This week: Lots of fun here! Those who know me personally, know I love one of these whisky’s thats coming back for a 17th edition, and we dive into a foam pit! Literally.

Every September for the past seventeen years, Bruichladdich has used its Octomore line to ask the same question a slightly different way: how much peat can a whisky carry before it stops being about the smoke and starts being about everything underneath it. Series 17 answers with three releases, each isolating a different variable in that equation. Octomore is built around a paradox: despite its extreme peat levels, the distillery's tall, narrow-necked stills produce a whisky that stays balanced and elegant rather than a one-note smoke bomb [1]. PPM here refers to phenol parts per million in the malted barley, a lab measurement of smoke compound concentration, not a measure of how the whisky will actually taste once it's been through fermentation, distillation, and cask time. That gap between the number on the tin and the number on your palate is basically the whole Octomore thesis.

17.1 is the control group of the series. It's distilled from 100% Scottish mainland Concerto barley malted to 81 PPM and matured full-term in first-fill bourbon barrels [2], giving you the clearest read on what that peat level does without a finishing cask muddying the signal. 17.2 takes the same 81 PPM barley and finishes it in port casks, trading some of that clarity for a bolder balance of smoke, ripe berries, dark fruit, vanilla, oak, and spice [3].

17.3 is where it gets interesting from a provenance standpoint. It's a single-farm, single-field, single-vintage release using barley grown exclusively in Irene's Field on Octomore Farm, just two miles from the distillery, matured five years across first-fill bourbon and second-fill Ribera del Duero, Sauternes, Eiswein, and Syrah casks, and peated to 132.1 PPM [1]. That's a five-cask program stacked on top of an already extreme peat level, and it carries a U.S. suggested retail price of $279.99 [1]. If you want the full comparison set, a 17.4 release is reportedly landing October 1 with 108.2 PPM peat plus Oloroso and virgin oak finishing [4], which would make this the largest Octomore lineup in a single series yet.

I highly recommend everyone try Octomore. Don’t be put off by the peat. Yes, it’s peaty. But its such a good, sweet peat. It’s truly magical.

Full disclosure before I get into the release notes: I've been collecting the Remus Repeal Reserve series since Series I, and Series X means I'm one bottle away from an unbroken decade of releases, unopened, sitting in the collection. That's not a normal thing to be excited about, but if you've ever tried to keep a vertical intact for ten straight years without caving and opening one, you understand the stakes.

The anniversary release itself earns the milestone. Series X is bottled at 107 proof and blends three mash bills, including the historic LBSV and LESV recipes plus the rarely seen LISV, marking the first time all three have appeared together [5]. It's a complex medley of batches aged between 2008 and 2017, blended by Master Distiller Ian Stirsman, with a nose of French oak, vanilla, tobacco, and dark chocolate, a palate of almond croissant, vanilla, balanced oak, and pistachio, and a finish of English toffee and candied almond [5].

The bigger news for the brand is the rye. Remus Repeal Reserve Rye Whiskey is a limited-edition straight rye, a first for the brand, built from 2015 and 2016 reserves of Remus's 95% rye mash bill and bottled at 111 proof [5]. Expect butterscotch, caramel, French oak, and cardamom on the nose, with mint, star anise, toffee, and fennel on the palate, closing with candy-coated fennel seed [5]. A 95% rye mash bill is about as high as the category goes, so this should be a sharper, spicier departure from the bourbon house style rather than a rye-flavored version of it.

Both releases hit select retailers nationwide beginning this September, while supplies last, for a suggested retail price of $79.99 [5].

The Murph has always been Hamilton's most interesting case study in how a movie prop becomes a permanent catalog fixture. It's named for its role in Interstellar on the wrist of Murphy "Murph" Cooper, and it went on to transcend the film entirely and become a permanent part of Hamilton's lineup [6]. The newest version leans into that origin harder than any prior edition.

The new Murph reprises the more accessible 38mm proportions rather than the original's oversized 42mm case [6]. Power comes from Hamilton's H-10 automatic, based on the ETA 2824-2, with an 80-hour power reserve, the same caliber found across the current collection [6]. The real change is cosmetic but deliberate: to create the intergalactic look of the new dial, Hamilton combines a brighter blue center that fades to black at the periphery with a pronounced grained texture inspired by stardust, adding dimension and shifting light across the surface [6].

The new Murph joins the collection with the strap version priced at $995 and the bracelet version priced at $1,075 [6].

Tudor's centennial has been a steady drip of archive-driven releases, and the North Flag's return is one of the bigger ones. The line has served as the north star for Tudor's modern catalog for a decade, and when the model first debuted in 2015, it marked the first Tudor watch to house an in-house movement paired with an exhibition caseback [7]. That in-house push mattered beyond the model itself: the COSC-certified Caliber MT5621 that powered the original was the jumping-off point for Tudor to roll manufacture movements and chronometer certification across its catalog [7].

The new version pushes the technical spec further, adding METAS certification for Master Chronometer status along with a GMT complication [7]. METAS is the Swiss federal metrology institute's own chronometer test, layered on top of COSC, and it's a materially tighter bar for accuracy and magnetic resistance than COSC alone.

Inside the 40mm stainless steel case sits the Manufacture Caliber MT5652-U, displaying hours, minutes, seconds, date, and GMT, with both COSC and METAS certification and a "weekend proof" 65-hour power reserve [7]. Design-wise, Tudor kept the model's core identity intact: the black dial with large Arabic numerals, the arrow-shaped 24-hour hand paired with an angular seconds hand and baton minutes hand, and the integrated bracelet all trace back to the Ranger II from 1973, the historic touchpoint for the collection since its inception [7].

