Duty free whiskies

Johnnie Walker Swing is a pretty good deal at duty free shops and is quite a quality blend. I'm not sure if you can get it other places, but I've only ever seen it at duty free shops.

Macallan has one called "The Whisky Maker's Edition." It's very good and highly rated by the likes of Jim Murray.

I think Bowmore 17 is still available at duty free outlets and it is way better than the 18 yr. old that replaced it as part of their core range..

I would imagine that whatever you already buy and like that might be available at the airports would be a better deal than in Vancouver. If only for the fact that you're getting 1L vs standard bottle. We save a lot sometimes over WA state prices. I buy standards like highland park, even found a 1L bottle of glendronach. I'm not fully convinced that travel retail releases are always worthwhile, but some are surely worth seeking out. Good topic, I'll be curious what other recommendations come up!

Nice topic!

I am flying very rarely but I guess there are big differences in pricing over the different airports. I honestly thought some years ago (maybe 10-15) they stopped the really good duty free offers, but plz feel free to correct me because I have no clue :)

A friend is going often to London so I will ask him to compare some price tags.

@BlueNote and @mariapeterson Bowmore 17 is definitely still available. Now that I know it's better than the 18 year old I will have to pick it up next time I cross a border!

@BlueNote Yes, the Bowmore 17 is still available. I did a little video review back in May (youtu.be/HZBfUVSZLYk).

Auchentoshan have released a few recently for the duty free market which are worth a go and are well priced. I also recently got a 1L bottle of laphraoig quarter cask which was criminally cheap, strongly recommend that too. If you want to splash out go for the Bowmore 1965 ;)

Just read a discussion about differences for whisky of 0.7 and 1 liter bottles. There are rumors they are bottling the better whisky to 0.7l because pple are more likely to complain than in a duty free shop where they seldomly appear. Did you noticed something like that? I guess it's unlikely because of the big batches nowadays.

As i see it reputation of the quality of your product is the most important thing that a distillery has. I can't imagine that this would occur but perhaps I'm wrong. I've had the Laphraoig quarter cask in 700ml and 1L and i didn't notice any difference. Perhaps for travel exclusive but who Knows, where did you read the article? @Wills

@Sroberts86 It was a discussion in a german whisky forum. It seems like some salesman are telling this story. Maybe they were just trying to convince pple to buy more of their 700ml bottles...

@Sroberts86 I know, I have them and will post tasting notes soon. There is one up already in the Whisky Ramblings section: the Cooper's Reserve, filmed on location in my Spanish swimming pool :)

@markjedi1 Poser! :D

Btw I liked the fast-forward scene, just was worried about the whisky glass getting drown!

@markjedi1 I really like the springwood

@Sroberts86 Me too. A worthy successor to the Select (which will be phased out because of this release).

@markjedi1. I assume that was the OB, NAS Boga. I understand that their aged expressions are much better. Love your ramblings. Cheers.

@ EvaRees. @Wills. I have found some very good deals at some airports and some border crossings, but there are certainly differences in price and selection. LAX, for example, has a pathetic duty free shop with limited selection and relatively high prices. That surprised me considering that LAX is a huge and very busy international airport. Prices were far better at the road border crossings between Washington State and BC, and both prices and selection are far better at Heathrow and Gatwick.

One of the last bottles of Malt I received from Duty Free was a 1litre Talisker 57* - It was very good indeed, if anything, it had the edge on the std. 700ml. previously purchased from my normal retail outlet: Perhaps I'm biased, filling a large decanter and still having 300ml. to play with give me a nice warm glow, I kid you not!

@A'bunadhman, do you really ever kid about whiskies?

@Victor: No, I don't! I would love to see all Whiskies delivered in 1litre bottles and at a minium strength of 46% abv. or higher, How good would that be? Or to paraphrase Br. Armstrong, "...what a wonderful World it would be".