WHISKEY TASTINGS AND LIFE
Hello again dear readers! The last two days have been quite extraordinary indeed as I had two tastings with completely different styles of whiskies! The true beauty of these is doing it with friends and eventually, the whole process of a tasting turns out into a long get-together. I really like that.
This "two-part" tasting started on Tuesday at the bar I work at, where I met two of my good friends and a friend of my friend, an Italian exchange student...
:D
Jokes aside, he was a really cool guy. He drank beer with us and wasn't afraid of anything.
So what was the first tasting all about? The peat bomb Ardbeg - series hailing from Islay! As far as I was concerned, I've never been a true fan of heavily smoked/peaty whiskies. But with maturity comes great respon...taste bud development and lately I can appreciate a good smoked whisky. I would still prefer a sherry-like malt over any Islay whisky, though. But as I want to finish my project (New Year's Resolution 2014), I knew this day would eventually come.
The tasting included:
- Ardbeg 10yo
- Ardbeg Uigeadail (matured in a mix of bourbon and sherry casks)
- Ardbog (matured in ex-manzanilla sherry casks for at least 10 years)
- Ardbeg Corryveckan (previously a Committee-only bottling, it is intended as a replacement for Airigh Nam Beist in the core range)
For me these were difficult to evaluate properly. Yes, they were really peaty and all of them had an incredibly long finish. I kid you not when I say the flavors lingered in the mouth for a long, long time after tasting them. Corryveckan had peppery notes and out of these four I enjoyed the Uigeadail the best. Overall these whiskies were genuinely soft.
The evening continued with beers and alike with a soft touch of schnapps. But this was just the beginning...
The following day (one of my friends stayed over for the night) I conducted a Bourbon tasting with three products! I held this tasting twice today; once at noon and a second time when one friend got here from school.
For this tasting I initially had in mind to order the whole range of Jim Beam (they have over a dozen of different styles of bottling) and truly evaluate the differences (age and effect of wood respectively). But while writing a letter to a friend of mine a few weeks back and explaining this, I had a doubt. "Would I really want this? Can I really afford this?" I ended up ordering only two different ones along with the "basic" one I already had:
- Jim Beam White (4yo)
- Jim Beam Black (6yo)
- Jim Beam Signature Craft (12yo)
One really distinctive difference with these products was the effect of age and thus color; the 12yo has a copper-ish color whereas the youngest (white/4yo) possesses a light golden (slightly shifting to green) color. Woody notes were present , perfume and wax. With age the flavor becomes apparent smoother. I did enjoy the Signature Craft's smoothness but taste-wise the Black was a tad better.
As we sampled these bourbons as their own, I then had the same amount of said whiskies in glasses with a fixed amount of soft drink (pepsi) added to it. A big thanks to a friend of mine, who gave me whisky stones the weekend before; these became extremely handy! So what I did was put about 2 cl (~½ fl oz) of bourbon, add two whisky stones and 5 cl of pepsi (1½ fl oz) to "reanimate" a bourbon&coke and perhaps taste how they differ. Had I used regular ice the drink would've eventually watered down altering the results of this "scientific" experiment.
As a joker I then introduced a fourth bourbon i.e. Maker's Mark, which we sipped but didn't really evaluate. This was kind of a "hey now that you've tasted these Jim Beams have a sip of this!"
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| Tasting in progress |
The evening ended with a game of hearts.
It was a really nice two days with good drink and better company!
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