This is a blog about the things I like. Whisky, books, cooking and more.
This was a very tricky one indeed. We’re not used to seeing Glenfiddich at cask strength or non-chill filtered and then a distillery exclusive hand-filled bottling to boot. But it was a bloody nice dram, I sat and enjoyed the last half of it after taking my notes for quite some time.
Continue reading “Glenfiddich 15 Handfilled – BTC #05”
Sorry about the fairly long silence, I was on holiday for a week and had a pretty hectic time before that. Anyways, back into things. For the past few years I’ve been following a few friends who have participated in the annual Blind Tasting Competition by the Dutch Usquebaugh Society (https://levenswater.nl/btc-2017/). While essentially a Dutch club, the competition is open to participants from many countries. This year I decided to join in.
Tasted at a Malt Mongers Israel evening.
So the day after the insane Cadenhead tasting I mentioned in my last post, it was our whisky club’s (Malt Mongers Israel – MMI) scheduled monthly get together. The theme was Benromach. It was kind of a last minute thing we cobbled together from the Benromach range locally available, all of which I’ve reviewed at some point barring the Organic. But as a special treat we also had a special bottle, this 35 year old gem.
It’s already made quite a lot of news, but for those who don’t know W.M. Cadenhead, the oldest independent whisky bottler, recently celebrated their 175th anniversary For the occasion they released 6 truly remarkable bottles to be tasted at a set of international tasting events. Unfortunately Israel was not on the list for these events, but fortunately a local whisky anorak and fellow Malt Mongers Israel member, Assaf Errel, managed to get hold of the set of bottles and put on one of the most remarkable tasting I’ve ever been lucky enough to attend.
Fred Laing doing his thing.
Sorry about the delay since my last post. I was on holiday in Italy but am back and well rested. Very shortly before I left, to the point that I didn’t have time to write this up, I was invited to a very special tasting event. I recently posted about and evening that our whisky club, MMI had in conjunction with Sipil, a local importer and online retailer, who have recently begun to import Douglas Laing products to Israel, currently the only independent bottler on the market.
Our whisky club, Malt Mongers Israel, usually takes a break in August, but we had a special ad hoc meeting this month and with good reason. Independent bottlings are making a return to our shelves! Sipil, a local online store and importer which is very familiar to all the hardcore whisky geeks here, has begun importing Douglas Laing’s range.
Continue reading “Malt Mongers Israel Douglas Laing Evening”
So after quite a long break our local whisky club, Malt Mongers Israel (MMI), met up to try some more fine whisky. The theme this time was Cadenhead, the independent bottler owned by the same bunch of people as Springbank.
Continue reading “Two Cadenhead Glens from Glenlivet which aren’t The Glenlivet”
A few months back a few single cask Benromach bottlings appeared each exclusively bottled for a number of whisky retailers in the Netherlands. This one was bottled for the well reknowned Whiskysite.nl to coincide with their annual Whisky in Leiden festival.
Continue reading “Benromach 2008 Single Cask Bottling for Whiskysite.nl”
One thing that always intrigues me is how whisky that’s currently available tasted in previous decades. To that end I sometimes trawl local second hand markets. Unfortunately with the current whisky boom a lot of people want to sell these things at obscene prices because they see some collectable malt from the same era going for insane amounts on auction.
The Macallan is a brand of single malt most whisky aficionados are well acquainted with. Everyone knows that Macallan make good whisky, and everyone knows that their thing is sherry. The problem with everyone knowing this is that with the current whisky boom, demand for Macallan is through the roof.
