Measure of Whisky

Glenfiddich Cask of Dreams in Vancouver!

Glenfiddich Distillery

Hey Vancouver folks, in case you weren’t aware, Glenfiddich are rolling their Cask of Dreams through our fair city on Thursday and Friday this week. That’s Thursday April 26th and Friday April 27th in case you’re reading this in a different week. If that is the case, you’ve missed it, by the way. That’s a shame, it was [[super fun/really dull]]! (note to self: fill this in after the event)

The “Cask of Dreams” is an American oak barrel (really a series of them) that you get to inscribe a wish on, and it might come true! It should be noted that if your wish is to buy a bottle of whisky finished in your optimistically-inscribed vessel later this year, then it has a somewhat higher chance of coming true than most of the others.

Here’s the schedule:

Thursday April 26th
10.00am-11.00am – Stanley Park & Lions Gate Bridge (610 Pipeline Road)
11.30am-12.00pm – Granville Island (Anderson St and W 2nd Ave)
12.30pm-3.00pm – Vancouver Convention Centre and Olympic Cauldron (1055 Canada Place)
4.00pm-7.00pm – The Irish Heather (RSVP required) (210 Carrall Street)

Friday April 27th
9.45am-10.45am – Grouse Mountain (6400 Nancy Green Way or 6000 Cypress Bowl Road)
11.15am-1.15pm – City Centre Canada Line Station & Yaletown (Georgia and Granville)
2.00pm-3.00pm – English Bay (1600 Beach Ave)
4.00pm-6.00pm – Alberni & Bute (768 Bute St)

In the unlikely event I have any stalkers out there, I’ll be at the Granville Island stop on Thursday! My crack undercover security team will be watching though so don’t try anything funny. I’m just saying.

The Glenfiddich Cask of Dreams official site

Official press release

Review: Nikka Taketsuru “Pure Malt” 21-year-old

What’s this?! That map down there doesn’t look much like Scotland!

Well spotted – we’re exploring Japan this time around. The land of the rising sun has an almost century-long whisky tradition which was begun by the founder of the Nikka Whisky company, Masataka Taketsuru, in 1920. Many Japanese whiskies are world-class; this Nikka “Pure Malt” Taketsuru 21 has won several awards and as I write this, the 17-year-old version has just won “Best Blended Malt” at Whisky Magazine’s World Whiskies Awards. It’s not just Nikka either; Suntory has an excellent line of single malts, especially from their Yamazaki distillery (I highly recommend the 12-year-old or the 18-year-old, both superb).

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Trip Report: Scotland For The Scotch, October 2011 – Part 4

Day 4, afternoon: The Spey and The Macallan

The weather had brightened up during my time at Aberlour, to the point where it didn’t feel like a crazy idea to grab a bite down by the river before my Macallan visit. So, sometime just after noon I was happily munching on a sandwich right on the banks of the famous river Spey. The Spey is the fastest-flowing river in Scotland apparently, and I could believe it; the water was choppy as it rushed by, though that was probably as much to do with the strong wind as the river’s high velocity.

Donald at the hotel had told me you could walk to Macallan by crossing onto the north bank of the Spey and following a path along the river, bordering the fields. His directions kind of ended there but I was fairly sure I’d find it (ah, the optimism of youth) so I set off across the rather attractive suspension bridge you can see in the photo.

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Trip Report: Scotland For The Scotch, October 2011 – Part 3

Day 4, October 21st, morning: Aberlour

Aberlour Sign

I woke from a fitful and jet-lagged sleep greatly looking forward to the day ahead – at last it was time for my first distillery visit! The Dowans Hotel is just a couple of minutes walk to Aberlour so it was the obvious choice to begin my Speyside tour. I was already impressed with the Aberlour staff; when setting up the tour via email they’d been really helpful and friendly, and happily they proved to be even more so in person.

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Trip Report: Scotland For The Scotch, October 2011 – Part 2

Day 3, October 20th: Edinburgh to Speyside

I decided to take the train to Inverness rather than drive, as the weather was a bit snowy over the Highlands and I pretty much just wanted to relax and enjoy the scenery. This turned out to be a brilliant idea as that train journey is probably the most scenic one I’ve ever made. It starts out in fine style crossing the Forth Bridge, the beautiful Victorian mass of girders that was built in 1890. Not too much later I remember passing what looked like a distribution center for a whisky company, with casks piled high.

The Highlands in late Autumn, from the Edinburgh-Inverness train.

