[austrotard]

told you peebs was gay.

note to self: buy amber today.

[FormerlyChaseChrome]

English think they will take over production of "Scotch" if Scoreland opts for independence...fuck the Brits

[T.J. Brayshaw]

A couple of what we used to be allowed to call vatted malts, or pure malts, but we now have to call blended malt Scotch whisky (not to be confused with blended Scotch whisky)…

I enjoyed the Monkey Shoulder, but thought it was nothing particularly special or interesting.



I typically go for the peaty or rich whiskies, but this Hive stuff has been getting all sorts of awards so I thought I'd give it a go. Honey. Lots of honey. Pretty good stuff, especially on a hot day when peat isn't really what quenches the thirst...

[T.J. Brayshaw]

My friend Jon, an Englishman who also spent many of his formative years (college) in Edinburgh and now lives in Connecticut, sent me this email earlier tonight:

"I wish I had some video of my life, at least the tiny snippets that amuse me, and occasionally you. Walking to the counter in the Madison Wine Exchange (read: upper class experts) the manager approached me, and seeing the whisky under my arm, pronounced "I love Ardberg!".

I said the only thing I could say was: "what?"

This just encouraged him to repeat the wrong.

Fucking American pig dogs."

[T.J. Brayshaw]

Local had a free tasting event:



It was fun, but I can barely bring myself to spend $200 on a fly rod, let alone on a bottle of whisky.

[austrotard]

that glen spey is pretty nice. butterscotchyscotchyscotch.
luckybastard pulled some on his 30th.

we settled on the 'farclas 25 some awesome drakian gave us.
yaay, me.

[T.J. Brayshaw]

They were all pretty good, but a bit too light and fruity for my manly taste. The Glentauchers was my favorite, I think, because of the sherry casking. But at something like 55% alcohol, it was also a bit much. These were all single cask selections from Duncan Taylor.

Learned some interesting things too. For example, when selling to independent bottlers (like Duncan Taylor), the distillers will sometimes put a single teaspoon of (say) Laphroaig (or whatever) into a huge batch of Ardbeg so that the bottlers cannot sell it as single malt. So they bottle it under (for example) a blended malt whisky like Black Bull or Smokehead or whatever. It will be 99.99% single malt from some distiller, but priced much lower. He said there's some vetted malt out there (maybe the Black Bull) that is basically a bunch of 40 year old single malts, but they couldn't sell them as such because they'd gone below the required 40%, so they had to bump them up with a bit of something else from a different distiller…rendering them no longer single malt.

I also knew that a lot of single malts are blends from a lot of casks, often of different ages, but never realized how many: he said that to get the consistent flavor of some of the well known single malts, a distillery might have to blend whiskies from 300 different casks to do so.

[austrotard]

every tasting I've been to contains at least one 50something divorcee with too much wonga, history and mascara.

and they love a man in tweed.
just typing.

[P-A]

Opened up my bottle of 21 years old Mortlach today, if you guys ever
find one just buy it!! Its old one with white/red/purple label
almost silly nice!!
Cheeeeers P-A

[markl]

Really enjoying the blended scotches from Compass Box. Delilah's, Oak Cross, Peat Monster and the Great King St blends are all getting good time in my glass. Well worth exploring, and well worth the price. In Canuckistani dollars, less than half the price of Oban and I get to explore some truly different and interesting scotches. It's kinda like starting to get into the blended reds. Not all successes, but totally interesting when it works. Not damn bad. You still want your stand by's - Lagavulin for me - but, these guys are charging up the charts for saving my sanity.
Though out of the UK, the best part for you Yanks, is that their whiskey maker is one of your own.
http://www.compassboxwhisky.com/index.php
Cheers to guys breaking the mold. A great story.

[Lurgee]

Really enjoying the blended scotches from Compass Box. Delilah's, Oak Cross, Peat Monster and the Great King St blends are all getting good time in my glass. Well worth exploring, and well worth the price. In Canuckistani dollars, less than half the price of Oban and I get to explore some truly different and interesting scotches. It's kinda like starting to get into the blended reds. Not all successes, but totally interesting when it works. Not damn bad. You still want your stand by's - Lagavulin for me - but, these guys are charging up the charts for saving my sanity.
Though out of the UK, the best part for you Yanks, is that their whiskey maker is one of your own.
http://www.compassboxwhisky.com/index.php
Cheers to guys breaking the mold. A great story.

If you're gonna go blend make sure you try Monkey Shoulder.

[T.J. Brayshaw]

Keep in mind that the term "blend" by itself is too vague. Monkey Shoulder (and Peat Monster, I think as well) is a blended malt Scotch whisky, not a blended Scotch whisky. Some of the others from Compass Box are blended Scotch whiskies.

And most of your single malt Scotch whiskies are blends of different whiskies as well. They're just not blended malt Scotch whisky, or blended Scotch whisky.