Yesterday I bought a whisky from 1982 for a friend's 30th birthday. It's from the Whisky Agency, distilled at the rather small Mannochmore Distillery, and since it's a run of 131 bottles made only for Sweden, I can't really find any tasting notes on it anywhere, so it will definitely be interesting to try.
Y'know, for a cheapo ($18 a bottle) blend, Islay Mist is far from undrinkable. One can definitely taste the charcoal character of Laphroaig, but it's balanced out by a surprising sweetness. A bit too young for my taste, but hey, I can buy 2.5 bottles of this stuff for the price of one bottle of straight Laphroaig, so it's a fine budget choice.
I just recieved a 10 year old Suntory YAMAZAKI. It's not half bad. Nice and smooth, not spectacular, but then it wasn't too expensive either.
Suntory time is indeed relaxing time. The thing to hunt down if you can is the Suntory Hibiki, which spends part of its time in plum liqueur casks.
Worth it for an introductory whiskey. I'm still easing into the sharpness of the drink in general, so the extra burn from the cinnamon flavor helps me realize that not everything needs to be mixed. Now, if only I could find a way to stash my half-bottle of Fireball in my luggage without my mom noticing. Hm.
I'm going to be in Edinburgh, Scotland for a few days in November. What distilleries should I visit while I'm there?
probably old, but. http://www.esquire.com/features/drinking/scotch-pronunciation-guide-5836909#v963669212001
I love that this thread exists. I still consider myself a whisky noob. I'm finishing up a bottle of my current favorite: the Balvenie DoubleWood 12 year. I've been drinking this fine whisky for a few years (and still love it), but I feel like trying something new. I tend to prefer the sweeter/fruitier end of the whisky spectrum. I'm not judgin' anyone for loving Laphroaig, but peat moss is not for me. Other known favorites are the Macallan, Bushmills 10+, and Jefferson's Reserve small batch bourbon. Assume I know and am meh about the bar standards (Glenlivet, Glenfiddich, Johnnie Walker). Help me, BF!
I got back from a trip to Cape Breton a couple of days ago and got to tour the only single malt distillery in North America. I also purchased a bottle of their 15 year old. Apparently only the 10 year old is actually distributed so everything else is only available at the distillery itself. I was tempted by their 19 year old cask strength but paying hundreds for 250ml put it a little out of my price range.
I'd say you should try highland and lowland whiskies: for highlands, try Glenmorangie, which is obtainable just about anywhere. For lowlands, consider Auchentoshan or Bladnoch.
If you haven't had Glenmorangie, I bet you'd love it, especially the sweeter casked-in-something-unusual bottlings. Look for the Lasanta (sherry casked), the Artein (supertuscan wine casked), or the Nectar d'Or (sauternes casked). They're all excellent.
A not very experienced drinker here. Try the Oban - not the 'normal' one, which seems a bit flat to me, but the distillers edition which is matured in sherry casks. Good stuff, and my guess is you'll like it. A bit expensive though.
So hey, assuming I'd be interested in doing a small podcast-type thing about whisky, could I get one or two people who are really into the subject to volunteer? Ideally, we'd chat a bit about the stuff, trying to give people outside this thread an idea of why it's worthy of its own niche here. I'd play the role of outsider, asking questions as a noob looking in (which I mostly am) so you should know a bit about it, but I guess that's not a problem for most of the crowd here. :)
Ahhhh.... I need more money in my life ! https://www.masterofmalt.com/whiskies/drinks-by-the-dram/the-whisky-advent-calendar/ What a fantastic idea !
It's like getting a regular calendar late -- you just flip through all the pages so you can catch up. Try to be already sitting down when you start catching up on this one, though.
To console myself for not having a scotch advent calendar in my life I ordered a nice bottle of the aforementioned Oban distillers ed. Which arrived today. Scotch makes me happy. I can use happy.
