Glastonbury: It's full of fuckwits

As promised last week, it is time now to take you back to last summer with a trip to the legendary Glastonbury Festival.

Glastonbury. Where the do you start with this? It’s legendary, possibly the greatest festival there has ever been. Five days of music, drinking, dancing, mud, drugs… and bums. Yes, bums. At this year’s festival (my first Glastonbury) I exceeded my normal number of bums seen in a week quota, by quite a lot. Girls in hot pants, in dresses that were too short, cheeks on show, underwear missing presumed absent  – let’s just get that particular aspect out of the way first, then we can get on to the other things.

Yes, it was baffling.

It is possible that this one might not be as much about booze as it should be, but we’ll see. “Bare” with me.

Logistics

What’s the first thing you need then, when going to the Glastonbury Festival? Well, of course it’s a ticket. And they were something like £230 this year (including a parking pass), which is fairly ridiculous considering how sharply that figure has risen over the last decade, but you are getting the greatest party in the world™.

You might also need some friends (or a partner) who are willing to get out of bed before 9 on a Sunday morning and continuously hit refresh on an internet browser while you sleep off the previous night’s debauchery.

Tick, tick and tick on that one for me.

Then you need to be thinking about logistics. How are you going to get there? What are you going to sleep in? What are you going to take? How much booze are you going to need?

People came up with all kinds of answers to those questions. Let’s have a look at some, shall we?

• How are you going to get there?

For us it was a case of drive down for a few days in Gloucestershire first, then head to the festival from there. It wasn’t exactly easy because you had to decide whereabouts you wanted to camp in advance, and then approach the enormous site from the right direction. In our case it was to be from the West, but we started North East. On top of that, signs to the site weren’t always as helpful as they could have been.The site is so big that it was like planning a military assault, planning which hills you were going to come over.

• What are you going to sleep in?

Most people chose the tent in a muddy field surrounded by empty beer cans option, some even by a busy path or notoriously daunting toilets (having to inhale that smell the whole time… ew). Some have camper vans, and get to stay in fields a little further away with toilets you can actually shit in without worrying about catching typhoid or challenging your hamstrings to support a marathon half-squat.

Luckily, our friends have a camper van with a convenient awning that they allowed us to sleep in. Quiet and comfortable. Nice.

• What are you going to take?

You can split this one into categories – clothes and booze mainly. For us it was oldish clothes and waterproofs while for everyone else it seemed to be hotpants and summer dresses (for the girls), and t-shirts and shorts (for the boys).

In terms of booze, I took 32 cans of Holsten Pils, 2.5 litres of cider, a plastic bottle of cheap dark rum and a litre bottle of the Stolichnaya. Mrs Cake took cans of Hobgoblin and Old Speckled Hen, a number of canned cocktails, a bottle of Spanish gin and the Green Mark vodka. All I saw anyone else lugging about on their trolleys was crate upon crate of Foster’s, Strongbow and Kronenberg. Occasionally you’d see a massive jug of local cider (which you can buy outside the festival from roadside stalls).

It’s also a good idea to take plenty of toilet roll and some of that hand sanitiser stuff.

• How much booze are you going to need?

Well, we nearly [nearly] took enough. But not quite. On the last two days it turned out I only had 6 cans left, so I had to allocate myself three per day. You can’t take glass into the festival, so one afternoon I walked back to the car to refill my hip flask with Stoli, and that only lasted one day. I couldn’t be bothered to make another trip because it had taken about 45 minutes that first time and my feet were killing from spending 12 hours a day standing around or power walking in wellies.

So let that be a lesson to you; overestimate, add a bit more, then add a bit more. That’s probably almost enough.

not enough. anywhere near

Activities

Things don’t really start until Friday, but most people arrive two days before that, as we did. So you spend a couple of days wandering around, getting the lay of land and all that. There’s always plenty going on with sound systems, bars, stages of performing arts of all kinds as well as just random shit that makes you go: what’s this for? Like a double decker bus that just has loads of shit in it – by which I mean pictures, dolls, toys, artefacts, knick-knacks. I just didn’t get it.

Come and have a look in me bus!

What for?

You just pick a destination, head over there with your can in your hand, and check it out.

In all honesty, the line-up of musical acts wasn’t as much to my taste as I had seen billed in previous years. This year I remember seeing:

Pixies – a favourite band of mine, who were excellent as usual.

Kelis – she did a cursory two verses and two choruses of Milkshake, and then we had somewhere else to be.

Metallica – interesting that a metal band should headline the Saturday night. They were ok, but I don’t think Metallica are all that.

The Subways – just about as average as a rock band can be.

Dolly Parton – convinced she was miming.

Lana Del Rey – yawn.

Kasabian – what it would sound like if Robbie Williams had a rock band.

Jurassic 5 – seen them before, it is what it is.

De La Soul – the first band I saw, I think. I have a number of their records, but was quite surprised by how good their set was.

The Radiophonic Workshop – one of the highlights; electronic music pioneers.

Jack White – I like Jack White, but this was disappointing.

Rodrigo y Gabriela – has anyone ever bought one of their records?

Warpaint – nothing to say, but I do like them.

Tinariwen – nice, groovy, bluesy north African pscyhedelia… with lots of toffs hanging around, talking loudly.

I deliberately avoided Ed Sheeran, Arcade Fire, Elbow, The Black Keys, Jake Bugg, Paulo Nutini, Kaiser Chiefs… so you can see… it was more about avoiding things I didn’t want to see than there being too many things that I did want to see.

Your Own Perfect Party

Now, after that last section about music, you’re going to think I wasn’t having a very good time. Seriously though: I was. It’s not all about the bands, and the experience alone is enough to keep you going. There are of course, other means of entertainment – one of the performance highlights in fact was the English National Ballet, which was just superb. The entire audience stood in solemn silence through the whole thing, holding back tears, the peace broken only occasionally by people wandering in from elsewhere going, “what the fuck is going on?” – that and a few of us that couldn’t help breaking the sombre mood by laughing at a girl’s dress that was riding up too high while she retrieved something from a friends backpack [back to bums again].

The greatest thing about Glastonbury is that you can go out and find your own perfect party. It’s all right there. My group’s best night was the Thursday night when we went to the South East Corner – Block 9, Shangri-La and the Unfairground where everything is a post-apocalyptic set filled with stages, bars and scenery. We happened upon a tiny bar playing a bit of metal (that you had to answer a rock-related question to be granted admission), and seemed to actually get the party to take off by requesting System of a Down. For the next hour we danced around and screamed like idiots before collectively thinking our work here is done, fist bumping the dj and a south American looking dude, and heading off for further adventures.

