Well,you guys certainly know yer stuff.
I have just picked up a bottle of 12yo Lochruan (speyside) on a discount and it’s smooth with a lemon/peaty finish.mmmmmmmm
I’ll be shareing it with Mr Hinnigan today as he is over for another session.
Tony,who is from Glasgow is definately drawn to a good whisky and has a wealth of knowlege about the stuff as he has sampled most brands.
Islays will be next on the list.
Buy the way ,Tonys’ new site www.tonyhinnigan.com is nearly there.You guys will have a field day.There are interviews,comentaries,galleries and mp3 track downloads of all his music.It has taken a very long time to compile all the data but well worth the effort.I’ll post when it’s up.
So back to the whiskys’.
My partner Lucy (a whistler and very occasional C&F poster) grew up in a place called Knockando and right next door (literally) to Tamdhu. Both of these are of course whisky distilleries of great distinction. As you might expect she is something of an expert on whisky although her dad is even more so. Her sister also works at Macallan so we can get numerous single malts cheaply as well as your ordinary Macallan and Famous Grouse. My personal fave at the moment is Highland Park (from Orkney) although probably the most amazing liquid to ever to lubricate my thrapple was an old port finished Bowmore which cost £8 a dram!!! It really blew my mind that one.
I don’t seem to notice the all my missed notes after a few visits with Mr. Macallan or Mr. Talisker. In fact, my play becomes much more pleasing, at least to my ears. Has anyone else had this experience?
it was 1991, the first time i and my then girl-friend went to scotland. we had an excellent meal, there was an elderly couple there too, they had been watching us and just enjoyed seeing us. After our meal Glynn came to me and asked whether i had ever had scottish whisky. well, to that point i didn’t have a clue, i said that i had tried some at some point at my parents’ place, but, i really didn’t have a clue about whiskies. Anyway, he said he’d invite us to a dram of whisky we would never ever forget. he was right. it still is one of my favorite whiskies today.
are we talking about whisky again? It seems you boys have nothing better to do with your time :roll:
I actually bought a bottle of Tullamore Dew lately (yes, amar, I do realize this isn’t WHISKY). But it seems that it’s difficult to buy single malt anything here and so it was blended. I believe that’s almost anathema to quite a few here. But it wasn’t too bad. It tasted good in my coffee at any rate
Hmm, I’ve never tried whisky or whiskey in my coffee. I am partial to a bit of Bailey’s in it, though. Yes, I know Baileys has whikey in it, I meant I’ve never had whiskEy in my coffee straight.
I’d agree that Famous Grouse is a pretty good blend. If you just want a drink then it’s fine!
Cragganmore is classic Speyside but try Aberlour or Knockando for that smooth nectar taste as well. Not sure I’d bother with Glenfiddich myself. Laphroaig or Bunnahabhain to me seems to epitomise what a good Islay whisky should be - complex and you can almost taste that west coast spray!
best sold blend in scotland: famous grouse
best sold malt in scotland: glenmorangie (please, pronounced as in glenmORANgie)
best sold malt worldwide: glenfiddich (which doesn’t make it the best..)
I’m not Kevin, but I’m guessing that he is talking about cask conditioned ales. Typically breweries try to condition their beer for a long shelf life, and have it ready to drink as soon as it is shipped out. They do stuff like filter, chill, and stick it in a keg (this is a very short, not much detail explanation). This has an affect on the tast of beer. Beer that is put in a can or bottle is also processed this way.
“Real Ales” on the otherhand, are ales that undergo their secondary fermentation in a cask. The brewery typically sticks a bit of sugar into the casks to encourage the secondary ferementation. When the casks arrive at the pub, normally the pub will store them in a cool cellar for a number of months.
When ready to serve, real ales are served at what is called “cellar temperature”, typically a bit cooler than room temp, somewhere in the range of mid-50’s (F). The beer is served by dispensing directly from the cask by a “beer engine” which is sort of a suction pump.
Anyway, real ales have a distinct flavor difference.
I haven’t tried the regular 12y.o Glenfiddich but I had a bottle of 15y.o Solera reserve Glenfiddich at home a few moths ago. I liked it fine but it was maybe a little too oily for my taste (oily in flavour and not in mouthfeel). Many people have told me that the 12y.o is a bit uninteresting.
