merry whiskmas

So here's another annual tradition - the post-Christmas whisky round-up. I'm pleased to say that my relatives and in-laws have now grasped the basic principles here, which are:

• whisky as a Christmas present is great;
• it really doesn't matter if two people end up both buying me a bottle of whisky, even if it ends up being the same brand;
• just because you bought me a bottle last year doesn't mean that it would be inappropriate for you to buy me another one this year.

So this year's Christmas whisky haul was an encouraging four bottles, though only one was one I hadn't tried before. Fortunately I have three others of relatively recent acquisition in the cupboard to bulk out this post. I think it's often instructive to look at these in pairs, so here goes:

The first one is Strathisla. As I've said before, most Scottish distilleries lay claim to some sort of superlative, however esoteric, but Strathisla's is fairly simple: it is the oldest continuously operating distillery in Scotland. Needless to say there are a whole host of other distilleries (notably Glenturret and Bowmore) which make subtly different versions of the same claim, and no-one really seems to know the definitive answer.

Anyway, Strathisla's main claim to fame today is that it is the major constituent of the Chivas Regal blend, probably the second-most-famous blended whisky in the world after Johnnie Walker (the other claim is that the distillery complex is one of the most-photographed in Scotland). The single malt hasn't historically been that easy to get hold of, but as of recently they seem to be making a bit of a push into the supermarket sector by updating the packaging  from the old flat brown medicine bottles to some brighter clean white packaging. As far as I can gather the composition of the whisky hasn't changed, though.

Let's try a bit. It smells great - buttery, nutty, quite sweet, with the usual Speyside almonds and magic markers. To be honest what follows (i.e. taste-wise) is a slight disappointment - it's nice and biscuity and slightly less sweet then you'd expect, but it's not as rich and interesting as the initial sniff would suggest, and it doesn't hang about much in terms of aftertaste either.

Secondly, The Singleton Of Dufftown. Now I'm naturally inclined to be ill-disposed towards this one, as the silliness of the naming annoys me somewhat. What this is is a 12-year-old single malt from the Dufftown distillery, located in the town of the same name which is the spiritual (pun sort of intended) home of Speyside whisky and home to half-a-dozen active distilleries, most notably Glenfiddich. So why couldn't they just call it "Dufftown 12"? Well, mostly because the distillery is owned by Diageo, and they wanted a way of sexing up some of the products from their lesser-known distilleries like Dufftown, Glendullan and Glen Ord under a single "brand".

Despite that annoyance, though, this is really quite good. It's very inoffensive, as befits something clearly designed to compete with the standard 12-year-old versions of the Speyside behemoths like Glenfiddich and Glenlivet, but none the worse for that. It's slightly lighter and fudgier (and perhaps less interesting) than the Strathisla when you have a sniff, but there's more going on when you actually get to drinking it. Nothing massively startling, mind you, but just nice a sweet biscuity whisky that doesn't die away after a couple of seconds like the Strathisla does. If you're viewing it in the light of its obvious competitors I can't speak for the Glenlivet but I'd say it's more interesting than the standard Glenfiddich.

The second pairing is a couple of slightly more hairy-chested brutes - firstly Talisker Dark Storm. I'm very fond of the standard Talisker, and this one is supposedly a darker, smokier version of that, matured in heavily charred casks. It's currently only available in airport duty-free outlets which is where my father picked up a bottle for me on his travels a few months back.

It's been a while since I sampled the bog-standard 10-year-old Talisker, but this one certainly does seem very dark and smoky, perhaps veering towards the rich dark smoky Islay malts like Bowmore and Lagavulin compared to the standard Talisker which is more salty and peppery. It's tremendously rich and sweet to drink, perhaps slightly overpoweringly so, a bit like the Lagavulin. I don't usually, but this is one (particularly at 45.8% ABV) that might benefit from a dash of water. If pressed I'd probably have to say that the standard bottling is a better all-round whisky.

Next we head south of the border. We've done this before, of course, but this time we're off to Norfolk to sample the delights of the only proper distillery in England. The imaginatively-named English Whisky Company produce a number of products, Chapter 9 being their peated expression. They've only been going for a few years, so there aren't any really aged stocks, as you can see by the colour - very pale and straw-coloured, like healthy well-hydrated piss (the Talisker, by contrast, representing the morning after a night on the Guinness and vindaloo). There's plenty of peat, though, which combined with the paleness of the whisky makes it seem like some of the younger Ardbegs, without being quite so much like drinking an ashtray. It tastes young - quite hot, quite raw, a bit like the Penderyn, but without being off-putting.

