Festival Face-Off: Indy Man Beer Con vs Manchester Whisky Festival 2013

What’s that? Two alcohol-related festivals in the city of Manchester on one weekend? That sounds like something I could write a post about. In fact, in the spirit of Harry Hill’s TV Burp… I like beer festivals and I like whisky (though I’ve never been to a whisky festival before)… but which is best? There’s only one way to find out, and it isn’t a fight. It’s a direct comparison across a number of areas.

Yes, we’ve had product face-offs before, but this is the first time that I’ve had the chance to watch two festivals battle it out. It’s beer against whisky, father against son (whisky is made from beer), pints against drams, ales against spirits. This is going to be great.

I suppose before I start, we should prepare to judge across some criteria. Here’s what I’ve been able to come up with:

Price and Organisation

IMBC – There were a couple of options for people who wanted to attend this – such as an afternoon, evening or all day session. Mrs Cake and I went for the Friday evening and I’m told by our friends Paul and Victoria who actually purchased the tickets (in advance) that it was £11 each. That’s fairly pricey when you compare it to a CAMRA event.

MWF – I bought early bird tickets, and that was £40 for both the missus and myself. I’m afraid I haven’t determined how much full price tickets are, but I think it was around £30 each.

Value for money (what do you get?)

IMBC – Paul told me that there had been some promise to provide a certain amount of free beer, but in reality that wasn’t the case. What you got for your money then, was entry, a programme and a fancy branded “thistle” beer glass, which makes the beer look very appealing indeed.

MWF – A bit more for your money on this one. Included were entry, a glencairn glass, a programme and shop price list, water and a pipette (for ruining your whisky with water), two white tokens that could be exchanged for special “under the counter” drams, entry to free workshops (on a first come, first served basis) and unlimited samples of whisky from the various exhibitors.

Venue

The Victoria Baths

IMBC – The famous Victoria Baths, known to many for to its inclusion on the Restoration TV programme. This was the first time I’d actually been there and I have to say; very impressive. Striking from the outside, resplendent on the inside, and in terms of a venue for hosting a beer festival: excellent. It reminded me of the kinds of clubs I used to like to go to in my younger days – clubs where there were multiple rooms, all manner of nooks and crannies, and you could just wander around all night seeing what you could see. There was a lot more tiling going on though, which gives it the aesthetic of a posh public toilet.

The space was used effectively, and because there were several rooms, people were encouraged to keep moving around rather than finding a table and fixing their position.

The location perhaps wasn’t ideal, being in the middle of Victoria Park, outside of town and not really on any of the bus routes, but the venue itself more than makes up for it.

MWF –Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall is an excellent music venue (though it tends to offer classical and world music more than anything else), and is actually mounted on springs to insulate the inside from any traffic noise emanating from outside. All that of course is irrelevant when it comes to the staging of a whisky festival. It quickly became apparent on arrival that the feel of the event was going to be a good deal more conferency than it was festivally, and that I’m afraid was to its detriment. More talking, less action, more serious, less fun.

Range

IMBC – excellent selection of craft beers from numerous brewers including Brewdog, Thornbridge, Marble, Hawkshead and Magic Rock. Having come to appreciate IPA as a genre all of its own at the Bearded Theory Festival, I decided to focus my attentions on trying as many of those as possible. I did fairly well, but did run out of options long before the session was over.

MWF – a good variety of whiskies, mostly scotch and single malt, but Irish, Japanese, English and Indian were all represented, too. I tried lots but as ever, I found myself unable to appreciate the differences after a while, so a feeling of disappointment crept in. I remember being impressed by Amrut in particular, but elsewhere mostly non-plussed. Seriously, I swear I like whisky, it’s just hard to appreciate the tiny dribble you’re allowed.

On the flip side, there was only one whisky I would describe as particularly bad, and that was The Whisky Lounge’s  Bomb PX, which you can read more about here. It states that the effect of taking some 15 year old ex-bourbon hogshead matured Westport and putting it in an ex sherry cash is profound. I don’t disagree: profound-ly unpleasant.

Food

IMBC – decent choice, decent quality. I had a pulled pork sandwich on a brioche bun which was nice, but didn’t really fill the hole. That said, it was sufficient to line the stomach for the drinking that followed.

MWF – None, as far as I’m aware.

Facilities

IMBC – Clearly this venue wasn’t created for a beer festival, but in spite of that it fared pretty well. There were (at least) three sets of toilet facilities that were clean enough and available enough. A little queuing might be necessary from time to time, but what do you expect? It was certainly better facilitated than the annual Chorlton Beer Festival where they have one toilet for everybody. It is likely though that the fact of drinks being served in thirds, rather than pints, went some way to er… relieving us of this issue.

In terms of miscellaneous facilities, there was a cloakroom but it consisted of one small rack that filled up double quick.

MWF – um… I didn’t go. The bladder doesn’t fill up enough on little dribbles of whisky. However, I have been before, and I think we can assume they were as clean and spacious as ever.

Experience

Let’s face it, this is the most important consideration; what was it like? Well, I’ll tell you.

IMBC – This was very good, in spite of small measures and (in some cases) high prices. I knew as soon as I saw the kinds of beers that were there in abundance, I’d made the right choice in coming – though I did ask for a top-up the first time. Sadly, as I said earlier, drinks were served in thirds, and that meant only the head went up to the top of the glass.

Nevertheless, it was rich and tasty IPAs and various other crafty beers all the way. My only disappointment was that I wasn’t able to try the Magic Rock Dart Arts Soured in Bruichladdich with raspberries because they ran out before I even heard it was there. Actually, I was disappointed to miss out on a Bruichladdich related beer, but less so when I saw it had raspberries in it.

The beers were kept fresh and cold – unlike at those CAMRA ale festivals where the patrons are kept fresh and cold and you’re led to believe that beer is better when it isn’t cold but does taste of vomit. Do you know, I’ve come to realise I don’t really like those CAMRA jobs; the venues are depressing, there’s not enough toilets, they’re too busy and they always run out of beer. None of those problems here.

On a personal note, the only thing that annoyed me was people sampling things instead of buying them. At one of the bars I was asked for my order, but knowing there were two girls who had gotten there before me, I indicated that they should be served first. Then they proceeded to try two or three samples before making their minds up, keeping me waiting, and didn’t even acknowledge that I’d done the noble thing. Stop it. Honestly, you’re drinking thirds. No beer can be that bad that you can’t finish a third of it, so just pick one. Frankly it annoys me, people who try beer before deciding whether to buy it, as if it’s the only beer they’re going to drink this year. If any beer is so disagreeable to your palate that you can’t drink a glass of it you shouldn’t be drinking beer in the first place. Rant over.

MWF – Clearly different “festivals” want to attract different clientele. A CAMRA festival successfully attracts middle aged, beardy people (there’s nothing wrong with being middle aged or beardy), while Indy Man Beer Con was more for hip, sophisticated, and just under middle aged people. Either way, both are for people who want to have a good time drinking interesting beers.

 Which brings me to the Manchester Whisky Festival. The crowd it seems to have gone for is the serious, geeky type. Now, I don’t blame them for not accepting bookings from hen or stag dos, but what I do blame them for is fostering a sterile environment and an atmosphere that was absolutely devoid of any sense of fun. It was, as I said, essentially a conference. And it was a conference where, despite being devoted to the tasting of whisky, sobriety was the order of the day.