Two nights later I saw the same thing happen again when, after Metallica’s set we stopped off at a bar and a couple of Metallica and Rage Against the Machine tracks brought out a number of peoples’ inner rock gods and there was all manner of screaming, air-guitarring, gurning… just pure joy. I don’t know what happened when, 20 minutes later the dj played Eminem and then Outcast and… everyone just accepted the change in musical styles, though the atmosphere had been lost. For those 20 minutes it was the greatest party those few people had ever seen – just like two nights before. We wandered on.

Weather

Glastonbury is famed for its weather – so much so that the media tends to fixate on it to some extent. If you live somewhere in the world, and you’ve heard of Glastonbury you’ve probably seen footage of mud and people covered in it, wrestling in it, sliding in it, even canoeing in it. This year was the same in the media – we had a bit of heavy rain which resulted in some muddy conditions, but what the media conveniently missed out was that for the majority of the time it was sunny and hot – so much so that I got a proper tan.

We weren’t worried about the mud anyway – I’d brought wellies, waterproof trou and a jacket (I am in my 30s), and the worst thing was just that it made it hard to find anywhere to sit down. We actually avoided the heaviest downpour, as we were taking timeout in the camper van. I made it back from my epic vodka replenishment trip just in time.

The fuckwits

Now, on that first Wednesday, when we arrived, the mood was surprisingly subdued as we pulled into the car park. I was expecting people to be squealing with delight, shouting bollocks, drinking cans immediately, as they began the weary trudge from their cars to wherever they were going to pass out for the next 5 nights (like at Leeds Festival), but nothing of the sort. It had an orderly sense of inevitability about it. Worry ye not, these people are going to party, and fairly soon they are going to turn into fuckwits – a term Mrs Cake coined one night with astounding clarity and accuracy.

Yes, these people are all fuckwits, with their ridiculous behaviour, ridiculous clothes, flower garlands in their hair, leather hats with horns, inhaling helium in the stone circle, painting their faces, queuing for half an hour to clean their teeth at the water point, when they could just have collected water earlier in a bottle, wearing a condom over their head and blowing it up with their nose while their friends point and laugh hysterically… but… in fairness the most ridiculous behaviour was perpetrated by only one or two individuals, and if you apply the rules of an infinite universe, these kinds of things are inevitable when you have so many people all partying together in one place at one time.

And anyway, I can’t exclude myself from these people. I’m older than most of them, I’m probably not having quite as much fun as them or being quite so ridiculous… but I’m a fuckwit too. We all become bellends after dark, but some are bellends all day. And fair enough. Is this a festival or isn’t it?

Glastonbury is way posher and way  better behaved than Leeds Festival – at times you feel like you’re in an episode of Made in Chelsea, or you do if you grew up anywhere North of Cheltenham – but you still get certain types of lazy behaviour like pissing in bushes (near tents where people are actually living) instead of going to the toilets… Mrs Cake and “Veronica” actually started a chant about that:

Don’t piss in the bush! Don’t piss in the bush! You should be asha-a-a-med! You should be asha-a-a-med!

… which “Pablo” tried to copy to hilarious effect after we’d had a joint a night or two later.

There was also a Who’s the Douche in the limo? chant, which went down quite well as one drove past us towards the VIP area with two bored looking girls in it.

Anyway, everyone was having fun, getting drunk, taking drugs with absolutely nothing negative (in my experience) to report. Would I go again? Yeah, but not for a while.

Aftermath

So it was a mad, fun few days followed by a marathon journey home. Oddly though, I was left feeling refreshed and ready to get on with life again – until Wednesday morning when I returned to work.

So last summer ended up turning into one gargantuan drinking session after another, which is fine and all, but it had never been quite so prolonged before, As this summer approaches, for some reason I can’t help thinking things will be more restrained… for some reason… but that’s a different story for another time.

Whatever your plans for the summer, make them responsibly alcohol fuelled and fun. And if you’re going to Glastonbury, remember; don’t piss in the bush.

Even more of a muchness: another 3 way vodka test

L-R: Vladivar, Stolichnaya, Green Mark

 Am I really so far behind on my posts? I ask myself? How come? Well, this week I’m going to take you back to about 9 months ago when I was preparing for a trip to the Glastonbury Festival. In a couple more weeks, I’ll be telling you all about that – so just in time for the 2015 edition really. For now though, it’s a return to the recurrent theme of wondering whether vodka is particularly interesting or not. Considering how many words I get out of it, it probably is – just not in the same way that other, more refined spirits are. Enough prevarication then; here’s the post.

With an extra long weekend at the Glastonbury Festival approaching, Mrs Cake and I thought it would be prudent for us to stock up on festival booze. I suggested we try a different supermarket for a change, in order that we might benefit from a different variety of products, so as we passed it on our way to Go Outdoors in Cheadle anyway, we plumped for Morrisons. What delights would await, I wonder?

Answer: not many.

My usual tinnie of choice, Holsten Pils was more expensive than it usually is in Tesco, so it was immediately apparent we would have to return to our usual supermarket anyway. I could have tried a different brand, but it would’ve meant either dropping my standards or paying a lot more – and when you want 32 cans, that increase can stack up.

Baileys was on “offer” at £14, but I decided to try a completely different brand (by which I mean budget) and go for Country Mist (14.5% ABV, £5.19), but more on that some time in the future…

More pertinent to this post though, is that Mrs Cake decided to stock up on vodka. I told her I’d got loads, but she didn’t want to use my stash. Then she thought she’d wait, and get some from Aldi, and I convinced her that it would be good to try a new brand – Green Mark fit the bill, on offer at £11, but showing a slightly below par 38% ABV).

Here comes the “factual” part.

The green mark was a soviet government seal of quality between the 1920s and 1950s and though this vodka is named for that, it was never actually awarded such a seal. Green Mark is in fact a recreation of a recipe gleaned from research into Glavspirttrest records.

All vodkas have some kind of factor that is supposed to set them apart from the rest – or so it seems. With Finlandia, it’s that it is produced with springwater so pure it requires no chemical treatment. With Grey Goose, it’s that is produced in the Maitre de Chai tradition (look it up), and that it is filtered through “champagne limestone”. Ketel One has any number of factors it would claim make it “a truly exceptional vodka”. Luxury brand Belvedere is distilled from Dankowskie rye, which is considered ideal for distillation (blah, blah, blah), and adheres to over 600 years of vodka making tradition blah.