If we're considering all this as a preamble to a pair of verdicts in the head-to-head contests, then I suppose the winners would be the Dufftown and the Talisker. That won't stop me drinking all of them in due course, though.

you kinchie devil

I don't get to buy, let alone drink, as much whisky as I used to back in the pre-bairn disposable income glory glory days, but just occasionally a bargain presents itself. And so it was this week when my local Morrisons were knocking out Glenkinchie for 25 quid a pop.

Glenkinchie is a Lowland single malt, a pretty rare breed these days. The only other one readily available in supermarkets is Auchentoshan. There's also the recently revived Bladnoch, and a couple of new ones that haven't officially produced any whisky yet.

Lowland malts are traditionally very light and mellow, with some of them (Auchentoshan claims to be the only remaining one) triple-distilling their spirit, uniquely among Scotch whiskies, though it's standard practice for Irish whiskey.

Dip in for a sniff and you get some magic markers, a bit of citrus-y lemony stuff and just a smidgen of custard tarts. Taste and it's surprisingly "hot" (at 43%) for something so apparently mellow, but you also get more lemon and custard creams and something that might be bananas.

Talking as we were of triple distillation, I thought a useful contrast might be provided by comparison with Bushmills, a bottle of which I was kindly given either for Christmas or my birthday, I can't remember. This one is a bit paler than the Glenkinchie, and much more estery (i.e. the magic markers again) when you have a sniff; it's sweeter too. Have a swig and it seems simultaneously sweeter and thinner, though you do get a bit of mouth-puckering astringency if you wait a bit.

I retain a soft spot in my heart for Bushmills, since it's the first proper single malt I actually paid my own money for, as recently as 2008, but I'd have to say that the Glenkinchie is the more interesting whisky; it's light and biscuity but deeper and darker and more complex as well. Even then, and as fine as the Glenkinchie is, it's up at the polite end of the spectrum as far as I'm concerned, my taste being more for the big hairy-chested Highlanders like the Clynelish and the Oban and the Ben Nevis. But it would be a shame for Lowland whisky to disappear, and while I'm sure Glenkinchie are doing OK (protected as they are by being part of the Diageo stable) there really are a very small number of distilleries left; same goes for the Campbeltown region which has even fewer.

you take the high road

I haven't done a whisky post for a little while, and I've actually got a bit of a backlog of stuff to do, so here's the first one: this is Dalwhinnie.

Every distillery seems to claim some sort of superlative, biggest, smallest, oldest, tallest stills, most stills, et variously cetera. Dalwhinnie's claim is that it is the highest currently operating distillery in Scotland at 1073 feet above sea level. The official website sticks to a slightly weaselly "one of the highest of all distilleries", but I understand it really is the highest. You'll notice that the official website sits under the Diageo banner, and sure enough this is one of their Classic Malts range, as were a few previous ones in this series.

Anyway, Dalwhinnie's geographical location makes it a Highland malt, which should bode well as these are generally my favourites, since they combine the smokiness of the island malts with the rich sweetness of the Speysiders. It's the latter that dominates when you have a sniff - but for the slight whiff of smoke this could be something like a Cardhu as it has a sort of honeyed sweetness to it. The classic description of Dalwhinnie seems to compulsorily include the word "heather", but I don't eat a lot of heather so I wouldn't know about that. What it is is nice and rich and sweet (no doubt partly due to being bottled at 15 years old, rather unusually for an entry-level single malt, which are usually 10-12 years old) with just the faintest wisp of smoke in the background.

It's really very nice, but my preference would be for something a little more aggressive (without getting silly and turning into Ardbeg) and maybe dialling down the sweetness just a bit. If you did that you'd end up with something a bit like Ben Nevis or Oban or Clynelish, which would be an unalloyed Good Thing.

Just in case you can't make it out, the label on the neck of the bottle reads "The Gentle Spirit". This seems to be sailing pretty close to "the gentle dram", which has already been bagsied by Tomintoul; no doubt their respective lawyers got together, did lunch, and came to some agreement.

how do cardhu what you do to me; I wish I knew

Here's that whisky round-up I promised the other day.