Just try getting near this table

Measures (for the most part) were small – sometimes ridiculously so, like my 21 year old sample of Highland Park that I had to invest a special token in. I understand you don’t want people getting drunk and acting like bellends, but I personally can’t appreciate or appraise a whisky if there’s barely enough to taste it. It needs to be rested with and enjoyed for a while – if you visit a distillery, you’ll see that the producers understand about this. It isn’t all that makes it fun, but it does make it fun.

Another gripe I had was that attaining samples could sometimes be notoriously difficult. You would have a crowd of people blocking access to the exhibitors, and in most cases they were drinking the samples they’d just gotten there – move out of the way.

Then, when you’ve elbowed your way to the front, there’s two guys asking questions about malt and casks when all you want is a bit popping in your glass. Again, I don’t blame you for having questions about the whisky, but the representatives should be skilled at pouring and talking at the same time. Just saying, like.

standing about

Mrs Cake and I soon slinked off to a corner of the lower level to sit on the floor, taking it in turns to go on scavenging missions for samples. There were though, few places to recline – so it was hardly surprising that people were just standing around within a few feet of the stands.

So what was good about it? Well, it was nice to get a chance to try as many samples as I wanted (though my taste buds do tend to grow whisky blind after a while), and what was particularly nice was running into some of the people from the Manchester Whisky Club. That certainly encouraged me to stay for longer than I otherwise might, because to be fair, I ran out of samples to try in about an hour and a half. While making one trip I had just done a full sweep, become depressed at the lack of possibilities, and was thinking of heading back to Mrs Cake to suggest we do one when I was stopped for a chat. After that I managed to muster the enthusiasm for a couple of last samples.

The last straw though was when I went to spend my last token on the special Lagavulin or Talisker and they had just given away the last drop of both. That annoyed me inordinately. It was still early, too. Bring enough next time.

How drunk did I get?

IMBC – Not very… the beer was strong, but the thirds meant that often I couldn’t be bothered to go back and get another for a while, whereas with pints you would get a good long time to relax with  them, such that you can face going back to the bar as soon as you’re done. However, I did start the evening in low mood and picked up considerably after a couple.

MWF – Not very. The event itself started at noon, but we got there more around 1:30. We stayed for a couple of hours and didn’t manage to pick up much of a buzz. I suppose that was the intention as far as the organisers were concerned, but tell me this: who didn’t pay £20+ of their own money to get a bit smashed on whisky?

How much did I spend while I was there?

IMBC – I spent a tenner and Mrs Cake spent £20. Not bad at all for a night out.

MWF – Not a sausage. There was a shop where the various products could be bought, but there were no specific bargains to be had (not in my potential price range anyway), and nothing that you couldn’t buy online or from a specialist.

Verdict

I bet you think you know which way this one’s going, don’t you? Well, let me just start by saying that I didn’t intend to start griping about the Manchester Whisky Festival. It’s just that it wasn’t as much fun as I’d thought it was going to be, and I’m sorry, but I am all about fun – even though I can be a miserable bugger from time to time. I’m only ever miserable though because I’m not having fun.

Having said that, it did make me realise how lucky I am to be a member of the Manchester Whisky Club (though I have since relinquished my membership due to a variety of financial pressures and my preference of being able to buy bottles to drink at home over sharing experiences with other enthusiasts). There were a veritable shit-ton of people there who are more geeky about whisky than I am. I do find it fascinating but, cards on the table: I want to taste it and enjoy it. I don’t go to a festival to hear that something was aged in American bourbon casks and is slightly peated. That’s true of so much scotch whisky that I don’t find it that interesting. Don’t get me wrong; some combinations of casks, ageing and malting can be interesting, but if 90% of dogs are black it’s going to be the ones that are other colours that are interesting.

I remember at one particular stand I asked for a couple of samples and the lady said, “what would you like? Something peated or…”

“It doesn’t matter.”

There was much to sample there such that being discerning was futile. Just give me a sample of one, I’ll come back for the other anyway.

It felt almost as if the exhibitors expected you to be asking questions about production and ageing every time you went for a sample, like it was some kind of etiquette.

So in my opinion, the best festival was the Indy Man Beer Con. Congratulations to the organisers. Your prize is that I’ll probably come to the next one, but maybe include a couple of free tokens next time, eh?

As for the whisky festival, I probably won’t go again… but then, I might. It was only £20, but I do find it difficult to appreciate more than a couple of whiskies at a time.

And that's it for now. Thanks for stopping by again and congratulations if you managed to read all of it. I'm afraid, due to being busy this weekend, that I missed my posting deadline again, but I'll try to do better next week. Or rather, this week. Till then, enjoy yer booze.

How do you buy whisky as a gift? Part 1

A little while ago we had a post by the name of, how doyou select wine? in which I expressed my dismay at how hard it can be to choose what wine to buy from your local supermarket. I contended that there is just too much choice.

As a result of that, it occurred to me that while I can’t provide much advice to you on buying wine, I might be just the right person to help a novice select a nice bottle of whisky, and with Christmas approaching, there has never been a better time to cover this subject.

Many is the time that I’ve seen a lost soul perusing the whisky section at Tesco, obviously trying to buy a gift for a whisky-loving or whisky-curious loved one but sadly having no terms of reference or idea of where to start. They’re aware that there are good and bad selections, but they don’t know what they are and are reluctant to make a mistake. Well, I’m here to help you out. You may be one of the people I’ve seen at Tesco already, so if you do want to buy your relative or special friend a nice bottle of whisky, take a sip of coffee and sharpen your reading eyes, this is for you.

Obstacles

There are two major obstacles facing the novice who wants to buy a bottle of whisky: variety and price, and how much help you need depends on what you know already – both about whisky and about the person you’re buying for.

Let’s do a role play. For the purpose of the drama, imagine you’re a lady (if you’re not already), you’re in Tesco, and you’re looking to buy your husband a nice bottle of whisky. I’m stood nearby and I notice you looking lost, but I don’t want to impose. You might think I’m trying to pick you up, but I’m happily married and not looking for a female whisky drinking companion. You look at me and can tell that I’m not necessarily there to buy. I’m just looking to see what they’ve got, and whether there are any offers I can’t refuse. I must know something about this subject.

You: It’s so confusing, all these different bottles.

Me: Eh? Oh, yeah I know. Are you buying a present?

You: Yeah, for my husband. I don’t suppose you could help?

Me: Aye, probably.

Pay attention here. I’m about to ask the important questions.

Me again: Is it whisky in particular that you’re after?

That wasn’t one. Just wait.

You: Yes. What would be a good one?

Me: That depends. What kind of whisky does he like?

You: What do you mean?

Me: Scotch, Irish, bourbon…

You: Scotch?

Me: Blended or single malt?

You: I don’t know…

Here you might ask what the difference is. If you did, I would say, “single malt refers to when a bottle contains whisky that was all made at one distillery, while a blend can contain whiskies from any number of distilleries and  50-60% of the contents are usually made up of grain whisky. Grain whisky is cheaper than malt whisky, and that is why blends tend to be cheaper than single malts. Single malt is usually considered to be better, though there are a number of premium blends for which you could pay well in excess of £100.

Me: What does he normally drink?

You: I’m pretty sure he’s had the Glenfiddich before.

Me: Ok, well that’s a single malt. If you’d said Bells or Teachers, those would be blends. Did he like the Glenfiddich?

You: I think so.

