Bourbon's Canada Problem, Lagavulin half off... again, and Why Yeast Matters

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This week's deals come from Remedy Liquor. Four bottles across Islay, Highland, and Ireland — two of them at prices you're unlikely to see again, one that's app-exclusive (worth the 30 seconds to download), and a sub-$40 single malt that consistently punches above its weight. Shipping thresholds vary by state, so check your destination before ordering.

Yes, this one's back. If you missed it last time, Remedy has restocked the 2024 Special Release at a price that makes this one of the best Islay deals available right now. This is Lagavulin at cask strength, matured in first-fill ex-bourbon and refill casks. The bourbon influence pushes the profile toward toffee and vanilla while the Islay peat stays firmly in the driver's seat. This bottling regularly sits north of $130 at most US retailers, and the 2024 release has been increasingly hard to find. At $93, you may not see the Laga 12 this cheap again.

ABV: 57.5% (115 Proof) | Cask: First-Fill Ex-Bourbon & Refill | 750ml

Price: $92.99

Typical US Market Range: $130–$180 at most retailers. Some shops have already pushed past $150.

Savings: $37–$87 under typical retail.

Who's this for: Islay lovers who want cask strength Lagavulin without paying cask strength prices. If you've been eyeing the Special Release series but couldn't justify the typical markup, this is the one to grab.

Buy Here

The Ardbeg Committee asked for this for over 20 years and finally got it — the classic Ardbeg Ten bottled at its natural cask strength of 61.7% ABV. Matured in hand-selected American oak ex-bourbon casks, including some experimental barrels filled with undiluted spirit, this is everything you love about Ardbeg 10 with the volume turned all the way up. SRP is $89.99, some shops are already asking well above that, and Remedy has it at $79.99. Here's the catch — you need to download the Remedy Liquor app to purchase it. It's free, takes about 30 seconds, and it's an easy decision to get this bottle at this price.

ABV: 61.7% | Cask: Ex-Bourbon | 700ml

Price: $79.99 (App Exclusive — download the free Remedy Liquor app to purchase)

Typical US Market Range: SRP $89.99, with some shops already asking significantly more.

Savings: $10+ under SRP, and potentially much more depending on where you shop.

Who's this for: Peat heads. If you already love Ardbeg 10, this is the one you've been waiting for. If you've ever wished the standard bottling had more weight and intensity, this is exactly that.

Buy Here (via Remedy App)

A 14-year-old triple-distilled Irish single malt at 46% ABV for under $50 is hard to argue with. Distilled from 100% malted barley, matured in ex-bourbon barrels, then married with whiskey aged in Oloroso sherry casks. The bourbon influence gives you orchard fruit and vanilla; the sherry adds depth with plum and apricot. It's smooth without being boring, and the 46% ABV with no chill filtration means there's actual texture and body here — this isn't watered-down Irish whiskey built for cocktails. Most retailers have this in the $60 range, and it's worth every dollar at that price. At $49.99 it's a genuine value play.

ABV: 46% | Cask: Ex-Bourbon & Oloroso Sherry | 750ml

Price: $49.99

Typical US Market Range: $55–$65 at most retailers.

Savings: $5–$15 under typical retail.

Who's this for: Irish whiskey drinkers looking for something beyond the usual suspects, and Scotch drinkers curious about what a well-aged Irish single malt can do. At 14 years old and $50, there's very little competing with this in the Irish category at this price point.

Buy Here

For sub-$40 single malt Scotch, Deanston Virgin Oak is tough to beat. This Highland malt is matured first in ex-bourbon casks, then finished for 9–12 months in virgin American oak — new barrels that have never held spirit before, which is standard practice in bourbon but rare in Scotch. The result is sweet, waxy, and approachable: honey, candied orange, vanilla, and warm spice, with more character than you'd expect at this price. Deanston runs their distillery on hydroelectric power, uses an open-topped mash tun — the only one of its kind in Scotland — and bottles everything at natural color with no chill filtration. At $36.99 this is an everyday dram that punches well above its weight.

