Last night was the final week of the last running of the Scotch Whisky Trail Certificate course. The Good Spirits Company is proving to be an excellent venue for it.
This class was a maximum attendance of 23, although only 20 sat the exam last night. Good scores, everyone passed (as it is a leisure course, I'm not sure that anyone should fail, but we will see). The poorest score last night was 55%, with the highest being 83% and the average being 69%. And one student, Ian Hutchison, got a full 100% in the blind tasting; this is the first time in 15 years of running the course that anyone has done that. The three whiskies were High Commissioner, Auchentoshan Select and Laphroaig 10.
Despite the course running at what is now The City of Glasgow College for 13 years, feedback forms were never a part of the package. I inaugurated them in the courses which I ran in the autumn of 2012 and I must say that the responses have done great things for stroking my ego!
One thing which has come out of them is that a couple of this course's responses and one from the autumn's have said that the course is more advanced than they thought that it was going to be. I refer to this course as the "entry level course", so perhaps I will look at being less informative/technical at least for the first couple of weeks. I know that the course has evolved quite a bit from its first running back in 1999 because of a few of the students having been serial students (one has been on the entry level course six times!) and my adjusting the content to give them something extra.
Another thing which has come out of this batch of feedback is the timing of the distillery visit. My thinking behind it has always been that they do 6 weeks of classroom study, then a distillery visit to bring everything together and then the exam on the last week. Perhaps I should fit the distillery visit in around week 3 after they have done malt whisky production in week 1 and grain whisky production and the blend in week 2. Food for thought before the next course starts on September 16th.
Showing posts with label whisky education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label whisky education. Show all posts
Tuesday, 12 March 2013
Thursday, 8 November 2012
Cutty Sark again at Lochgreen House
Tuesday night was again down in deepest Ayrshire, at Lochgreen House in Troon educating a group of Greek bartenders about blended whisky for Cutty Sark. Our normal line up has been North British 5 yo, J&B, Cutty Sark, Dewar's White Label, Ballantine's & Johnnie Walker Red Label. The guys and gals at Cutty see these as being what they call their "competitive set".
We've been doing these events for their overseas distributors and customers for about 18 months now. Initially, I thought that they were being very brave, putting their juice up clinically against the opposition, but Cutty ALWAYS shows well. The liquid is of fantastic quality.
The Greeks, from W.S. Karoulias, Cutty's distributors in Athens, wanted the competitive set changed, because they see the competition differently in Greece. Thus, the line up this week was N.B. 5yo, Cutty, Dewar's, Grant's, Haig and J.W. Red.
Again, Cutty showed up wonderfully. It is a long time since I last tasted either Grant's or Haig. The Grant's showed well, but the Haig's flavour was flat, old-fashioned and exceedingly disappointing.
The group was quite knowledgeable, had a good command of English - sometimes one of the group has had to translate my words into Russian, Turkish or Portuguese and that adds to the length of the night.
We have dinner and then jump into a bus which takes us to Alloway, where we wander around the old churchyard and down to the Brig o' Doon where we drink Tam O' Shanter, Cutty Sark 25 yo.
It's a tough life...
Last night was a meeting of the Co-operative Area Committee in Stirling. A relatively easy meeting, we dispensed £5,697.84 from the Community Fund to deserving organisations, but there were applications totalling over £11,000, so we had to disappoint some groups.
Today I found some tasting notes which had become buried in the paperwork on my desk. I really must tidy it more regularly. I will get them up onto the website within the next couple of days - I hope!
We've been doing these events for their overseas distributors and customers for about 18 months now. Initially, I thought that they were being very brave, putting their juice up clinically against the opposition, but Cutty ALWAYS shows well. The liquid is of fantastic quality.
The Greeks, from W.S. Karoulias, Cutty's distributors in Athens, wanted the competitive set changed, because they see the competition differently in Greece. Thus, the line up this week was N.B. 5yo, Cutty, Dewar's, Grant's, Haig and J.W. Red.
Again, Cutty showed up wonderfully. It is a long time since I last tasted either Grant's or Haig. The Grant's showed well, but the Haig's flavour was flat, old-fashioned and exceedingly disappointing.
The group was quite knowledgeable, had a good command of English - sometimes one of the group has had to translate my words into Russian, Turkish or Portuguese and that adds to the length of the night.
We have dinner and then jump into a bus which takes us to Alloway, where we wander around the old churchyard and down to the Brig o' Doon where we drink Tam O' Shanter, Cutty Sark 25 yo.
It's a tough life...
Last night was a meeting of the Co-operative Area Committee in Stirling. A relatively easy meeting, we dispensed £5,697.84 from the Community Fund to deserving organisations, but there were applications totalling over £11,000, so we had to disappoint some groups.
Today I found some tasting notes which had become buried in the paperwork on my desk. I really must tidy it more regularly. I will get them up onto the website within the next couple of days - I hope!
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