Me: The standard 12 year old is halfway decent, so if he liked it, you might want to step up a class and get the 15 year old. It’s a bit more expensive, but it’s supposed to be better, though I haven’t tried it.

Here’s the next important question.

Me: What’s your budget, if you don’t mind me asking?

You: I was hoping to spend about thirty quid.

If you know how much he normally spends, it might be a good idea to spend a little bit more. That way you’re increasing the treat because you’re getting him something he wouldn’t normally allow himself to buy.

Me: All right. You can get something decent for that 30 quid. If you’re lucky, you can get a good single malt, but you’re more likely to if you go 35 quid and up – it just depends what they’ve got. Or you can get a very good blend. Some people are snooty about blends, but there’s no need to be because some are very good. So, first thing; the cheapest single malt they’ve got here is the Glen Moray Classic. See that? £18. Don’t get that. Now, you said you don’t know what kind of scotch he likes,  it would be easier if you did, but we’ll work around that. Does he like the strong flavours or the mellow ones?

You: I’m not sure.

Me: All right. You could just get the Glenfiddich 12. It’s decent and it’s cheap, but I think you ought to be a bit more adventurous. For future reference, the Glenfiddich 12 is still a good scotch for a novice to buy as a present. If it was me though, looking to buy a bottle of whisky as a present, I would be getting the Highland Park 12. It’s single malt, it’s always on offer, even at full price it’s a bargain, it comes in a funky bottle, it tastes great and it’s known for being a quality product.

You: Oh right. That’s under budget.

Me: You can get yourself something nice with the change.

You: Thanks.

Me: No worries.

 

Highland Park 12... a great gift

That’s one way the scenario could play out. Let’s look at some other eventualities though:

What if they haven’t got the Highland Park, or it’s not on offer?

I’d always recommend going with an Islay malt. They’re among the most interesting and you can usually get a decent one in the under £35 price range – the Laphroiag 10, the Caol Ila 12, Bruichladdich… I even got the Lagavulin 16 for £35 once. If it says Islay on it, it’s probably going to be good. The only drawback is that some people really don’t like the Islay malts, but I think it’s worth the risk.

As I say, you can always fall back on the Glennfiddich 12. Some like the Glenlivet 12 or the Aberlour 10 – they’re classy enough, but a little generic for me.

Can you give me some general things to look for?

It’s a gift, so generally look for a single malt unless you know your target doesn’t like single malt. If you don’t know, go for it.

Always go for one with an age statement, and make sure it’s at least 10 years. Some younger whiskies are excellent, but you don’t know enough to take the risk. Some without an age statement are good, but ages are impressive – it’s psychological.

If it comes in a box, that also suggests quality. That’s not necessarily the case but again, this is a gift, so boxes are good. Something that comes in an interesting bottle is also good. Again, it doesn’t say anything about the quality, but with gifts half the battle is presentation.

What should I avoid?

Definitely avoid the Glen Moray Classic. That’s just from personal experience. Horrible. When I see people buying that, I want to ask “Have you had that before? Cos if you haven’t, don’t”. My personal feeling is to avoid anything that is too pale in colour – there are exceptions to that, but we’re talking generalities. Also avoid Jura – it’s always on offer, so a very popular gift, but in my opinion it’s not so good.

Now, just because I say ‘avoid the Glen Moray Classic’ that doesn’t mean all Glen Morays are bad. Similarly, you can pick up a no age statement Ledaig from some supermarkets that isn’t good. I consider the 10 year old to be very good though.

Don’t get Jack Daniels – unless you’re buying for a very young adult. That’s not to say it’s bad (I actually like it – very nice mouthfeel), but many scotch drinkers are a bit snooty about it, possibly because it is so commonly mixed with coke.

Definitely don’t get Southern Comfort. This is not whisky – and I’m not being facetious here; it literally isn’t whisky. It’s a peach liqueur with whisky flavouring. It’s surprising how many people don’t know that.

If you know your target is a seasoned whisky drinker, your task might be more difficult because their standards can be quite exacting, but don’t worry; I’ll be offering some advice for buying whisky for the more discerning drinker next week. Remember, when someone receives a gift though, they want to be pleasantly surprised, not slightly disappointed. For this reason I’d avoid brands that are a bit too obvious (and that the novice might have heard of or seen on average drinks menus in restaurants) – for me, the Glenlivet 10, Balvenie Double Wood, Glenfiddich 12 and the basic Glenmorangie are a bit too obvious, but you could definitely do worse.

What if your budget is more modest?

I would aim to set your budget around £30-35 because you can definitely do the job for that. Anyone who likes whisky is going to know you spent £30-35, and they’re going to be all the more grateful for it. I understand though, that if you’re buying a gift for a friend, £30 might seem a little steep. You might have been thinking £20. If you were, don’t panic, just don’t be thinking about getting a single malt – unless you want to buy a 35cl bottle. That’s perfectly acceptable. The recipient will still appreciate the effort – and of course, it means you can get something even more special.

However, don’t be scared of going for a blend. A lot of basic blends are good, but if you can just go up one step to the next level, you’re going to be more likely to get one that your target hasn’t tried, or that is a little more interesting. Grants, Whyte and MacKay, Ballantine’s and Dewar’s all make decent, reasonably priced blends, and there are many more obscure ones that are worth a pop. Even a whisky aficionado can find a use for a basic blend. I always keep one for the times when I just don’t feel like getting the special stuff out, or as a precursor earlier in the evening. If you can chance across one that they haven’t tried before, you will have done very well because at least that’s one they can tick off their mental list. But don’t get the Johnnie Walker Red, Bells, Teachers, Famous Grouse or anything that says “bottled for [insert supermarket]” on the label. Not that there’s necessarily anything particularly bad about any of those, but you are buying a gift.

Conclusion

That at least, would be my advice. People all like different things, and there are no right and wrong opinions when it comes to whisky. Personally though, I think some whiskies exist just because people don’t know what to buy, so they all make sales to some degree. I don’t know – would a business be able to survive on that principal? Surely you have to rely on repeat customers. As I get more into whisky though, I find I seldom buy any bottle more than once because there’s always more to try. Caol Ila does well out of me, because I’ve bought four of their expressions so far, and I always recommend it to friends. In fact, usually when I like a whisky, I remember it as one to possibly buy as a gift for a friend, rather than one to buy again for me.

Perhaps one day I will have tried nearly everything (in my price range), and will just want to buy something I like with my money. There was a time when I bought different beer every time I bought a pint or some cans. Now I just buy what I like – though I have gotten into trying IPAs recently. I’m a long way off reaching that point with whisky, so we’ll just have to see how and when things pan out.

So, now if you find yourself at Tesco, and if you can remember any of this, you’re going to do all right. You could also have a look at the Whisky Exchange for specific brands but remember; you’re not going to be able to find most of those in your local supermarket. Finally, don’t be afraid to ask if another customer looks like they know what they’re doing. It might be me, and even if it’s not, anyone who is enthusiastic about whisky is going to be delighted to be able to share a bit of the knowledge.

Good luck, and don’t forget to come back next week when I’ll be considering how you can buy with confidence for the whisky enthusiast in your family.