ABV: 46.3% | Cask: Ex-Bourbon, Finished in Virgin American Oak | 750ml

Price: $36.99

Typical US Market Range: $38–$50 at most retailers.

Savings: A few dollars under typical retail — but the value here is what you're getting for $37, not the discount.

Who's this for: Anyone who wants a quality Highland single malt without spending quality Highland single malt money. If you're looking for a bottle to hand someone who's new to Scotch, or an everyday pour you don't have to think twice about reaching for, this is it.

Buy Here

There's a reason I started this column — watches and whisky attract the same kind of person. Someone who values how something is made, not just what it looks like on a shelf. Someone who'd rather own one thing done properly than ten things done cheaply. Marloe Watch Company is that philosophy in watch form.

Founded in 2015 by Oliver Goffe and Gordon Fraser, Marloe started the way a lot of good things start — with frustration. Oliver cracked open the back of an expensive quartz watch to replace a dead battery and found a hollow case with a cheap plastic movement staring back at him. He knew he could do better. He cold-emailed Gordon, an industrial designer in Scotland who initially turned him down, and within a year they'd launched their first mechanical watch — the Cherwell, named after the Oxford river — through a Kickstarter that raised nearly £180,000 against a £30,000 goal. They've been independent and self-funded ever since.

What draws me to Marloe is the design language. Every collection is inspired by a story of human endeavour — the Coniston is named for the lake where Sir Malcolm Campbell and his son Donald set water-speed records, produced in official partnership with the Campbell Family Heritage Trust. The Morar — their dive watch — takes its name from the deepest freshwater loch in Britain. These aren't marketing gimmicks bolted onto a generic case. Gordon Fraser has said that storytelling drives the design process — the shape of the hands, the dial layout, the color palette all trace back to the narrative behind each collection. The result is watches that look like nothing else at their price point. They're distinctive without being loud, refined without being boring.

The current range spans roughly £300 to £600. At the accessible end, the Sceptre S2 is their ocean-going dive watch — named after HMS Sceptre, the British Royal Navy submarine. It's 42mm, 200m water resistant, with a screw-down crown, bi-directional bezel, and a Miyota 9039 automatic movement visible through an exhibition caseback. The multi-layered dial is designed for legibility first, with Superluminova-filled indices and a propeller-style handset that looks like nothing else in this price range. Every Sceptre S2 is assembled in-house at Marloe's workshop. At £399, it's a serious dive watch at a price that undercuts most of its competition. At the top of the range, the SkySplitter Jetstream is their newest release — a true GMT pilot's watch that just launched in April. It runs a Miyota 9075 "true GMT" movement, meaning the local hour hand jumps independently while the GMT hand stays put, the way a proper travel watch should work. Add anti-magnetic resistance and a cockpit-inspired dial with a bespoke AM/PM 24-hour scale, and you've got a genuinely capable travel watch. The Calibrated Wrist called it better specced than most microbrand pilot watches at any price, and it retails for £599 — roughly $806 USD. Two colorways: the black Jetstream and the grey Airway.

Those are two watches worth looking at, but it's the whisky connection that really landed Marloe in this column.

Last year they partnered with Ardnamurchan Distillery to celebrate the distillery's 10th anniversary. Oliver and Gordon traveled to the remote Ardnamurchan Peninsula on Scotland's west coast, selected Cask No. 233 — a 10-year-old fully Oloroso sherry matured single cask — alongside the distillery's Sales Director Connal Mackenzie, and built an entire watch collection around it. The Glenbeg Blue pairs a Swiss-made automatic with the whisky in a numbered set of 292, with copper dial accents inspired by Ardnamurchan's pot stills, hour and minute hands shaped after the "persuader" bung extraction tool, and a sherry leather strap matched to the color of the whisky itself. It's one of the more thoughtful watch-and-whisky collaborations I've seen — not a logo slapped on a dial, but a genuine product of two independent makers who clearly respect each other's craft.