You get the idea… none of this explains why my friend Paul (and no doubt, many others) consider vodka brands all to be “much of a muchness”. Well, I’m not done confirming or refuting whether that is the case yet… which brings us to this week’s tasting experiment; yet another 3 way vodkachallenge for which Mrs Cake would be joining me: the new Green Mark, pitted against my existing Vladivar (37.5% ABV), and the undisputed champion of previous challenges and frankly, personal favourite (second only to its higher alcohol content brother), Stolichnaya (40%).

I brought six shot glasses out of the cupboard and prepared three blind samples for Mrs Cake, after which she did the same for me.

Firstly, a brief word on presentation…

Vladivar is presented in an uninteresting cylindrical bottle with a cyan coloured label and friendly but gothic white lettering. It is made from 100% pure grain, triple distilled and charcoal filtered. It is a British product.

Stolichnaya is pretty utilitarian looking and is made from wheat and rye grain. It is apparently filtered through quartz, sand, activated charcoal and woven cloth.

Green Mark has quite an elegant bottle, curvy and extra-narrow at the top – a bit like Glenmorangie in that regard – and has a novel cap instead of a normal crappy screw cap. It looks all right – I sure appreciate the effort.

So, on with the tasting. I encouraged Mrs Cake to have a sniff of each sample first, and see if she got any impressions. She said they didn’t smell of anything, and I agreed. So we proceeded to drink.

Results

Now, we were busy making a pizza at the time (no, it wasn’t the most dedicated tasting the world has ever seen), so I’m sorry to say the tasting wasn’t particularly stimulating. We both picked out Stolichnaya as the best (as expected), but it wasn’t by a massive distance on this occasion. Mrs Cake picked Vladivar as her second favourite, while I thought Green Mark was worthy of runner-up status, but 2^nd and 3^rd were very close. What swung it for me was that I could detect that extra 0.5% alcohol, and while I’m not saying that alone is enough to justify picking one over another, if there’s nothing else to choose, well then it probably is. I do find it bizarre how apparent minute differences in alcoholic strength seem to be – particularly in clear spirits – but they really are [seem to be].

 

Aaaand… the conclusion

So Stolichnaya is still the champ, but Green Mark places a respectable 4^th in the overall vodka rankings, displacing the Vladivar. You’re probably wondering by now what the official countdown is… so I think I might publish some lists to that end around Christmas/New Year time. That’s a long way off as it stands, but that just means I can get a lot more vodka tasting in between now and then.

Before I go, there is one more conclusion to draw, and that is that Morrison’s is not so good for the booze. They did have offers on Glenfiddich Rich Oak and Glenfiddich 15 mind, but I managed to talk myself down from any unplanned scotch expenditure. I’m regretting that now, as it turns out I had sufficient unallocated funds in my booze budget. Ah well. To be continued…

Booze and Chocolate

Cast your mind back - go on - to February 2012. Anything? Yes, John Terry was relieved of the England captaincy in relation to allegations of racist abuse, but it’s not that. What? The world record for the number of water skiers pulled by a single boat was broken? That’s amazing! How did you know that? And also, no, that is not what I’m referring to. Think a bit closer to home. No, not Zsa Zsa Gabor’s 95^th birthday. What is she even famous for anyway?

I could go scanning the Wikipedia entry for February 2012 in order to create an entertaining introduction to this post all day, but I’m not going to. So I’ll just tell you. I’m referring to a post from this blog’s infancy where I referenced the gift industry. This next post is related to that somehow. How? Because it is all about the dubious marriage between booze and chocolate. You know the kind of thing; liqueur chocolates, whisky “flavoured” chocolate etc.

I mention it now because I got some for Christmas. Ooh, chocolate! Nice! Oh, whisky chocolate… ok…

What’s it for? I like chocolate, I like whisky (or other kinds of booze), but there has never been an occasion when I’ve thought, you know what? I wish there were more opportunities for me to enjoy these two things together. It’s just not necessary. In fact, I’d just prefer to keep the two separate. It’s almost as if… these products exist [stick with me here…] purely to provide a possible gift for someone you know who likes whisky and chocolate. Whisky might be too expensive to give as a gift, chocolate perhaps too uninteresting, but both together? Now you’re talking. Except… you’re never going to get that alcohol buzz from eating chocolate. I know I always say this blog is about enjoying alcohol, not getting drunk but… the buzz is sometimes part of the enjoyment.

So without wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, let’s have a look at a couple of specific examples of presents I received last Christmas from Mrs Cake’s [and now by marriage, my] very generous family.

This first one is a box of forty-eight chocolate liqueurs. There were four varieties – Stolichnaya Orange, Jim Beam, Grand Marnier and Remy Martin – and they were all bottle-shaped, individually wrapped in foil, and then elaborately stacked in a large box with too many layers of plastic.

We were only in Canada a little over two weeks, and had only 5 days left when I received these. I figured I could probably just eat them all in a few days, so that I wouldn’t have to take them back to the UK with me. It turns out that 48 chocolate liqueurs is quite a lot – especially when you’re routinely overindulging in all the various meals of the day; burgers, chicken wings, poutine, pizza etc, etc.

I tried my best, I really did, but in the end I had to leave five or six at the mother-in-law’s. No one else was helping me either.

So how were they? Well, they were all right. To be fair, they all tasted the same unless you were to bite the top off and suck out the alcohol. Unfortunately that proved impractical and frequently led to a sticky substance dripping down the chin. Also it makes you look a bit stupid.

My ability to enjoy them to their fullest was further marred by all that individual wrapping. They were fiddly, and often a thin layer of chocolate had melted to the last bit of foil, which meant tiny but highly melt-prone shards of chocolate would be ejected over clothing and furniture on opening.

I know, you probably think I’m being finicky, but it’s hard to enjoy something when you find it so damn frustrating. Were the chocolates tasty? Yes. Were they ultimately more trouble than they were worth? Yes – especially considering there were 48 of them. Even without all that faffing, I think I would have been sick of them before I could eat all 48. Why not just… not wrap them all individually?

I’ve just worked out the answer to that question. It’s so that the different sprits can be represented in visual form on the foil wrappings. Damn. To be fair though, this isn’t absolutely necessary.

The other gift then, was a small pack of chocolates labelled, “Heather’s Pick”. These were chocolates that were apparently made with whisky. There were 4 in a pack, and I shared them with Mrs Cake. And they were nice, but neither of us could taste the whisky. They were like chocolate with caramel in the middle and just made us wonder, why bother? The only possible reason could be that someone might be tempted to buy these for a relative who likes whisky. Otherwise, you could just make them without whisky. Presumably though, there would be no reason then for anyone to buy them.

