In the years since separating from The Whisky Exchange (supplier of my day job), the team at Elixir Distillers have been busy. From tinkering with the Black Tot range to continuing to release Single Malts of Scotland bottlings, to say nothing of building Portintruan distillery on Islay and running Tormore, they’ve not had much time to create new things. However, despite all that, they have done so, repurposing an old name with a new idea: introducing The Whisky Trail. Again…
In the beginning was… The Whisky Trail
Before Elixir Distillers became a company in its own right, it was the independent bottling arm of The Whisky Exchange. I first encountered The Whisky Trail in my early days at TWE, when we had a few bottles of a Macallan left over after a project that we’d bottled with a “The Whisky Trail” label, and decided to pop them on the website. Some more Macallan and a Caol Ila followed, but then things went quiet for a few years.
Elixir Distillers was spun off as a more separate entity in 2017 and the team started looking at creating new ranges to sit alongside Port Askaig, Elements of Islay and Single Malts of Scotland. The Whisky Trail popped up as the perfect addition to the lineup, and a series of quartets of whiskies with themed labels was born.
The Elixir Trails
Shortly after The Whisky Exchange was sold in 2021 and Elixir Distillers started its new era as an independent company, The Whisky Trail went quiet. However, in 2025, the team decided to revive the name as part of a new project: The Elixir Trails.
Looking beyond just a single category of drinks, The Elixir Trails potentially spans the world of spirits. Starting with The Whisky Trail and The Rum Trail, the idea is to curate a range of small-batch releases:
Elixir Trails invites you on a journey of flavour discovery, through a series of bottlings of exciting spirits from around the globe – rums, single malt whiskies and more – selected by your navigator and liquid travel guide, Sukhinder Singh – a passionate, world-renowned connoisseur and champion of exceptional drinks.
—The Elixir Trails website
The Whisky Trail: Batch One
The first four releases from The Whisky Trail are now all in the wild, with whiskies from Thy, White Peak, Chichibu and Westland in the lineup.
The Whisky Trail Thy 2020 4yo Danish Malted Rye Whisky
I’ve spent a lot of time over the past couple of years talking about Nordic whisky. While Finland and Sweden have led the way, Denmark is rapidly becoming well known as a producer of interesting whisky. There’s a huge amount of variation between the distillers, with Stauning sticking to more traditional flavour profiles while Copenhagen seem to come up with a new craziness on a monthly basis.
Thy is again something very different, focusing even more than others on grain. The Whisky Trail’s release is one of the distillery’s more conservative grain bills, being simply malted rye, and this leads to something much more familiar to most whisky drinkers: The Whisky Trail release is the distillery’s spelt rye mash bill: 60% malted rye, 30% malted Odyssey barley and 10% spelt – almost a European take on the ratios you find in American ryes.
Nose: Toffee apples and Christmas tree pine followed by fruity jelly: lemon and orange. Buttery grain notes build: American grits with a touch of salty Scottish porridge. Brown sugar and raisins develop with time in the glass.
Palate: Brown sugar and baking spice lead with lots of freshly crushed grain and spiced custard. Minty notes build with hints of liquorice and leafy ferns. Apple sauce sits underneath along with candied lemon peel, sharp green apples and apple peel.
Finish: Brown sugar slowly fades to leave freshly crushed rye and cooling mint.
This is a great example of modern European rye whiskey. Very grain forward, and with the herbal and spicy notes you might expect of American rye balanced by fruit. My favourite expression from Thy that I’ve tried yet.
The Whisky Trail White Peak 2018 7yo English Single Malt Whisky
While you might expect the Chichibu in the lineup to get the most buzz, it’s actually been this release from Derbyshire’s White Peak distillery. I will admit that I’m a bit of a fanboy, and I have my own cask turning three in April 2026. I managed to try this at Whisky Show 2025, after hearing great things from people who’d tried it at Whisky Live Paris a few weeks earlier, and it lived up to expectation.
White Peak uses a combination of brewer’s yeast (from local beer-maker Thornbridge) and regular distiller’s yeast in fermentation – an approach that Elixir is now using at Tormore. The team also mix in some peated malt, creating a fruity spirit with a soft underlying smokiness.
Nose: Custard cream biscuits and baked apples covered in toffee sauce and cinnamon sugar. Hints of peat smoke and warm gravel develop, along with Pasteis de Nata and shortbread.
