Discover Whisky

As part of our efforts here to keep focussed and get information on whisky, tasting notes etc out as quickly as possible we’ve been working hard to develop our new posting schedule - so that all of our subscribers are able to get regular updates.

From February we’ll be doing two ‘core’ postings a week.

• Mondays - The Discover Whisky Weekly Digest
  • Look at Whisky News from the week that was
  • Look at up coming stories
  • Interviews
• Thursdays - Discover Whisky Tasting Notes
  • Review of a whisky every week

February Whisky Tastings

Over February we’ll be posting four brand new tastings of Malts from across Scotland - Bill’s focussing on Islay whiskies so everyone better keep him right!

1. Caol Ila Malt Whisky Review ¹
2. Ancnoc 12 year old Review ²
3. Ardbeg ³
4. Glenmorangie ‘Qunita Ruban’ ⁴

That will bring us up to the end of February and we can start saving up our pennies to get some new reviews/tasting notes for March - I’ve got my eye on doing a tasting of Cragganmore ⁵ in March.

Thanks from Discover Whisky in January

Thanks this month go to the guys at Spencerfield Spirit - I’ve been chatting to Alex by email and on the phone and hope to get over to Fife to meet them. They’ve also got a blog - good to see that whisky is becoming big online and that lots of people are starting to get involved.

Footnotes

1. Caol Ila Website - they don’t seem to have a website so link points to an information page about Caol Ila
2. anCnoc Website
3. Ardbeg Website
4. Glenmorangie Website
5. Cragganmore Website - no Cragganmore website so this link points to an information page too

Slainte

There are many areas of Scotland with concentrations of distilleries but of all of them there are none to compare with the lovely remote island of Islay. Of the other island sources Orkney has a mere two, Skye, Mull and Arran only one each, yet Islay has an astonishing seven - all of them highly regarded, all of them very different and yet still distinctively Islay. They tend to attract extreme reactions, some people finding the strong phenolic tastes of the southern ones too much for them. However those that acquire the taste tend to be adherents for life, indeed for the committed Islay drinker there is little else worth bothering with.

In alphabetical order (so as not to anticipate our tastings) they are:

Ardbeg
Bowmore
Bruichladdich
Bunnahabhain
Caol Ila
Lagavulin
Laphroaigh

And if that isn’t enough then just a short ferry hop across the sound is the Isle of Jura distillery, while you can still obtain Port Ellen, although sadly this Islay distillery was dismantled some years ago and the remaining stocks are rising in price rather quickly.

In the next few weeks we’ll be offering tasting notes on all of these well loved drams. Indeed we’ve looked at one of the versions of Bruichladdich already. If you’re new to the delights of Islay then we hope you’ll be encouraged to experiment. I (Bill) am even hoping to convert Mike from his Strathspey favourites!

While checking through my email yesterday I noticed a great little competition from Bowmore. Ok so its not quite so small. By signing up online you will be entered into a competition to win one of only 827 bottles of Islay whisky valued at £2,000.

Each of these bottles comes from a cask, that was set down, on the 5th of November 1964 and comes hand numbered and in a special presentation case. The competition is part of a larger campaign by Bowmore to launch a website called “The Bowmore Way” - which by the sounds of it is going to have forums, videos and more competitions. I don’t see a blog mentioned here but I’m sure they’ll have one so we can all keep up to date with the goings on up at the Bowmore Distillery.

To enter the competition to win this whisky - I’m assuming its a damn good bottle of spirit as it costs £2,000 a bottle - visit Bowmore Distillery website.

As we enter 2008 I thought it was about time that we said a bit about 2008 and said thank you to all the people who’ve helped make this site a success.

2008 - More tastings in more locations

In 2007 we’ve conducted a couple of tastings - trying to develop our scoring system has been our main concern. As none of us as ‘professional whisky tasters‘ we’ve been trying to develop a score card that we can put online so that everyone can add their views using the same criteria. At these tastings we’ve had close to one hundred people giving their views on how they taste whisky and what they use to determine a ‘great whisky‘ and how they determine a ‘poor whisky‘. This has been a harder task than we first envisaged. But we hope to have this done by the end of March.

Also in 2008 we’re hoping to arrange a public tasting - it may be a very limited public tasting of about 20 people and we’re currently finalising details as we speak. It is hoped to have something arranged in Edinburgh after the Festival is finished - as it’ll be less busy and Edinburgh always regains its sense of self at this time.

Thanks for 2007

A big thanks should go to Spider Writing and Amimono Design. Each of these companies have helped with hosting, design, installation and some other bits and pieces to do with the site.

A big round of applause goes to all at Glenmorangie. They helped arrange whisky for one of our small tastings at the tail end of last year - review coming soon. The whisky they sent us has also became one of the corner stones when developing our scoring system. They sent us a Christmas present too which was great.

So all the best to all of you in 2008.

Slainte