I was in Sainsbury's a few weeks ago and noticed that they were knocking out Cardhu 12-year-old for about £22, about a tenner less than the usual price. Clearly this was like a red rag to a bull, so I snapped it up.

Cardhu is quite hard to get hold of - Sainsbury's is the only supermarket I've seen it in, and they don't always have it - for a number of reasons; firstly well over half the volume of whisky they produce ends up in the various Johnnie Walker blends, and secondly for some reason the Spanish are absolutely nuts about the stuff - it's the biggest-selling malt whisky in Spain. So there isn't a great deal left to be bottled as single malt and sold in the UK. I suspect that the page for Cardhu at the normally reliable Malt Madness may exaggerate slightly when it claims that "more than 3,000,000,000 bottles" of Cardhu are sold every year. I assume there's an accidental factor of (at least) 1,000 error in there, otherwise after two years everyone on the planet would have a bottle.

Anyway, the whisky. It's hard not to be subconsciously influenced by the funky squashed square bottle, which makes it look less like a single malt and more like something liqueuer-y like Glayva or Drambuie. So you're half-expecting something sweet. And then, as if in some kind of elaborate double-bluff, that's what you get anyway. You get a big inviting whiff of honey and shortbread, and something similar when you drink it, though it's thinner (subtler, you might say, if you were in a charitable mood) than you'd expect. It's nice, but it's probably something you'd have to be in the mood for - better suited for a warm house, a roaring fire and an Arran sweater than a hip-flask on a cold night in a bothy, when you might want something a bit beefier and more aggressive.

Secondly, Cragganmore - I acquired a duty-free litre bottle of this for about thirty quid on the way out to Turkey. It's another Speysider, and reputed to have been one of Michael Jackson's (no, the other one) favourites. It's another one of Diageo's Classic Malts, which in real-world unspun English means "distilleries owned by Diageo", as were the Oban, Caol Ila, Royal Lochnagar and Talisker. And the Cardhu and Johnnie Walker, come to that.

It's instructive to compare this with the Cardhu - the Cragganmore is a fair bit darker, and when you have a sniff you get the same sort of dry fruit-cake with a faint wisp of smoke that came with the Glenfiddich Caoran Reserve (though that was a bit smokier), and just the faintest bit of the almondiness you get with the Aberlour and the Tormore. It's much more satisfyingly chewy to taste as well; imagine a Christmas cake that someone's peeled the marzipan off, and then set fire to just a corner of. Probably my favourite Speysider of all the ones I've tried so far, which is not to say it's up there with the best of the Highlanders, but it's pretty good.

JWB: WTF?

I have a couple of whisky posts to do as we were on holiday in Turkey a week or two back and I've now learned to cash in big stylee on the ridiculous duty-free offers available.

These are in no particular order, so, first: Johnnie Walker Black Label. A couple of points of interest here, not least that it's the first blended whisky featured. This litre bottle cost me 32 Euro, which at today's exchange rate is £27.95, which in turn is the equivalent of £19.57 for a standard-size bottle, compared with the £25-ish you'd pay in the shops. It's a better deal than that, though, as the bottle came in a gift pack with two nice chunky JW-logoed whisky tumblers, one of which is pictured here.

There is a long and fascinating history to the whisky-blending industry - nay, some might say, art - but I don't propose to launch into describing it here (Dr. Whisky has some interesting thoughts, as usual). There's a general perception these days that single malts are where it's at if you're a true whisky connoisseur, but this was most certainly not always the case, and has only really been so for perhaps the last 20 years or so.

What you basically want to do if you want to become a world-bestriding whisky blending house is to buy your own distillery. That's what Johnnie Walker and family did when they snapped up the venerable Cardhu distillery in 1893. Teacher's did the same with Ardmore around the same time, and Chivas snapped up Strathisla in the 1940s. The point of doing this, of course, is to ensure a steady supply of whisky to put into your premium blends, and sure enough Cardhu single malt (of which more later) is at the heart of Johnnie Walker's blends.

That there are other whiskies in here as well is very obvious when you drink the stuff, though, as while there's an initial sweetness from the Cardhu there's a good drying chunk of peat and smoke at the end - I would guess, looking at the rest of Diageo's whisky stable, that it's probably a dollop of Caol Ila. Anyway, it's absolutely one of my favourite things and an excellent argument for not being all malt-snobby. If you want an everyday entry-level blend recommendation then Teacher's is unquestionably the one in my book (and indeed in my cupboard).

