Scotland – Day 4: Through the Grapevine
Up early once again. Still can't get through an entire night yet.
While it's great to be away researching and learning more about our industry, there's still a retail world we're responsible for back in California. What's been happening at K&L in our absence?
- Green Spot Irish Whiskey came in. And then it went right back out again. We're trying to get some more for early next week. I think we sold about 200+ bottles in a matter of hours, but I haven't been able to check since coming to Islay.
- We've got our first of a handful of new Elijah Craig 12 barrels in stock at all locations now. If you didn't hear us say it before, Heaven Hill is no longer offering EC12 as part of their single cask program with retailers, so we took the last few available. It's great stuff.
- Bryan Davis from Lost Spirits in Salinas, CA has a new Leviathan single malt release called 111 set for delivery next week. I haven't tasted it, but I'm sure it's very true to character. Bryan doesn't often stray from who he is. Watch for that on Tuesday/Wednesday.
What's our plan for today? Well, things have changed a bit. I haven't seen any mention of it online, but Bladnoch distillery is no longer in the hands of the Armstrong brothers. I heard from both Raymond and Colin on Friday and they've allowed a liquidator to come in and take control of the company. We were set for our appointment Tuesday to select new casks, but we're not sure if the new director is on board with the idea yet. That remains up in the air at the moment.
Our next appointment isn't until this evening in Glasgow, so we're going to do some day tripping to a few whisky locations on the way back for young Kyle's professional growth.
I didn't get to it yesterday, but we swung by Bruichladdich to say hello to our friends at the distillery and learned they have yet to begin distilling in 2014. Apparently they're replacing some of their ancient copper equipment and have yet to get the distillery back up and running since moving forward with the repairs. From what we heard, completion of the project is still a ways off, so it might be a while before they can get going again. This surprises me because every other distillery I've visited is currently pumping out whisky 24/7 to meet the demand of the current market. With Remy's deep pockets it seems like they would want to invest in speeding things along.
Huh.
-David Driscoll