It started out as a normal day… what is the meaning of life?

Normally we just amble in the pub and have a pint, or a dram, or both, havin the craik and watchin any sport on the telly. As we gathered we totalled four, meself, Ming, Billy and Angus. After the usual talk on nothing, we decided to have a wee dram session, thats where we started the trail doonhill … Singleton looked at us appealingly. Good, but not one I would chose first. Its the one I would hang first. BUT, saying that we had to start somewhere, and the left of the shelf seemed as good a place as any.

Bushmills

Singleton of Dufftown 12 year old; Golden colour with a rich nose of fruits, liquorice and citrus. The smooth taste leaves a warm and pleasant finish. Well, it went doon well, better than most blends, even though this is a single malt. We chatted and all agreed we had tasted better really, but y’know you need start with something unpeated, so we did. The telly was pretty boring, och after all is was only 1.30 on a drab and driech Saturday. Which led us to one of the best films ever made “Whisky Galore”. Believe me if ya havnee seen it, make it a first to do on the list tomorrow. Bushmills Liz likes hers in hot toddies! But – C’mon lads were in a pub, so we had 4 neat single malt Booshmills. Aye it went down well and even Angus didnee put water in it, amazin!!! It was aboot now that Gus started sliding, mind – he had been there the longest, he thought he could taste Leprachauns in his dram, we moved a chair to the left and he didnee notice, he was dreamin of wee Irish Coleens. We left him and took another dram, it was good, plus – even better, Shamrock Rovers had just qualified for the group stages in Europa League.

Monkey Shoulder

Next on the shelf was a fine looking Monkey Shoulder. Aye no a single malt, but this wasnee a malt tasting day, we were “exploring”. I have had this dram often and do really like it. 3 malts but cannee separate them, sweet, vanilla and fruit, slightly malty. I love the monkey’s on the bottle and the website! Ok its a Glenfiddich/Balvenie mostly but we all enjoyed them, even Gus who was back in the land of the living. It was now we heard bagpipes, so we though Fraz was comin in, wrong, nae sign of him. Turns out it was the pub cat, someone had squashed it in the door. Gus thought it was Highland cathedral, oh God he’s gone! Footy was on by noo and we took a wee breather, ciggie break for two of us, bathroom breaks all roond. Upon our re-gathering, someone mentioned the meaning of life … er, where did that come from? Ming had mentioned watchin it the night before, so – as you do – a Monty Python conversation broke out. After another Monkey we challenged eachother who could do the best “silly walk” as in Python. Billy fell over trying the famous John Cleese walk, Gus walked into the bar, Ming couldnee walk for lafin and myself; decided against it on medical grounds. We left Gus fallin asleep at the end of the bar. Might I just say, when we started, the pub was quiet, now it was busy, most folk seemed to think this was the entertainment for the afternoon. Och well we were oblivious to it. By noo it was tea time, so we decided to wake Gus and all have a healthy bite to eat to see us right. Pub food can be good; deep fried haggis and a link sausage roll with mashed tattie. We took this on the bar and hey, Gus woke up!!! Being sensible adults we decided to put a hold on the drams, 4 Irn Bru’s so it was.

