Not exactly winter news, but in mid-October, Spirits Business reported the beginning of production at the Dunphail distillery, in Morayshire. Created by the owners of England’s Bimber distillery, Dunphail is one of the relatively few distilleries to crop up on Speyside in the midst of the current boom in the Scotch industry (so far, the Lowlands have been the greatest beneficiary).

….That said….Ballindalloch, a small farm distillery in the heart of Speyside, quietly released an inaugural range of bottlings sometime in the late fall. To my knowledge, the 50cl bottles were only released at the distillery.

The second of Edinburgh’s two new distilleries also released an inaugural bottling in the late fall. After Holyrood’s release of Holyrood Arrival in early October, Bonnington released its first single malt in January, although it very quickly sold out from the select specialty retailers that had stock.

Early this year, Pernod-Ricard has beefed up their Scotch offerings, with a special bicentennial  version of their flagship Glenlivet 12 year old. Bottled at a less-than-special 43% abv, it is, to my knowledge, available only through Whisky Exchange, now a subsidiary of Pernod-Ricard. 

Somewhat more excitingly, they’ve added two new whiskies to the Longmorn range, an 18 year old and a 22 year old, both bottled at cask strength and with a very welcome integrity presentation. The prices are a little less exciting (MSRP being $270 and $430, respectively), but not entirely unreasonable for well-aged whiskies that check all the right boxes.

While we’re on a Pernod kick: it’s not exactly news, but somewhere in the fine print of their deal with the Singh brothers to buy Whisky Exchange, they relinquished control of the Tormore distillery to the Singhs. Given Pernod’s generally abysmal management of their malt portfolio (from the perspective of the malt connoisseur moreso than their shareholders, I’d say), this is good news.

Finally, the moment has arrived at last…or at least soon will arrive: Diageo has finally come close to putting the finishing touches on their restoration of the long-moribund Port Ellen distillery on Islay. To celebrate the facility’s imminent reopening, they are launching two 44 year old expressions dubbed “Gemini”. If you happen to have a spare $50,000 or $60,000, they can be yours if you act fast (there are only a couple of hundred sets on offer).