It sure is weird, this whole gift industry. You’re probably not supposed to ask these questions. I don’t know. Whatever, man. Thanks to my in-laws for all the generous gifts – on top of the chocolates, I actually got two bottles of whisky, so that was pretty awesome – and thanks for providing another topic for the Drink it How You Like it blog.

That’s it for this week. Next week; something equally pointless and uninteresting. Actually, next week is probably going to be about the 12 year old Strathisla single malt. Laters.

Concentration Camping

Camping. It’s a rite of passage apparently. Something that, in American society (or so certain kinds of movies would have you believe) fathers do with their sons to help them develop into men – because Americans still need to be able to survive in the wilderness, catching fish with their teeth, wrestling bears and the like.

It’s different here in the UK of course. I never went camping with my dad. I never went camping at all until I reached the grand old age of 24, and if I had gone with my dad I would have found the whole experience to be quite different from that portrayed in the American films I’d grown up with – we don’t have any bears for a start, and as for camping in the wilderness… it can be more like camping on a council estate (which is the British equivalent of a wild, untamed wilderness), since in most cases campsites seem to be simply fields where people go for a cheap holiday and to drink lots of lager, eat lots of barbequed food and sit about being lairy, all side by side. Am I saying it’s a microcosm of British society? Well, I wasn’t, but now I think about it, I suppose I could be.

Don’t get me wrong though; camping is fun, I just haven’t really figured out what’s fun about it yet. Is it the sounds of people snoring from across the field? No… is it waking up at three in the morning with a screaming bladder and having to weigh up the benefits of emptying it against the inconvenience of getting dressed lying down and then traipsing to the toilet block in the cold and or dark and or wet? No, it’s not that either. Is it the way you can never be sure of the weather, but how much fun you have depends on it? Is it the kids that wake you up with their screaming and squealing at 7 in the morning? Or the way it takes ages to do anything? How it’s difficult to get clean, stay clean, feel clean?

rocking it with the Stoli

No, it’s none of those things, but in spite of those things, it’s good. It’s just something that people do in order to get a change of scenery, and that in itself does them a world of good. There’s always something new to see (and laugh at)… and it’s a great excuse for drinking with your friends.

A couple of weekends past, Mrs Cake and I decided to go camping on Anglesey, North Wales. I was dispatched to Aldi to pick up some bottled beers for the missus, and while I did so I started thinking about which of my spirits would be going with us. The winner: Stolichnaya. There’s no point in taking your single malts when you’ll be drinking from plastic beakers. I also picked up some Holsten Pils for me.

Ok, rules. First, find the flattest pitch possible, as far away as possible from other campers, always have your first beer while erecting the tent, reward yourself with a 2^nd beer as soon as the tent is up and carry an open can of beer around with you at all times. Those seem pretty universal.

an empty shoe makes a handy drinks holder

We stayed this time at a site near the town of Moelfre, overlooking an enormous beach. It was a peaceful site – in fact it would turn out to be too peaceful…

After a couple of beers and dinner, I rolled a joint and we took it and a couple of cups of vodka down to the beach for an early evening stroll, returning a little while later with a happy buzz and a propensity for hysterics.

As the light faded and we sat outside the tent that night, watching not very much in particular happen, chatting and drinking a little more, I wondered – what’s it all about? Not life no, but why were we there? We were just sitting in a field, not doing anything. And so was everyone else. We were having a nice time, but couldn’t we have been having a nice time at home?

We could be having a nice time at home, but while there would be more to entertain us, it wouldn’t be the same – we wouldn’t be having quite such a nice time. It’s the same reason you go on holiday.

As the evening wore on, we moved our chairs into the shelter of the tent and continued the fun.

“This is great, isn’t it?” I said. “It’s dead peaceful and relaxing, there’s no lairy people about, it’s just really nice.”

Right at that moment a man popped his head round and said, “just to let you know, it’s a very still night and your voices carry a long way – you can be heard up to a quarter of a mile away, so you know – just to let you know…”

So we were being reprimanded for being noisy. It seems that for once we were the lairy ones. We looked around us and realised everyone else on the entire campsite had gone to bed, and it was only 10.45! What the… it’s Friday night! Why’s everyone gone to bed?

Over the next hour or so Mrs Cake and I went through a series of emotions and thought processes:

-          Yeah, perhaps we were being a bit loud…

-          It is after 10.30 (though we didn’t realise it at the time), and the campsite rules did state ‘no noise after 10.30’…

-          We weren’t being that loud!

-          It’s not like we were shouting and swearing!

-          We might have been jokingly singing that Taylor Swift Trouble song… you know, with the screaming goats.

-          How dare they!

-          Oh christ, was everyone able to hear what we were saying?

-          You couldn’t have heard us a quarter of a mile away! The edge of the campsite isn’t that far!

-          Ah, it’s all right, he was kind of nice about it…

-          What a dick.

-           

Yeah, a bit neurotic as someone whose had a few drinks and a joint might be… We kept ourselves a little quieter on the Saturday night, though an incredibly Manc couple came over to tell us we weren’t being that loud after all, which was nice. They had been reprimanded for having a fire in a barbeque, which someone else had earlier told them was ok. They compared the way the site was run to a concentration camp with its military discipline and iron fist. You could see the family home at the top end, and the Manc guy came over later to point out that the owner was standing in his conservatory, surveying the site with a pair of binoculars, like Ralph Fiennes in Schindler’s List.

It wasn’t the first time we’d heard the comparison – at the end of a walk to a nearby pub on the Saturday we’d met an older couple who had asked where we were staying and described the campsite as militaristic.

shower beer

Ah well, we still had a nice time and a good laugh, and that’s what it’s all about, eh? Yeah. And I was able to get a shower-beer in – because the showers were warm and impeccably clean, so military discipline is good for something.

A couple of weeks later we camped with our friends Paul and Victoria in a field, behind a pub in Derbyshire. This was a very different affair – more space, no noise restrictions… and a pub, of course.

We’d been booze shopping beforehand again, and this time we’d decided to try Asda just for a change, and because they tend to have better deals on spirits than Tesco. I had £30 burning a hole in my pocket and an intention to buy some gold rum.

shopping

My idea had been to not buy two bottles, but I forgot this when I was having trouble making a decision and Mrs Cake said, “you could buy two bottles”, so I did and here’s what I ended up drinking that weekend in Derbyshire.

Mount Gay Eclipse

Class: Gold

Origin: Barbados

ABV: 40%

Price: £13

Presentation: I like the bottle shape –rectangular with rounded shoulders – and it has a distinctive label depicting a map of Barbados. It’s very recognisable.

