On Saturday, my girlfriend and I went to Croydon Cats Protection and got a little tabby cat. She’s about 3 (we’d have loved a kitten but we’re not home enough to look after a kitten properly) and she’s called Islay Isla!
A real whisky cat… I’ll try to get a picture to upload.
Arran, the source of the whisky for our little venture selling whisky presents (A Dram in Time) and a favourite distillery of mine has been in the news a bit recently.
The Herald talks about Arran in an article about the pressures on smaller players in the whisky market. It’s good to hear that they have been profitable through much of 2006. The article came out just before the end of the year, so I haven’t heard whether that extends to the whole of 2006, but it’s good news either way. I’ve seen similar articles pop up in a few places recently – it’s nice to see them doing a good job with their PR.
There is some controversy about pairing whisky with food – many people feel it taints both, but The Spirit of Speyside Whisky Festival seems to think it’s ok (I saw the story in The Publican online ). They are running a competition for chefs to demonstrate some innovative Speyside / food combinations.
I am a fan of some pairings – I enjoy a dram alongside haggis and dark chocolate can be an excellent after-dinner accompaniment, but I would like to experiment a bit more – there are a number of combinations of food and whisky that I haven’t tried yet. Some that are supposed to be good but haven’t tried include:
So I wrote about the drammies yesterday – before the winners were announced and it’s a good job I wasn’t betting on them because I didn’t pick many of the consensus winners!
See below for some links to the actual winners in each category (with my nomination in brackets)
Best Packaging
Highland Park
(Monkey Shoulder)
Most Innovative New Product
Compass Box – The Spice Tree – unfortunately I can’t link directly to the spice tree whisky because of the flash on their website
(Laphroaig Quarter Cask)
Innovator of the Year Yay. I got this one!!: Compass Box / John Glaser
Bang for the Buck
Old Pulteney 12
(Dalmore 12)
Distillery of the Year
Bruichladdich
(Ardbeg)
Best Distillery Tour
Aberlour
(No experience of any of the nominations!)
Most under-rated Whisky
Longmorn 15 – on the Scotch Whisky website – I can’t find a Longmorn website – is there one? I have just heard from Neil MacDonald at Chivas that there is a new Longmorn website in the pipeline – you’ll hear more when we do!
(Springbank)
Best New Product
Benriach Authenticus 21
(Laphroaig Quarter Cask)
Most over-rated Whisky
Johnnie Walker Blue Label
(Macallan 18)
I think I’m a bit behind the time on this one, but I’ve just seen the nominations over at the drammies.
If my vote were going to count for anything, I would be going for:
Best Packaging
Monkey Shoulder
Most Innovative New Product
Laphroaig Quarter Cask
Innovator of the Year
Compass Box / John Glaser
Bang for the Buck
Dalmore 12
Distillery of the Year
Ardbeg
Best Distillery Tour
No experience of any of the nominations!
Most under-rated Whisky
Springbank
Best New Product
Laphroaig Quarter Cask
Most over-rated Whisky
Macallan 18
Just my personal opinions. Let’s see what the ‘right’ answers are tomorrow!
Update – the winners of the drammies have been announced. I didn’t pick very many!
Apparently Chinese imports of whisky have increased from about £2 million in 2001 to about £45 million in 2005 (this is where I read it: Seattle Times meaning China is now in the top 10 whisky-drinking countries in the world.
The bit of the news I found particularly interesting was the new ‘cocktail’ that I hadn’t heard about previously – whisky with sweet green tea. I might have to try that. All kinds of health benefits!
Yesterday, in a longstanding tradition, Duncan and I celebrated a pre-Christmas Christmas with our girlfriends. Every year, we buy each other stockings of presents with a price-cap and eat and drink far too much all day before we head off towards our respective families for the 25th.
Duncan and I both received some Christmas whisky miniatures in our stockings. Duncan got a Bunnahabhain, while I got a Japanese blend. I’ve only tried a couple of Japanese whiskies so far – an SMWS single cask and a Suntory 18 y.o. that was far too sherried for my liking at the whisky live event in London last year.
So I’m looking forward to trying my new Japanese blend.
What whisky are you getting for Christmas?
I hope pretty much every whisky drinker has a copy of Jim Murray’s whisky bible? (If not, better, head to Amazon and buy it).
Well, I have a few copies from different years, and have just heard that he has given a blend 97 out of 100 – equalling the highest score ever awarded. The lucky whisky is the Old Parr Superior, bottled by MacDonald Greenlees Distillers. Apparently it is almost exclusively exported to the Far East. Murray reckons we are suffering in Britain in terms of the decent blends that are available – especially when you look at what is available in Japan, for example.
I would very much like to try this blend (or any others getting decent reviews). To date, I have been pretty much exclusively a single malt drinker (with a few vatted whiskies thrown in for good measure). My sole experiences of blends have been some pretty dire Bells, Grouse, etc.
Incidentally, if you get stuck with only the dodgy blends available – go for Teachers above Bells or Grouse. The Ardmore in it helps it stand above the other similar-priced blends.
I have just seen that the famous grouse are offering personalised labels. I tried it out and the simple piece of software to create your own label seems to work very well.
I have to admit that I didn’t buy my personalised bottle, after all, a personal label doesn’t hide the fact that it is still famous grouse inside the bottle. To be fair to the famous grouse, I have drunk their whisky, and would drink it again, if their was nothing else available. But I am a single malt man, and however nice the whisky is, it just doesn’t compare to a single malt.
All credit to them though, personalised whisky labels should give them a boost in sales running up to christmas. For me though, my money is staying firmly in my wallet.
Bruichladdich, one of the less pronounceable distilleries on Islay (facing some decent competition from the likes of Laphroaig) are warning that they are running out of whisky as a result of Shell’s oil tankers not being able to get through in rough weather.
Rough weather is a common feature up there, making this an apparently predictable result of EU directives increasing the size of the tankers that Shell uses to deliver oil. Changes were made to allow the new tankers to dock, but locals apparently warned that it wouldn’t all work in bad weather.
We’re not convinced, however, that this actually means whisky is running out (not like it did before – see the classic whisky galore DVD and whisky galore book). Surely if they have run out of oil, the problem is that they aren’t currently producing whisky? Not that they are about to run out in their warehouses!
Since whisky matures for years (at least 3 before it can be called whisky – and normally much longer) it seems to me that they shouldn’t be that close to running out.
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