Friday 26 February 2010

More winter madness ...

If you are after a superb winter warmer that's perhaps right as an extra special gift, then try on the wooden boxed Glenlivet 21 Year Old we're just added to our website for the steal of £ 70.00.

Here's the pic :

Thursday 25 February 2010

Dalwhinnie Winter madness

We've added the second new Dalwhinnie of the week to the website today.

You'll now find the Distillers Edition on the Highland and new whisky tab for a refreshing
£ 44.99.

Try this one if you like a spicy vanilla tint to your tipple.

Wednesday 24 February 2010

New whisky now live

We have some exciting new whisky hitting the www.prestigewhisky.com website in coming days, starting with a 36 Year Old Dalwhinnie - bob across there now to pick up this important expression for £ 399.99

Monday 22 February 2010

PW News for February

We've had to remove three whiskies from www.prestigewhisky.com as they are no longer available. Affected are the following expressions ;

Mortlach 1949
Strathisla 1949
Smiths Glenlivet

We dod however have a fantastic Glen Grant 1949 to part replace this loss - keep checking out the webstie for more details.

You'll also find a new Prestige Whisky Experiences partner added to the website today. This is Merus Deli - a fine coffee house and delicatesan in North Leeds. Situated along New Road Side between Horsforth and Yeadon, Merus is also close to Leeds Bradford Airport.

Please try and get along if you're in the Leeds area - definitely worth a visit for the true gastronought

Friday 12 February 2010

English Whisky

Following on from my recent post concerning the above, The English Whisky Company came back to us recently and I've learned that following an appearance on Radio 2 in November there has been a massive increase in demand for their Chapter 6, 3 Year Old Whisky expression.

As a result they now funnel all their stock to a distributor (our main one as it happens) however, there is no availability of this item at the moment - I'm reliably informed there are two bottles for sale in the UK - both ironically in Scotland.

However, the furore will die down as we move into the Summer and I'm expecting to begin listing this item in July or August.

Incidentally, Red Rose Whisky the other 'English' producer sell a five year old blend of Scotch Whisky - probably not something we'd plan to stock although if there is demand that might change.

Thursday 11 February 2010

THe Dalmore Selene

The Dalmore Selene is a new expression created and approved by Richard Paterson. There will only be 30 limited edition Decanters produced for worldwide consumption making this one of those rare whisky 'events'. Expect them to increase massively above the retail price of            £ 12,000 in coming months and years. Our supplier has one and only one bottle available and that is on a strictly first come first served basis. If you wish to buy contact us urgently and we will attempt to secure this very special item for you. 

Here's the details from www.prestigewhisky.com


This is one very special bottle of whisky.

The Dalmore distillery is soon to release Selene, a stunning 58 Year Old vintage drawn from casks 1781 and 1782. Both casks were filled on the same day, 7th June 1951 and then left slumbering in the Dalmore’s warehousing until Richard Paterson deemed the time was right to combine their individual aromas, flavours and finishes.

Just 30 outstanding crystal decanters are available worldwide. Each has been crafted from the finest Portuguese mouth blown crystal and is enhanced with patient hand cutting, a solid silver stag and a beautiful, bespoke silver moon.


To find out more about this exciting whisky event please contact Prestige Whisky on 0845 6254395 or e-mail info@prestigewhisky.com

The Dalmore Selene is so rare that our supplier only has access to one decanter. We are therefore showing the bottle on our website but if you want to own this once in a lifetime piece of whisky history you must act quickly. Please contact us as above and we will check if the one decanter is still available.

If we are able to secure this item then we will proceed at normal and organise delivery for the very lucky purchaser. 

Tuesday 9 February 2010

How you search on www.prestigewhisky.com

How you search on a website pretty much epitomises the success or failure of the web design process.

I think that it is true to say that we took a lot of time over getting the look, feel and search experience of Prestige Whisky as good as we could on the budget that was available at the time. We were extremely lucky that the designer we used (BWeb based in Woking who I have mentioned here before) was both patient and brilliant and I think that the result we created punches well above it's wait in a number of crucial areas outlined above.

However, since launch I've certainly got a bit lazy with regards the sites search function - basically knowing where everything sits on the site I tend to go straight to the item I want and by pass the search box (top right of the screen) altogether. When I do use it, it's to type the first three letters of a brand to get quickly to a item I know is there ('MAC' for Macallan, 'STR' for Strathisla etc). Yesterday morning though I had two calls from separate customers who'd both arrived at our site and used 'search' as intended - they were both independently looking for 40th birthday/anniversary gifts and rang to check stock availability (one bought, the other didn't). Both had searched using the magic box and come up with the whisky they wanted.

The ironic thing is that although it is perfectly possible to search by brand, year, age, abv, region - in fact practically anyway you can think up on the website none of this functionality we actually intended - we just got lucky with a good designer and really function website. In fact we expected at outset most visitors to search using the region tabs to the left of the screen - which to my knowledge very few people actually do.

English Whisky

Over November and December we had quite a few requests from customers for English whisky. In particular I took half a dozen calls ironically when I was on holiday in the home of whisky (Scotland) over Christmas from customers disappointed that our extensive range didn't include any English expressions.

To be honest, English whisky had never really occurred to me - I was aware of it but had assumed that most people would be more interested in Scottish or Irish iterations. However, given we do have an (slowly) expanding whiskies of the world section at www.prestigewhisky.com I thought it would be worth giving English a go. I contacted the two live distillery businesses I knew of : The English Whisky Company and Red Rose Whisky.

