The revival of the traditional whisky-producing countries’ fortunes has been heartening for whisky fans, but today single malts and blended whiskies are being produced all over the world, with whisky distilleries cropping up in countries that have never made the spirit before. At the end of the 1990s and in the first few years of this century a trickle of new whisky distilleries in countries including Sweden, Finland, Wales, England, Denmark, India, Taiwan and Australia began producing single malt whisky which complied with the rules for Western markets.  

These new wave whiskies were met with great enthusiasm by the new wave of whisky fans, and the trickle of new distilleries soon became a tidal wave of its own.  Nowadays, each new edition of Ingvar Ronde’s essential Malt Whisky Yearbook contains dozens of new malt whisky distilleries in exotic places, with the 2023 edition of the book listing whisky distilleries in South Korea, Brazil, Iceland and Hungary among many other previously unlikely locations. 

In other words, this is a very exciting time to be a world whisky fan, with the quality of single malt whisky from these new world distilleries getting better every year, and more and more aged expressions due to hit the market in the next decade or two. As Ingvar Ronde says, “I don’t think there has been a better time to be alive if you love whisky.”