This morning I mentioned to Ben it was high time we posted something on the blog for this week, his suggestion:
“Something about whisky. We don’t do enough of that.”
To be fair, he has a point. We’ve been so caught up in the recent excitement of Christmas, making and launching new stuff, and my imminent emigration, that we’ve neglected that one little thing we’re here to write about first: Whisky!
Note how careful I was with the punctuation there. It’s not that our online editor is wanted, but rather that we want an online editor.
If Mike – our current online editor- was wanted, it might at least go some way towards explaining his decision to move from the sunny, safe, really rather delightful climes of Royal Tunbridge Wells, to Perth. Nope, not that Perth (the sensible Perth, the Perth that’s within just a few miles of a load of great distilleries), the other Perth. The one in Australia. More…
Good morning folks, it’s announcement time! If you can cast your minds back through the booze and turkey-induced haze of Christmas you may remember we ran a little competition on our site.
To enter all you had to do was purchase any bottle of Heaven Hill whiskey from us before Christmas day, and the prize was pretty staggering: three incredible “ultra-premium” American whiskeys including Rittenhouse 25, Evan Williams 23 and Elijah Craig 18, all signed by the bourbon legends Craig and Parker Beam! More…
At this point last year, I was hobbling around the office on a crutch (that’s not a misprint – the mean, mean Osteopath at the hospital would only give me one) following what can only be described as the least impressive injury in the history of man.
Sit back Children, and I shall tell you a tale of Christmas Past, Present and Future(1):
Last Tuesday evening, I was invited to the salubrious surroundings of the Four Seasons hotel on Park Lane, to sample the re-invention of a classic Dalmore Dram. This whisky provoked more controversy through its ousting and subsequent reinvention a couple of years ago than perhaps any other spirit, save perhaps that which we do not mention:
I’m talking of course, about The Dalmore Cigar Malt.
It all began last month, when I was invited by the founders of the London Cocktail Society to go up to London and present our range of bitters to their members. Throughout the course of our conversation it became clear that we could potentially do even more than this, and turn the event into a bitters blending competition.
Throughout the course of another couple of conversations (and over a few lovely cocktails with The Cocktail Geek at the superb Shaker and Company), it became clear that not only was it our moral duty to bottle and release the winning bitters, but that more research at the bar was required as to which cocktails exactly contained bitters, and what were cocktails again, and who are you and why am I here? Ah. Cocktails.
So, it would seem that the hype surrounding the release of Aldi’s 24 year old and 40 year old ‘single malts’ has now died down (with one notable bombshell yet to come courtesy of our chums at caskstrength.net. Keep an eye on their site. We won’t spoil the surprise), and the whisky world has returned to its former calm self. Well, I say calm… As calm as it can be whilst sending out enough Christmas booze per day to fill a small swimming pool.
There are tales aplenty in the feedback to our first blog post about the queuing, jostling, and general shenanigans surrounding the release, but we, being the ever inquisitive souls that we are, wanted to revisit the whiskies away from the initial tasting, and see just what we made of them in the cold light of day.
Okay – I’m not going to lie – it’s busy around here at the moment. Anyone would think that there’s some kind of holiday impending…
Anyway, it turns out that despite the craziness of the ‘tide, my wife’s sister wasn’t prepared to move her Hen Party back by a couple of weeks to accommodate the fact that I’d promised to develop a bespoke cocktail for them, and was quite busy at the moment. Something to do with already having booked her plane tickets over from Australia or something. Selfish if you ask me…
Anyway – yesterday evening, I finally settled in to make a cocktail both sufficiently special for the event, but which also reflected the turning season, and seeking to get the most out of our new Bathtub Gin.
I’m going to relay to you two phrases that I’ve uttered over the last few weeks which have genuinely made me chuckle maniacally to myself for about 5 minutes.
The first is unrelated to this post, but I think very pleasing anyway – “Look – all I need is for someone to find me a consignment of Fresh Sloes – how bloody difficult can that be” (incidentally, if anyone knows where I can get hold of a consignment of Fresh Sloes, there’s a bottle of something nice in it for you).