My uncle told me a story about when he was first introduced to single malt whisky. He was in Scotland on some sort of golf trip in his early twenties and they sat there at a pretty exclusive golf pub when an old gentleman walks in accompanied two young ladies. He walks up to my uncle and says something about them having taken his table. When they appologice and prepare to move away he just laughs and tells them to sit down. Then he calls on the waiter and orders “the usual”. The waiter comes in with a bottle of The Glenlivet and the gentleman then starts to fill up my uncles empty pint with it. My uncle said “thanks, sir” about five times before he stoped pouring and by that time he had a pint which was about half full of whisky in front of him. The gentleman just smiled at him and said “There you go lad. Now don’t ever go have another dram then The Glenlivet. And also remember it’s THE Glenlivet not Glenlivet, very important.” Then the gentleman walks off with his bottle and the two ladies, chuckling. My uncle have since gone out and tried several other brands but he always keep a bottle of The Glenlivet at home. He has thought me most of what I know (which of course is not much) about whisky, and he’s a great sorce of information on the subject.
A great site for whisky fans with lots and lots of useful information is www.scotchwhisky.com , that site has given me most of the rest of my limited knowledge… I really need to go buy a whisky book now, I’m suddenly hungry to learn more.
Best cure for whisky addiction is two years living on a fast jet base surrounded by members of the Malt Whisky Society who insist in having you round for drinks..regularly.
We both loved whisky until then…but have hardly touched in the ten years since.
Old Fettercairn for me, and Lagavulin (the Islay malt). Took our mutual friend in Brittany a bottle of Bowmore, Phil - it went fast… :roll: .
I’m “cursed” with good taste, I can go into a commercial art gallery and the one piece I find truly appealing will be the one with the highest price tag.
I’ve had friends pour me a bit of something “sold to me by Scotsman I could not make head nor tails of what he said, but gave me this when I asked for the best whisky in all the land and price was no issue.” My reaction is always “I could get used to this quite easily.” Then I realize that would not be a good idea for someone of my income level. Maybe my love of that little bit of fine single malt whisky has something to do with some sort of ancestral memory, as well as good taste. I also have German in my background and the best beer I’ve ever had was the local brew in a beer hall along the Rhine.
An upper class member of the Spanish speaking community of Tucson helped raise me, so have a great respect for things like the very best tequila, too. I have an idea for a culture based on my background I could use in science fiction stories. The Mestezo-Scotian-Tutons would be the result of Scotsmen, Mexicans and Germans colonizing the same planet. No Octoberfiesta mariachi band would be quite complete without a piper, tubaist and whistler (whistleist?) (but they wouldn’t necessarily all play at the same time, as such a combination would not be that easy to orchestrate, especially with the drones on the great Highland bagpipe!)
Rod, go transcultural with your instruments, and have them develop a bass bagpipe and a tuba with drones. Would add a truly interesting flavor to oompah-oompah music.
CDrom, I think along similar lines to that a lot, with good reason.
My playing style has been influenced by my fondness for classical music and country and western, including early bluegrass, I got from my parents, the music of Price Edward Island, Canada we learned to appreciate when we spent a summer there, including both the fiddle and bagpipes (not at the same time), the Hispanic music I was exposed to in Tucson AZ, all the background music of just living in the US, my playing the baritone sax in both high school concert and stage band, the inland Northwest Indian music at the powwows my dad the anthropologist took me to, all the electronic music by Wendy Carlos I listened to in adolescence and the electronic country music of Gil Trythall.
I am a mad scientist, at heart. I am very good at making things, including a plasma globe that won “Best Three Dimentional Art” in the Con-Vertion VI science fiction convention art show in Calgary Alberta. I am building a electrostatic inertial confinement fusion reactor and just might have figured out how to make it a workable energy source. I have made numerous whistles; some of which have been very odd experiments, applying what I have learned from all my experimentation, sometimes to great effect. I own a copy of Musical Instrument Design (which gives odd advice, such as simple ways to make slide instruments with conical bores!) and Making Simple Musical Instruments by Bart Hopkin and have read most of the instrument building books in the U of I library. Using what I have read, and my mad scientist tendencies, I have things like the slide contrabass saxophone, slide contrabassoon, the vapor phase deposition solid diamond whistle and the parallelogram fiddle-banjo on the drawing board.
Is the world really ready for the odd music and instruments that just might result?
