ScotchBuddy

White Ardbeg

When I traveled to Scotland in 2002 I went to Islay and visited some of my favorite distilleries.  There's a great hotel on the island called the Lochside.  It has an astounding collection of whiskeys.  I wanted to bring home a bottle of scotch with me, but I wanted to get something that would be hard to find in the US.  The bartender there wanted to know what I liked.  "Peat."  He pointed out that Ardbeg had done some experiments to see how much peat you could put in a bottle and still leave it drinkable.  They produced a batch of Scotch known as "White Ardbeg".  Aged only 8 years, it packs a real wallop.  I've almost finished the bottle, 6 years later.  (Signatory Bottling, 1991, 8-year.  Cask 621.  Bottle 233/308).  It really helps set perspective on how bright and peaty a scotch can be.  I wouldn't recommend it for regular drinking, but it's a great perspective scotch.

Here's another person's take on it: Joshua McGee

Scotch tasting tree update

I lead a number of people through my first tasting tree, and got consistent feedback:

1. Sherry beats LightBlossoms 3-to-1.  This may be that people like the sherry-cask flavor, but it may be due to the fact that Macallan is a $40 bottle, and Glen Moray is a $26 bottle.  So people asked me to up the quality of the LightBlossoms exemplar.  The problem is, there's a big jump in price.  Nonetheless, I've chosen a new exemplar for my tastings: Bunnahabhain 12-year, available for $46.
2. People who got a chance to try SweetSmoke later liked it a lot, and were surprised it's not in the original line-up.  In addition, they would complain that the Bowmore Legend (the DrySmoke exemplar) was way too one-dimensional.  Accordingly, I've swapped SweetSmoke (Old Pulteney) in to the primary lineup.  If you make it to the end with SweetSmoke, that's when you'll try the DrySmoke.

So far, Laphroaig (Peaty), Glenfiddich (Floral) and Macallan (Sherry) have done well.  Glen Livet (Tangy) came out on top once (which should be no surprise, it's the best selling single malt in the US), as did Old Pulteney (SweetSmoke).  Based on the changes I'm making, I expect to see SweetSmoke some more.

The new form also includes the long awaited taste descriptions for each cluster, and a list of all scotches, the cluster they belong too, and where I could find it, a good price.  Print it on a duplex printer so it's a single sheet.