Thoughts: I’ve read quite a few nice things about this (user reviews on retail sites, blog reviews and the like) but I can’t for the life of me understand why. To my palate this is rough, grainy, thin and not particularly complex. It may have a 2.5% advantage, but it also lacks the sweetness of Bacardi Gold, which I would normally tend to look down on. I would actually prefer to like the Mount Gay Eclipse to that, but I don’t. I’m not saying it’s a bad rum, but it’s only good for mixing or for your hip flask.

Liberty Ship

Class: dark

Origin: unspecified

ABV: 37.5%

Price: £10

Presentation: There’s nothing fancy here. It’s a very basic bottle with a very basic label depicting a compass.

Thoughts: I have to say I’m more impressed with this one than with the Mount Gay. Maybe it’s the lower expectations and I know that for £10 it can’t be up to much, but for my taste, there’s more going on here. Perhaps there should be, given that it is of the dark variety…

On the nose I’m getting balsamic vinegar, and in terms of palate it is dry and spicy. It’s still not special, and it won’t get much use beyond cocktails and the hip flask but it is marginally the better of my two camping purchases. In direct comparisons with dark rums of a similar price point though, Lambs (thought slightly more expensive in general) is preferable.

I did take both bottles camping, and opened both, though I’m not sure why. One would surely have sufficed. Perhaps I wanted to make sure there was some left for when we got home, and there would be more likelihood of this if I dipped into two bottles instead of relying on one. That must be it.

I know, it being the middle of winter that this maybe isn’t the right time to be posting on this topic, but such is arbitrary way in which I work. I mean, it doesn’t matter; once it’s posted it’s there forever, so it will be relevant when spring rolls around again.

And uh... yes, that’s it for now. Have a good week!

Spirits of the Year... 2013

No, I don’t believe in doing an annual review post or anything like that. If you want to know what happened in the year, look back over the blog. Nor do I think I try enough of everything to be able to make sweeping generalisations about such and such being the year’s best single malt or whatever. I would though, just very quickly, like to pay tribute to what I’m going to call my Spirits of the Year. Without getting too formal or anything, these are bottles that I enjoyed massively over the course of 2013. There’s only three, and you’ll notice that there isn’t a single malt amongst them. Single malt is probably what I drink most of, but the reason there isn’t one here – despite some excellent drams this year – is that nothing came out of nowhere and surprised me. Yep, Ardbeg 10 is great, yes, I definitely enjoyed the Caol Ila Distiller’s Edition and the Glenfarclas 10… but I kind of expected all that. So just put that aside and let's pay tribute to the unexpected… in no particular order, other than that in which I thought of it.

Vodka: Stolichnaya 100 Proof

You know that I love Stolichnaya, right? Course you do. I’ve been singing the praises of the 40% ABV red variety for years now, so it is undeniably to the blue variety’s credit that it absolutely rocked my world when I finally got around to buying a bottle. You’ll be able to read more about it in the coming weeks, but let’s just say for now that it is all the red variety is and more – with an extra 10% of ABV thrown on top. Awesome.

lended Scotch: Jim McEwan’s Symphony No 1

You might remember this from my Distilgrimage adventure. This one makes the cut because it was an absolute bargain (£13) and whether you factor in the price or not, it was a delight; the first time I’ve enjoyed a blend so fully – though not the last in2013 (shout outs but no awards, to Ballantine’s Finest and White Horse).

Grappa: Mille Lune

Another spirit that delighted and amazed in equal measure, and that you will be able to read about in more detail in the coming weeks. Despite trying it at the vineyard prior to purchase, it still surprised me on opening at home. Clean and beautifully balanced, this rocketed right to the top of my grappa league table.

So, here’s looking forward to another fun year of fine spirits and heavy drinking. I’ve already got some single malts, blends, and Canadian whiskies to open, and have just broken the seal on another grappa… Then there’s plans for trips to Florida, as well as to various countries within the EU that should yield some interesting purchases.

All of the above were so good that for me, they represent the best that their spirit genre has to offer so let’s hope 2014 brings some examples that challenge their supremacy. I don’t know what the year will bring yet, but you can be sure I’ll be telling you all about it. See you soon for the first proper post of the year and, in the meantime, you can tell me about your favourite spirits of 2013 in the comments.

A couple of budget vodkas

“All vodka”, said my friend Paul on the eve of his trip to Russia, “is much of a muchness really”. He would be riding the Trans-Siberian Railway for something like three weeks, so  I had remarked on how I’d be looking forward to drinking vodka all day and trying some bizarre Russian varieries - because that’s what you do on these train journeys (presumably).  I was a little disappointed then, to hear that he wasn’t all that bothered about that.

Is he right, though about all vodkas being much of a muchness? I haven’t tried all the vodkas in the world. I haven’t even tried all the ones in the local supermarket, but I have made it my mission to do so… at some point.

Back before I embarked on this alcothusiastic voyage of discovery, before I had tried any single malt scotch, before I knew that spirits could be enjoyed for their flavours rather than for how quickly and how extremely they could get you drunk or how hard it made you look to be drinking them, I used to say I liked vodka. Not that I dislike it now, it’s just that it doesn’t seem to be the most interesting spirit in the world, does it? But… much of a muchness?

I’ve read that generally, the better a vodka is, the less flavour it has, which to me seems perverse. It suggests vodka is simply for achieving inebriation, rather than for enjoying. I don’t have a problem with people drinking to achieve inebriation as such, but I am confused that the best vodka I’ve ever tasted, which you’ll know if you’ve ever glanced at this blog before because I keep banging on about it… is Stolichnaya. And that’s damn tasty… so does that mean it’s bad?

Stolichnaya is an awesome vodka – it is equally tasty, whether you’ve stuck it in your freezer for a few hours, or are just drinking it at room temperature. It is very reasonably priced, and frequently on special offer – the last bottle I got was £14, which is almost criminal value. In fact, the only problem with it is that it’s so good I can’t let Mrs Cake use it to mix with. I have to buy another brand for that, but you know, I’m not complaining because that means I can try some more. And that brings me smoothly to the actual topic of this week’s post – a couple of budget vodka brands.

First up is Putinoff Platinum (40% ABV, 50cl, £9.49), a Lidl brand. I don’t normally shop at Lidl, but with a store just up the road from where I work, there wasn’t much chance of me staying away for long.

