Fifty Years in Whisky, Three Days in New York

I have been drinking sherry-cask Speyside for twenty years, but until last week I could not have told you who Billy Walker was. There's nothing unusual in that. Whisky comes to you as a bottle on a shelf or a pour at a bar; the person who made it stays offstage.

When I was going to Ward III in Tribeca most weeks, his whisky came through that bar at least three times that I can find: two BenRiach nights and a GlenDronach one. These were Whisky Mondays, the kind of night where a rep opens a few bottles and you work your way down the bar. I don't remember them specifically, but I was there constantly, so the odds I had a glass of his whisky in my hand on one of those nights are very good. I just didn't know whose whisky it was. That's how a night like that settles in memory: you remember the bar, you remember who you were with, and if you're lucky you remember the whisky. You almost never remember the name of the person who made it.

So when three GlenAllachie tastings turned up on the September calendar, all headlined with Billy Walker, I looked him up.

In 2004 he and two partners bought BenRiach, a mothballed distillery Chivas didn't want, for £5 million. Over the next twelve years they added GlenDronach and Glenglassaugh and built the three into a serious independent company. The GlenDronach 15 Revival became a benchmark for heavily sherried Scotch. In 2016 they sold the lot to Brown-Forman, the company behind Jack Daniel's, for £285 million. His family's share was reported at around £95 million. That is the point where a sensible person retires somewhere less rainy than Scotland.

Instead, in 2017 at age seventy-two, he bought another distillery: GlenAllachie, a Speyside workhorse whose spirit had spent decades disappearing anonymously into blends. Within a few years it was winning World's Best Single Malt at the World Whiskies Awards. He's a Whisky Magazine Hall of Fame inductee and has been named Master Distiller of the Year; 2022 marked his fiftieth year in the industry. None of which I knew while drinking his whisky at my local.

Reading all this, I understood why the whisky had suited me without my ever knowing the maker. Non-chill-filtered, natural colour, generously sherried, cask strength when you want it. That's more or less my own shorthand for whisky worth drinking. And it's Walker's house style across every distillery he's touched. If you like GlenDronach, you already like Billy Walker. You just haven't had a reason to learn his name — same as me.

Here's the part that makes this a this-week thing rather than a biography. In seventeen years of this calendar, his distilleries have poured in New York dozens of times — but always by proxy. As far as our listings go back, the man himself has not been here, and GlenAllachie has never appeared at all. These three dates are the first time both are true at once.

Walker also makes a couple of blends, MacNair's and White Heather, plus a peated GlenAllachie called Meikle Tòir. All of them turn up across the three days. It's closer to a tour of everything he does now than a single-distillery tasting.

Two of the three are free.

• Wednesday, Sept 3, 6:30 PM — Travel Bar (Brooklyn), $50. The masterclass pours a rarer, collector lineup — a Sinteis Series single cask, an 11-year Palo Cortado finish — with the man walking you through each. Book it if you already know you love this whisky and want the deep cut.
• Thursday, Sept 4, 5 PM — Astor Wines (Manhattan), free. The one to go to if you go to one. A walk-up tasting and bottle signing at the city's busiest whisky shop, pouring the full core run — the 12, 15 and 18, plus a 13-year Madeira. No ticket.
• Friday, Sept 5, noon — 1936 Wine & Spirits, free. The same core lineup and another signing, at lunchtime. If Thursday's a wash, here's your second shot at the 15.

My advice: if you're whisky-curious, go to Astor on Thursday and start with the 15 — it's the sherry bomb this whole story is about, and the fastest way to understand what the fuss is. If you already know this style is yours, the $50 masterclass is where the rare bottles are, and a guided flight from the maker beats any tasting note I could write down.

Usually that's where it ends. You drink the whisky and never learn who made it. This week you can. He'll be standing behind a table at Astor with the bottles in front of him.

Twenty years of drinking his whisky, and I never knew his name. But that's the good kind of gap: there's always someone you've missed, and this one you can fix on a single Thursday. I'll be there.