New is always better...Always...or is it?

NEW IS ALWAYS BETTER...ALWAYS...

OR IS IT?

The old Glenmorangie 10yo (left) and new "Original" 10yo Glenmorangie (right)

Or is it after all? This is what we're finding out today!

Hello everyone and welcome to yet another tasting. I was really happy to have this opportunity to sample one whisky that has changed over the years but is still the same 10yo product! I present you the Glenmorangie 10yo sampling!

The story so far; I received a bottle of Glenmorangie 10yo and by the looks of the label was considered quite "old" (not that the whisky was any older than 10yo). The cork broke and I sent the distillers a picture of the bottle and all the information I could find from the label. I quickly received an answer and quote

"The bottle you have very kindly sent pictures of was produced in 2002 and as cork is a natural substance damage can take place at such an age. Unfortunately we redesigned the whole Glenmorangie range in 2006 and no longer have any replacement corks, however I do have a different product cork which will fit your bottle and I will send you a couple over."

To make a long story short, a colleague and friend of mine later bought a bottle of the redesigned range and thus figured we could sample these both and make an empiric study to find out if Barney Stinson was right after all; is new always better?

A few notes must be told though.

1. The old bottle is 43% ABV where as the new 10yo only 40%
2. The old bottle contained 75cl (quite peculiar IMO) and the new 70cl (taste-wise not relevant)
3. The old bottle was first opened on the 10th of February 2015 and the new bottle's first open on the 30th of August

Both were easily enjoyed; Glenmorangie, for me at least, represents a nice and easy way to start enjoying single malts. Not too sweet, pure, even hints of dark chocolate and fudge. With the 3% ABV change, it is funny how one can taste the difference.

But to answer the question, is new always better? In my opinion, I liked the older version more where as my colleague/friend her new 10yo. For me, the aroma in the old was stronger (for obvious reasons) but also added slightly more depth to the whisky.

A Great Ginger Beer Tasting

A GREAT GINGER BEER TASTING

10 ginger beers waiting to be tested

Good day everyone! Today I had the greatest opportunity to conduct another great tasting, now with different kinds of ginger beers! As we all know ginger beer is different from ginger ale and quote "The big difference between ginger beer and ginger ale is that ginger beer is brewed (fermented) but ginger ale is just carbonated water that's been flavored with ginger." Moreover, the taste is like day and night where proper ginger beer is spicy and much more full of flavor.

Over the weeks I managed to gather ten different kinds of products. These varied not only by size but also in taste. The more I thought of this tasting I realized one major aspect that should be taken into account: "Since marketing/branding is a key element of selling (anything), how do these products manage if put to the test?" Before we started tasting these beers, I asked each guest to rank the products from 1-10 based on their visual outlooks. To do this we assume that

1. One buys a product for a friend of theirs
2. All of these taste the same
3. They all costs the same (per liter)

I asked each one to do this "separately"; this way we can minimize any impact on others' opinions on the matter. I would later gather the intel and compile these as a spreadsheet. With four guests (and me), the maximum score was 50. I was interested in knowing if there was any consistency in the scoring and if any product really shines out (be it in better or worse).

Each guest was given a sheet with the ten ginger beers in a tasting order. We first went through five, had a small break and then sampled the rest. Although there wasn't any particular order per se, the first four were organic and the last three in cans. Otherwise the order was random so to speak. I did count up the carbohydrates (sugar) from each product g/100ml

1. Naturfrisk (organic, Denmark)       8.5g
2. Luscombe cold (organic, UK)         N/A
3. Luscombe hot (organic, UK)          N/A
4. Belvoir (organic, UK)                    10g
5. Fentiman's (UK)                           7.8g
6. Fever Tree (UK)                           10g
7. Bundaberg (Australia)                  10.8g
8. Grace (UK)                                  13.8g
9. Old Jamaican (UK)                       15.2g
10. Barr's Originals (UK)                    13.9g

Was (?) quite the coincidence that the last set contained the most sugary ones. Also to mention the difference between Luscombe cold & hot was that cold had 2% ginger and hot 3%, respectively.

The first set

With these products it is essential that you tip the bottle upside down a few times before opening. There is no danger of foam forming but it helps the ginger sediment (if any) to mix properly. What was peculiar was the fact the bottle sizes varied a lot. These included 200ml, 275ml, 320ml, 330ml, 375ml and 750ml.

The first set

Both Luscombe's had a rather lemony taste to it (it contained organic lemon juice from sicilian lemons) and Naturfrisk had a huge amount of ginger sediment in the bottle. Fentiman's had the least sugar of them all you could tell, both fiery and a tad bitter. But in my opinion a truly wild card in our set of ten was the Belvoir. In a perverse kind of way it tasted excellent and was ginger-y but had a very forest-y touch to it and I kid you not! You have that fresh birch whisk (used in saunas) aroma and earthy tones. Among us testers it stood out, it stood out good.

The last set

When it came to the last five, we were glad the order was how it was. Fever tree made a ginger cloudy (pun intended) distinction between the rest by its very spicy taste. After that, Bundaberg tasted like lemonade and the three last, being incredibly sugary couldn't beat the others either. In addition, Grace (picture middle) could have been disqualified for not really being a ginger beer at all. Its ingredients list doesn't mention ginger at all, just "natural ginger flavoring". Then again, for its defence it does claim it is a "Jamaican style" ginger beer. Old Jamaican was rated the best (out of the canned ones).

Tasting ginger beer, serious business!

Finally, each product was given a 1 to 10 points for its taste and I compiled a spreadsheet (as mentioned before) how each one managed.

