Portugal is known for its hospitable people, amazing seafood and gorgeous tiled buildings – not known for whisky, though Jay at Venakki is trying to change that. We visited the country in 2023 when our son was about 8 months old and as expected, absolutely fell in love with the culture and food. When I messaged Jay beforehand to see if we could visit the … Continue reading Venakki Distillery, Alpiarça, Portugal
Bedford Park is a Toronto-based independent bottler who we’ve used for our last two custom bottlings . We’ve long said we needed to do a tasting with them, and in April it finally happened. We didn’t take many pictures, but the line-up was well-received and favourites varied greatly! The artwork on the latter 4 you can see are part of a theme of Chess pieces, … Continue reading Bedford Park IB tasting – April 2026
West coast, best coast. I love the Maritimes, don’t get me wrong, but BC hits differently, and Vancouver Island may be my favourite place in Canada. I’ve been a few times, and one time back in 2019, I managed to convince my wife and some friends to drive up to Campbell River to visit Shelter Point Distillery. Why am I posting this now instead of … Continue reading Shelter Point Distillery – Vancouver Island, BC
Driving through Montreal in the spring is a frustrating experience – there’s construction happening on every other street, the traffic is backed up as you wait for the same stoplight for 3 cycles, and a single accident on the highways will have you sitting in stop and go for a very long time. But it’s incredible just how quickly all of that changes as soon … Continue reading Distillery Spotlight: Côte des Saints Distillery, Mirabel, QC
When the weather outside dips to -20C most peoples thoughts turn to hibernation. On a particularly cold Super Bowl Sunday members of the Toronto Whisky Society decided to brave the cold and warm up on a whisky world tour. Six whiskies from different points on the globe were concealed. Teaser descriptions were given and members were encouraged to try to guess the country of origin, … Continue reading Mystery Malt World Tour – Feb 2026
As always, we finished off the year with our AGM and heels party! We had about 30 members come out, bring bottles with ~1/3 left, covered off a little business including exec elections for the next few years, and then sampled dozens of great drams together! At the end, we raffle off the leftovers for folks to take home! Sadly we didn’t get a good … Continue reading AGM & Heels Party 2025
We’ve worked with a ton of brands over the years, but Diageo was a tough nut to crack as we couldn’t get a consistent contact to work with. Diageo distilleries showed up frequently in our line-ups as independently bottled expressions, but never OBs. We picked up a bunch of LEs from a local collector and decided we’d just run an event on our own without … Continue reading Diageo LE Mega-lineup
Back in the day, we did a higher end event every year, but that fell to the wayside a bit during COVID. we’ve revisited this old favourite with a line-up of bottles all 20+ years old. First off was a Braeval / Braes of Glenlivet 32yr old from Murray McDavid finished in Margaux casks. Delicious palate opener and very refined spirit! Second was another Murray … Continue reading High End Vintages
TWS kicked off the warmer weather with our first Whisky Summer Social. Members were greeted with a “Wise-ball”, a refreshing Highball made with Wiser’s 10, soda water and a slice of lemon. Throughout the afternoon three other specialty cocktails were served all featuring whisky along with a broad selection of bitters. Thanks to donations by Corby and some pre-planning, the event was free for members … Continue reading Summer Cocktail Social
We first did a Laphroaig/Bowmore event with Matt Jones way back in 2018, and as many members love these brands, we felt it time for a revisit 7 years later! Working with James Neil and Mike Mclean of Beam Suntory, we pulled together an incredible line-up for both brands. We started with a trio of Bowmore 15 expressions, all showcasing different styles of sherry influence. … Continue reading Laphroig & Bowmore Re-visited
