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Speciality Drinks Limited

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Speciality Drinks Limited

Speciality Drinks Limited Speciality Drinks is the UK’s premier supplier of whiskies, spirits and champagnes to the on trade.

We were launched as an on-trade supplier to meet the growing demand of bars, restaurants and hotels for interesting and rare products. As a family-owned-and-operated business, we are committed to providing bespoke consultancy and exceptional service. With access to the largest product portfolio in the industry (10,000 products at any one time, shared with our sister company The Whisky Exchange), w

e deliver our expertise on an international level to independents, groups and prestige accounts. Through our unrivalled knowledge and passion for the drinks industry, we endeavour to promote future trends and drive our customers’ business forward

23/04/2025

We popped over to the unlikely enclave of Earls Court to say hello-how-are-ya to this lovely pair, who have just installed a totally world-class bar within Templeton Garden, a wonderfully calm and verdant luxury hotel from the Miiro Group. Meet Will Meredith (bar director) and Dominic Royle (bar manager) of Sprout!

London's finest new bar launch is just over the road from Twice Shy (the brilliant sister bar to Top 50 favourite, Amaro) which means that Earls Court is now officially London's top spot for excellent cocktails 🙌

As alum of the Lyan Group, Will & Dominic both boast exceptional cocktail pedigree. Given their lustrous CVs, you'd be right in expecting a stunning drinks list for their maiden launch. Their serves focus on elevating the flavours of fresh, local produce, with a stripped-back approach that focuses on fermentation and cordials over more cerebral preparations. Each one makes a hero of an ingredient and allows that flavour and provenance to sing out.

Kensington is now lucky enough to have a cluster of fantastic cocktail spots, all within a mile of each other, so get yourself over to West London to experience its glow-up for yourself! 💫

10/04/2025

Nico de Soto is the definition of an international bartender, spending most of his life seven miles over our heads! After a decade spent bartending in exceptional bars across the globe, the Parisian opened his first bar in New York’s East Village - Mace – soon becoming known for outlandish flavour combinations that pulled heavily on the exotic ingredients Nico discovered while travelling 🌎

Since opening Mace is 2015, every single menu has featured a cocktail with pandan leaf, AKA screwpine. The leafy, tropical shrub is a key ingredient in South East Asian cuisine, used for its fragrant grassy notes.

Kota captures those delicate buttery, vanilla and almond notes perfectly. Production is attentively handled by famed liqueur producers Gabriel Boudier, who’ve been making top-quality fruit liqueurs since 1874.

As warmer weather approaches this could be just the thing to give your SS25 menus a lift. Kota margs all round!

07/04/2025

Come join for highballs galore, as top nerd Tristan Stephenson shares a clutch of superb simple whisky serves that'll put the Fizzy Feel Good into your summer menus. Say goodbye to neat pours and hello to 12oz of sparkling refreshment! ☀️

From the history, science, and art of bubbly stuff, to how to make the very best two-bit drink, expect thirty minutes of fizzilicious fun!

25/03/2025

Introducing another newcomer to the Speciality Drinks list! A special release from Filey Bay, their brand-new Orange Wine Barrique release.

Hear the mention of orange wine and you’ll no doubt think of skin-contact, tannic, hazy wine. And normally you’d be right, but not today! The barrique casks used to mature this whisky formerly held Vino Naranja del Condado de Huelva – a fortified wine and regional speciality of Andalusia, Spain.

Vino Naranja del Condado de Huelva is made with grapes that are dried before fermentation, concentrating the sugars before being fortified. Here the liquor used to fortified the wine is macerated with orange peels before maturation, giving it a zippy, zesty profile.

Filey Bay bought four of these barriques (small wine casks) and filled them with whisky that has been matured for over 3 years in ex-bourbon casks before reducing the whisky to 50% abv. The whisky was then re-racked in the barriques for a secondary maturation until bottling at 7 years old at 46.2% with no final reduction.

For those of you new to Filey Bay, this is whisky made by a family of cereal farmers turned brewers and distillers, based in on the northeast coast of England at the Spirit of Yorkshire distillery. Their vast knowledge of grain is a huge asset to their pursuit of quality whisky, not to mention their experimental approach that has long made use of ex-wine casks.

Using wine casks like stems from having worked closely with the late, great Dr Jim Swan, who pioneered the use of the now widely adopted STR (shaved, toasted, recharred) cask.

These barriques are not STR but are filled wet to sop up all those delicious orange aromatics. A little slice of Spanish sunshine, by way of Yorkshire!

Their Orange Wine Barrique release is only 1100 bottles.
Early birds take note!

19/03/2025

Hailing from the mystical north of the Indian subcontinent, Indri whisky has been made in Haryana since 2009 and has been making waves on the international spirit award circuit ever since.

Indri takes its name from Sanskrit, meaning ‘of the five senses’, and this special release for Diwali is for sure a sensory delight! The five-day-long Festival of Lights is a sacred time for Hindus, Sikhs and Jains, each year celebrating the triumph of good over evil, of light winning over darkness.

