The Whisky Showcase: Master of Malt and Studio Minerva launch brand

By Hamish Graham

Published: 09 September, 2026

Online spirits retailer Master of Malt has launched The Islay range of whiskies in collaboration with female founded design agency Studio Minerva.

The new Scotches were launched at The Whisky Showcase which Harpers attended – a portfolio tasting hosted by Atom Group sister companies Master of Malt and distributor Maverick Drinks.

The three-whisky range was curated by Master of Malt’s head of whisky Dr Samuel J Simmons (pictured, right) and “rather than telling Islay's story distillery by distillery” it aims to celebrate “the shared character its whiskies are known for – tropical fruit, minerality and a backbone of peat”, said the retailer.

Read more: Hannah Wilkins – ‘Looking Back, Forging Ahead’

The new launches feature a 16 Year Old Basalt, 20 Year Old Red Sandstone and a 30 Year Old Quartzite.

The range will utilise a ‘continuous single cask model’, which Master of Malt explained means that “every bottle is still drawn from a single cask, but when one cask is finished, it rolls on to the next, same name, same age statement, same strength”. Each cask is distilled and matured on Islay.

“Few places inspire devotion like Islay. It's a place of pilgrimage for whisky lovers, people who fall in love with it return to it, even permanently ink its name on their skin. And the island carries far more than any single distillery does,” said Simmons.

He added: “That’s why we made a deliberate decision not to name them. This is a celebration of the island as a whole, as a place, not a hunt for individual names. The provenance is all there for anyone who wants to find it, the coordinates on the bottle, the cask code on the label, but the point is Islay itself.”

Coral Harker (pictured, left), MD of Studio Minerva, explained the agency’s decision to pursue its own brand.

“We've spent a decade building brands for other people, and starting one of our own has always been the dream,” she said. “The timing was never quite right. Then we met Master of Malt and the fit was there straight away, and The Islay certainly won't be the last brand we build together.

"All of our favourite whisky brands start their story with a distillery. We started our story with the geology of the island.”

Studio Minerva has worked with high profile business across whisk(e)y including Laphroaig and Bushmills.

The Whisky Showcase

The Islay joins a Master of Malt in-house range (known as Atom Brands) that includes Wormtub and That Boutique-y Whisky Company releases. Maverick Drinks’ group brand ambassador Dave Worthington was on hand at The Whisky Showcase to guide Harpers through this portfolio.

That Boutique-y Whisky Company is Atom Brands’ indie bottling range which also celebrates its 14th birthday next week. The 11-bottle range aims to encourage world whisky exploration – from Scotch to Canadian corn whisky by way of Ireland.

Its most recent bottling was launched in August of this year – World Whisky Blend 21 Year Old. Combining long-aged whiskies from Scotland, Ireland, Canada and Japan it is limited to just 440 bottles.

Worthington detailed that 50% of the Boutique-y range is exported, mostly to the APAC region. Exports interestingly include sales of the Canadian 6 Year Old back to its country of origin. This whisky is also the most popular in the range and popular among bar world clients.

The line of whiskies also includes a range of four Scotch examples from an Islay 8 Year Old to a Blended Grain 30 Year Old. Worthington pointed out that the labels for this mini-range start with a youthful deer for the youngest expression all the way to a fully-fledged ‘Monarch of the Glen’ for the 30 Year Old (see picture below).

Harpers sampled the Peated Highland 18 Year Old which displayed enjoyable herbaceous notes followed by the quintessential smoky palate of a peated Highland bottling. Master of Malt are unable to disclose the distillers which provided spirit for the range, with the exception of their Bushmills 22 Year Old.

The launch comes at a time when indie bottlers are entering somewhat of a heyday. One explanation for this is that amid Scotch’s oversupply challenges, many distillers are willing to part with their spirit for a new stream of revenue, providing opportunities for innovative bottlers.

Worthington also presented some products that distribution arm Maverick Drinks imports. Kyrö is a Finnish rye whisky that has been featured by the company since 2018.

Although rye whisky was made famous in the States, the crop is most widely grown across what Worthington described as the ‘rye belt’, which includes Finland (though the world’s leading producer is Germany). The grain is suited to short summers and poor soils he added.

Harpers sampled the brand’s Malt Rye Whisky which had a lovely nose with hints of caramel. Worthington explained that rye whisky from the US is typically unmalted, whereas European expressions such as Kyrö usually are malted, providing what he described as a rounder taste profile.

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