If the Glenbeg Blue is out of your range, the Glenbeg White is the same Ardnamurchan collaboration in a more accessible package — same barrel-shaped case, same still hatch caseback with the Ardnamurchan motif, same Miyota 9039 automatic movement and sapphire crystal, but with a white dial designed to match Ardnamurchan's Core Range whisky. It's a limited edition of 500 pieces, currently on sale for $460, with free worldwide shipping including to the US. For a whisky-inspired mechanical watch from an independent maker at that price, it's hard to argue with.

Marloe is now based in Perth, Scotland, and builds watches in-house at their Oxfordshire workshop. They run their own secondary marketplace for pre-owned Marloe pieces and offer a trade-in programme — which tells you something about how they think about longevity. If you're looking for a mechanical watch with genuine personality at a price that doesn't require a second mortgage, Marloe is worth your time.

Marloe Watch Company

Scott and Bart cracked open the 25th anniversary edition of Flaming Heart — the eighth rendition of Compass Box's flagship peated blended malt — and came away seriously impressed. The breakdown from the Compass Box transparency tree: 48% Talisker from recharged American oak hogsheads, 35.5% unpeated Benrinnes from custom French oak barrels at various toast levels, 13.4% Williamson (Laphroaig) from recharged American oak hogsheads, and 3% Laphroaig from a first-fill Marsala barrique. That means only 16.4% of this is heavily peated — the rest is lightly peated Talisker and unpeated Highland malt. On the nose, they found it lighter on peat than expected — dark fruit, caramels, a dry flaky pie crust sweetness, and a lemon custard note that reminded them of a good New York cheesecake. The palate is where it got interesting: an opening sweetness that makes you want to hold it before swallowing, a brief fruity flash in the mid-palate, then a warm peat finish with caramel peanut brittle and chocolate. They noted a clear transition from wood smoke on the front to peat bog on the finish — coastal, maritime, salty. Both agreed it drinks beautifully neat at 48.9% and didn't want to add water. Lead whisky maker on this edition was James Saxon. 9,384 bottles produced. $160.

Scores: Scott gave it a 92, Bart a 93.

Full Review Here

My take: Compass Box keeps proving why they're the gold standard for blended malt whisky. The chef analogy Scott and Bart keep coming back to is exactly right — this is whisky made by people who understand how individual components work together, and the Flaming Heart recipe has always been the best showcase of that philosophy. What stands out here is how restrained the peat is despite the Laphroaig and Talisker in the mix. That's intentional — the peat is a thread running through the whisky, not a wall hitting you in the face, and the Benrinnes and French oak give it a body and sweetness that lets the smoke play a supporting role. SRP is $160, but I've seen it as low as $125 — and at that price it's a no-brainer for a limited blended malt scoring in the low 90s from two reviewers who don't inflate numbers. The previous release is still readily available if you want to compare editions, so there's no rush — but at $125 this is well worth picking up.

Rob tackled the fourth of five editions in Springbank's limited sherry series — the Fino 10 Year Old, which spent 6 years in Fino sherry casks and 4 years in refill bourbon barrels. 11,400 bottles, bottled in October 2025. Despite spending more time in sherry than any of the previous three releases (PX, Palo Cortado, Amontillado), the color is surprisingly light. On the nose, he found something unexpected — a champagne-like quality, almost Prosecco, with sweet green grape, salty caramel, and very little of Springbank's signature funk or peat. On the palate, it's identifiably Springbank but the least peated expression he's tried across the 10 and 12-year-old ranges. White grape syrup, salt, a slightest touch of peat, and burnt caramel at the finish. The standout characteristic is the brininess — Rob attributed it to the flor layer that develops on Fino and Manzanilla sherries during aging, and said it delivered a saltiness he doesn't normally get from Springbank. He compared it side by side with last year's Amontillado edition and gave the Fino the edge for its extra salt, sweetness, and freshness, though noted the two are close enough that he wouldn't have been able to identify them blind. His advice: if you haven't tried Springbank, start with the standard 10 — don't lose your mind chasing these limited releases on the secondary market.

