London's Largest Whisky Store: The Whisky Exchange

Welcome to the Whiskey Exchange. I'm here at one of London's biggest spirit and whiskey shops. Two floors of alcohol. What more could a whiskey lover want? I'm here today to have a bit of a tour, have a look at all the whiskey that's downstairs and at the end I'm going to pick out some of my favourite bottles that are available here. So without further ado, come follow me and let's check this place out. Here we are inside the Great Portland Street Whiskey Exchange store. Obviously they've got two other stores as well. Covent Garden and London Bridge. Behind me there is a huge wall of wine and champagne. Something I don't know very much about at all. So we're going to skip straight past. Here a wall full of rum. Now rum I think as a spirit is really interesting. Something I've been getting into a little bit more recently. Really affordable. I mean there's a 15 year old rum here for £70. Compared to some whiskey prices, pretty good value. But for the whiskey lovers this little bit of the top floor is where it's at. Especially for a certain type of whiskey lover. It's not the world's best collection but there's a huge array of different minis here. Stuff from core range through to 25 year old whiskey and above. There's obviously people that collect minis but also in terms of your ability to try new things. You could come here, empty the shelves of 10-15 different minis for the price of a bottle, bottle and a half of whiskey and have yourself a couple of great nights just trying new things. Over here though is a section that is something that I find hard to ignore on my way downstairs to the whiskey here at Great Portland Street. It's the sherry, the port and the fortified wine. So let's have a look. We're a lovely little corner of the shop. Over here there's some particularly old and rare cognacs and armagnacs. Over here some ports, Madeira, sherry and other bits as well. You've got over here a collection of 30 year old sherrys, Palo Cortado, Pedro Ximenez etc. Many where between £30 for a half bottle to £90. If you're into your sherry whiskey actually check out where some of the casks come from. Obviously some of the seasoned stuff that goes into the whiskey is not 30 year old vintage sherry but again I think it's really really interesting to be able to have a glass of sherry and a glass of whiskey in each hand and see what you can pick up in terms of the notes on each one and where the provenance of the cask has come from. But I know you're all here for the whiskey, the cellar's downstairs so follow me. Downstairs obviously we talk a lot about scotch but there's more to that in the world of whiskey. Shelf upon shelf of American whiskey, shelf upon shelf of Irish whiskey and again you know you're not just talking about core range items here you know 97 and 2000 vintage Bushmills for example and then into Japanese whiskey as well. There are not too many places where you've got Yamazaki 18, Hikashu 18 sat on the shelf, limited edition Hibikis and there's even a cabinet full of old and rares as well. And as well for me one of the most underrated parts of the shop we start getting into the blended malts and the grains as well. Pretty much a full range from Compass Box, a lot of Johnny Walker but then what you've all been waiting for the scotch selection. I'm quite lucky that I work quite closely to this store actually here and sometimes on a lunch break or just after work it's fun to come in here because it's almost like a museum of scotch. Down here you've got the best part of 20 bottles from the rare malts collection. There's a 1977 and 1978 vintage Ardberg, there's six different Port Ellens, some incredibly rare old Taliskas. Now you know let's face it you need deep pockets for some of these you know there are very few bottles in here that will set you back less than a thousand pounds. Some are more than twenty thousand pounds but I like to just come and have a little watch if nothing else. You know the scotch is at least you know pretty well organized as well. A lot of it kind of by region you've got some Campbelltown and Islay over here, Bunners, Bermores, Kalilas all over in this corner as well and you start kind of getting a little bit lighter down some of the flavor spectrum apart from some of the sherry monsters from Space Island the Highlands that you start to see as well. There's also a bunch of exclusive whiskeys that you'll find here as well. We're going to taste some of those with Alex in another video so do watch out for that one and in the middle here is where you find some of the other Whiskey Show bottlings and other shop exclusives that have been around for the last year or two. I think the latest actually is this 2009 14 year old Glenality which is 150 pounds and is a fairly punchy 60.3% ABV but again a whole range of different prices and labels as well you know ranging from you know 63 pounds for a 12 year old Ben Rinness up to 600 pounds for a 20 year old single cask Ardberg as well. There's also down here a really really good selection of indie bottlers as well so I think you know I've given you a little bit of a tour it's time to pick out a couple of bottles that have caught my eye and tell you why. Here's the moment you've all been waiting for my three favorite shop picks. Today we've got something for just about every budget. Let's start off with actually what I've got in my glass at the minute. So 94 pounds it's an Arden American sherry cask unpeated so a little bit unusual exclusive to the Whiskey Exchange it's just a little bit dirty really high quality sherry obviously it's relatively young whiskey but that is about the price you're going to pay for any Arden American single cask plus is really interested to have that mix of kind of unpeated spirit with kind of a bit of dirt from previous runs and a nice quality sherry cask as well great stuff. Second pick of the day and this is for those of you that have got deeper pockets there's this Lost in Time series. Chivas workhorse distilleries very well aged generally bourbon casks it's kind of like what rare malts did for Diageo 20 years ago. Some of you will know from my history that Glen Tockers is my favorite workhorse distillery of them all. This one this 33 year old absolutely incredible bursting with fruit incredible depth of flavor the only negative is the price 970 pounds but this is the only place you can get it unless you're lucky enough to find one on auction that somehow comes up cheaper. If you love Glen Tockers and you can afford 970 pounds for a bottle it will blow you away. I'm over here at the counter now and I've got a bottle of that exclusive Glen Alec in my hand I think it just shows that it's really important to have a chat with the staff. At the end of the day I think one of the things that makes the whiskey exchange stand out is that the staff are here to talk to you guys about whiskey so if you're wandering around with your headphones in you're going to miss the opportunity to have a dram. They've always got a couple of things that are here for punters to come in and try and you might find that you're really pleasantly surprised and if you don't have a chat you're not going to try it. Final pick of the day um signatory unchill filtered collection. These are always really good value simple labels simple tins but good honest pricing. Here you've got a secant orkney there is no independent scapper it's a highland park 13 years old 53 pounds 46 percent um refill hogshead it's fairly light but it doesn't cost you much more than a highland park 12. Should be really interesting for the price again yeah come to a whiskey shop like this so many different independent bottlings loads and loads of different stuff under 60 pounds at least a dozen bottles here you could pick anything whatever your flavor profile is. All right that was our trip to the whiskey exchange and a tour around great portland street store and a bit of footage as well from covent garden and london bridge um thank you so much for the team for having us obviously amazing stores do go in and speak to the staff they're all super knowledgeable about whiskey they love whiskey as much as you guys do as well they've got some great exclusives as well so please don't miss out on tasting them obviously check out the whiskey show and all the other great things they do as well including the we are whiskey campaign it's just a bunch of people telling you their stories about how they got into and started loving whiskey so do look at those stories as well it's been a pleasure being here this has been whiskey baron and another episode of the enthusiast series so thank you so much for joining us and we'll see you next time