The variety and scope of booze on offer at Lidl was somewhat disappointing, but it is cheap. You have far more options at Aldi (that gives me an idea for a future post… Aldi vs Lidl… watch this space…), but there were two varieties of Putinoff to choose from – one was a standard red variety (under 40% and triple distilled) and the other, the blue or platinum variety, which is stronger, five times distilled and even ‘oxygenated’, whatever that means. Whatever it is, it is supposed to open up certain aromatic elements.

I did a little internet research on my return to the office, and found that Putinoff has been making quite a name for itself, scoring 10 out of 10 in the Daily Mirror, who also say it is better than the significantly pricier Grey Goose. I haven’t gotten around to that one yet, so that’s a verdict for another day. Quite how seriously you should take the Daily Mirror as an authority though is up for debate.

Well, I can only give you my verdict, so I will, but let’s simplify this as much as possible and score in terms of:

Much of a muchness?

Yes. This vodka doesn’t really taste of anything, and I didn’t even need to put it in the freezer to achieve that – low temperatures famously mask flavours in alcohol, giving the appearance of a better spirit than you actually have. So in theory, it is good, but I don’t judge vodka in that way, and with so many other brands to try it’s safe to say I won’t be buying it again, but if you need something to make your cocktails with, this’ll do.

Moving on to our second budget brand then, this one is Morrison’s Imperial Vodka. Yes, a triple distilled, own brand vodka, weighing in at a libido-dampening 37.5% ABV. This one was only a 35cl bottle because it was purchased for Mrs Cake to drink with a mixer at a recent barbeque. Again, Morrison’s isn’t a shop we get into very often, and this brand won out because it was only £5.30 or something like that. Mrs Cake drank the whole thing that afternoon/evening with the exception of a couple of swigs that I managed to snaffle for research purposes.

Much of a muchness? Well, yes, but less so than that of the Putinoff Platinum, so if we were talking winners, Morrison’s comes out on top in this one despite its lower ABV. I would buy this again if say, I was on a tight budget, I just needed something to mix, and there was nothing else. To its credit itmanages to avoid that slight bitterness that many cheap vodkas (including the Putinoff) have.

I have compiled an ongoing vodka ranking system, but there are too many omissions to give it value at the moment, and so far I’ve only tried a variety of cheap ones really. I’ll see about splashing out a bit next time to see if there is actually any scope for any vodkas being particularly good. I’ll just say for now, on the question of all vodka being much of a muchness, Stolichnaya is way out in front with frankly little to choose between the others. So you might say Stoli is the exception that proves the rule, except that would be wrong because that would be a misuse of that commonly misused phrase. See this link for what I’m talking about there. Hmm… interesting.

Well, I think that’s all I wanted to say on this subject for the time being. No doubt I’ll be trying more vodkas and doing other drink related experiments in the future, so if you’d care to join me again, you’d be very welcome.

Before I go, please accept my apologies for making you wait 4 days for this post. I was away camping from Friday afternoon, and might have something to post about that in the coming weeks. While I’m on it, I think this week’s post might be late also… or early, I’ll keep you posted.

Homemade flavoured vodkas... by Paul and Victoria

Shortly after the missus and I returned from honeymoon, we came across a copy of Maxim magazine that had been left behind by my new brother-in-law. In it were instructions on making your own flavoured vodka. Apparently it’s as simple as dropping fruit or spices (or whatever) into a bottle, and leaving it in a cool dark place for two weeks.

Now, I was never really interested in making my own flavoured vodka because I haven’t really worked out what the use of it is yet, but it definitely seemed like the right time for me to find out because one of the best presents the wife and I received on our wedding day was a selection of homemade flavoured vodkas from our friends Paul and Victoria. They were beautifully presented (as you can see), and came in lavender, rosemary, cinnamon and vanilla flavours.

 

“Well!” I said, “You’ve found the perfect gift for me! What have you brought for Brenda?”

Naturally, I couldn’t wait to start dipping into them, and waited only until the night after our wedding before randomly plucking the lavender one from the basket, and pouring it into a hotel-issue glass.

Lavender is a weird flavour though, isn’t it? Who eats lavender? Oddly enough, I’d had some lavender flavoured ice cream at Room just two days prior to receiving this gift, and that was a strange experience.

There were three scoops of different flavours, and the waitress had asked me if I wanted to know what they were before she brought them out. I said no, and it turned into a guessing game. Lavender was the first one I tried, and it just seemed so unusual that it fooled me into thinking I didn’t recognize it for a moment.

 

lavender?

I suppose I had a vague recollection of what lavender at least smelled like because, when I was studying for my university exams, my mum heard lavender would help with concentration, and left a little glass of it in my room (to sniff!?). One day my dad saw it, and thought it was weed - which was funny because there probably was weed in my room, just not there. Funnier than that is that they found my stash, ripped Rizla packets and all twice and didn’t even realise what it was. My parents are old-school and believe all the government has told them about recreational drugs. Just like in Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, I think the “high and beautiful wave” of freedom and love in the 1960s broke and rolled back before it reached South Yorkshire…

Where was I?

The lavender here has turned the vodka a fascinating purple colour, but I have to say this is probably my least favourite of the examples.

It wasn’t long before I went on to try the other choices, and for drinking straight, the vanilla and cinnamon varieties were most successful in my opinion  - despite not being a particular fan of either flavour in general. It turns out that Paul is also of the opinion that these are the two best flavours.

I moved on to trying the two less successful flavours with tonic water – rosemary, then lavender – and the results were actually delightful – surprisingly the lavender performed particularly well and I got through it pretty quickly after that.

If you’d asked me in a general sense, which is my favourite flavour: vanilla, cinnamon, lavender or rosemary, I would have said rosemary – though I’d generally have that with meat. It’s interesting then, that vanilla and cinnamon make the best vodkas, while lavender mixes best with tonic. Still; rosemary is the winner when it comes to pork. In fact, I brought these out at a party recently, and someone said they tasted like gravy…

Later – I don’t know whether it was a result of oxidisation, or the state of my taste buds at that particular moment – the vanilla vodka started to taste bitter. I felt the Aldi product that Paul used to make these was probably starting to come through, though it hadn’t on previous tastings. It wasn’t unpleasant, but I did feel I needed to dull the edge slightly with a couple of ice cubes. That did the trick.

Why don’t you give your own flavoured vodkas a try, and let me know your results? As I said, Paul used the standard Aldi vodka for these, and I’d say they were successful attempts, so you don’t need to splash out or anything, and it might be a good chance to use up a brand you don’t like so much. A lot of brands sell various flavoured vodkas now, and the bar Revolution is almost entirely dedicated to flavoured vodkas, but why bother buying when you can make your own?

