we – as many European Mainlanders – arrive with our own car, it is an almost straight West when following the whole A69 to Carlisle, where our route turns North following the M6, towards our beloved Scotland. It only takes very little time when we cross the river Sark, which forms…
Smokes on the water of life, and a bottle of rum
We have been to several festivals in the Netherlands and love finding new festivals to go to and discover. At most events we find the same tables and selections of whiskies, and the only difference seems to be a bigger or smaller location. After a while, there is less and less to discover whisky-wise, and…
Maltstock 2015
Warning This lengthy article covers many of the relaxed events happening at Maltstock 2015. It may cause a relaxed jealousy, start you (relaxedly) drinking whisky or trigger uncontrolled (but very relaxed) urges to purchase relaxed tickets for the next edition (here) After the 2014 event, we (as everybody else) were offered a €25,- discount per…
The Sleeping Beauty..?
You know the feeling when starting something and just not getting it to complete satisfaction? It just seems not to “do” what you want it to “do”? For us, this happened to what we experienced the morning after the Benelux release of “the Beast of Dufftown” in Brussels, where we had a chat with…
The Speyside Incident
This is what we called it amongst ourselves for the last year because the Police had asked us not to talk about the incident online (close to impossible for bloggers, we tell ya) until the perpetrator was caught, and here is our breaking news from earlier today: Ladies and Gentlemen: they’ve got ‘em! The guy…
Benromach – touch, feel, smell and experience…
Recently we received a set of samples from the Benromach Distillery, their lovely 10 years old and the Organic 2008. The 10 years old consists of whisky from 80% ex-Bourbon barrels, 20% ex-Sherry hogsheads and had a final finishing year in first fill ex-Oloroso casks. The Organic 2008 is a certified Organic whisky from…
A Sensory trip through the Seasons with Martine Nouet
After an amazing 10 course opening dinner we told you all about in an earlier post, we had some more food and whisky combinations during the Whisky Festival Noord Nederland. We were lucky enough to have obtained tickets to another of Martine Nouet‘s masterclass where she paired eight different bites – four sweet and four…
Whats cooking…?
Almost two years ago we made our first quick visit to Zuidam Distillers in Baarle Nassau, in the south of the Netherlands. Plans to go back to them were made a while ago already, and we were looking forward to seeing the place again with their new stills added to the distillery and other…
WFNN 2015 opening dinner
The earlier mentioned WFNN tenth anniversary opening dinner was in one word; fantastic. As we might have hinted on some occasions, we are experimenting with food and whisky for some time already, in order to find what fits well in combination with one another. We got tipped that the organisation had planned a ten-course…
WhiskySpeller 