Postscript

Last Sunday my whisky advice fantasy almost came true. It was shopping day in the Cake household and, feeling a bit down, I thought adding a trip to Tesco to the regular Aldi shop in order to pick up a cut price Grant’s Sherry Cask Edition that I’d seen on offer the day before might cheer me up. A quick preparatory glance through my wallet and on the fridge revealed that we had £7 in vouchers – though we had to spend at least £40 to recoup one of them. Also in my favour was that I’d stashed £10 away in my booze budget, and then found a farewell fiver in the back pocket of my favourite jeans. I say “farewell fiver” because it was during that shopping trip that they developed a split in the back and threatened to show more and more bum cleavage every time I had to reach down to a low shelf…

Well, as you know, Christmas is approaching and Mrs Cake thought maybe she could get some whisky for her dad and brother… that sounds bad; they aren’t the same person. Yes, I would be delighted to help with that.

Mrs Cake isn’t really one for taking advice. She has her own mind you see, so it wasn’t as simple as me offering a suggestion and her taking it, but in the end she did follow my recommendations despite battling me all the way.

The Highland Park 12 was on offer, and I persuaded her that that would be a good choice for her dad, because it’s “excellent”. He doesn’t like peaty whiskies, and of the ones available in this price range, this was definitely the best choice in my opinion. He had said previously that he likes a 16 year old Glenmorangie, but they didn’t have that (it doesn’t seem to exist), and I doubt the price would have been anywhere near comparable (if it did exist).

Buying for the brother was a little trickier since I remembered he had wanted to drink the Crown Royal Black I took to his house a couple of years ago… with coke. So I maintained that we should get him something he can mix, and that meant a blend. Mrs Cake wanted to get something they wouldn’t be able to get in Canada, but in Tesco there isn’t really anything you couldn’t get in Canada. I advised her to go for the Grant’s Ale Cask Edition as that was on offer too. I don’t actually know what that one is like yet, but it is a step up (price-wise) from the standard Family Reserve and therefore makes a slightly better present than a standard cheap blend. I don’t think Brian is all that knowledgeable about scotch anyway, so we didn’t need to stress to much about it… though I suppose that remains to be seen. Perhaps I’ll follow up this post after Christmas and let you know how we did. To be fair, I probably won’t know how we did for the father-in-law until next year when he sends the bottle back hoping we won’t notice it’s the one we bought him. And if that happened… I would be delighted...

Spirit Log: White Horse Blended Scotch

I had a pleasant surprise one Saturday, when a visit to my parents resulted in receiving a new bottle of whisky. Apparently my dad had been emptying out the pantry because they needed to find storage space for some things that had been displaced by the arrival of a dishwasher, and he found some booze hidden away in there – you wouldn’t get that in my house. I was invited to take a look – like one of those experts they get in on Cash in the Attic.

First out were 20cl bottles of Gordon’s Gin and Smirnoff vodka. Pretty standard, and no more than I had expected. I would have been happy to take these off their hands – I’m not a big fan of Smirnoff, or the whole genre of gin, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have requirements – nevertheless, my mum laid claim to those, for drinking with orange or tonic or whatever – she doesn’t normally, and actually had to ask me what she could mix vodka with. The answer? Nearly anything.

Far more interesting than those anyway, was what came out of the pantry next: White Horse blended scotch (40% ABV). It’s not a brand you hear much about, being as it is, more popular and readily available in overseas markets. I had heard of it though, from a brief perusal of sub-£20 blends on The Whisky Exchange (£18.55 + P&P, btw). Reviews were exclusively good so I’d made a mental note to keep an eye out for it next time I was looking to buy a blend.

It scores an impressive 90.5 in Jim Murray’s 2013 Whisky Bible, is made up of 40% malt whisky, and has as its base, the excellent Lagavulin single malt. I read somewhere though, that it is actually blended from around 40 malts in total. Does that mean each malt comprises only 1% of the resulting blend?

Where did this buried treasure come from? Apparently it all used to belong to my granddad… who died about 15 years ago. None of the bottles have been opened, so it should be fine – despite the fact that there looks to be a lot of air at the top of my bottle – perhaps some of it had evaporated? I’ve read before that whisky will taste as good as when it was bottled for hundreds of years, as long as the bottle remains unopened. And now this particular bottle belongs to me and there is no longer any chance of it remaining unopened for hundreds of years. I give it a week or two at most.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience, but when my grand parents learned they were not much longer for this world, they started asking me if there was anything of theirs I wanted. I said that I would like whatever they specifically wanted to give me. The person is more important to me than their stuff. A word of advice for you though, if an elderly relative of yours asks you this question, think about saying, “I wouldn’t mind having your booze”. You never know, you might get something valuable. Worst case scenario: some bottles of booze.

Something else my granddad did as the end approached was to try to give me the benefit of some useful things he had learned. One was about changing a tyre, that I’ve sadly forgotten, and the other was about how to emerge from a shower cubicle in winter without feeling the cold.

White Horse, I see, is one of Diageo’s blends, though my internet research so far has not revealed for how long Diageo has produced this particular brand. Diageo was formed in 1997 from a merger between Guinness and Grand Metropolitan, and that’s probably roughly around the time this particular bottle was produced, though nowhere on it is the name Diageo mentioned, and to be fair, my granddad could have had it for quite sometime before he passed on anyway. It remains to be seen then, whether this bottle is representative of the White Horse brand you might be able to buy today, since I’ll need to buy a new bottle to determine that.

Have you ever inherited any booze? I remember now that when my Grandma died, I was given a litre bottle of Teachers so, you know, it would be interesting to know what gets left behind at the end of a person’s life. If you were proper into whisky you’d probably make sure you were finishing the good stuff in your last days – or maybe there are more important considerations for the terminally ill. Would you drink the good stuff, leaving the Teachers, or would you save something special for the end?

A Few Weeks Later…

So, what about this White Horse, then? I broke the seal and gave it a first tasting the night of the Confederations Cup Final, and was impressed right away. In the glass, it looks simply beautiful. There’s something about that rich hue that shimmers invitingly in kitchen lighting conditions. Incidentally, I'm sorry but I don't seem to have taken a picture of the bottle. I don't know how that happened.

As I said, it is supposed to be founded on Lagavulin, and while I can’t say I detect that in there specifically, there is a definite feel of Islay. This is a nice blend – not as great as the Jim McEwan’s Symphony that rocketed right to the top of my blend league – but approaching that level of complexity and refinement.

After a couple of tastings I started to detect vanilla on the nose – like the Bladnoch 10 that I had some time ago. Grainy elements also started to show through on the finish, where I hadn’t been able to detect them before. In spite of that, on the blended scotch scale it sits closer to the delicate sweetness of the Jim McEwan’s Symphony than it does to what I consider standard budget blend fare where sweetness is lacking and instead the spirit seems rough and unpleasant .

Perhaps not one to bring out when the single malt snobs come round, but I wouldn’t use it for mixing. It’s definitely one to consider if you’re looking for a decent blend on a budget.

I see from looking at my stats today that this is my 100^th post. Go me. Thanks everyone that has popped by whether it by to read, look at a picture or whether it was entirely by accident. And apologies for my tardiness. I’ve not been so good at posting regularly of late, but I’ll keep trying. See you next week (or later this week) for something else.

Wall Street

Hello everyone. Let me just start by apologising for my absence over the last few weeks. I’ve been very busy, and have had to take a break from the blogging game. Bless you if you’ve missed me. If not, well I expected as much. Either way, this week I’m back to enrich your life with a new post, and it’s all about a mysterious spirit called Wall Street that I picked up this summer. Enjoy…

To facilitate giving you my impressions of Wall Street, I’d best start with a brief rundown of what for me are the essential facets of booze tourism; the two aims, if you will.

