A Scottish whisky firm on Thursday unveiled bottles of the oldest single malt whisky in the world, having spent the best part of a century inside an oak barrel.

Gordon and MacPhail’s Mortlach 70-Year-Old Speyside was sampled at a launch party in Edinburgh Castle, where it was escorted through the doors by pipers and a military escort.

“It matured for 70 years in the cask and that is what makes it the oldest whisky in the world,” a spokeswoman for Gordon and MacPhail told AFP.

The whisky was filled into its cask on October 15, 1938 by the grandfather of the company’s managing directors David and Michael Urquhart.

Speaking to AutoExpress at the 2010 Geneva Motor Show, Aston Martin design director Marek Reichman said that he wants to set a new standard for personalization of Aston vehicles.

The aim is to form a team of engineers that would be able to make any of your dreams come true.

Reichman said that this could be accomplished using Aston’s historic Works Service department and the engineering and production staff who currently help produce the One-77 supercar.

“There is much more choice in the world,” Reichman said, “so our cars need to be much more personal.”

China‘s seemingly unquenchable thirst for wine has ousted America as Bordeaux’s number one client outside Europe, latest figures showed Friday.

With overall exports down a large 23 percent in 2009, vintners are now looking to the East to drain their cellars.

“China has become our first client outside the European Union,” said Alain Vironneau, president of the CIVB, Bordeaux’s wine trade body, in a press conference, hailing both Hong Kong and China as “dynamic”.

China’s buying power comes at a particularly opportune moment as France’s leading wine region struggles to survive the economic crisis.

Diamantini & Domeniconi have a range of contemporary clocks that both tell the time and add some significant design elements to your walls.

The Tribute model is a pocket-watch which can be transformed into a wristwatch in homage to Louis-Ulysse Chopard, who founded Chopard in 1860.

The Tribute is made of eighteen karat white gold with an alligator strap, only one hundred and fifty of the watches will be made to mark Chopard’s 150th birthday.

Kensington Palace will be taken over by British designers in a bid to lure in the masses.

The palace is at the center of a transformation project designed to make the royal residence in London more accessible to the public!

… even though the designs of Vivienne Westwood, Stephen Jones, or William Tempest — who are all involved in the project — usually aren’t.

Thought up by theater company Wildworks, the designers, joined by other UK labels including Boudicca, Aminaka Wilmon, and the illustrator Echo Morgan, are turning the residence into an Enchanted Palace through installations inspired by the princesses that lived there.