The North Flag is priced at $5,525 [7].

After a five-year hiatus, Mitsubishi's off-road nameplate returns for a fifth generation, and it's a genuine reversal of the direction the model had been heading. Rather than continuing to evolve the increasingly road-oriented outgoing generation, Mitsubishi went the other way, building the new Pajero on a ladder frame derived from the Triton/L200 mid-size pickup [8].

The numbers back up the off-road repositioning. Mitsubishi has confirmed a turbocharged 2.4-liter diesel borrowed from the Triton, making 204 horsepower and 354 pound-feet of torque [9], paired with an eight-speed automatic [10]. Design language borrows from elsewhere in the lineup, supersizing cues from regional models like the Destinator and Xforce with bulging fenders and a more imposing front grille [9].

Rollout is staged: it launches first in Thailand, then Japan and Australia by the end of March 2027, followed by roughly 100 countries across ASEAN, Latin America, and the Middle East [10]. As for the U.S., don't hold your breath: Mitsubishi is still undecided about bringing it here [11], and pricing so far reflects other markets, starting around the equivalent of $50,000 USD in Australia [11].

This is the kind of story that doesn't have a single hero car attached to it, but it's going to shape what shows up in showrooms for the next decade. The plan gradually concentrates VW's model lineup on the most attractive market segments, streamlining it by up to 50 percent while cutting trim and variant complexity by up to 75 percent [12]. Translation: fewer trims, fewer niche variants, and a lineup built around fewer, higher-volume nameplates across VW's stable of brands.

The workforce numbers are the headline most outlets led with. The Supervisory Board approved a restructuring plan targeting a workforce reduction of roughly 50,000 positions, on top of cuts already underway from earlier this year, alongside consolidating the global model lineup and tightening cost controls [13][14]. Four German plants, Emden, Zwickau, Hanover, and Neckarsulm, are flagged as losing current production runs between 2031 and 2034 [15].

Financially, the targets are specific: annual sales of nine million vehicles and an operating margin of nine percent by 2030, corresponding to an operating result of roughly €31 billion [12]. CEO Oliver Blume framed it as a stability move rather than a retreat: "This is a strong signal for the future of the Volkswagen Group. We are taking responsibility for our entire workforce, for our partners and for industrial jobs worldwide" [12].

A few weekends ago I got to spend time at Pastranaland with Travis Pastrana and Ken Block's family, and I'm still processing how lucky that was. Thank You John for making this a reality for me. A childhood dream was literally checked off that weekend. Dirt biking, Can-Am, ATVing, all of it, on the actual grounds where half the stunts you've seen on your phone over the last twenty years were built and tested. Video's linked below, but I wanted to give some background on the place and the people first, because there's a lot more history here than "guy has a cool backyard."

What Pastranaland actually is. The property in Davidsonville, Maryland is used as a training facility for extreme sports professionals, with ramps, jumps, and off-road tracks scattered across the grounds [16]. Travis didn't buy it as an established star, either: he picked up the property in 1999 at just 17 years old, using his early factory Suzuki motocross earnings [17]. Over the decades it's grown into something between a private R&D lab and a proving ground, the place athletes from around the world come to hang out and push their biggest tricks [18]. There's a rally course, a supercross track, a foam pit, and enough off-road terrain to run UTVs and ATVs all day, which is exactly what we did.

Travis's rally career, for anyone who only knows him from the X Games. Pastrana's freestyle motocross résumé gets most of the attention, but the rally side of his career is just as decorated. He's a six-time American rally champion, currently racing for Subaru Motorsports USA [19], and his rally roots go back further than most people realize, to a career that started in 2004 [20]. He's continued competing well into his 40s, entering the 2025 American Rally Association season at the Olympus Rally alongside longtime co-driver Rhianon Gelsomino [21].

Why the number 43 matters here. If you've followed rally or rallycross at all, you know Ken Block's number. Block competed under 43 from the earliest days of his motorsports career, including WRC rounds in the 2000s [22]. After his death, both major series retired it in his honor: Nitro Rallycross permanently retired the number, and the World Rally Championship followed suit [22]. Pastrana and Block came up through the same era of American rally and action sports together, and that friendship is baked into a lot of what still happens at Pastranaland.

Lia Block is the one to watch right now. Ken's daughter isn't just carrying the family name, she's actively rewriting the record book. She won the Open Two-Wheel-Drive class in the 2023 American Rally Association season, becoming the youngest champion in series history at 16 [23]. After a two-year detour into single-seaters, including a season with the Williams Racing junior program in F1 Academy, she came back to rally for 2026 in a serious step up in equipment, targeting the full ARA National Championship in a Hyundai i20 N Rally2 [24]. The results have followed: as of the Ojibwe Forests Rally, the sixth of eight rounds this season, she leads the standings by 21 points over Seth Quintero [25]. The season wraps with the Overmountain Rally in Tennessee on September 18-19 and the Lake Superior Performance Rally on October 9-10 [25], and if she holds the lead, it would be a genuinely historic result for American rally.

Video from the weekend is linked below. Dirt biking, Can-Am, ATVs, and a lot of standing around in disbelief that this was actually happening. Hanging with the Brew Crew, The Pastrana Crew, The Block Crew, Banksy & Gray, Dave Mirra Family, Everyone. It was incredible and still cannot believe it. Got 20 minutes? Watch here.

Outro: Well, that’s it for this week! Hope everyone is ready for the fall, because it is boost season!