First, in alignment with the basic point of all kinds of tourism, is the pursuit of new experiences. For the booze tourist that could mean drinking in local bars, trying the local brew, doing a tasting tour, visiting a distillery – even going on a booze cruise or ending up in hospital after drunkenly diving into a fountain in Ibiza and hitting your head… basically it’s anything alcohol related that pertains to the place you’re visiting.

The second is concerned with the issue of procurement of things that you drink and try to get your friends to drink, in order to convince them that you are exotic and interesting. You know what though? Your friends don’t care. They’re too busy worrying about how exotic and interesting they appear.

This second aim can be broken into 3 parts:

1. Procuring something unusual, that you can’t get at home.

 Ideally this is some local oddity, such as the longan wine I picked up in Vietnam or the aguardiente de orujo and hierbas ibicencas that I collected in Ibiza. It could just be some malt liquor that simply doesn’t have a distributor in the UK market.  The basic thing is that you’re trying to get something that you couldn’t’ve picked up at your local supermarket, and ideally that you couldn’t get without going to the country you went to.

2.  Pick up something at a bargain price.

Let’s face it, some liquors are particularly expensive but when you go on holiday they can turn out to be incredibly cheap. The basic idea here is, if you’re going to Italy, get some grappa. If you’re going to any of the Caribbean countries, you might want to think about getting some rum. You get the idea. We’ve covered this before.

3.  Hit the Duty Free.

 It’s not just an issue of getting a litre of something for the price you’d normally pay for 70cl. No, some things are only available in Duty Free. As a booze tourist, you need to find out what these things are and look for them. This brings its own problems; how good is the duty free at the particular airport you’re returning home from? You aren’t going to know until it’s already time to come home and too late to buy elsewhere. So don’t rely on Duty Free for all your alcohol purchases, and definitely make sure you pick up your local stuff beforehand. You never know what they’re going to have in, and the local stuff is probably going to be cheap enough in general anyway. Thinking about this just now has made me realise I should start a Duty Free airport guide, so look out for that sometime in the future…

Diageo... curious

So! Back to my bottle of Wall Street. You might remember from an earlier post that I picked this up in Vietnam. It appears to be distributed by Diageo, going off the label on the cap, and it’s a blend of scotch and ‘Vietnamese spirit’, clocking in at 39% ABV - so below the minimum level required by the Scotch Whisky Association to be classed as ‘genuine whisky’. It doesn’t claim to be whisky anywhere on the packaging, and it has listed as its ingredients, ‘scotch’ and ‘caramel’. What that does make it, I’m not sure. I do know that caramel is often used as a colourant in whisky production, so it could just be that. For a bit more science on caramel spirit, you can visit dramming.com, where it actually says that the Talisker 10 and Lagavulin 16 are examples of scotch that use caramel for adding colour. Both of those have managed to maintain ABV levels of over 40% though, so they are allowed to be called whisky.

As is the case with most brands of alcoholic beverage, there are more questions concerning this one than answers like:

            What is Diageo’s involvement, and why are they too ashamed to list it on their website?

What has Wall Street got to do with either scotch or Vietnamese spirit?

I haven’t found any answers to those, so let’s just crack on with some comments. 

I haven’t seen this anywhere else, and a search of the internet yielded a solitary picture of a bottle among someone’s holiday snaps from Vietnam, so in terms of procurement of items you can’t find anywhere else: mission accomplished.

The only problem of course, with buying random stuff that you can’t get at home is that it might not be any good. It might not even be made for your western palate. I had no idea what it was actually going to be like. Mrs Cake asked the lady in the shop if she had any idea, and she said she didn’t drink but her husband was very fond of it. Sadly, that information didn’t prove all that useful to me – not just because I don’t know him, but also because… he’s probably Vietnamese, which means he has different terms of reference to me as far as taste goes. You know; presumably Chinese people like Baiju, but I’d be surprised if you found many people in the UK who’d go back for a second glass.

My impressions then, of this Wall Street stuff is that in spite of its intriguing appearance and mystique, it’s fairly characterless. It sure is colourful – that’s probably the brightest amber I’ve ever seen in a spirit.

BRIGHT!

I’m getting nothing on the nose and very little on the palate. I’m not very good at this whole tasting lark anyway, but usually I can at least find a spirit tasty or interesting or enjoyable. After an initial hit of sweetness, this one is a bit like drinking fluff off the carpet. I just didn’t know now how I was going to get rid of it. I tried it with ice, and while that was an improvement, it still wasn’t a drink to enjoy. If you’re trying to write a booze blog and limit your alcohol intake to some degree, you simply can’t go wasting a drink on something you don’t enjoy.

It ended up being an easy go-to when I wanted a quick swig of something before going out, and for carrying around in my hipflask .It is surprisingly effective in a hipflask actually. I don’t know what it is, but that combination of cold, hard metal and pseudo-whisky gives the impression you’re drinking something a little more interesting than you actually are. A few people tried it out of the flask and were impressed.

Worries about getting rid of it were shortlived in the end because it was summer and there were plenty of occasions when warm-up swigs were required before heading out to various barbeques and all day drinking events. As such, it has actually left a void in my life… I don’t really have anything I don’t like enough to consume as flippantly. I suppose that dubious honour will have to fall on a cheap brand of rum… Mount Gay Eclipse, or the alarmingly cheap Liberty Ship - but more on those later…

So that's it. Thanks for joining me once again. I'll be back next week with something else.

Glencairn glasses; I can smell things too!

well spotted. One of these is not a Glencairn glass. So?

I’d like to revisit a theme now that last cropped up in my Am I becoming a bit of a snob? post – the question of whisky glasses. I had started to bemoan the fact that whenever you order whisky in a pub, it seems to come in either what are known as ‘rocks’ glasses or even in small straight glasses – like what you’d normally expect to receive with a bottle of J2O.

Whisky though, is renowned for being a very complex spirit that can impart a huge variety of scents and flavours, yet the kinds of glass that most people seem to begin their whisky journeys drinking out of don’t facilitate the experiencing of this complex spirit to the full. Anyone who’s anyone in the world of whisky knows that there exists a glass that supposedly will help you make the most of your whisky tasting experience – the Glencairn glass, which first came into production in 2001, so quite recently.

This blog has up to this point been a journey of discovery for me, so that should explain some of my naïve questions and opinions. I’ve been somewhat sceptical of all those things people report experiencing in their whisky because I just enjoy whisky, and a part of me wanted to continue doing that without having to get all finicky about details like glasses and techniques, and am I tasting what you’re tasting and all that. The other part just felt like a teenager that had discovered a new favourite band and wanted to absorb all their recordings and discover their influences, and just immerse themselves in it.

When I heard about the Glencairn glass (£6.90 on Amazon – why are they not available in like, John Lewis or Debenhams or Ikea?), it didn’t really occur to me that there was any point in getting one, but then, as you might have read in previous weeks, I visited some distilleries in Islay, and not only did all the tastings involve Glencairn glasses, but also they were just throwing them at me, so I came home with five – branded with Lagavulin, Laphroaig and Caol Ila. Honestly, you get more of these in one day on Islay than you get napkins in two visits to a fried chicken joint – here’s your massive box of greasy chicken that you have to eat with your fingers, and here’s one single play napkin the size of a postage stamp.

Can I have some more napkins, please?

No.

I decided it was time to put the glasses the test, and started using them. Now I can give you the results of my experiments.