Iron Bru

Nothin like a healthy meal to keep you young an fit. And that was nothin like a healthy meal. Next on the shelf was the Glenlivet. A standard pub dram and one I normally shy away from (I’m a very shy person) but we had one each. Did you know, it was the first distillery to be licensed to make Scotch whisky in 1824. The 12 year old is the one we supped. No bad, Nose fruity – hint of apple, light. Palate light, hint of citrus fruits. Comes and goes quickly. Not very complex in the mouth. Restless. It was around 8pm that Gus broke in that he thought he could see flying frogs behind the bar. Hell, the girls hair was no that bad! Time to move him over again. As Gus chatted away to himself, 2 policemen wandered in … 3 locals wandered out the back door for a smoke. I peeped back inside, I have never heard quiet so loud as that, we dinnee like bluebells in our pubs. Back in we went after they departed, to be sure we had another Irn Bru each. Around now I recall being hit with a camera, terrible so it was, still get flash backs! So to Peat; Connemara Peated Single Malt. The lovely Linda had given me a few bottles of this and one went to the pub, she worked at Cooley’s until recently. It was pretty smoky, hints of hazelnut and liquorice. Liz, God bless her can niff germaline. Grand stuff, though Billy and Ming diddnee like that much peat, so .. out came the hip flask. I had a weed dram in it; Glen Garioch from the old brown bottle. Needless to say this was all our favourite dram of the night, the hip flask soon was empty. By now we were all looking at Gus, who was still alseep and thought it no a bad idea! It was to be truthful, getting a wee bit hazy now. We agreed to end our tasting with a Wild Scotsman. My pal in USA, Jeff gave me two of these bottles, one is half drunk at home, the other is more than half drunk in the pub, we finished it for them. Its a blend and very nice it is too. We were woken up and asked to leave about midnight, Gus had mysteriously gone already.

Glen Garioch

So what IS the meaning of life? Answer; sittin doon with pals, browsing distilleries without leaving the pub, while enjoying good grub, nice pub staff and havin the craik.

Paul McLean

MCLEANSCOTLAND

www.mcleanscotland.com

and an ANGELS WHISKY CLUB special report

www.angelswhiskyclub.com  

Vignettes – Moments in Whisky – Auchentoshan Visit – ‘Bottle Your Own & Toshan Man 1975 Experiment’

Distillery Visit

On Saturday 18th June 2011, Mark – together with his friends Niek & Ilse – returned to the Auchentoshan Distillery.

Jeremy Stephens, who’s become a close friend, moved on from being Head Distiller to Senior Blender for the Morrison-Bowmore group, allowed us to shoot some videos explaining the production process, but also allowed us to conduct a unique experiment in the Blender’s Room.

Warm Welcome

It was a pleasant surprise when the pulled into the parking lot of the Auchentoshan distillery to be welcomed by the guard at the gate with the words: ‘Ah, Mr Dermul, they are expecting you!’ Even more pleasant was to see the anticipation in the eyes of the Auchentoshan staff when we entered the visitor center. It felt like coming home. And in a sense, it was.

Mahj, Paula, Jenny, me, Jeremy and Christopher - my Toshan family!

Niek, Ilse and myself settled our purchases first, as our experience last year had taught us that we wouldn’t be leaving until long after the visitor center had closed. We were able to upholster our collections with quite a few wonderful bottles, such as the newly released Auchentoshan Valinch – a cask strength edition of the Classic, the first creation of newly appointed Senior Blender Jeremy Stephens (former Head Distiller). I was also eagerly looking forward to getting my hands on the Auchentoshan 1975, a limited edition of 500 bottles of this 35 Year Old whisky.

Production Process

After getting acquainted with the staff (it was a pleasure to meet Mahj, Paula, Jenny and Christopher), Jeremy took us along for another tour. We had done this before, of course, but this time we shot some informative videos in which the former Head Distiller explains the production process. Be sure to check that out here.

Mash Tun

After explaining about the mashing process, we moved on to the washbacks where the mysterious interplay between the wort and the yeast takes place to create the wash that will be charged into the wash still.

Washbacks

There are, of course, three stills at Auchentoshan: a wash still, the intermediate still and the spirit still. Jeremy went to great lenghts explaining why this is different from other distilleries and how that creates the strongest spirit in Scotland. Ah, the magic of triple distillation!

The stillhouse

We then moved into Warehouse Number 3, where the casks are stacked three high, during their long maturation. About 80% are Bourbon barrels, 20% sherry butts and a few wine barrels. Jeremy goes on to explain that whisky needs to be put in oak casks for a minimum of three years before it can be labeled whisky and also shows the effect of charring.