I think my next step will be to buy a flavoured vodka, and see what that’s like. I see from Proof 66.com that one or two of the flavoured Stolichnaya varieties (my favourite vodka brand so far) are rated higher than the standard variety, though I think I’ll be trying this 50% ABV one first. It’s interesting though, that the product description says “we are looking for an absence of flavour in vodka”. If it’s an absence of flavour we’re looking for, why is the standard Stolichnaya so damn tasty? Come to that, I saw a poster the other day for Grey Goose vodka, in which it claimed that it was the best tasting vodka. So does that mean it’s the tastiest, or that it has less flavour than other vodkas, and that presumably that is better?

Very confusing. Nevertheless there’s still plenty to learn about vodka, and as ever, my journey continues.

On to my weekend preview then, and speaking of Paul and Victoria, the missus and I will be seeing them this weekend at the Bearded Theory Festival. The weather forecast doesn’t look too good, but the alco-forecast is showing a 100% chance of getting hammered. You’re allowed to take a ‘moderate’ amount of booze for personal consumption into the site, so I’ve been procuring beers and spirits for the occasion, and am already looking forward to cracking open that first one. 9.30 am on Friday, anyone?

As ever, whatever you get up to, I hope it’s a lot of fun. I’ll be back next week, on my usual day (Friday) for some more alcohol-related guff. Don’t forget, if you can’t get enough of me, you can follow me on Twitter (@alcothusiast). See you then.

Bank Holiday Weekend

Hey! How was your bank holiday weekend? Mine was pretty good, and I feel like I’ve got a lot to tell you about so, while I don’t normally tell you that much about what I’ve gotten up to (perhaps because I don’t tend to get up to much), I’m going to indulge myself today. Don’t worry, it’s all booze related, and I’ll get back to more of the usual type of stuff next week.

Brenda’s been having a hard time of late. It all culminated last week when she had to complete an assignment for her degree, give an assessed group presentation, and oversee the (hopeful and eventual) revalidation of the educational courses that her employer provides. You can imagine it was a very stressful time for her, but she handled it very well. Having learned that ladies like simple but romantic gestures I bought her flowers (the first of three bunches she would receive last week – not from other men, mind!) and asked her out on a date for Friday night. On the recommendation of a drinking colleague from work I decided to take her to Southern Eleven in Manchester’s Spinningfields area.

Spinningfields is still a bit of a ghost town – lots of restaurants and bars, but no customers – but despite the property crash and ensuing (double) financial crisis it actually looks like it is starting to catch on (a little) – thanks in part perhaps, to Southern Eleven because that place was buzzing… in stark contrast to Giraffe and Zizzi, where a couple of embarrassed diners were wondering when The Restaurant Inspector was going to walk in.

Southern Eleven serves American style food (burgers, ribs, steaks, pulled pork and the like), but with a style and quality that is sadly lacking from every other UK-based-US-style bar/restaurant I’ve ever been in. What’s that you say? Food? Yes, I’m talking a little bit about food, but only to set the context for what’s coming next. Be patient. The food’s good enough that it deserves a mention, if not a more thorough description. Perhaps Clare will indulge us with a proper investigation at some point.

What I really came here to tell you about though, is the cocktails. I don’t normally drink cocktails when I go out, but it is a bit more fun when you’re on a date, and they don’t make me feel sluggish and tired like beer can. That’s a good thing, because it probably makes it less likely that Brenda and I will have a daft falling out.

I do make a lot of cocktails, and have been trying my hand at inventing some, but Southern Eleven’s cocktails were the best I’ve ever tasted, and I could only dream of inventing cocktails as complex but wonderfully balanced as these.

a fancy cup-holder contraption - mine's the one on the right

We started out by taking advantage of the special offer – two cocktails (from a small selection – between 4 and 6, I think) for £10.95, so that’s £2-3 cheaper than what I would call standard cocktail price in Manchester.

I’m afraid I can’t tell you exactly what was in those cocktails since I’m not (yet) that type of blogger who takes notes or photos of everything no matter what, or where it is, just to show one or two readers. Brenda said I should take a photo of the cocktail menu, but I said, “no, it’ll be online”. It isn’t. Here’s a photo though, of the weird contraption our cocktails came in – with a bowl of olives (bleugh) and strawberries (why?).

What I can tell you is that my cocktail was based on bourbon and combined cherry and chocolate flavours – there may have been some amaretto in there, too. It was perfectly balanced; I just loved it. I like bourbon, I like chocolate, put ‘em together, do a bit of magic – fantastic. Brenda’s was something fruity (I think it was called a Sidecar). It was awesome also, but I can’t remember anything specific about it. We basically had a sip of each other’s, and both agreed that they were excellent, but our own was the best, and that was all we wanted.

The food arrived quickly, and we weren’t there very long, but we did have time for another cocktail. I had a fancy variation on a Mint Julep, which was also excellent, and Brenda had a Hillbilly, which she amusingly called a Hilly-billy. Again, it was something fruity.

In all, both food and drink were very good, so I can recommend you give it a try. You can find a voucher (2 courses and a cocktail for £15) here. We didn’t order a starter, so we weren’t eligible for that particular discount. It’s not the greatest discount in the world, since you can only use one per party, but it’s better than nothing, and it’s good till September.

We had called in the Slug and Lettuce on Deansgate beforehand where it was 2 for 1 on cocktails (so that was good), but the quality was vastly inferior. Well, not that bad; just standard cocktails.

So Friday night was a success in regard to having a nice evening out. We had also called into Trailfinders to see about setting up a honeymoon fund. That was less successful, and raised more questions than it answered, as everything wedding-related seems to be doing at the moment. That little story isn’t booze-related though, so you’ll have to visit my arranging a wedding blog instead…

Saturday would involve a trip out to Whaley Bridge in Cheshire to attend John and Mandy’s party and watch the FA Cup Final. Sadly Liverpool didn’t win, but I drank a lot of beer and Brenda developed a taste for gin and tonic. John and Mandy seem very keen on that, so Brenda didn’t need to dip into the vodka I’d took along for her.

I’d faced a tough choice at Tesco earlier in the day where I was searching just for a vodka for mixing since (as far as I knew) Brenda would be finishing off my Russian Standard at the party later. There was a decent looking brandy on sale and Stolichnaya was only £14, but I had to resist since I’ve already spent a lot of money this month, the credit card debt is racking up, and it’s not like I’ve got nothing to drink at home.

I love Stolichnaya, but it isn’t a mixing vodka, so I decided to try Red Square. I’m not sure whether I’ve tried that one before, but it appears to be British… I’ve stuck it in the freezer for trying later in the week. 