One weird feature of the bottle of JWB I've got, though, is this crazy cap attachment - unscrew the cap and underneath is this clear plastic thingy with a little rattly ball-bearing in it. I assume this is some sort of whisky portion-measuring arrangement, but a) it's far from obvious how it works, b) it dispenses ridiculously small measures and c) there doesn't (at first glance anyway) appear to be an obvious way of removing it that doesn't jeopardise the contents of the bottle. Quite frankly if I've shelled out upwards of 20 quid for a bottle of whisky, I'll decide for myself in what size portions I drink it, thanks very much. Consider me mildly annoyed.

they'll never take me alive

A word to the wise: Tesco currently have a special offer on whereby you can get yourself a bottle of the legendary Talisker for a bargain £22 (down from about £29). You'll have to get there before the end of this month, and you may find stocks are a bit thin. There was one single bottle left in the Tesco branch I went to yesterday, so I snapped it up. In the trolley, over to the checkout, pay, job done. Or so I thought.

As I went out of the store I heard the alarm bleep a few times. As there were lots of other people coming and going at the same time as me I thought little of it; certainly no black-clad security goons jumped out and started furiously tazering anybody in the immediate vicinity. However, when I got home and took the bottle out of the box I noticed that it still had the magnetic security tag on it. Oops. I mean, not my fault, obviously, but still.


Now, for obvious reasons these things are designed not to be easily removable. Certainly the average shopper is not going to be able to do it with his or her bare hands, and carrying the tools required with you and deploying them in-store is going to look a bit conspicuous on CCTV. However, in the comfort of one's own home, as long as you are in possession of a decent hacksaw then a couple of minutes is all you need to remove the evidence and provide unfettered access to the contents. Well, actually the security tag is no hindrance to opening the bottle, but a bottle with a tag on it is not quite the thing to be offering your guests at your next sophisticated soirée, so it's best to get rid of it.

Anyway, once inside you can have a butchers at the contents. And a big hairy-chested brute it is too. There's plenty of peat and smoke here, but it's not the really nose-stinging TCP-esque smoke you get with the Islays like Ardbeg and Laphroaig (Talisker is distilled in Carbost on the Isle of Skye). In terms of similarity to other ones in this series, it's nearest to the Highland Park in terms of the sweet/smoky combination. It's also similar to the Royal Lochnagar in the slight peppery dryness at the end that makes you want another sip. Some beers are like that - Timothy Taylor's Landlord is the one that springs to mind. I reckon if you distilled a vat of Landlord (and lobbed in a bit of E274 Essence of Peat Smoke) you'd end up with something not unlike Talisker; someone should try that and let me know how it goes.

Speaking of comparing whisky to other whisky, you might find this interesting - this is Diageo's whisky map. Now clearly this doesn't include all the hundreds of different ones you can buy, but it gives you an idea of what to expect, and commendably includes several which aren't Diageo's own brands (Talisker is, as it happens). Click to enlarge if you can't read it.

Ones that have featured in this series are circled in red, others I've tried are in green. The idea (as I'm sure you've worked out by now) is that whiskies close to each other on the map are broadly similar. So, for instance, if I conclude that I like the Talisker (which I do, very much) and the Highland Park (ditto) then I might conclude that there's a good chance I'll like the Bowmore as well. Time will tell.

he drinks a whisky drink

Let's do the whisky stuff next. I got back from Scotland with three bottles of whisky - all of which, rather miraculously, survived being in my luggage and thrown around on a seven-hour train journey from Glasgow Central to Newport via Crewe.


Each of these was bought in the distillery at which it was made - in the case of Oban this was just a visit to the distillery shop as the tours were fully booked, but at Glengoyne, which has the enlightened policy of not requiring bookings for parties of less than ten, we did the full tour. In fact we did the full "Tasting Tour" which not only gets you a look round the distillery but also samples of all four of their "standard" whisky bottlings (the 10-year-old, the cask strength 12-year-old, the 17-year-old and the 21-year-old). There is also, amusingly, a "Wee Tasting Tour" which isn't what you might think but is in fact just a reduced-alcohol-consumption version of the Tasting Tour (i.e. you only get two to try).