So how good are they? Well, let’s get some aesthetic and practical considerations out of the way first. They are small, and they aren’t exactly masculine. Nor are they particularly comfortable to drink out of, since my nose gets in the way when I tip one back, which means I also need to tip my head back.

However, they are comfy to hold – they sit nicely between my index finger and thumb, and the base then sits pleasingly on my curled middle finger. You can swirl your spirit vigorously around the glass, and it doesn’t spill out the top as it might in certain other shapes and styles, and the bulb shape makes it easy to pour a suitably sized measure consistently without having to use a measuring cup; should you be concerned about such things, just pour until the liquid reaches the point where the curve begins to turn back on itself. And despite having to tip your head back a bit, the shape facilitates getting just the right quantity smoothly into your mouth for enjoying.

The important considerations though are:

                Is there any improvement in terms of nosing my whisky?

                Does it make the whisky taste any better?

I’m not going to keep you waiting here; the answer to both of those questions is a resounding yes. Seriously. They are not making this shit up.

I think there might be a tiny element of the immersion in scotch on the Island of Islay having a positive influence on my enjoyment of whisky overall, but I now feel that these Glencairn glasses really help me to enjoy my whisky to the fullest extent. Let me give you some examples.

Firstly, I’ve never really been able to identify any individual scents or tastes in the whisky I’ve drunk beyond smoky, salty, peppery – to me those are very basic. When it comes to blackberries, chocolate, honey - I don’t know, some people can find anything in there – I was all at sea. Straight away though, I started finding things.

The first whisky I tried on my return home from Islay was my Balvenie 12 year old, double wood (40% ABV), earlier impressions on which you can find here and here. Immediately, on the nose I detected liquorice and vanilla, while on the palate I could taste oak, mint and (later – not on the same occasion) strawberries. I went from being non-plussed about this malt to being im-pressed in just a couple of tastings.

With the last of my Grant and MacPhail bottling of Scapa (43% ABV), I got tobacco on the nose and citrus on the palate. Sadly that was it, there was none left to analyse any further – but that’s still a massive improvement.

Next I moved on to my Woodford Reserve bourbon (43.2% ABV) and found caramel and dark chocolate on the nose, with sweet apple juice on the palate that actually took me right back to a school trip to the Jorvik Centre in York, where part of the tour takes you through a strong smell of apples that is supposed to represent the Vikings’ cultivation of orchards.

The most I’ve experienced in a single glass so far comes from a bottle of 10 year old Bladnoch (46% ABV). It’s a real delicate and mellow scotch that doesn’t give away its above average strength, and on the nose for that one I got something quite weird. It was incredibly familiar, but I couldn’t quite pin down what it was at first. Finally it came to me; ice cream cake, like your friend’s mum used to serve at birthday parties. I know, it sounds silly. Perhaps that’s the vanilla that everyone’s always finding. Then there was tobacco, and later, cheese – though not as strongly as Bruichladdich’sOrganic expression.

The palate was spicy and contained a hint of orange, followed by chocolate truffle.

Finally I was starting to see what everyone was talking about – not because I had to really strain and grasp in order to convince myself that I could detect these things, but because they were just sitting there at the top of my Glencairn glass, and (inexplicably) on my tongue. How the glass could possibly affect the overall flavour, I don’t know – perhaps this is the Islay immersion’s effect – but all I know is that I definitely noticed a difference.

Oddly though the cagiest whisky I’ve tried so far in terms of giving up distinct scents or flavours is my Caol Ila Distillers Edition that I’ve been enjoying immensely. It’s sweet like nectar, but I’m getting nothing familiar from it – excepting the mellow peatiness that causes it to act like God’s own room odouriser, and on my 6^th or 7^th tasting, a mild suggestion of sizzling bacon.

Previously I simply enjoyed whisky (among other spirits) very much, but the Glencairn glass has opened up a whole new layer of possibilities for me to explore, and that’s pretty exciting, so I’m not exaggerating when I say I’m delighted. However, in some small way, the universal laws of physics are reflected here, in that there have turned out to be drawbacks – perhaps not to the point of an equal and opposite reaction, but just drawbacks.

Firstly, you can forget about enjoying a nice glass of whisky on a night out anymore. You’ll just be throwing your money away, paying over the odds for something that you’re not going to get the full benefit from.

It’s getting a bit silly really. I was thinking about buying a half bottle in the Duty Free at Manchester Airport to take to Vietnam with me, and I started thinking, but they won’t have the right type of glasses in Vietnam… Honestly, what a geek.  Did it anyway.

Secondly, these glasses only seem to work with whisky. I’ve tried my 20 year old Armagnac, my 10 Cane rum ,and my Blanc e Neri grappa and neither of them has benefitted in the slightest, which only goes to reinforce the supposition that whisky is the most complex spirit there is. Previously I loved all kinds of spirits, but now I can’t help feeling that in some way they are all inferior to whisky, and that maybe this matters. And that’s no way to be!

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I feel like so much of my whisky tasting up to now has been a waste of time, and that perhaps I need to try so many of them all over again – the Black Grouse, Aldi’s Highland Black, definitely the Highland Park 12 year old. Whether it’s because I think maybe I didn’t like them when I might have, or whether it’s a case of if it was that good, imagine how good it could be… it doesn’t matter; I’ve wasted so much time! And money! And words!

Ah, whaddaya gonna do? Life goes on, so get on with it. Whisky is awesome with or without fancy glasses. If you want to know exactly how awesome it can be though, just get one. Totally worth it.

Distilgrimage... Part One

Good evening! Yes, I’m finally back from Vietnam. I say ‘finally’, as if I wouldn’t rather be there, but believe me… I would. It was awesome, and I can’t wait to tell you all about it (I hope you enjoyed the tweets), but first… I need to get around to writing about it. Don’t worry though, this week’s post is something else I’ve been looking forward to giving you for a while. It’s part one of a two part account of my trip with the missus to the island of Islay. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… Distilgrimage (part one).

800+ miles… 2 days travelling, 9 hours each way… 2 days tasting… 6 distilleries… 5 tastings… 3 tours… 19 whiskies… 2 new-make spirits and 1 gin sampled… 3 new bottles… 6 new glasses.

Given those stats, I can only be talking about a weekend on the island of Islay, off the western coast of Scotland. Yes, do you remember me asking in my previous ‘review’ of Ian Buxton’s 101 Whiskies to Try Before You Die, is it worth visiting more than one distillery? How different can they be? Well, I will come to answer those two questions in the course of these next two posts because, for my birthday, Mrs Cake decided to treat me to a weekend away at the home of several of my favourite whiskies – in fact, the birthplace of scotch whisky itself,  in what would come to be known as our Distilgrimage - a name that makes perfect sense since, like a pilgrimage, it was a long fricking way, and it was a spiritual experience – which is both a pun and attempt to ascribe some kind of poetic significance to proceedings. Just go with it.

I had known Mrs Cake was planning something, and I had an inkling that it would be a weekend away – it’s kind of obvious when you are required to book a couple of days off work. I also remembered telling her that maybe one day I’d quite like to visit a distillery, but I had no idea how much effort she would put into it. If it had been me, we’d have gone to Edinburgh, and I would have found the nearest distillery to there. Not Mrs Cake, she knows I’m partial to the peaty goodness of Islay (Caol Ila, Bruichladdich and Laphroaig were already firm favourites), so she pulled out all the stops and on my birthday presented me with a full colour itinerary (I bet her work is pleased about that) detailing what we would be up to come the 21^st of February 2013.

