Yesterday I got my hands on the new Malt Whisky Yearbook 2012. Since its first publication in 2006, this has become one of the most anticipated releases among whisky books.

Editor Ingvar Ronde’s recipe is still the same: gather up-to-date information about the people, the news, the facts and the stories in the whisky industry, add beautiful photos and compact tasting notes and what you get is essentially the best summary of the whisky year.

The 2012 edition adds 24 pages over last year and covers three main sections:

• A number of interesting articles about Prohibition, the new wave of blenders, emotions in whisky, Irish whiskey… written by well-known whisky writers like Charles MacLean, Ian Buxton, Gavin D. Smith, Dominic Roskrow, Neil Ridley and Colin Dunn.
• An overview of all active whisky distilleries, each with their own profile, short history and their new releases in 2011. The section about closed distilleries seems to have grown this year and there are several interviews with distillery managers again.
• Lots of facts and figures: a whisky production primer, lists of interesting websites (WhiskyNotes among the old favourites already…), new whisky books, whisky shops around the world, the latest sales and consumption statistics and much more.

The success of this must-have book is due to the mixture of accurate encyclopaedic data and more philosophic reflections on where the industry is going. You’ll want to read it from A to Z, but afterwards you’ll regularly pick it up as a reliable source of whisky knowledge. A treat for whisky enthusiasts.

The Malt Whisky Yearbook has been published a couple of days ago and is sold through whisky shops all over Europe, distillery visitor centres and their own website www.maltwhiskyyearbook.com. It costs £ 14 / around € 15.