Christmas shopping

Yes, even I have to undertake this time consuming and mindless task.
My wife and I, who both positively hate shopping, chose some years ago to get it all done in one day early/mid November, before the mobs arrive.
A couple of years ago, we saw that this unpleasant experience has a possible pleasant one connected to it (for every action, there is a reaction). Get the shopping done in one day, stay over in Glasgow, have a pleasant night out, take the pain and misery out of the shopping experience. Sorted!
This year, we went into Glasgow last Saturday (daughter spent two nights with grandparents) arriving in the Buchanan Galleries car park at 9.20. We had lunch in O Sole Mio in Bath Street and shopping was finished, everything bought apart from an Amazon voucher, by 2.45.
This year, we had booked into the Crowne Plaza beside the SECC and watched the fireworks displays around the city from our room on the 14th floor.
We then went out and had a very pleasant dinner in The Pelican Cafe - my fourth attempt to eat here in the past year, finishe doff with an aniseed grappa.
Unfortunately, our room (no 1422 - avoid it like the plague) is close to some machinery, possibly the air-conditioning unit, which emits a low hume for 24 hours a day.
Our sleep was disturbed.

Someone helping me to educate the masses!

At last, someone is helping me to spread the good word. John Glaser of the Compass Box Whisky Co. is to take a lead in the educational drive around the new laws on Scotch Whisky that come into force from Wednesday 23rd November, 2011.
To mark the occasion, Compass Box will release a limited edition bottling, the Last Vatted Malt, made from a marriage of fine, old single malt whiskies from Islay and Speyside distilleries, that will be the last whisky to be labelled legally as a Vatted Malt.

As Compass Box founder and whiskymaker John Glaser explains: “At midnight on November 22nd, 2011, an era ends. After that point, it will be illegal for whiskymakers to use the term Vatted Malt to describe a Scotch whisky made from the combination of two or more single malts. From 23rd November 2011, this style of whisky will by law have to be labelled as a Blended Malt Scotch Whisky. Vatted Malt is a term that has been in use since at least the 19th century. It represents a style of whisky in which Compass Box specialise, so it has special meaning for us. Therefore we have decided to take a lead in the education of whisky drinkers about the new legal definitions of the 5 styles of Scotch whisky. We feel that this is an important change to the law that needs to be explained to whisky lovers. As the new laws come into effect, we want to take this opportunity to educate, to look to the future and to help the industry as a whole.”
To commemorate this transition into a new era, The Last Vatted Malt Limited Edition from Compass Box will be on sale from 23rd November 2011 onwards at www.compassboxwhisky.com and from whisky retailers. It will be bottled at cask strength, and each bottle will be personally signed by John Glaser. Only 1323 bottles will be produced. The recommended retail price will be £175.00 per 70cl bottle.
Compass Box intend organising a number of activities through November to help promote awareness of the new laws, supported by a programme of communication on Facebook, Twitter and by email. These will include:http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

• A Twitter Q&A with John Glaser @CompassBox at 8pm GMT on Tues 15th November

• The Compass Box potted guide to all you need to know about the new Scotch Whisky laws at www.facebook.com/CompassBox

• Last Vatted Malt Day on Tues 22nd November encouraging whisky fans worldwide to bid adieu to Vatted Malt by raising a glass wherever they are.

• A ceremonial bottling of the last bottle of Vatted Malt at a mystery location in Central London by John Glaser at 11.59 on the night of Tues 22nd November – accompanied by a select Vatted Malt flash mob!
They say that “The Last Vatted Malt is a testament to the high merit of blending single malts—to create a whisky flavour profile that no single distillery can produce. This whisky combines intense aromas and flavours of dried fruits and maltiness underscored by a subtle, sweet smokiness, all robed in the revealing signs of whiskies of antiquity. It is composed of two single malts: approximately 22% of the recipe is whisky distilled at the younger of the two distilleries in the village of Aberlour in 1974 (36 years-old), aged in a first fill sherry butt. The balance is from the famed distillery in the village of Port Askaig on Islay, made in 1984 (26 years-old), aged in an American oak hogshead.”
If you can't work out what the whiskies are, come back at me and I will enlighten you.