I sent the same letter to both on the same day - outlining who we are, how we would want to work with them and offering them access to the site as we do with all our distillery partners. This was all in the last week of December. It suddenly occurred to me today that neither has replied.

I have e-mailed both again today, reminding them who we are and hopefully soon we'll be able to add some quality English liquid to the site.

I will of course keep you all updated.

Wander over to www.prestigewhisky.com for Lagavulin

We've just added the IWSC award winning Islay, Lagavulin 16 Year Old at £48.99

Buy it before it runs out !

Friday 5 February 2010

New items on www.prestigewhisky.com

I've added some very exciting new expressions to the site this morning.

First up is the Scapa 16 Year Old at £ 48.99


This is a wonderful Island malt, a decent 'everyday' drink that would be ideal on a cold blowy evening.










Then The Balvenie 1978 at 53.8% abv



This excellent, prestigious, award winning distillation I see more as a celebration of something really special - a business deal, a retirement, a christening ?

Both are IWSC Award winning and represent excellent examples of their type importantly at totallt different ends of the pricing spectrum - hopefully we can tick the swift and clean Island malt to drink whenever you fancy and also the rare prestige of the Balvenie which is for special occasions or that ultimate gift.

Thursday 4 February 2010

Whisky news

It looks like Edrington has finally got it''s hands on Cutty Sark as a deal has been agreed with Berry Brothers for them to pass the Cutty Sark brand to Edrington and the Glenrothes brand moves the other way (although the Glenrothes distillery itself will remain with Edrington). As you'd expect long term supply agreements are also expected to be in place.

This news isn't going to surprise insiders too much as I remember talking to an Edrington contact as long ago as October/November 2008 who said they were expecting to acquire the Cutty Sark brand for the Maxxium portfolio.

You can find full detail on the story at Scotchwhisky.net

New delivery terms and conditions

We have now formally amended the T & C in line with recent EU delivery issues.

It's offically, five working days delivery time in the UK, up to six weeks in the EU and 8 to 10 weeks for the rest of the world.

Here's a screenshot of the new website Terms and Conditions at www.prestigewhisky.com :



UK Orders :

All of our mainland UK orders regardless of number of bottles have a flat charge of £ 8.95 per order

Delivery is usually within five working days. However, because some of our products are bottled to order it can take a little longer (perfection takes a little time). We will keep you fully informed if this is the case. Free gift cards are available if a present is going to take a while - contact us for full details.

Due to the nature of the whiskies we stock, limited bottlings and rare whisky can become unavailable very quickly. This is often outwith our control and we will always let you know as soon as we can when this happens following any order.

Please note that the 'Silver' Range is only available to UK purchasers.

Overseas Orders :

All Western EU/non mainland UK orders (e.g. Channel Islands, Northern Ireland etc) are £ 24.95

Other European orders will cost £ 29.95

European orders can take up to six weeks for you to receive your whisky. This is outwith our control and would ask you to bear this in mind when making your order.

Shipping to the USA and Canada costs £ 49.95

Other Worldwide orders £ 59.95

Orders outside the European Union can take between eight and ten weeks for you to receive tour whisky. This is outwith our control, please bear this in mind when making your order.

Please note that our silver range is only available to UK based customers.

For more information and details of extra insurance you can purchase let us know.

For orders to the USA, Russia, China and India we strongly recommend your purchase additional shipping insurance that we can provide you with.

Prestige Whisky work with an extremely professional courier business and will provide proof of dispatch upon request - please remember that we can't be held responsible for overzealous customs officials!

Please note that the payment of any levies,taxes or import charges for your orders destination country are the responsibility of the purchaser and Prestige Whisky in no way accepts this liability.

Where we think there may be issues as above we will get in touch to discuss the best options prior to dispatching your purchase.

International Deliveries from Prestige Whisky

Over the recent festive period we had issues with deliveries into Europe. When the business was set up we expected deliveries into Europe to take around ten to fourteen days.

In December 2009 it actually took over three weeks. We had just chalked this down to either customs delays or simply the Christmas rush.

In fact we've now had one order in particular to Belgium outstanding since the 6th of January - a total of 28 days today. Obviously we're actively investigating the circumstances around this delivery with a view to establishing if this is a delay or a lost package. However I think it's important that we be honest with Prestige Whisky customers so I wanted to outline a couple of important issues around overseas postage.

Clearly we're reliant on overseas courier companies who receive handoff from our reliable UK partners. At the moment we actually pay more for mainland European package delivery than we charge on to our clients - there are a number of reasons for us subsidising this service but one thing is apparent that unless we were to hike the rate charged astronomically we aren't in a position in Europe to offer a reduced turnround on delivery times.

However, we are still keen to offer a service outside the UK, it just seems that cutomers may need to be extremely patient.

With this in mind, and we will update the website accordingly I have to warn overseas customers that it can take several weeks for consignments from the UK to arrive with them. Please bear this in mind when ordering.

Wednesday 3 February 2010

Changes to the layout of the PW website

This time there are no visible changes to the textual content or layout as such but we're just beginning to make use of the visual potential of some of the IT kit that we are now using - so we're hoping that the new images of products that we're now able to include within the blog make things look a lot better.

Hopefully readers are now enjoying the blog a little more - please feel free to contact us on info@prestigewhisky.com if you want to leave any feedback or ask questions.

New, low cost whisky

New to the site you'll now find the Black Bottle 10 Year Old blend under either the new product tab or in the blended whisky section.

This is a lovely award winning whisky that would suit someone who is new to whisky or fancy trying something of an Islay type without perhaps so much peat flavouring.

Enjoy.