DramMaster Daily Whisky News — 13 July 2026

Aberfeldy Releases 24-Year-Old White Port Cask Distillery Exclusive — 252 Bottles, £350, 50.7% ABV

Dewar's has added a 24-year-old white Port cask finish to its Aberfeldy Exceptional Cask Series, available exclusively at the distillery in Perthshire and its online store.

The expression is limited to 252 bottles, bottled at 50.7% ABV, and priced at £350 (US$465) per 700ml. Visitors to the distillery can order a dram for £13. Malt master Stephanie Macleod said: "White Port offers something particularly fresh and vibrant. Rich in citrus peel, stone fruits and delicate nuttiness, the casks complement rather than overpower Aberfeldy's signature honeyed style."

Aberfeldy was established in 1898 by John Alexander and Thomas Dewar. Previous Exceptional Cask releases include a 22-year-old Oloroso Sherry cask-matured single malt bottled in 2025 for the distillery visitor centre's 25th anniversary.

Murray's take: Stephanie Macleod is on a run — IWC Master Blender of the Year for the seventh straight year, and Aberfeldy 25 took Best Single Malt Scotch last week. White Port is the quieter cousin — less syrupy than ruby, more citrus and stone fruit. Complementing rather than overpowering is the right instinct for Aberfeldy's honeyed house style. 252 bottles at £350, distillery-only, is a visitor-centre play. The £13 dram is the smart move.

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Islay Rum Distillery Launches First Single Cask Release — Oloroso Sherry Wood, 390 Bottles, £53

The Islay Rum Distillery, Scotland's first dedicated rum distillery, has released its inaugural single cask expression: The Original Islay Rum Sherry Wood.

Distilled on 18 July 2022 during the distillery's earliest production runs, the rum was aged in an Oloroso Sherry cask and bottled at 50% ABV. Limited to 390 bottles worldwide, it retails at £53 (US$71).

The distillery was established in 2017 by father-and-son duo Brian and Andrew Crook, owners of independent bottling company The Vintage Malt Whisky Company. It opened in 2021 in the restored 1959 Art Deco Old Lemonade Factory in Port Ellen. Head distiller and co-founder Ben Inglis, an Islay native, uses a copper pot and twin-retort still for a triple-distillation effect in a single run. Scotland's cool maritime climate slows maturation considerably compared to tropical rum regions.

Tasting notes: dried fruits, raisins, figs, Sherried spice, toasted oak, coastal salinity. The palate offers caramel, butterscotch, green banana, sea salt, and tropical fruits.

The core range includes three expressions: Geal white rum, Barrel Aged (rested in ex-peated Islay whisky casks), and smoke-influenced Peat Spiced.

Murray's take: Islay's first rum distillery releasing a single cask aged in Oloroso — the tasting notes read like a whisky review, and that's the point. The Crook family runs an independent whisky bottling company, so sherry cask maturation is in their vocabulary. Scotland's cool maritime conditions slow rum maturation the same way they slow whisky maturation, meaning three years in Islay air is a different proposition from three years in the Caribbean. 390 bottles at £53 is accessible for a single cask.

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ASA Rules Against Whisky Cask Investment Firm Capgroup — Second Ruling in Three Years

The UK's Advertising Standards Authority has ruled against Capgroup Int for misleading advertising and failing to provide appropriate risk warnings on its website. This is the second time the firm has faced ASA action under a different name.

The London-based company has operated under three names with the same Companies House registration: London Cask Company (banned by the ASA in 2023 for misleading financial return claims in a Guardian ad), Caskcap Ltd (2024), and Capgroup Int Ltd (May 2025). The ASA's 2023 ruling led to an industry-wide enforcement notice on misleading cask investment ads, effective January 2024.

Under its current name, the website claimed 27,023 "excellent" TrustPilot reviews alongside a four-and-a-half-star image. The ASA found Capgroup had no such rating. TrustPilot shows no reviews under the Capgroup name and only 85 under Caskcap, with a three-and-a-half-star rating.

The website also displayed "as seen on" logos from Sky News, The Times, Daily Mail, GB News, Metro, and The Telegraph. Capgroup stated these reflected paid advertising, not editorial endorsements. The ASA upheld four of five challenges, including failure to inform prospective clients that the company operates in an unregulated investment category subject to negative fluctuations.

Murray's take: A company changing its name three times in three years while facing the same watchdog is a pattern, not a coincidence. The cask investment space has attracted operators who use whisky's prestige to dress up unregulated speculation as portfolio diversification. The ASA's 2023 enforcement notice was supposed to clean this up. That Capgroup rebranded and repeated the same playbook — fake review scores, "as seen on" logo walls, promises of 8-15% annual returns — tells you enforcement notices alone don't change behaviour. Cask investment done properly has a place. Operators who fabricate credentials make the whole category harder to trust.

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Southern Glazer's Cuts 1% of US Workforce in AI-Driven Restructure

Southern Glazer's Wine and Spirits, the largest beverage alcohol distributor in North America, is cutting approximately 1% of its US workforce as it moves to a "hybrid" customer service model powered by AI.

The restructure is effective immediately. An additional 1% of the company's independent customer base will be served by a redesigned inside sales unit called the "customer solutions team," supported by the Proof Commerce platform. The model combines field sales, inside sales, and digital commerce.

CEO Wayne E Chaplin said: "The marketplace is clearly signalling us to think differently about how we operate. We are redirecting our resources where the business is moving, using AI to help us adapt to a changing market."

Murray's take: 1% of a distribution giant's workforce is real jobs, not a rounding error. The largest distributor in North America is replacing field sales roles with AI-assisted inside sales for independent retailers. Fewer feet on the street talking to shop owners about what to stock. For whisky producers — especially small and mid-sized distilleries that depend on distributor advocacy — a thinner sales force means their brands compete for attention against a digital recommendation engine.

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Mark Reynier's Renegade Rum Distillery in Grenada Goes Up for Sale

Renegade Rum Distillery, the Grenada-based operation founded by whisky entrepreneur Mark Reynier, is seeking a buyer. The sale is being led by EY-Parthenon Caribbean.

Reynier is known for leading the revival of Islay's Bruichladdich Distillery and founding Waterford Distillery in Ireland. He established Renegade with the goal of moving rum away from molasses-based industrial production toward a terroir-driven spirit that captures the soil, local farms, and microclimates of Grenada. The distillery began production in 2022.

The "farm to bottle" model sources sugarcane from 12 neighbouring farms. Within hours of harvest, the cane is milled and begins fermentation. Each bottle carries a "cane code" allowing drinkers to trace the rum to the specific farm, plot, and harvest date. The distillery converts agricultural residue into energy and returns byproducts to the soil.

Maria Daniel, managing partner at EY-Parthenon Caribbean, said: "'Farm to bottle' isn't a marketing line; it's a structural model. Our cane is locally sourced and processed on site, byproducts returned to the soil. It's a fully integrated platform that keeps value at the source."

Global rum category value is projected to grow from US$17.3 billion in 2024 to US$28 billion by 2033, at a 5.5% CAGR (OhBev).

Murray's take: Mark Reynier's career is a study in applying whisky's single-malt logic to other categories — Bruichladdich's "progressive Hebridean distillers" pitch, Waterford's single-estate barley terroir project, and now Renegade's farm-to-bottle rum. Renegade up for sale after three years of production is not necessarily a failure — building a distillery and proving the concept is phase one; finding a buyer with capital to scale is phase two. The cane-code traceability system is exactly the kind of transparency whisky drinkers expect and rum has lacked. Whoever buys this gets a working distillery with a proven concept, not a business plan.

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