The flavor of aniseed in wine of Wallonie

Part of the auction house’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations, the sale runs until next Tuesday, 14 June, and also includes one-off collaborations with artist Ini Archibong and photographer Trey Ratcliff. The two refill American oak hogshead casks, supplied from Diageo’s Casks of Distinction VIP private cask purchase programme, both have pre-sale estimates of £700,000-1.2m. The Port Ellen cask was filled on 15 February 1979, has a current strength of 52.9% abv and is estimated to hold 102 bottles. T ...

The fifth of Redbreast’s Dream Cask offerings, released to mark World Whisky Day tomorrow (Saturday 21st May), is a 30-year-old single pot still whiskey produced by Irish Distillers at its Midleton Distillery in Co Cork. Unlike previous single-cask releases, this year’s Dream Cask combines two casks chosen as their favourites from Midleton’s vast inventory by master blender Billy Leighton and blender Dave McCabe. Leighton’s cask is a first-fill Oloroso Sherry butt filled in May 1990, while McCab ...

The US still comes top on the list of which countries drink the most wine overall, according to to preliminary figures released this week by the International Organisation of Vine & Wine (OIV).  Wine consumption in the US crept up by 0.7% in 2021, to 33.1 million hectolitres (3.31 billion litres), the OIV said in a report on the state of the industry. World wine consumption grew by the same margin, to hit 236 million hectolitres (mhl), or 23.6bn litres, although trends varied by nation. That ...