
This is a whisky designed to be paired with steak, and is quite good even if the previous year’s Guinness Cask Edition was just a bit better. In fact, he’s such a fan that he has collaborated on several releases with the distillery, including the recent Offerman Edition: Charred Oak Cask Aged 11 Years. Lagavulin is a very smoky Islay single malt with legions of fans, and one of them happens to be actor and author Nick Offerman. Shop Reserve Bar Shop Drizly Shop The Whisky Exchange Highland Park does not add coloring to its whisky.

There are many other Norse-themed bottles from Highland Park to explore, with age statements ranging up to 50 years. The third batch of this NAS, non-chill filtered whisky was recently released, bottled at 64.1 percent ABV (slightly more than batch 2) with big notes of smoke, vanilla, and honey on the palate. Another new and really flavorful addition to the family is the Cask Strength expression. consists of 12 (Viking Honour), 15 (Viking Heart), and 18-year-old (Viking Pride) whiskies, all of which do a nice job of balancing smoke with rich dried fruit flavors. The whisky is generally moderately peaty and matured mostly in sherry-seasoned casks, with bourbon barrels used for a few expressions as well. Highland Park is known for a few things that are unique within the scotch whisky industry-namely, its fixation on all things Viking and its remote Orkney location, which makes it Scotland’s northernmost distillery (it beats Scapa by about a mile). No color is added to these delicate and flavorful whiskies, which are complex enough for seasoned drinkers but simultaneously suitable for newcomers to scotch. Most recently, The Sixteen was reintroduced to the lineup for the first time since 2016. Last fall, the second edition of Malting Season was released, which is made using barley malted inhouse at the distillery, along with a new edition of Smoke Season, the distillery’s most heavily peated whisky. But there’s a lot more that goes into these excellent single malts as well as far as the range of casks used for maturation, including ex-bourbon, sherry, port, virgin oak, and rum. As you can guess, one of each is peated, the other is not. The most accessible and affordable whiskies are simply and directly named - The Original Ten and The Smoky Ten, The Twelve and the Smoky Twelve. The core lineup was relaunched with new bottle designs, names, and expressions a couple of years ago. It’s also one of the few distilleries that still does its own floor maltings, albeit occasionally, in which the barley is germinated and then dried onsite before distillation (this is usually done by malting houses nowadays). There are so many to choose from (over 130 and counting), but here are 15 of the best single malt scotch distilleries making whisky right nowīenRiach isn’t the best known scotch distillery, but it is really quite interesting and produces some fantastic whisky.

Pepper, go for it (but maybe also give the whisky a try on its own as well). Hell, if you want to mix a $300 bottle of whisky with Diet Dr. Whisky is supposed to be fun, so don’t listen to anyone who says you shouldn’t add ice or you have to add water to enjoy your dram properly. Whatever type of whisky you choose to drink, remember that there’s no right or wrong way to enjoy it.

Regardless, the distilleries that don't use coloring at all in their whiskies will proudly and loudly let this be known. Some people are staunchly against this, believing it affects the character of the whisky, while others argue that it makes no noticeable difference. (Peat is measured in ppm, or parts per million the higher the ppm, the smokier the whisky will be.) Legally, a small amount of caramel coloring can be used for color consistency in single malts. While Islay in particular is known for using peat in the malting process, which gives its whisky that smoky flavor, the majority of scotch is not smoky at all. There are five or six different whisky regions in Scotland, depending on who you ask, each with its own character-Lowlands, Speyside, Highlands, Campbeltown, Islay, and (sometimes) Islands. And blended malt is a blend of malt whiskies, with no grain whisky included. Blended scotch, on the other hand, is a combination of malt and grain whisky that usually comes from many different distilleries. So a bottle of Glenfiddich 12, for example, may be a blend of a few hundred barrels, but all of them come from the Glenfiddich distillery, and the 12-year-old age statement refers to the youngest whisky in the mix. A quick primer on the differences between these different styles: "Single malt" means that the whisky comes from one distillery and is made from 100-percent malted barley.