Journey

It’s a long way to Islay (from Manchester). It’s a fairly long way to Scotland, and I never expected I’d have any particular excuse to go there again, but it’s a really long way to Islay. That doesn’t matter though, I like a good road trip, and the missus and I had been needing something like this for a while since our working lives hadn’t been seeming to get along with us, and as a result, us with each other. We always have a great time on holiday though.

I jiggled my hours about at work, and arranged for a 3 o clock finish on the Thursday. We’d packed the night before, so it was straight home, load the car, get going.

I’d requested some bangin’ hip-hop for the journey, but Mrs Cake had sadly missed the mark, picking the worst of Ghostface Killah’s albums, and frankly nothing I’d been hoping for. Nevermind – we at least got right into the People Under the Stairs’ Highlighter album.

We set off not long before 4pm. Mrs Cake had booked us a hotel by Loch Lomond to rest up in in advance of an early ferry the next morning. We arrived at the hotel, starving, at 9.30pm. As we approached the entrance, I could see the chef wearing one of those flame coloured chef caps through the window, drinking a can of Special Brew. It turned out though, that the kitchen was already closed, and all they could offer us was soup and a sandwich. They had a well-stocked bar, but all I fancied was a pint and bed, being exhausted from the journey. I had just enough energy to watch Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe, and despite having brought my bottle of Scapa (coals to Newcastle?) I didn’t even bother getting it out.

The ferry was scheduled to depart from Kennacraig at 9.45 the next morning, but we had to be there by 9.15. It was roughly a two hour drive from the hotel, so that meant we had to leave while it was still dark, and before our hotel started serving breakfast. That was fine with me, as I feel nervous eating breakfast when I have to be somewhere at a certain time.

On the way the satnav decided to send us down a weird side road that we determined couldn’t be right, so we turned back after a bit and just went the way that seemed logical. I joked that maybe we should change the voice on the satnav to a man’s, since he would probably be better at reading maps.

Mrs Cake was getting flustered, but I reassured her that we still had plenty of time, and if we missed the ferry, we’d just have to get the next one. We made it to the ferry for 9.05, so it was all good anyway.

satnav does not show the boat

The ferry takes around two hours, and it’s comfortable enough. The scenery’s nice, as you’d expect from Scotland, but the wind was blowing cold so I didn’t stay outside for long. I’d wanted to be on deck to see Islay approaching, since I’d heard you can see Laphroaig from the ferry, but for some reason you can’t get to the front of the boat. It wouldn’t really have mattered, as I learned on the way back that the boat comes out of port, then turns 90 degrees left, so you can see Laphroaig on the left hand side. Coming into port of course, it would be visible on the right. Nevertheless, I got a couple of pictures on the way back. I’m estimating the distillery was about a mile away, but you can see it quite clearly.

All the TVs were on on the ferry, and were showing Homes Under the Hammer for some reason. We’d both left our books in the car, so it was a waiting game. Thankfully, time goes quicker as you get older, so it didn’t seem to take that long. In theory that should mean that the faster time goes, the closer to death you are, so you ought to have some kind of clue as to when you’re actually going to die because right before, time will be going really fast.  I’ve seen old people though, and they don’t seem to be noticing. Perhaps you don’t when you’re in the moment, it’s only afterwards, and if you’re dead there isn’t an afterwards anyway…

Where was I? Ah yes, arrival on Islay. Mrs Cake had made a reservation for us at the Islay Hotel in Port Ellen, which is literally on your left as soon as you get off the ferry. She picked this one for two very good reasons:

1. We wouldn’t have to worry too much about getting to the ferry in time for the trip back
2. The distilleries of Laphroaig, Lagavulin and Ardbeg are within a brisk walking distance (of sorts), so that would mean we could potentially get hammered and not worry about having to drive.

Day One

Mrs Cake hadn’t booked any distillery tours for our first day, but on arrival we decided to head straight out and try the triumvirate of classic distilleries that were just down the road. Not actually being sure whether it was walkable (a map suggested it was a distance of 5km between the three), we decided to drive to the furthest first (Ardbeg), just to see how far the others were, and potentially drive back before walking to them later.

Nearly everyone we passed waved to us as we went by, which was certainly a nice welcome, but since we weren’t expecting it we didn’t always get chance to wave back. Sorry about that, people of Islay.

The three distilleries are all on the same road, and Laphroaig is definitely walkable. Lagavulin should be possible also, but the road narrows and winds somewhat before you reach Ardbeg. There’s no footpath and the grass verge was a little bushy and looked heavy going. We reached Ardbeg in just a couple of minutes and headed inside where their café was doing a roaring trade. We perused the gift shop while we waited for a table, since lunch was well on the cards by this point.

A lady told us that for £5 we could have a table tasting alongside lunch if we wanted, and that seemed like a good idea. They have a good range of tours, which you can read about here (http://www.ardbeg.com/ardbeg/distillery/tours), and I forget why we didn’t join one. I think that with it starting at 3pm, we would be waiting around a while, and we thought we wouldn’t get time to get to Lagavulin and Laphroaig that afternoon if we did.

So we had lunch, planning to have our table tasting afterwards. As we ate though, the café continued to get busier, so we thought they might want to use our table. We were told instead that we could have our tasting in what they call The Chairman’s Study. That’s a small room at the end of the bar that houses a wide range of Ardbeg expressions, ranging from standard to very rare. We would only be tasting four current expressions, Blasda, 10 year old, Uigeadail and Corryvreckan.

You’ll be pleased to hear that they are all damn good. I’d only tried the 10 year old before, but had already heard good things about Uigeadail. That one and the Corryvreckan are both cask strength and, along with the 10 year old, are very peaty. Blasda is actually only lightly peated in comparison. You get to learn all about phenols and parts per million, and it’s interesting to think you can taste something that consists of only 8 parts in a million.

I’d just like to note at this point that I added a drop or two of water to the cask strength whiskies, and again at certain other points during the trip, and if you’ve ever read that when adding water, you should ideally try to get the same kind of spring water as was used to produed the whisky… none of the distilleries bother with that – and they’re probably the only ones who could! In fact, if you raise this point, they’re likely to look at you like you’re an imbecile. So that’s something you can stop worrying about. I’m thinking it’s probably best to use your own tap water, since you’re probably used to the taste of that, and therefore you won’t notice it. That’s one to try next time I get something cask strength.

Incidentally, Laphroaig’s water source dried up fairly recently, so I guess it’s wasteful to bottle it when you could be making special whisky with it.

That tasting became the first of a number of freebies that the various distilleries threw our merry way over the next few days. On its culmination I asked the young girl who had done the hosting if I just gave her the £5, and she said don’t worry about it. ‘I won’t tell anyone,’ I said, but I just have. Anyway, it seems to be standard practice, so nothing to worry about.

When it came to buying souvenirs, I was considering buying a bottle from Ardbeg (I’ve been wanting one for some time), but decided to wait until I’d been to a few more distilleries before making a choice.

Before getting back in the car, we walked down to the sea to get a picture of the building that has ‘Ardbeg’ written on the side. We also saw quite a few barrels sitting out there, and got some photos of those too. Of course we were tempted to reverse the car up, and try to get one in the back. That would actually be the only time we would see any barrels on the trip (aside from one other – the cask that Bruichladdich lets you fill your own 50cl bottle from for £55). For some reason, none of the distilleries would take us into their storage facilities. Caol Ila would later tell us that it was for Customs and Excise reasons. I know they don’t have many on site at that particular distillery, but other than the still themselves, thousands of barrels of whisky, peacefully aging in a warehouse is what I want to see the most! Could they not have a big glass window or something, that you could look through?