Indian whisky favours the slightly spicier six-row barley over the two-row usually used in whisky making. Theirs is grown by a local farmer of a neighbouring state; Rajasthan is an arid region, and farming cereals here means relying on the monsoon rains to flood the soils and prepare them to grow the grasses. A dry climate means the barley is in peak condition at harvest. For the Diwali release the barley is kilned with just a little peat for smoky complexity, maybe a reminder of the sooty aroma in the air over Diwali as fireworks are launched to scare away evil spirits.

It is said that a year of maturation in India is equal to three in Scotland. This is a NAS (no age statement) bottling, a blend of sherry casks of different ages, giving a rich dried fruit character that is the perfect foil for that touch of sooty smoke. The 2024 is bottled at a hefty 58.5% abv for a texture that really is an explosion of flavour!

03/03/2025

New to the list is a range of cocktail seasonings from Three Families, a collaboration between hospo industry titan Mr Lyan, alongside Rockland - one of Sri Lanka’s oldest distilleries, and celebrated Sri Lankan tea grower, Dilmah.

Each of the five iterations in the range begin with a base of cold-brew tea, then layered with complex aromatics from Sri Lanka’s larder. Historically known as the ‘Spice Island’, Sri Lanka’s fertile soils and optimum climate mean the spices grown here are rich in flavonoids. Their intensely pungent spices have been celebrated for millennia, the world over.

The range from Three Families offer cocktailians a shorthand to achieve cocktails with depth. Contact your account manager for more info!

28/02/2025

The lovely Fabio Spinetti can be found at one of London's most prestigious bars, The Donovan. He's been a familiar face at every one of our Speciality Sessions, and is a champion for the learning and development of the team he manages. We caught up with him to learn more about one of Italy's finest!

Q: Fabio! Tell us, how did you start out in the trade?

Oh I think like everybody. At 17 - I didn’t have any money and I didn’t want to ask for money! I’m from Genoa, north Italy, and I did my first summer polishing glasses in a cocktail bar at 17. Initially it was to pay for university, but I was so in love with the atmosphere and the experience. I went to work happy, learning new things every day. By 26 I reached the limits of my city and wanted to take things a bit further, so I put all my things in my dad’s garage and sold my motorbike so I could give London a try. Which by the way my stuff is still in his garage 15 years later!

Q: Which bars have shaped your career in London?

There was no internet back then, so I moved to London having never been there before, with just five or six places written for me on a piece of paper. I printed my CV and took it into a bunch of places, and I was really lucky because my first job was at The Connaught Coburg Bar.

They had a great wine cellar so I got heavily into wine. I had the opportunity to take a WSET Wine course - I figured that I would study all the previous levels myself to get ready and do Level 3 straight away! I hardly spoke English at the time so Chapter 1 on Pruning, I didn’t even know the word 'pruning'! But I got a distinction, and I was so, so proud of myself. But this was massive for me, to work for a company that would pay for me to learn, and let me take the week off to go to school. This is what the industry means in London, and probably there’s not many places in the world like it. It really made me feel like this is my career.

Q: What’s the secret to a great bar team?

You need that balance of different interests and skills to push everyone up.

cont. below 👇

27/02/2025

We have two excellent seminars cued up for you Friday 7th March! First up is a very nerdy dive into the history of Cognac's forestry, and the science of maturation with Dawn Davies MW & Cognac educator Hannah Lanfear 🤓

Second we have the lovely Guillaume Le Dorner from Bar Luciole, who will be making us a few Cognac cocktails and sharing everything he knows about mixing with the queen of fruit spirits 🍸

Make sure you're signed up to the Cognac Show to receive the seminar invites! Link in bio 👊

20/02/2025

The first of our seminars at RTBB was 'So You Think You Can Taste?', in which our buyer, Dawn Davies MW, & advocacy manager, Hannah Lanfear, took attendees on a trip through the science of taste and flavour.

Chock-full of top tips on how to better your nose, the seminar culminated in a blind tasting of four spirits. One victor lifted the prize for top nose, and here he is! Mattia from The Newt in Somerset! Well done Mattia! He won himself a bottle of Millstone PX 12yo, an absolutely superb single malt from the farm-to-glass Zuidam distillery 🔥

We can't find Mattia to tag him so if you know him, @ that man!!

19/02/2025

Please join us in congratulating Raffaele Fusco for taking home the top prize at this month's Speciality Session! He'll be winging his way to Kentucky to visit Angel's Envy distillery - a sweet reward for studying up and smashing the ferociously tough Bourbon quiz, pipping 150 of the UK's top bartenders to the post!

You can find Raffaele bartending at The Donovan, home to an exceptional array of vintage spirits, and some very fine bourbons too. He's a huge fan of an Angel's Envy Boulevardier, so be sure to try one, made by the Bourbon champ himself 🙌

13/02/2025

Raising the Back Bar '25 is fast approaching! Join us on Monday to taste through over a hundred prize picks from our portfolio, enjoy a cocktail with industry pals, and attend one of our excellent seminars.