Palate: The smoke is much more prominent on the palate, with gravel and char leading to singed apples, burnt toffee and crisp pears. Rich and buttery caramel notes are joined by cooling mint and granny smith apples, with apple Jolly Ranchers and pear drops floating around on top.
Finish: Soft wood smoke and pink shrimp sweets linger, backed up by a touch of damp oak.
I bought this on the day it landed in the UK, and it’s one of my favourite releases from White Peak so far. The distillery’s Wire Works Bourbon Barrel picked up The Whisky Exchange’s Whisky of the Year award this year, so it seems that it’s not only me who’s a fan.
The Whisky Trail Chichibu 2014 10yo Japanese Single Malt Whisky
This is whisky which you almost certainly won’t be able to find from the initial releases. It is further evidence of Sukhinder’s love of the distillery’s whisky matured in beer casks, and uses casks that previously held Shiga Kogen’s frankly ridiculous The Far East imperial IPA. The beer seems to vary from release to release, but each batch uses a variety of methods from the following list:
- Fermenting in whisky casks from Ichiro Akuto, owner of Chichibu
- Aging in those whisky casks
- Sitting at between 11% and 16% ABV
In short: a big IPA with some secondary-fermentation and cask-maturation character. I’ve not managed to try the beer, but all tales of it cement it as a mad thing that I need to try. Some of Chichibu’s most celebrated beer-cask-matured whiskies have used similar casks, and the bar is very high.
Nose: Jelly babies and milk chocolate, with malted milk biscuits and chocolate fudge brownies. Marzipan and Play-Doh notes develop, along with bourbon biscuits and crunchy nut cornflakes.
Palate: Rich and oily with stacks of fruit at first: pineapple, mango, anonymous gummi bear fruits, star fruit and very ripe pear. Chocolate and spice build: dry Cocoa pops, more chocolate fudge and a touch of baking spice. Pops of candied peel, wine gum and sherbet pip fruitiness appear.
Finish: Spiced dark bread, raisins and sultanas fade to leave fruity jelly baby notes.
It’s a bit much for me, but if you like these beer casks then I suspect this will be one for you. While I loved the last one we had at The Whisky Exchange (Chichibu 2014 Martial Arts), this one is a step too far, with the chocolate adding too much richness and the fruit being slightly cloying – this was matured for 6 years in the beer cask, and that has taken it a little over the top for my liking. It is an impressive whisky, but not one that I’d ever want more than a single dram of in an evening.
The Whisky Trail Westland Multi-vintage 9yo American Single Malt Whiskey
Westland have very much been a pioneer of American single malt whiskey, launching in 2011 as a grain-focused distiller of solely single malt. The category has since bloomed, with a legal definition of American single malt now letting producers make whisky that sits more closely alongside its international counterparts in both flavour profile and production methodology. This release from Westland is from before the legal changes, but was produced in anticipation of the rules one day changing: it is a vatting of first-fill bourbon casks, the most commonly used cask in distilleries around the world, but not legally used to mature American single malt whiskey until the law changed in early 2025.
Nose: Butterscotch and savoury spice at first, but quite shy. Resinous hints lead to freshly baked bread and buttered toast. Popcorn notes develop along with earthy grain and rich malt.
Palate: Very different from the nose, wiith barley sugar leading to sharp apples, grainy flapjacks, chocolate-covered caramels, mint choc chips and toffee. Creamy notes build along with a touch of green leafiness.
Finish: Brown sugar and spice with green leaves.
This was totally unexpected. I’m used to Westland being rich and chocolatey thanks to the influence of new oak, but this went in a very different direction, albeit still with a gentle chocolatey character. I’m already a fan of the developing American single malt category, and this just makes me more excited for things to come.
Conclusions
A solid first release for the revival of The Whisky Trail. Four very distinct whiskies that show off the conceit of the range: finding tasty things among the huge array of producers now making whisky. While three of the four aren’t that adventurous on paper, with Thy being the only producer not already well known in the whisky community for making great whisky, the Chichibu and Westland both show a very different side of those distilleries.
In the end, they are a great start to the range and a good way in for Elixir’s usually more Scotch-whisky-focused fans to explore the wider world of whisky.
Many thanks to Rhys and the team at Elixir Distillers for the samples.
Thanks to Andrew at Elixir for pointing out that I’d assumed the wrong mashbill for the Thy Malted Rye.