On with the crawl. Mrs Cake isn’t into whisky, so driving duties passed to her. She was able to have a sip of each sample while I finished the rest, so I left with a happy buzz and we headed over to Lagavulin, not bothering with the driving back to the hotel and walking thing after all.

We were greeted at Lagavulin by a lovely lady called Marjorie, who informed us that a tour would be starting in half an hour, if we would care to wait – just in case some more people turned up (no one did). It would be £6, and we would receive a free branded Glencairn glass and a sample of the expression of our choice at the end. Alternatively, we could have a tasting of the three expressions, which would also be £6. Well, there were two of us, which meant we would be able to sample two of the three expressions between us if we took the tour, and Glencairn glasses were £5 in the gift shop (and indeed in the gift shops of all the various distilleries we would eventually visit), so the tour seemed like the best deal – especially since I’d tried the Lagavulin 16 before, so I only needed to taste two. We decided to wait, and had a nice chat with Marjorie while we did.

Marjorie led the tour herself (in fact, all the tours we took were led by women), and it was informative, friendly and conversational. Mrs Cake asked a ton of questions and Marjorie proved her knowledge to be extensive. We saw the old malting fire which isn’t in use anymore as the grain for all the distilleries on Islay is malted at the large Port Ellen plant – where they also used to make whisky, but sadly no more – as well as the mill, the mash tun, wash back (?) and finally, the moment you’ve all been waiting for, as the French would say, the still room.

Marjorie let us taste the wash out of one of the tubs, which is essentially warm beer, and quite tasty, before throwing the remainder back in the tub. We wondered about hygiene, but apparently it literally makes no difference, as all this is going to be boiled at the distilling stage anyway.

Lagavulin and indeed Caol Ila are sister distilleries under the authoritarian father-figure of Diageo – the giant company that also owns Guinness, Smirnoff, Gordon’s, Captain Morgan and a whole slew of whisky producers – and as such are subject to the ‘no photographs on any part of the tour’ rule, which explains why I’ve no pictures for you here. The reason apparently, is that a lot of the other distilleries owned by Diageo get many many times more visitors, and it causes delays to their tours. Quite why they should make this a blanket policy to cover tours that consist of just two people doesn’t really make sense to me, but there you go.

I heard also that in the past, tour guides had been known to allow sneaky photos, but ended up getting in trouble when the same tourists went to another distillery and complained when they weren’t allowed to take photos there, stating that they had been allowed to at Lagavulin. Why anyone would want to get their guide in trouble like that, I couldn’t say – I certainly wouldn’t. Knowing that I was going to tell you about all this, I didn’t even take a sneaky photo, but don’t worry, there will be a photo of a still in part two of this travelogue, thanks to Bruichladdich where they aren’t subject to such strict discipline – yet – and a couple of pictures of the giant stills at Caol Ila… through a window.

Finally then, we were led into a comfortable drawing room and invited to select which of the three expressions we would like to try. We passed over the 16 year old (which is reputed to be the best), instead selecting the cask strength 12 year old and the limited edition that was finished in sherry casks. Mrs Cake liked the sherry finish, but I wasn’t overly fond of either on this occasion. Not that they were bad! No, but let’s just say I hadn’t found one of my purchases yet.

Before she left us, Marjorie also gave us our Classic Malts passports which entitle us to free tours at 11 other distilleries – one of them being Caol Ila. Mrs Cake hadn’t actually booked us a tour at Caol Ila in advance, instead opting for the Premium Tasting, so we thought these might prove useful. They did, but much more on that in part 2!

Don’t go anywhere just yet, there’s one more distillery to go before the end of day 1, and while there’s less to tell about this one, I’m sure you’ll want to stay and find out because it’s the legendary Laphroaig.

Laphroaig was probably the first single malt that I ever truly loved, though the early romance has cooled somewhat over the last few years as I came to explore so many other styles and products. Even so, I still hold the distillery in some reverence.

It was about 4.15pm when we arrived, and we’d missed any tours but that didn’t mean we couldn’t pop into the bustling gift shop and see about having a little tasting in the last 15 minutes they were open, which we did, and they allowed us to for free.

I’d tried the 10 year old and Quarter Cask expressions before, and figured they probably wouldn’t want to let me try the 25 and 30 year olds they had there. Mrs Cake asked anyway, and they said they didn’t open them. That left the Triple Wood and 18 year old, that they did let us try, though I barely got a dribble of the 18 year old! I didn’t make any notes, and it is difficult to give a full appraisal from a single taste, but I’d have to say I liked the 18 without being sure whether I’d like to shell out £70 for a bottle, while the Triple Wood had a strong and not particularly pleasant finish that I remembered from my own bottle of Caol Ila 18 year old – an expression we later learned is quite rare now. Check me out.

I thought then, that I probably wouldn’t make a Laphroaig one of my purchases on this occasion either, though I will return at some time in the future. I did make sure to get a branded Glencairn glass though, as well as some cheese that is made with Laphroaig. I don’t recall now, but I thought that cost £2.50, while Mrs Cake says it was £3.50. There was also a pair of spectacles on the counter, black with a large white L on them, that given the breadth of branded products you can get, made us consider that maybe they were official Laphroaig spectacle frames, but no, they belonged to one of the Belgian or Norwegian tourists who were busily getting their expensive purchases in.

I’ve tried the cheese now, and despite the fact that it is made of only 1.6% whisky, you can really taste it. On numerous occasions in the past, Mrs Cake and I have tried a product like this and found traces of the special ingredient nowhere. The bad news though, is that in my opinion, the cheese isn’t particularly nice. I’m sure some people will get a lot of enjoyment out of it, but sadly not I. Nevermind.

Well, that concludes part one of the Islay Distilgrimage Adventure. We had dinner and whatnot that evening, but it wasn’t particularly whisky-related, so not for inclusion here. I may as well give the Islay Hotel its due though, and say its restaurant was pretty good. I’m not a food blogger, so I’m not going to get all specific or glowing on you, but I’d recommend it if you’re staying on Islay one of these days. Come to think of it, the bar was fairly impressively stocked...

Join me next week then, for part two, in which we’ll be visiting the distilleries of Bruichladdich and Caol Ila and making some purchases. It will most likely be a quiet weekend for me – feeling the strain of holiday expenses – but with all the booze I’ve got, that doesn’t mean I can’t have a party. Tonight I’m thinking I’ll compare the bootleg longan wine that I bought in Vietnam for £4 with my £48 bottle of Domenis Blanc e Neri grappa, so that will be fun. Tomorrow will be, you know, similar. I er… forgot that I’d splashed out (£5.99)  on the premium Ballycastle Irish Cream from Aldi before I went away, so I might give that one an airing. Then there’s always other things burning a hole in their bottles…

Other than that, it’s time to get back to normal life after the holiday – shopping, cooking and all that. I’ve promised Mrs Cake I’ll make her a birthday cake, so along with my first round of golf since the first week in January, that’s Saturday taken care of.

There’s still plenty to look forward to and to blog about, so keep coming back and inbetween times, follow me on twitter (@alcothusiast) where I’ll be giving you tasters of what’s to come and generally trying to be funny.

Have a good one, and see you later!