Seminar invites are limited so head to the link in our bio and make sure you don't miss the boat ⛵

08/02/2025

Third but by no means last! Join our head buyer, Dawn Davies MW, and our advocacy manager, Hannah Lanfear, for So You Think You Can Taste?

Our two resident nerds will be unravelling the science of tasting spirits, and sharing hacks on how to better your nose. Bring your A-game - this one's a competition, with a very special bottle of booze up for grabs for the best nose in class!

Did you sign up yet? Find the link to RSVP in our bio!

Raising the Back Bar
12pm - 5pm, 17 February
Glaziers Hall, London

07/02/2025

The big reveal continues! Our second seminar at this year's Raising the Back Bar features two titan alumni of London's bartending community - Giuseppe Gallo & Bex Almqvist. In 'From Shaker to Still' we'll be finding out what it takes for a bartender to launch a brand, and finding out which skills from behind the bar helped them get there.

Did you sign up yet? Find the link to RSVP in our bio!

Raising the Back Bar
12pm - 5pm, 17 February
Glaziers Hall, London

06/02/2025

We've got three superb seminars in store for you at this year's Raising the Back Bar.

First up we have a dissection of whisky from two excellent modern whisky makers: The Heart Cut, & Woven. Featuring the infinite wisdom of Georgie Bell and Peter Allison, we'll be examining how spotlighting little brands can be a great way for bars to offer exciting, delicious whiskies to their guests, as well as getting into how and why indie bottlers and maverick blenders are where it's at for top drams.

Did you sign up yet? Find the link to RSVP in our bio!

Raising the Back Bar
12pm - 5pm, 17 February
Glaziers Hall, London

14/01/2025

Our first Speciality Session of the year is fast approaching, and we have a MEGA prize for the quiz winner. Fancy bagging a once in a lifetime trip to Kentucky with Angel's Envy? Then better study up!

Here's our top tips for a bit of pre-study, so you can arrive match fit and ready to sn**ch the crown 👑 🤓

13/01/2025

Join us on the 29th January for Speciality Sessions, the Bourbon Edition

Study up, smash the quiz, and win a trip to Kentucky with Angel's Envy! 💥

17/12/2024

Run don't walk if you want one of these ⚠️

Just 15 bottles of the new Hampden Great House Distillery Edition '24 are available on general allocation - first come, first served!

Fans of Hampden will know exactly what to expect from this iconic Jamaican distillery, a heady, high ester rum that pulls no punches. The historic distillery is famed for its eight, historic marks, all distilled on their double retort pot stills.

Their marks range from the 'common clean' OWH (named for Outram Wormald Hussey, the Hussey family being Hampden's owners today), all the way up to the bonkers DOK (named for Dermot Owen Kelly-Lawson, a historic owner of the estate). The heavier the mark, the more likely the use of dunder (stillage).

Hampden is one of only two distilleries in Jamaica that is known to be home to a muck pit. The name might not conjure delicious ideas, and the description sure doesn't (!), but a muck pit is a vessel that collects dunder in order to allow it to putrify, creating a wild concoction of bacteria and acids that cause massive levels of esterification when added to the fermentation.

Great House 2024 is a blend of three marks between two and five years old:
70% LFCH: 90 - 120 gr/hL ester level
15% HGML: 1000 - 1100 gr/hL ester level
15% DOK: 1500 - 1600 gr/hL ester level

16/12/2024

New to the list is this exceptional distillate, designed and created by bartender-turned-distiller, Bex Almqvist. Her Rejmyre Akvavit, named for the tiny Swedish village that is home to the distillery, takes the traditional Nordic spirit and brings it bang up-to-date, with a vibrant akvavit that is just perfect for cocktail making.

The botanical recipe features caraway, fennel, elderflower, coriander seed and local apples, in a beautifully balanced recipe that honours the Swedish style – complex and fragrant, but with an attention to the texture and sustain of the spirit that makes it a delight to sip neat or in a martini.

The distillery is young but shouts proudly about its intent with its strapline: ‘A Swedish flavour circus since 2022’. With elite bars such as Tayer + Elementary listing Almqvist akavit cocktails will we see a new botanical spirit elbow gin off its perch? We'll have to wait and see! 👀

Address

Elixir House, Whitby Avenue, Park Royal
London
NW107SF

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 6pm
Tuesday	9am - 6pm
Wednesday	9am - 6pm
Thursday	9am - 6pm
Friday	9am - 6pm

Telephone

+442088389444

Website

http://www.specialitydrinks.com/

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Our Story

Speciality Drinks is a premium on-trade wholesaler. We were launched as an on-trade supplier to meet the growing demand of bars, restaurants and hotels for interesting and rare products. As a family-owned-and-operated business, we are committed to providing bespoke consultancy and exceptional service. With access to the largest product portfolio in the industry (10,000 products at any one time, shared with our sister company The Whisky Exchange), we deliver our expertise on an international level to independents, groups and prestige accounts. Through our unrivalled knowledge and passion for the drinks industry, we endeavour to promote future trends and drive our customers’ business forward