Hello, Alex Martin here. It’s been nine months since our first newsletter, where I promised we would have a website in “the coming weeks”. But just like fine spirits, fine websites take a surprisingly large amount of time to make.
I’m pleased to say – for reals this time – we’re almost there, and we should have some good news for you very soon.
While we work hard on the final details, this week’s newsletter is a chance to look back at our best stories of 2026 so far. We’ve been around the world, spanning RTD cocktails created in an Australian garage to fruit brandy distilled in an English shed.
One thing connects them all: passionate people making great drinks. That’s what we’re here for.
Best of 2026 (so far)
The Dalmore Goes Private
Set against the windswept beauty of the Firth, the new experience positions The Dalmore not simply as a production site, but as a destination. The architecture reflects this shift. Contemporary yet sympathetic to its Highland surroundings, the space balances clean lines with tactile materials – wood, stone, and metal – echoing the interplay of spirit, oak, and time. Light is used deliberately, shifting throughout the day. A sundial in all but name. Subtle, but ever-present.
Inside, the experience unfolds in carefully considered stages, and crucially, at the guest’s pace. Each visit is private and bespoke. “You’ll never be on a tour with a stranger,” explains The Dalmore’s global specialist Craig Swindell. “The maximum we host is eight, but if it’s just one or two of you, that’s all the tour will be.” It’s a small detail, but a telling one.
The format rejects the traditional linear distillery tour. Instead, this is closer to a whisky-based “choose your own adventure”. Guests shape the experience around their interests, from technical deep dives in the stillhouse, extended discussions on history, or a focus on maturation. “Because each experience is bespoke, we can focus on any area,” Swindell notes. The result is immersive without feeling prescriptive; an experience that unfolds rather than dictates.
For bartenders and drinks obsessives, vintage bottles of spirit offer something that modern-day drinks brands can’t recreate. Production methods have evolved and ingredients have changed (sometimes even been banned!). Vermouths once made with richer wine bases, bitters blended with now-restricted botanicals; liqueurs produced before recipe reformulations, are only available through the few surviving vintage bottles.
Not only do they showcase how aromas and flavors have morphed over time, but texture and color too. And let’s not gloss over how beautiful (and sometimes not beautiful) these bottles can be. From floating corks and frayed Walgreens stickers to leaky lids and kitsch branding, the lives these bottles have lived – especially compared to their modern-day counterparts – are plain to see.
On the eve of Paris Fashion Week, Jarrod Scott is preparing for the usual chaos of photoshoots and runway shows. It’s a routine he’s well versed in, having worked at the top of the modeling industry for more than a decade, fronting campaigns for Givenchy, Jean Paul Gaultier, and Chanel.
Yet when we meet over a video call, I get the feeling his modeling career is at the back of his mind. Instead, our conversation turns to harvesting seaweed, tracking down rare eucalyptus and the differences between rose and jasmine when they hit the tongue.
“‘Cognac is very expensive, cognac is for old men, cognac is for rappers.’ Everyone has a preconceived notion about what cognac is, but very few people have tasted anything outside one of the Big Four.”
That’s Amy Pasquet from Jean-Luc Pasquet, a small producer in Grande Champagne that specializes in organic viticulture. Amy and her husband, Jean, grow grapes, make wine, distil eaux-de-vie, and age cognac on their land. This is what we mean when we talk about single estate cognac.
The Big Four – Hennessy, Remy Martin, Martell and Courvoisier – are responsible for as much as 90% of all cognac sales, titans compared to Jean-Luc Pasquet. This enviable market share means that they have enormous sway over the way cognac is perceived the world over.
When I call Barney Wilczak on a particularly grim February afternoon, he’s been handling quince, pears, and apples to make his cult-loved Capreolus eaux-de-vie.
An often-underutilized spirit category, eaux-de-vie (a fruit brandy) is traditionally found in countries like Germany, France, Switzerland and Austria. Unaged, double distilled and designed to capture a single fruit, it is a spirit that has varied in quality and popularity over the centuries.
But when Wilczak taught himself to distil a decade ago, England woke up to an exciting new proposition utilizing produce that we can find on hedgerows and trees in our own back yards.
There are some spirits which only need to whisper their way into immortality, rather than shout. Karuizawa is one of them.
In a whisky world increasingly reliant on spectacle, its ascent to legendary status feels almost contrarian. There was no grand plan, no choreographed mythology. What carried Karuizawa into the collective reverence of serious whisky drinkers worldwide was something far more stubborn and rare: a total, unflinching appreciation of spirit character.
This was a whisky that never tried to please. Distilled at the foot of an active volcano (Mount Asama), shaped by long fermentation and originally distilled through direct coal-fired stills, Karuizawa was dense, muscular, and uncompromising. The sherry cask maturation had formidable intensity, but it didn't polish or soften the spirit – it wrestled with it.
The Macallan builds its identity around six pillars, from its small stills to its sherry-seasoned oak casks. In truth, a single bottle has done more than any of them to elevate it. The Fine and Rare 1926, the first bottle of wine or spirit to exceed $2m at auction, has shaped The Macallan’s position as the world’s most collected Scotch whisky since its release.
There were just 40 bottles of that 60-year-old vintage. They were never sold publicly and handed to private clients sporadically over several years. The first known private sale in 1987 valued the bottle at a then-record of $8,000. Since then, examples of the 1926 have broken that record a further six times and traded for over $1m on eight occasions.
For The Macallan, the 1926 remains its strongest brand asset, but four decades on it is also the benchmark for everything that follows. Now it’s tackling that benchmark head-on with the Romantica Collection, a new 1986 vintage that is being unapologetically pitched as the natural successor to Scotch whisky’s most celebrated and valuable bottle.