Advanced Whisky course week 7

Yesterday evening, the task set to the students was to present for 5 minutes to their peers on the subject of a whisky of their choice. Each whisky was tasted blind and the student's presentation was to give information about the whisky without naming it or supplying the clue which would make it obvious to everyone.
I set it off with Eddu Grey Rock from Brittany which no-one guessed and some found a bit hard and unyielding.
Gary Ledgerwood then showed a 24 yo (1986) Cambus which no-one got, but he displayed as a part of his presentation, a Google Earth picture of the location which showed Diageo's huge warehouse complex at Blackgrange and my home here.
Alan Hall showed a 19 yo Longmorn from Creative Whisky which about half of the class got from his words.
Mark Connelly showed Bain's Cape Mountain Whisky, a 5 yo grain from South Africa which, with a bit of prompting, one or two got to South Africa, but no-one correctly identified either the whisky of Sedgewick's distillery.
James Farrelly showed Ballantine's Finest which most got when they read about the geese on his presentation. Apparently he lived locally and worked there as a student.
Ian Petrie showed Aberlour a'Bunadh Batch 37 which, surprisingly, none of the students got. He bought the bottle at a disgustingly low promotional price at Waitrose.
Stefan Kah showed Glen Scotia 17 yo from Gordon & MacPhail which a few were able to identify - with some help.
Bob Arnott showed Ben Bracken from Lidl, which is apparently Tamnavulin. I found this disappointing as I have a soft spot for Tamnavulin and the whisky was giving acetone and lots of it.
Jeff McKenzie also had Ben Bracken! I suppose that it had to happen! If you look at the post about last week's class, you will see that there was no duplication, so once in 30 cases isn't bad.
Drew Nicolson showed Macallan Fine Oak 10 yo which most people correctly identified and a few were surprised by how well it showed, having tasted it blind.
Andy Davidson also threw everyone with Kavalan from Taiwan. Some of the class had never even heard of Kavalan. It is a relative newcomer.
Jim Schultz also threw everyone with Old Ballintruan. He had shown the same whisky blind to the Helensburgh Whisky Group on Saturday with similar results. Just over half of the class were either on Islay or close to it with the whisky's flavour. The clues Jim put in to his presentation guided one or two to Tomintoul, but the peat threw them off the scent. The sweetness, however, should have taken them to somewhere other than Islay.
Then I put on 4 whiskies blind.
Each bottle is numbered and, like last week, they were not in the correct tasting order. Towards the end of this the Advanced course, the students should be able to taste them in the correct order.
The order they were given was:
1 Bunnahabhain 18 yo
2 Auchentoshan Classic
3 Dewar's White Label
4 Dalmore Gran Reserva
The order, of course, should have been either 3,2,4,1 or maybe, 3,2,1,4. Having already tasted 13 whiskies, their palates were confused so they didn't correctly identify any of them, but one or two were close with the Dalmore. The Dewar's showed very well with no-one slotting it as a blend, its soft, toffee character raising it in the students' opinions to a Single Highland Malt. The Bunnahabhain threw everyone completely because of the Sherry cask element and as the phenolics have almost completely dissipated over the 18 years.
A good night and showing how well the students have developed over the course of the classes.
Taking both the Scotch Whisky Trail Certificate course (which they have to complete first) and the Advanced Whisky course, they have now completed 15 nights, probably 35 hours of quite intensive education. They all came into the courses as maltheads, but now appreciate the quality of The Blend and some grains and also the importance of these to the industry.
Within the class, there are 3 whisky bloggers, one of whom is a whisky retailer; one, previously retired is now doing some work for David Stirk's Creative Whisky Co. and another is doing some work for Angus Dundee.
What next?

Good Spirit Company

Signed a few copies of Le Snob Whisky today at The Good Spirits Company in Glasgow's Bath Street. Spoke with quite a few maltheads and tasted one or two interesting whiskies. See Tasting Notes in my website for Forty Creek Confederation Oak Reserve and Wiser's Legacy.
Great not so wee shop; imaginatively and carefully laid out; looks and feels good, expensive, but friendly, serious about the product and crisply fresh.
Train from Stirling to Glasgow mobbed, standing room only and damed little of that. Return train Glasgow to Stirling equally crowded, but managed to get a seat. No sign of ticket inspectors/conductors in either direction, probably couldn't get through the crush of bodies. Laughingly, they announced over the tannoy as we were leaving Glasgow's Queen Street that passengers were not to block the aisle of the entrance doors. In that case, they shouldn't have let so many people on to the train!

