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: tours and visits
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…
Clan MacMorland
Wullie & Gerie MacMorland When you are alive and breathing in the Netherlands and are in one form or the other enthusiastic about whisky and passionate about good food, there is a good chance you have heard about Wullie MacMorland from Hielander Scottish Restaurant in Alkmaar. Besides running the restaurant & whisky bar, he is…
Mouth of the River – Bunnahabhain distillery
On our earlier visits to Islay, we had already been to Bunnahabhain distillery, but somehow we had never come around to do a tour or stay longer than an hour or so to take the obligatory panorama picture at their pier, and walk to the wreck a little further on. Last year, we had the…
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…
Stand together, fight together
It is the beginning of July 2015, Wimbledon is in its final stage, the Formula-1 circus has landed in Silverstone, and here – in the Netherlands – the Tour the France is about to kick off during the hottest day recorded in years. This takes us to go mesmerizing about what we were doing only…
A lot of But(t)s, howevers and althoughs
Our first time in Scotland was only in 2012. In our fully packed two week programme we had managed to squeeze in a two-night stay in a (great) B&B, see all of the eight distilleries and fall in love with the Queen of the Hebrides: Islay. This was at the start of our journey, and…
#WhiskyFabric Gathering – Feis Ile 2015
Plans for the Feis Ile 2015 festivities were made over a year before, where online chats began about the 200th year celebrations of Ardbeg and Laphroaig and how cool it would be to be able to meet all of the #WhiskyFabric people on Islay. Most people we had met only online so far, and we…
WhiskySpeller 