The warehouse

We then get the chance to fill up our own bottles.

Bottle Your Own – again!

When we were at the distillery last year, we bottled directly from a 1996 bourbon cask. It was – at the time – a 13 Year Old. Today, that cask is still there, but it’s nearly empty.

Bourbon Cask 11507 from November 1996

And since the cask was filled in november 1996, that meant that it had celebrated yet another year and it was now a 14 Year Old. That will make for an interesting comparison. We can taste both samples again and see what the extra year has done to the golden liquid.

It took quite a bit of work to get the whisky out of the cask, as it was nearly empty. That just made it all the more fun, of course. The valinch (which is the copper pitpette used to draw the whisky straight from the cask) went up and down quite a few times. And it meant that the spirit even had a few bits of the cask in it as well, as I pointed out to Jeremy. Exquisite!

After putting the labels on our bottles and stashing them in their own beautiful boxes, we took a walk around the grounds of the distillery and were amazed to see that it’s actually a domain of 78.000 sq meters! It was quite a walk! But very invigorating (apart from the occassional shower).

Toshan Man ‘Experiment 1975′

Walking into the Blender’s Room is always a rare treat. This is a beautiful place and not only because it’s nicely decorated. The sample cabinet is breathtaking and leaves us drooling in silence for several minutes. Jeremy offers us a few samples as well as a taste of the newly released Auchentoshan Valinch (the cask strength version of the popular Classic), the first whisky he put together as Senior Blender. After the first sip, I knew Morrison-Bowmore had put the right man on the right place. Jeremy knows his stuff, alright. The Valinch is marvellous. It’s got crème brûlée on the nose, with lots of vanilla, and pretty creamy too. It is a powerful whisky with a nice round body and great mouthfeel and tastes of toffee and orange peel. The lingering finish is quite sweet and lively. So I got me two bottles to start with!

But then something magical happened. Jeremy invited me to conduct an experiment. He offered me 8 cask samples from 1975 (!), 7 bourbon casks and 1 sherry hogshead. He put a blender’s glass in front of me and told me to create my very own ‘Toshan Man 1975′. I could hardly believe my luck. What an honour!

Cask Samples

You’ll appreciate the fact that this is quite a unique whisky as no notes were taken and the whiskies were poured into the glass ‘from the hip’, so to speak. A splash of this and a drop of that, on impulse. Hit or miss? Well, you can hardly go wrong with 1975 Auchentoshan, now can you? So it was bound to be good. And… it wasn’t. It was out of this world! A very creamy, lively dram with toffee, candid sugar, butter sprinkled with demarara, dark honey and some citrussy notes with a touch of raisins. But it was surprisingly lively, considering the cask samples were all 35 years old.

 
You must see the video as this was such good fun, we want to share it with all Toshan Men and Women.

Understandably, I was instructed to create just one dram – after all, these are precious cask samples not to be trifled with. But I did get to fill up a little sample bottle and still was able to taste my own Toshan Man 1975 expression and share it with the rest. The votes were unanimous: this was a fantastic dram. I plan to keep the sample for another few years in my cabinet, to open it up when I turn 50. I will then toast to Auchentoshan and that wonderful day in June 2011.

A big thank you goes to all the staff of Auchentoshan, for allowing me to conduct this unique experiment.

Niek, my friend who was born in 1974, was allowed to create his own ‘birthday dram’ as well from four cask samples from that same year. He was as happy as a kid in a candy store. Can you blame him?

We look forward to visiting the distillery again next year, during its Open Day, and hope to meet up with many of you!

Send us your own ‘Vignettes – Moments in Whisky’. If you have a whisky moment please feel free to submit your moment and we’ll do our best to publish it.

A unique moment at BenRiach distillery.

