Review of the Year 2021

The big change at the beginning of the year was the relocation of our Whisky warehouse. From the tranquil town of Kirchheim near Munich, we not only changed our warehouse location, but also our logistics service provider. We now store our Whiskies in Nuremberg in Franconia. As you can imagine, moving the entire warehouse is not something that can be done in a weekend. For one month, boxes were diligently packed, and lorries were eagerly loaded to transport our bottles intact to their new home. Everyone lent a hand, whether salespeople from our call centre or designers from the marketing department. We moved over 2,000 different products - in corresponding quantities - from A to B.

We strive to organise one of our exciting regular Live Tastings for you every month. In January, we started with a special live stream: together with three St. Kilian Whiskies from the Franconian distillery, we tasted the Whisky from our own cask. In 2017, the cask was filled with spirit for us at St. Kilian and officially became 'Whisky' at the end of 2020. After three years in the cask, we tasted the unique Malt with you. In February, things got strong and smoky: In our Laphroaig Live Tasting, we tasted three intense Islay Malts. The following month, things got a little milder again and we held a Live Tasting with the Independent Malts Glenfarclas, Kilchoman and Longrow, before tasting faraway Israel with its M&H Distillery and its Whiskies in April. A summer highlight was our Bourbon Summer Live Event, where Ben Luening enjoyed four special Bourbons from Knob Creek to Maker's Mark with Maker's Mark diplomat Jan Forsberg. In September, we travelled to the coastal regions of Scotland in our Coastal Live Event with Caol Ila, Clynelish and Talisker. In October and November, we dedicated ourselves to the Highland distilleries Dalmore and Aberfeldy, before we ushered in the Christmas season with our St. Nicholas Live Tasting with Daniel Schöll, Malt Whisky Brand Ambassador of Beam Suntory, and three smoky malts from Ardmore, Bowmore and Laphroaig. All our Live Tastings can still be found afterwards on our YouTube channel or at Whisky.com/LIVE.

We had to take a long break, but in November it was finally time again: we were allowed to go on a distillery tour! We were on the road in the northern Highlands and visited ten distilleries: Glenmorangie, Balblair, Dalmore, Clynelish, Wolfburn and Highland Park as well as Glen Ord, Pulteney, Teaninich and Tomatin. In the coming weeks, we will publish a new video roughly every week in which Ben Luening takes you behind the scenes of a Highland distillery. Feel free to subscribe to our YouTube channel or our newsletters to make sure you don't miss any of the videos!

Another big change for Whisky.com was coming up at the end of the year. It concerns the new generation in the Luening family: Ben is now the managing director and owner of Whisky.com. Of course, the handover doesn't happen all at once. After years of leadership, you can't suddenly hand over the baton, and the new generation also benefits from the competence and experience of the previous generation. After all, Whisky.com remains a family business, even with a growing staff.

Thank you for reviewing the past year with us. Now we look forward to a healthy, good year 2022 with you! Whatever resolution you have made, we hope we can continue to accompany you. The Luening family and the Whisky.com team wish you a Happy New Year!