Scores: Fino 89, Amontillado 88 (re-scored alongside).

Full Review Here

My take: This sherry series has been one of the more interesting experiments Springbank has run — same distillery DNA, same age, same ABV across all editions, with only the sherry type changing. It's a controlled comparison that lets you taste exactly what different sherry casks contribute, and the Fino standing out for brininess rather than sweetness makes sense given how different Fino is from the heavier Oloroso and PX styles most distilleries default to. Rob's right that the standard 10 is where anyone new to Springbank should start — and his broader point about not chasing limited releases at inflated secondary prices is advice more people need to hear. These are excellent whiskies, but so is the bottle that's actually sitting on a shelf at retail.

Whisky Lock dove into the Speyburn 18 with a clear message: buy this now while you can, because it's being discontinued and replaced with a 40% version at the same price. The current bottling is natural color, no chill filtration, 46% — and soon it won't be. On the nose, he found it super rich with deep sherry and malt, incredibly estery, and showing a solventy rum-like quality that he attributed to advanced maturation — the kind of transcendental crossover you get when very old whisky, rum, and cognac start to converge after extended time in oak. Sugar-coated almonds, full-sugar Coca-Cola, fig rolls, rosewater, honey-sweetened orange juice. On the palate, enormously waxy and oily with beeswax, rich old maltiness, almond oil, concentrated orange, sugared walnuts, spicy oak, and sweetened black tea. The finish brought raisins, prunes, and more black tea — rich, sugary, and refined. He compared it extensively to the Speyburn 15, which he reviewed recently, and his conclusion was genuinely conflicted: the 18 has more age, complexity, and maltiness, but the 15 has more explosive, juicy sherry flavor and intensity. He called it too close to pick a clear winner and suggested the choice comes down to whether you value maturity or bold flavor. His parting shot at Speyburn's decision to drop both expressions to 40% was unsparing — calling it removing flavor and replacing it with water.

Score: Not numerically scored, but he called it one of the last truly great 18-year-old whiskies under £100.

Full Review Here

My take: This is one of those decisions that just doesn't make sense from any angle other than margin. You're taking two whiskies that have earned genuine respect in the enthusiast community — natural color, no chill filtration, 46% — and gutting them to 40% at the same price. That's not a reformulation; that's a downgrade. I'm completely with Whisky Lock on this one. I've recommended the Speyburn 18 in this newsletter before — it's been one of the best values in aged Scotch for a while now — and every time I go looking for it, there's less of it out there. If you can still find the 46% version of either the 15 or the 18, buy it. Once the current stock is gone, it's gone forever, and what replaces it won't be the same whisky.

Last week we talked about malting — how barley gets tricked into germinating so its enzymes can convert starch into fermentable sugar during mashing. That process gives the distiller a sweet, sugary liquid called wort. But wort isn't whisky. The thing that turns it into something worth putting in a cask is yeast — and yeast does far more than just make alcohol.

Here's what most people understand about fermentation: yeast eats sugar and produces ethanol and carbon dioxide. That's true, but if that were all yeast did, every distillery using the same barley and the same water would produce the same spirit. They don't — and a big part of the reason comes down to what happens during fermentation beyond simple alcohol production. As yeast metabolizes sugar, it produces hundreds of chemical byproducts known as congeners — esters, aldehydes, higher alcohols, fatty acids — and these are flavor compounds. Many of the fruity, floral, creamy, and funky characteristics you pick up in new-make spirit originate here. Distillation determines which of those compounds survive and in what proportion. Maturation shapes and refines them further. But fermentation is where the raw flavor palette gets created.