Hello whiskey. You might have noticed that I have not posted in this thread, because I'm not much of a whiskey drinker, which is to say I do not care for bourbon or scotch. But if you were to approach me and say "want some rye?" I would naturally reply "'course I do!" To that end, I embarked earlier to night on a mission from God, one which I have humbly named The Quest for the Perfect A Sazerac. Have I ever even tentatively made an apology here for the state-run liquor stores in Pennsylvania? If so, I'd like to retract it. You see, before heading out to get the ingredients, I did a little research and found out about Sazerac brand rye: good, affordable, and intended for my very purpose. Only the first liquor store I went to did not have it. In fact, they didn't have any rye at all besides Knob Creek, which was a little more expensive than I wanted to spend. So I went to a larger liquor store farther away. They only had the Knob Creek and a couple of cheap ones that I wasn't too sure about. When I got back out to the car I checked the official state website and whoops! Sazerac brand rye is not available literally anywhere in this entire state. Thanks a fucking lot, Pennsylvania. Almost bailed on the mission but I have a problem cutting my losses, so I went to a THIRD liquor store, which had Knob Creek and one cheapie. So after all that I left with the Knob Creek after all, along with a bottle of Pernod--you didn't think this story ended with me scoring actual absinthe, did you? Additionally, the liquor store does not sell bitters, because that would be just way too sensible. Instead, bitters are the domain of grocery stores, and while I didn't have much hope of finding the prescribed Peychaud’s bitters, I had a few groceries to pick up anyway so I figured it was worth a shot. However, when I got into the store and found out that scallions were apparently too exotic a treat for this place I pretty much gave up, and when I saw this sign: (lol "new age" wtf) ...I realized I wasn't about to be pleasantly surprised. Angostura it is. But after all that, this sazerac (or psuedorac, or whatever) is pretty damn good. There's a lesson in there somewhere, but I don't have time to figure out what it is; I have to go make two more.
Sazerac is sort of a weird case -- it's cheap and delicious, but Buffalo Trace has started only releasing it twice a year, and the production run sells out really really fast. The PLCB doesn't make this even remotely clear, but in this case it's actually not entirely their fault. Mostly I just buy Bulleit rye these days, and when a new batch of Sazerac comes out I buy 2-3 bottles and stockpile 'em. If you have one of the PLCB liquor specialty stores near you, they do sell Peychaud's and a couple pretty decent absinthes, but again it's not made particularly clear. Maybe 18 months or so ago they tried stocking bitters more widely, but it turned out that approximately nobody bought them (possibly because they didn't actually TELL ANYBODY), so most of them got cut out of the catalog. Mostly I order my bitters online from Cocktail Kingdom these days. Anyway, if you want to see if one of the goofy 'Premium Collection Stores' is near you, the PLCB has a startlingly well hidden list available here. Note that I only actually know this because I know the guy who runs PLCB Users Group and he's spent a lot of time figuring this stuff out. I have no idea how the fuck anybody else is supposed to know any of it. Also, in no way should any of this be taken as a defense of the godforsaken PLCB system. It's awful that I have to know any of this in order to make a good drink.
We live so close to Delaware, it would have been faster for extarbags to go to Total Wine than three state stores. But it wouldn't have been as good a story! Mmmm... sazerac...
Yeah, for us it's the excitement of driving an hour to Ohio. And then you're in scenic Youngstown, so hurrah. Fortunately, one of my coworkers goes on distillery tours a couple times a year and is always willing to stop at the world's best liquor store near Cincinnati on the way back, so supply levels are maintained with only a minimum of smuggling.
Interesting. I only saw Bulleit bourbon for sale tonight, and I've seen people online making sazeracs with that, but I didn't see their rye. Are there any other less expensive ryes you can recommend? The Knob Creek is delicious but I spent forty bucks on it ninety minutes ago and it's already half gone, and that is not exactly my usual liquor budget. Awesome link, thanks. I did get a sweet variety pack of great artisanal bitters from my Qt3 secret santa last year, so I've got some of the good stuff in stock but I figured if I'm going to go off-book for this standard recipe I might as well do it with bitter that are cheap and readily available. Also they worked out fine. Sweet. One of them is actually pretty close to here, but as Marged said Delaware is almost as close, plus she actually works there so I should really just have her do the booze shopping for the household. Yeah it's pretty stupid. Come visit us in Philly sometime, we'll show you a good time, Delaware-adjacent style. ;)
Also that Pernod stuff is effing delicious. I may have a glass of it just on the rocks a little later.
If you can find Old Overholt near you, that's a pretty solid choice. Cheap but still nice for mixing. Both the Jim Beam rye and Wild Turkey are surprisingly okay, but I don't know if I'd put 'em in a Sazerac. In a pinch you can go with the (ri)1 stuff, but it's both too expensive for what you get and really annoyingly named. I've been wanting to go to Dogfish Head for years. I guess Philly is arguably kind of sort of on the way there...
Happiness. Bourbon's sort of sweet and tastes of caramel, while rye is sharper, spicier, and a little peppery.
It just tastes like whiskey only instead of tasting like whiskey and mouthwash it tastes like whiskey and feeling warm inside. Make sense? Want some rye? 'Course ya do.
Hmmm. I wonder if I can get any mini-bar sized bottles of it. I hate buying full-sized bottles of booze only to find that they're not to my taste. I'm on a limited budget here...