Anyway, I was so impressed with Glengoyne I bought two bottles - the standard 10yo at £26 and the 17yo at £49, which is comfortably the most I've ever spent on a bottle of whisky (actually I got a £3 off voucher with the tour so it was "only" £46). The Oban 14yo pictured is their standard bottling. The distillery is tucked away in the town centre and is very small, which means the volume they can produce is quite limited. They've made the best of it and tried to make this exclusivity a selling point, though - needless to say one of the ways they do this is by making the whisky quite expensive for a standard bottling at £34. But, what the heck, I bought one anyway.

Here's an idiot's guide to what they're like, just in case you fancy one:

• The Glengoyne 10yo is very pale and light. Glengoyne make a selling point of using no peat to dry their malted barley, so it's all very smooth. Not unlike Glenmorangie in some ways, but tending more to the grassy and citrusy where Glenmorangie is a bit more vanilla custardy.
• The Glengoyne 17yo is a fair bit darker (though still not as dark as the Oban, as you can see from the photo). Glengoyne mature their whisky in sherry casks so you get the usual fruity sweetness as you do in, say, Macallan, but a bit of darker woodiness as well. This is really, REALLY good stuff.
• Oban's location on the west coast puts it between the Highlands and Islay and sure enough it's got a bit of Highland mellow cakiness but also some Islay peat smoke. It's very dark, and it's got an almost rubbery, licoricey element to it, which sounds disgusting, but isn't. Oban is also one of the 14 "Classic Malts", which sounds very grand, but is in fact some slippery marketing-ese that just means it's one of the 14 distilleries owned by Diageo, who also own all manner of blenders like Johnnie Walker, J&B and Bell's and presumably just slapped a copyright on the phrase "Classic Malts", the cheeky bastards.

apparently Thursday is the new Friday

Well, I didn't get to sample the apple & mint jelly - I'd forgotten it was Thursday night, and Thursday night is (occasionally) pub quiz night. So I had to knock up something quick for dinner, and I came up with this:

Dave's Prawn Laksa

You will need (these quantities are for 1 person, i.e. me. Multiply them up as required. I haven't put quantities for some of them as I assume it's obvious, i.e. as much or as little as you want, within reason. Don't come complaining to me if you put a pint of lime juice in and it ends up tasting horrible.):

• Prawns (I had a 220g packet of jumbo king prawns, which was more than enough for me)
• Coconut milk - about half a tin. Shake up up before opening it, otherwise you get half a tin of really thick coconut goo and half a tin of water.
• Garlic
• Red Chillies
• Ginger
• Lemon grass (mine comes out of a jar)
• Fresh coriander (ideally. Mine came out of a jar last night, though)
• Laksa paste. Reuben Solomon's Singapore Laksa paste is the one I use, and it's great. Sainsbury's sell it, or at least the one in Bristol does.
• Lime juice
• Fish sauce
• Noodles (I used the big fat wormy udon ones last night, but any old noodles will do. Amoy ones are good.)

Fry up the garlic, chillies, ginger and lemon grass a bit. Bung a couple of big spoonfuls of the paste in and stir it around a bit. Add the coconut milk, lime juice & fish sauce and stir it all around so it's mixed together. Chuck the prawns in, cook for 5 minutes or so, add the noodles, another 2-3 minutes, add the coriander, stir it in. Serve. Eat. Bish, and, indeed, bosh. Total preparation and cooking time: about 15 minutes. And it's delicious. Well, I think so anyway.

Then we went to the pub, specifically the Hop House in Clifton village, which has a music quiz on Thursday nights. Nice pub, one major complaint: they don't have enough beer! They do a very delicious pint of Wadworth's 6X, but I don't think I've ever been there when they haven't run out of it at some point during the evening. Last night I managed to get in two pints before it ran out and I had to switch to something else. It can't be that difficult, surely? Other pubs seem to manage it OK.

Speaking of drinking something else, we came second in the quiz, and this week all the prizes were drink-based, specifically varying numbers of bottles of Quinn's, a sort of fruity alcopop that Diageo are marketing as "Fruit Made Alcohol", i.e. the alcohol comes from fermenting fruit, and is therefore presumably more "natural" in some way, as if this makes a blind bit of difference. Anyway, second prize was ten bottles of the stuff, and we didn't want to carry it home, or argue about dividing it up, so we drank the lot there and then. My head hurts a bit this morning! Though on the upside I am in no immediate danger of catching scurvy, which is nice.