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Trip Report: Scotland For The Scotch, October 2011 – Part 1

October 2011 was pretty good to me. After working overtime for months, I was given an unexpected 2-week vacation, with less than a week’s notice. What to do with it? I’d get bored sitting around the house for that long. Well, I had been hankering to visit some distilleries in Scotland…. maybe I could!

The Sir Walter Scott monument in Edinburgh, aka the Gothic Starfighter!

I’m not really a person who does things on the spur of the moment, but this felt like too good an opportunity to pass up (edit: my wife disagrees with this. She reminded me we once made a 2000-mile round-trip by car to see a Formula 1 race with one day’s notice). How often do you have two clear weeks with no prior plans? For me, never. So with my wife’s blessing (she wouldn’t be able to come, poor thing), I started planning.

Initially I was set on visiting Islay. Obviously something of a Mecca for whisky lovers, it seemed the perfect destination. However late-October weather in Scotland is unpredictable to say the least, and in the event of ferry problems I decided to hedge my bets for as long as possible. I made up two completely different itineraries: Option A saw me flying into Edinburgh on day 1, exploring it for day 2 and heading to Islay on day 3. Option B swapped the Islay ferry for a train to Inverness and a drive to Speyside.

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Review: Talisker 57° North

I love getting to try new stuff, especially if it’s not easy to find here in BC. This Talisker falls into that category – usually this bottling is only available in duty-free stores in airports or at a few UK specialty shops. A friend of mine was traveling back from England last week, and generously offered up the meager duty-free allowance you’re given in Canada to my constant quest for new whisky. I asked him to grab the 57° North if he could find it which he was good enough to do. So thanks, Simon!

Talisker is famously the only distillery on the Isle of Skye, up in the north-west of Scotland. Built in 1830, it suffered a devastating fire in 1960 and had to be rebuilt. This isn’t an uncommon occurrence with distilleries; in fact while on a tour around Aberlour it was mentioned that most originally built in the 19th century have suffered fires. The milling process is especially dangerous as it results in a fine haze of suspended particles that is actually explosive. No flash photography of an operating mill if you visit a distillery, please!

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Best Budget Bets for Beginners

Too Many Bottles!

Ever feel that there’s just too much whisky out there? A common question that is seen frequently around the internet, and that I’ve been asked myself, is “Well, I’ve tried a <Glenfiddich/Glenlivet> 12 year old and quite liked it; what on earth do I try next?” In this article I’ll attempt to answer that. Typically the questioner is looking for good quality but also good value too; after all, it’s often an expensive risk buying a bottle of whisky that you haven’t tried. Keeping the cost down is always worthwhile!

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Review: Coopers Choice Knockdhu 1998

As part of Hopscotch last year, I was lucky enough to attend a “Scotch and Chocolate” tasting at the amazing Legacy Liquor Store. One of the selections was this Coopers Choice bottling of a Knockdhu 10-year from 1998 (which was paired with a Madagascan dark chocolate if you’re interested!). It stood out immediately as a very different experience to the other whiskies at the tasting, and I bought one of the few bottles available immediately afterwards. So what was it that made it so memorable?

Before we get into that, let’s take a look at the origins of this delicate and delicious spirit. Knockdhu is not one of the major single-malt distilleries and you could be forgiven for being unfamiliar with it. Located in Aberdeenshire in the tiny village of Knock, the distillery was built in 1893 and and began production in 1894. Knockdhu was producing spirit for almost a hundred years before closing in 1983 during a widespread slump in the Scotch whisky industry. Happily, it was bought some time later by Inver House Distillers and re-opened in 1989. These days it produces single malts under the name “anCnoc”, as the name “Knockdhu” was considered too close to Knockando, another distillery not too far away.

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Supercharge Your Whisky Experience!

If you want to quickly increase your level of whisky experience, there’s one sure way – join a club!

A few years ago at my last place of work, I was invited to join a Scotch club. The club worked like this: every Friday, one nominated member brought a new unopened bottle of Scotch, and all the members had a pour or two. If the bottle wasn’t dead it went into the club stockpile, and after the main feature members could dip into the old bottles. The only rule for the weekly bottle was that it had to be a single malt that we hadn’t had before, although we did occasionally branch out into blends and other kinds of liquor (the keyword here being “occasionally”).

If you can get a good number of people interested, this can be a really good way to try a lot of whisky – we had around 20 members at our peak so that meant you were only buying two bottles per year or so, but you were trying 50 different single malts for the price of your two bottles.

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