This was the first time I’d had chance to actually use one of those ‘£3 off £20 spend’ vouchers that you get with your receipt when you shop at Tesco. I never seem to have one with me when I actually shop, but earlier in the week something had told me it might prove useful at the weekend if I kept it in my wallet. That brought the £11 vodka down to £8, so as long as it’s good enough for mixing, it’s a bargain.

Sunday was the day of Salford’s Sounds From the Other City Festival, that I mentioned last Friday. I’ve been to this event for at least the last 5 years, and on every one of them I’ve been hungover. It must be something about this particular weekend – this year was no different, and both Brenda and I showed up at the Islington Mill just after 3pm, not really wanting to be there, and not sure how long we’d be able to stick it out.

We met Paul and Victoria at a favourite starting point – The New Oxford – and the first pint (Bohemia Regent, was one of those that just goes right down your gullet – you know when you’ve got a proper thirst on, and you go for a beer? Just like that. It can go either way when you’re already hungover, but I drank my first pint in about 5 minutes. Fantastic; game on. 

The New Oxford sells all kinds of fancy Belgian (and other) beers, and they’re very enthusiastic about them. For the occasion all Belgian lagers were £3.60. That’s very good in this day and age. At Kro Piccadilly a couple of weeks ago, I’d paid £5 for a pint of Bohemia Regent and well, it’s nice, but it’s not that nice – what is?!

Once again, it was a fairly successful festival (for those of us who attended), though the number of attendees was clearly down on previous years – so potentially not so successful for the festival organisers. The pubs seemed to be doing a roaring trade though, and even with numbers down on previous years, they’d be selling a ton more pints than on a usual Sunday afternoon.

Inspired by how much fun we tended to have in Salford pubs at Sounds From the Other City, I had arranged to visit them all on a pub crawl one Saturday last year, only to find a very different atmosphere. Most of the pubs were shut, and the ones that were open had about three people in them – except the New Oxford, which was pleasant and friendly as usual.

The highlight of this year’s festival for me was Wode providing the soundtrack to a silent Japanese film that depicted scenes from a madhouse – you might call it Wode Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Sorry. 

Wode have been described (I think in the festival literature) as black metal, but I wouldn’t say they were as dark as that. I would fit it under the broader umbrella of thrash. Using my (admittedly limited) frame of reference, I heard shades of Sepultura, Alice in Chains, Helmet and Slint (if that’s any use to you). The film seemed very rhythmic to me, which fitted in well with what I consider to be a mostly rhythmic kind of music. Wode really were excellent, and we all emerged from the venue buzzing. Until then it had seemed like our £18 had been paid to listen to mostly amateurish screeching and self-indulgent posturing, but now we were ready to believe it had been worth it.

Speaking with Paul and Victoria earlier in the day, I learned they had attended a wine tasting so Paul and I were able to discuss the reservations we have about these kinds of things. It brought to mind for me, the idea of whisky tastings. Brenda’s been toying with the idea of taking me to one for a while (I’d certainly be very interested), but I am quite sceptical. It’s not just that these kinds of things are geared towards encouraging you to buy, when perhaps all you want to do is taste. If you’re a wine novice and you go to a wine tasting, the last thing you’re thinking about is buying a whole case of wine.

I don’t know if that would be the same at a whisky tasting – I suppose buying one bottle would be acceptable, and I might allow myself to do that if it was soon enough after pay day…

My main problem though, is that having a little taste of a whisky wouldn’t be that useful to me. It’s not enough; I do all the proper tasting methods and that, but I maintain that it takes around half a bottle before I actually start to appreciate a whisky – with the possible exception of the Ledaig 10 year old that Brenda took to Canada for her dad, and then brought back almost entirely full because it wasn’t to his taste. That one was right up my street, straight away.

No, in most cases it takes a great deal more. A case in point is the bottle of Highland Park 12 year old that I bought recently. I understand Highland Park is supposed to be thought of quite highly, and I decided to try a bottle of the ‘standard expression’ (as I’ve heard it called), when I saw it on special offer in Sainsburys.

in the bottle

close up, in the glass - nice

I found it severely underwhelming… at first. I’d just finished my bottle of 46% Bruichladdich Rocks, which was very full-bodied, and that I had been enjoying very much. In contrast, Highland Park seemed a great deal lighter, and I couldn’t see what the fuss was about. 

Well, I reached the magical half a bottle mark on Friday night when Brenda and I returned from our date, and for some reason the whisky just revealed itself – not in a creepy old-man-in-a-raincoat kind of way, more in a sexy-lady-slipping-out-of-her-dress-with-a-wiggle kind of way. It tingled and played on every part of my tongue that it came into contact with. It caused my saliva glands to dribble like Thames Water’s leaking pipes. Fantastic.

I don’t know why it always seems to be the case, but that is my experience. I’d read that it’s possible the whisky needs a certain amount of exposure to air to open itself up – since it’s sealed in the bottle for however long it is before you open it. Equally though, I’ve heard that over-exposure to air causes it to stagnate, and that over 2-3 months it will even do this in the bottle. Is it just a fine line between perfect aeration and stagnation?

In terms of my own observations, I don’t think it is a matter of allowing the whisky time to breathe a little since once I’ve already decided I like a certain whisky, the first taste of a new bottle always hits those highs that you remember having experienced before. I think it’s more of a matter of your taste buds becoming receptive to the new (and different) flavours that each individual whisky imparts. And usually, by about halfway down the bottle, I’m fully receptive.

And that’s why I’m sceptical about whisky tastings – as well as being another reason I’ll never be invited to sit on a judging panel.

It doesn’t represent my favourite kind of whisky – that remains the smoky Islay contingent – but Highland Park really revealed its class on Friday night, and has become one I’d be glad to share with a whisky-loving friend. I’m thinking this will be a good one to get in when Brenda’s dad visits for our wedding in August. He’s into the single malt, but not the strong flavours of Islay like I am. This will be a good one to keep on hand.

If you have any thoughts on the issues we’ve discussed today, feel free to get in touch in the comments, and once again, let me just encourage you to visit the various websites I’ve included links to today. It’s been an eclectic post for me, covering restaurants, cocktails, pubs, festivals and music. We’re not likely to see anything like that again for a good long time, so make the most of it. I’ll be back next week with something a bit more specific, and potentially less rambling. I developed a bit of a cold the other night, so this weekend might be the perfect opportunity to start the research into hot toddies that I’ve been planning for some time. I’ll let you know how that turns out at a later date.

Whatever you’re doing, have a good one and enjoy your drinks.