Two variables matter most: the yeast strain and how long fermentation runs. On strain, most Scottish distilleries have converged on commercial dried distiller's yeasts — fast, reliable, high-yielding — replacing the older practice of blending distiller's and brewer's yeast. That shift, mostly through the 1980s and 1990s, improved consistency but arguably narrowed some of the flavor diversity across the industry. Bourbon takes yeast strain selection more seriously as a point of identity. Four Roses uses five proprietary strains, each producing a meaningfully different flavor profile, which combined with their two mash bills gives them ten distinct recipes to blend from. Maker's Mark has kept a proprietary jug yeast culture alive since the distillery's founding. In bourbon, losing your yeast culture isn't an inconvenience — it's an existential threat to the character of your whiskey.

But fermentation length may matter even more. Most Scotch distilleries ferment for somewhere between 48 and 120 hours, and where they land on that range has a real effect on the spirit. Short fermentations — 48 to 56 hours — produce a wash that's malty, cereal-forward, and relatively straightforward. Extend beyond about 55 to 60 hours and something else starts to happen. The yeast has consumed most of the sugar and begins to die off. Bacterial activity — primarily lactobacillus, naturally present in the wooden washbacks many distilleries still use — becomes more significant, producing lactic acid that reacts with alcohol to form fruity esters. This is one important route by which tropical fruit, pear drop, and creamy notes can develop in new-make spirit. Distilleries that ferment for 70, 80, or 120-plus hours aren't being inefficient — they're using time as an ingredient, letting biology do work that copper and oak alone can't replicate. It's one piece of why Springbank's spirit has the funky complexity people chase — not the whole magic trick, but a significant part of it.

So the next time you nose a whisky and find pear, banana, or that creamy, almost yogurt-like quality some drams carry, there's a good chance you're tasting fermentation — what yeast and the bacteria that followed it did to sugar water before it was ever distilled. Fermentation is where a distillery's DNA is written. Yeast is holding the pen.

The US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said this week that the US may need to take action against Canada over its ongoing rejection of American wine and spirits. The boycott, which began in early 2025 after the Trump administration placed 25% tariffs on Canadian exports, has seen multiple provinces — including Ontario and Quebec, which together account for roughly 60% of Canada's population — pull American-made alcohol from government-run liquor store shelves. The impact has been severe. US spirit exports to Canada dropped 85% in the second quarter of 2025, and Brown-Forman reported that Canadian organic net sales fell more than 60% in the first half of fiscal 2026. CEO Lawson Whiting called the boycott "worse than a tariff" and a "very disproportionate response." The damage extends beyond Brown-Forman. The broader slowdown, including trade uncertainty and lost export demand, has been cited in connection with Jim Beam's decision to pause production at its Clermont distillery for 2026, and Canadian consumers have shifted aggressively toward domestic whisky alternatives, with some industry observers suggesting the buying habits may have permanently changed. Greer's comments signal that the US government is now treating the provincial liquor bans as a trade barrier rather than a consumer choice issue, though it remains unclear what specific action would follow.

My take: Whatever your politics, the practical reality for the whiskey industry is ugly. Canada was one of bourbon's most reliable export markets, and losing 85% of that volume in a single quarter while the industry is already sitting on a record 16.1 million barrels of aging inventory makes a bad situation worse. What makes this particularly difficult to unwind is that tariffs and boycotts work differently — tariffs raise prices, but boycotts eliminate demand entirely. And even if the political situation resolves tomorrow, consumer habits may have already shifted. Canadian drinkers have spent over a year discovering domestic alternatives, and markets don't just snap back when the shelves get restocked. The timing compounds everything: this is playing out alongside declining US alcohol consumption, production pauses at major distilleries, and the broader slowdown we've been covering in this newsletter for weeks. For bourbon drinkers, the question worth watching is whether the surplus eventually works in your favor at the shelf. If distilleries are sitting on inventory they can't move internationally, that whiskey has to go somewhere.

That’s it for this week.

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— Tim