Advanced Whisky course

I am tutoring the Advanced Whisky course at the City of Glasgow College at the moment. This week, the students had to present for 5 minutes on a whisky-related subject of their own selection. All the students' presentations showed very good levels of research into their subjects.
Alan Hall (who for some reason on Tuesday, I was calling Peter - must have been a senior moment or three) presented on Customs Officer Malcolm Gillespie. His presentation was entertaining and contained lots of detail, some specifics of which I hadn't come across before.
Ian Petrie presented on Advertising. He did a critique of half a dozen ads from magazines. His outcome of this was that, with the exception of Jack Daniels, they didn't hit their target audience of 20-35 years old. It's true that the JD ad was the only one which wasn't the "glass & bottle" style, but I felt that the Glenfiddich ad has moved away from it quite considerably.
Steve Richardson presented on Abhainn Dearg, the new distillery on Lewis. He had produced a Powerpoint slideshow with a lot of detail and included some historical facts of illicit distillation in the Outer Isles.
Bob Arnott also had a Powerpoint show, this time on the relative merits of Dunnage Warehousing versus Racking. It was a thoughtful presentation and pushed the oft-quoted reason of cost versus quality, but laid the question, "but should cost be the deciding factor?" and suggested that to mature whisky in large, central warehouses and not at the distillery, while not breaking the rules, was breaking the spirit of the regulations.
Jim Coleman posed the question: “Are Whisky Bloggers Important to the Industry?” As a whisky blogger, Jim may be biased, but he argued that most bloggers have no direct affiliation to any whisky company and so they are de facto independent. As such, they help to “spread the good word” and encourage enjoyment in all forms.
James Farrelly also posed a question. This time it was “Does Scotch Whisky Have a Future?” James had obviously done a lot of digging to obtain the statistics he argued with and his conclusion was that, “yes, it does have a future, but that it needs some generic advertising.”
Stefan Kah’s subject was German Whisky and he looked in detail at the many German whisky distilleries, most of which had developed out of fruit spirits distillation. He demonstrated their uniqueness and differences from the general acceptance of “what is a whisky” by sampling the products of two small distilleries including a smoky Steiger Wald which was coarse, rough and out of balance. He advised that most were very small, amateur producers and could not understand why Jim Murray’s Whisky Bible 2011 had scored all of the German Whiskies he had tasted in excess of 90 points.
Jeff McKenzie caused us to look at “What Do We Expect From a Whisky?” His presentation was thought provoking and fitted in well following on from Stefan’s. He suggested that we all look for Scotch look-alikes and argued that each country should develop their own style of whisky.
Gary Ledgerwood’s subject was Prohibition. He looked at the fact that, during Prohibition, whisky was available as a medicine, the routes into the States, and shortcuts for the production of bathtub whisky. His conclusion was that the industry had “played it right” and that the fact that they had continued to supply U.S. distributors (whether legal or not) had served them well since then.
Jim Schultz argued that “Proof = Bravado & Rent”. He argued that high alcoholic strength (proof) = bravado as it makes us less inhibited and thus braver to say and do what we would have been reticent to say or do when sober. He argued that proof makes our kidneys work harder and that the alcohol is in our bodies for a short period of time and therefore proof = rent. Amusing and different.
All in all a very good demonstration of their understanding of the subject and good to note that there was no overlap, in that every student had selected a completely different subject. As a tutor, when setting a project for a number of students, I regularly expect that there will be a couple who will select the same or similar topics. This time, all different.
Naturally, there was ablind tasting after their challenges: Aberlour 10, Bowmore 12, Glenlivet 18 and Glenlivet 12 - in that order to confuse them. They all got the order correct and identified the regions and James Farrelly correctly identified Glenlivet 18.

Also on Glengoyne's Distilley Shop Oopening

I should also have said that the company revealed its new film to us. "Us" was a group of 20ish hacks and bloggers. Glengoyne has set up a large screen with speakers wrapped in plastic to protect them from the rain. The film, all 16 minutes of it, ran while we remained sheltered on the terrace of the visitor centre with the rain falling down between us and the screen. They even laid on a particularly delicate dropping of the leaves from the trees towards the end of the film. Very dramatic. I have to say that I enjoyed it greatly (and I see lots of these). It was relaxed, laid back, a little ireverent and pawky (look up a dictionary). There is, in particular, one little piece I would like to use in my lectures which demonstrates reflux particularly well.

Glengoyne Distillery Shop Opening

I really must get round to keeping this up to date on a more regular basis, a LOT has happened since June.
Anyhow, Friday evening saw the official opening of Glengoyne's Distillery Shop after a £500,000 (that was the figure quoted) revamp. It looks and feels better than it did previously, much fresher and probably better laid out, but half a million? I think that the figure was swollen in translation somewhere. Reading the press blurb, they have spent £300,000 on upgrading visitor facilities during 2011 in addition to £200,000 on renovating the Manager's House as an events space in 2007. That's where the £500K comes from.
The company also released 4 new whiskies (see my website for tasting notes):
The Glengoyne Distillery Cask, this is an first fill American oak hogshead, no. 1016 filled in June, 2000. The whisky is currently 60.7% abv and a bottle costs £75.00. To get one, you must visit the distillery and fill it yourself. A great wee gimmick.
A Single Cask 24 years old from cask no 354 of 1987 bottled at 54.8% abv.
A Single Cask 15 years old from cask no
and the Teapot Dram.
The Teapot Dram is the only one which will be widely (?) available, all the others are only available at the distillery. Great excuse to visit though!
Reviews from consumers - and the whisky industry - for "Le Snob Whisky" have been very good. They all seem to like its look and feel. My concern is that, due to its size (only 144 pages), I have had to leave out a lot of whiskies - and a lot of distilleries. I'll just have to wait & see what the reviews are for its content.