Our recent whisky tour took us yet again to BenRiach, our Dutch group spent over two hours here tasting from several casks (many, many actually!) and did indeed mention it was “the moment we went to heaven”.  Photos show Calum managing to get enough of the heavenly liquid for the boys.  A whisky tour that included; Bowmore, Lagavulin, Ardbeg, Bruichladdich, Oban, Ben Nevis, Glenfiddich, BenRiach, Knockdhu, Strathisla, Glen Grant, Edradour, Dewar’s Aberfeldy and Auchentoshan.

A dark moment.

dark? aye, Knockdhu to be factual.  The Dutch boys took their time on this unique distillery tour, with distillery manager Gordon, 2 and a half hours of warts – an – all – sights and tastes. Many thanks to Gordon for these special moments, we must also mention the doogs! 

Submitted by Paul Mclean of www.mcleanscotland.com

Send us your own ‘Vignettes – Moments in Whisky’. If you have a whisky moment please feel free to submit your moment and we’ll do our best to publish it.

Marc Pendlebury

Whisky in Lagos: Enter the Ninja by Marc Pendlebury

At the end of this month, after 8 months, my time in Lagos, Nigeria, will be over. Although trying at times, it’s been a great experience overall and one that I will remember fondly, and which I feel I’ve made the most of.  It’s a whole other world. The sheer size of the city and number of people, cars, taxis and motorcycles is astounding; not to mention the brazen corruption, manic streets, extensive poverty, unremitting noise and abundant pollution. (Imagine a post-apocalyptic New York City with 18 million people!).

There are entertainment options in Lagos but they aren’t plentiful, and so to break the monotony of work over the weekend, Saturday mornings I do a weekly shop. Although I usually end up buying a few food items, the purpose of my shopping is to find whisky. Now believe it or not, finding whisky isn’t too hard. There are no dedicated alcohol/liquor stores but most grocers, apart from the few that are strictly Halaal of course, stock a fairly decent range of alcohols. Wine and cognac seem to be most popular with great variety on offer, including more premium swanky cognac bottles than I care to count. Whisky stock however, although present, is erratic and usually restricted to only a few brands. But herein lies the fun.

No two stores are alike in their whisky stock, not even within the same supermarket chains. Visiting a store for the first time is like opening a lucky packet; you cannot anticipate what you’re going to find. Of course there are the usual cheap and premium blends from across America, Canada and Scotland, but more than that one can only guess. The only single malt brands that appear well distributed are Glenmorangie and Glenfiddich, but no surprise there really.

Some of my unexpected finds so far (all unavailable in SA):

• Lots of older Glenmorangie Wood Finishes: Madeira and Burgundy
• Glen Moray 8yo & 16yo Speyside single malt
• Three expressions of Castle Rock: NAS blend, 12yo blend and a 12yo “malt Scotch whisky”
• Two  expressions of William Peel:  8yo “pure malt” in numbered bottle and a 12yo Speyside single malt
• A bottle of Midleton Very Rare 2008
• Cameron Brig NAS pure single grain whisky
• Smokehead single Islay malt
• Glavya and American Honey whisky liqueurs

Out of all the oddities and lesser distributed bottles I’ve stumbled across, there is one that wins the unusual pageant without contest. Enter the Ninja! Ninja Whisky is “a fine blend of matured malts and premium grain spirits”, NAS whisky bottled and blended by Alcobrew Distilleries in India, for Sainov Spirits. When I came across this on a shelf for 800 Naira (≈ R36/£3) I had a hearty chuckle and had to buy a bottle. I intend keeping it closed for my whisky shelf as it’ll bring back my memories of Lagos and make for good story telling, but I am tempted to get another bottle to taste out of pure curiosity – I’m just scared of what it’ll taste like! Credit where it is due though: the packaging is very creative and honest; it isn’t masquerading as anything other than a blended and bottled Indian ninja! Although it is oddly void of place of distillation.

