Andy Cant has been a Scotch Whisky nomad for nearly four decades, working at distilleries and maltings all over Scotland. He's done everything from making grain whisky for blends to running a maltings and multiple malt whisky distilleries from Islay to the Highlands. These days, you'll find him at Cardhu Distillery in Speyside, but we caught up with him recently at Mount Vernon in Virginia, where he was part of a team from Scotland making single malt whisky at George Washington's Distillery. He shares some stories of the distilleries and the people he's worked with along the way on this week's WhiskyCast In-Depth. Travel retail releases dominate the news this week, with a bunch of new whiskies being unveiled at the travel retail industry's annual showcase in Cannes. We'll also have the details on Diageo's 2015 Special Releases from Scotland, this year's Masters Collection release from Woodford Reserve, and tales of lawyers on the loose in Kentucky!

George Washington's Scottish distiller never made single malt whisky at Mount Vernon in the 18th Century, but Scottish distillers John Campbell, Bill Lumsden, and Andy Cant did in the spring of 2012. They returned to Virginia this week to bottle that whisky for charity, and the first set of two bottles sold at the Spirit of Mount Vernon gala for $26,000. We'll hear from the distillers on the challenge of making whisky the "old school" way on WhiskyCast In-Depth. In the news, Pappy Van Winkle shortages will be even worse than usual this year, another rare Bourbon is making a comeback, and Irish Whiskey experts honor this year's crop of whiskies in the Irish Whiskey Awards.

It's rare that we talk about spirits other than whiskies on WhiskyCast, but with many people complaining that rising prices for single malts are forcing them to seek alternatives, it's a good time to take another look at Armagnacs. We first looked at the French spirit back in 2007, and while whisky prices have been rising sharply, prices for vintage Armagnacs have been rising much more slowly. Florence Castarède is the sixth generation of her family to manage Armagnac Castarède, and we'll discuss Armagnacs with her on this week's WhiskyCast In-Depth. In the news, Sazerac plans to revive the Michael Collins Irish Whiskey brand - just in time for the centennial of the Irish revolutionary's rise to prominence during the Irish Civil War. Shakespeare asked "what's in a name" -- and two whisky makers are asking that after winding up with the same name on their whiskies...and Neiman Marcus has the $125,000 answer to the question "what to give a whisky lover who has everything."

Earlier this year, Japan's Nikka Whisky announced plans to replace many of its age-statement single malts with new no-age-statement versions. The company's past projections of estimated demand couldn't have forecast the current boom in Japanese whisky sales, and Nikka didn't lay down enough whisky to meet today's demand. We'll discuss the situation with Nikka's chief blender, Tadashi Sakuma, on this week's WhiskyCast In-Depth. In the news, Brown-Forman has started construction of its new distillery at Ireland's Slane Castle, and the popularity of flavored whiskies may lead to a sale of its Southern Comfort whiskey liqueur. Heaven Hill's warehouses have yielded a treasure from the old Stitzel-Weller Distillery, and we now know what The Glenlivet's Alan Winchester had in mind when he hinted earlier this year that he'd been experimenting with peat.