I’ll have two more weekends in Lagos, which means two more Saturdays for whisky hunting. Thereafter I just need to sneak my several bottles of whisky through SA customs in one piece. Hopefully the mystical cloaking skills of the Ninja will help…

Update: Ninja whisky product page that mentions ‘Oakwood’ maturation, and a TV ad. Seems there is a whole family of Ninja spirits including rum, brandy, vodka and gin. (That’s one deadly family!)

Visit Marc at http://whiskybrother.com

Send us your own ‘Vignettes – Moments in Whisky’. If you have a whisky moment please feel free to submit your moment and we’ll do our best to publish it.

Whisky Intelligence has added a new category called ‘Vignettes – Moments in Whisky’ which will feature whisky moments as experienced by the readership. If you have a whisky moment please feel free to submit your moment and we’ll do our best to publish it. The very first Vignettes – Moments in Whisky was published on Monday May 30th and was submitted by Joe Barry of South Africa.

This last weekend I happened to be in Cape Town when I was told the Bascule Whisky Bar at the Cape Grace Hotel had a bottle of the Mackinlays (Shackleton’s) replica in stock having been flown in personally by the hotel’s UK agent. On Sunday morning I was there and Bradley, the bar manager, had the as yet unopened bottle ready. On looking for the (normal?) tear strip to open it and not finding anything it crossed my mind it might be a screw cap so a knife was used to cut the foil neatly off.

Then the penny dropped, we were handling a bottle ostensibly made prior to 1907 and whilst screw tops were in use for foodstuffs since the middle 19th century they were probably not used on whisky bottles then. And so it proved, when the foil was removed a cork sealed the bottle but different to the modern corks, this had a thin flat top unlike the thicker plastic  coated tops of today. What was most interesting was, as this thin lip could easily break with continued use the bottle came provided with an alternative cork, a robust round V shaped stopper contained in it’s own little hessian bag. What attention to detail!

The whisky itself was excellent, pale gold color, very good legs, floral nose, no peat, neat it tasted of biscuit,cereal and brown sugar. With water the sweetness became more apparent, honey, nuttiness and hints of nutmeg. The finish was long and lingering and overall I gave it 88 points, not bad for a blended malt.

Sadly we will not be seeing  much of this here as the bottle is 70cl and our regulations stipulate 75cl but I have heard rumours that one of our liquor chains has put in an order so perhaps W&M are producing a run in the bigger size.

Anyway it was an auspicious moment for me especially as the hotel is convinced I was the first person in SA to taste this whisky here and be that true or not I enjoyed the occasion.

One final question, on the label is a red circle with the letters ML inside and they are also on the box. What do they represent, surely not the name of the producers because that would be CM - do you perhaps know the answer?

Cheers
Joe Barry – South Africa

Update – 31/05/2011 – In my article on Shackletons Mackinlay whisky (30th May) I queried the significance of the letters ML on the bottle. Nobody could tell me so I contacted Rob Bruce, PR man at W&M, who advised they stood for Mackinlay Liqueur but after 1949 (when liqueur was not allowed) it was changed to Mackinlay Legacy! Interesting, no wonder no-one knew! -  Joe

‘Vignettes – Moments in Whisky’ is a new category on Whisky Intelligence and Joe’s article in the very first. Please feel free to submit your own vignette and maybe we’ll publish it!

Whisky Intelligence has added a new category called ‘Vignettes – Moments in Whisky’ which will feature whisky moments as experienced by the readership. If you have a whisky moment please feel free to submit your moment and we’ll do our best to publish it. The very first Vignette – Moments in Whisky will be published on Monday May 30th and was submitted by Joe Barry of South Africa.

Whisky Intelligence has added a new category called ‘Vignettes – Moments in Whisky’ which will feature whisky moments as experienced by the readership. If you have a whisky moment please feel free to submit your moment and we’ll do our best to publish it. The very first Vignette – Moments in Whisky will be published on Monday May 30th and was submitted by Joe Barry of South Africa.