(don't even care that the picture's borders go out of line)

WINNER BY LABEL(max 50 points)

1. Fentiman's, 41 points
2. Belvoir, 39 points
3. Old Jamaican, 34 points

WINNER BY TASTE(max 40 points)

1. Fever Tree, 31 points
2. Naturfrisk, 26.5 points
3. Belvoir & Fentiman's 25 points

Even when scoring is based on personal preferences/opinions, when we take a closer look at the scoring table we can clearly see that some products managed to keep consistency throughout the test. Naturfrisk  (8-8-7-3-2) and Old Jamaican (7-10-5-4-8) had the most variation when it came down to labels where the winner, Fentiman's had a solid score (10-8-7-8-8).

When it came down to taste, we can clearly notice how the first five were better overall. With the exception of Luscombe's cold, they all got 20+ in scores where as the last five (with the exception of our tasting winner Fever Tree), not a single one got 20 or more!

MORE SERIOUS BUSINESS!

So what conclusion(s) can we make out of this tasting/test? First of all, compared to regular soda, these are more expensive. But what was really interesting that how these ginger beers can taste so different and how much effort is put in making a good product. It's not just about good flavor, you also need to have a solid team making a great label for your fine product and be assured, it sells like hotcakes.

I later gave the canned ginger beers a thought and "what's with the heaps of sugar in them?" Even with their high sugar levels they do mix well with alcohol, because of said sugar! I couldn't really imagine making a Moscow Mule out of Belvoir, unless feeling really diabolical.

All in all, yet another great experiment in our back pockets, was fun to do!

Kurant Delight

KURANT DELIGHT

Evening everyone! This cocktail was inspired by a fellow comrade acquaintance, who approached me with a challenge! He insisted that I would use two of the ingredients, because those "fire him the most". 

1. Red currants 
2. Absolut Kurant

I gladly accepted his request since what do you know, I happened to have a red currant bush in my back yard! Absolut Kurant (a currant flavored vodka) I didn't, but I got a sample bottle of it for my disposal. Let's get to work, shall we?

One issue arose, though. What makes a great currant - based cocktail? After one failed draft I came up with a recipe that worked out quite nicely!

• 1 dl red currants
• 40 ml Absolut Kurant
• 20 ml cherry liqueur
• 20 ml cognac, VSOP
• a sprig of red currants as garnish

Muddle the currants in your shaker, add the rest and shake hard with ice. Double (!) strain into your chilled coupe and garnish. Serve.

Mai Tai

MAI TAI

Deliciousness in a nutshell double old fashioned

Hello again everyone! First of all...FINALLY, FINALLY I made the truly classic cocktail Mai Tai I've wanted to do...for over a year now! Thanks to my sister who brought me a bottle of orgeat syrup (or orgeat) I finally didn't let me dreams just be dreams and just did it.

When I went to Bremen last summer I got to taste two Mai Tais (okay just a sip from the first one); now I had the ingredients I needed to make my own! A big shout out to CHOW's Mai Tai recipe!

• 20 ml fresh lime juice (½ lime pressed)
• 7.5 ml rock candy syrup (2:1 sugar syrup where 2 parts of sugar and 1 part water)
• 7.5 ml orgeat syrup
• 15 ml gran marnier
• 35 ml El Dorado 15yo rum
• 25 ml Appleton Estate 12yo rum

One point at the start. Orange Curacao is called for in this drink; I substituted it with Gran Marnier because "Grand Marnier is a blend of cognac and triple sec, so although it's not a traditional curaçao, it's a similar product. Cointreau, on the other hand, is straight up a triple sec."

I had no curacao so I did that one change. Shake everything with crushed ice and pour the content into a double old fashioned glass (or a tiki mug if you have one). Use the pressed lime shell as a garnish and add a sprig of mint (you've slapped before to express the essential oils) to make it look "like an island and a palm tree".

No comments needed.

Rum Cola Fizz

RUM COLA FIZZ

A good and a summery evening to y'all! Tonight I present you with a cocktail that makes good use of the classic version of the Ramos Gin Fizz. I picked up the recipe from a cocktail community I currently belong to and extra went to the local shop today to get a few ingredients I was short of! So here it is, the Rum Cola Fizz.

• 4 cl dark rum
• 2 cl lime juice
• 2 cl simple syrup
• 2 cl heavy cream
• 1 egg white (as fresh as possible)
• 1 dash angostura bitters
• cola to top

Except with the cola, add everything in a cocktail shaker, dryshake firmly first, then add ice and shake again very vigorously until super cold. Strain into a tumbler and top the drink with cola. No garnish needed.

The taste was quite funky indeed! The cola addition had a slight nostalgic touch to it making the whole drink remind me of those childhood cola-popsicles.

Moscow Mule

MOSCOW MULE

No cupper mug, but still has the kick!

Hello everyone and welcome back! Today I came to realize that in the past years I still had not made the Moscow Mule. Given, it's a well known drink and when done properly, tastes a-mazing during the summer time.

As you already see, I did not use the traditional Moscow Mule cup (I don't have one), so any good sized tumbler will do. What you'll need is:

• ½ of a lime + 1 lime wheel
• 5 cl vodka
• ginger beer, not ale. BEER.

The reason I have to stress the importance of using ginger BEER is that it is a completely different product than the ale one. Ginger ale, in all its fairness is just carbonated water with ginger flavoring, but ginger beer uses real ginger, has that spicy kick and just overall tastes about...I don't know, a thousand times better.

So what you want to do is the following: Squeeze the juice of the ½ lime into your tumbler, you can drop the shell in the glass as well. Add 5 cl of vodka and fill the glass with cracked ice (not blocks nor totally crushed). Add your ginger beer and garnish with a lime wheel. Serve.

Extremely refreshing during the summer periods, if you ever get a hold on to some ginger beer, try this cocktail!

Tonic water tasting, s'il vous plaît!

TONIC WATER TASTING, S'IL VOUS PLAÎT!

An arrangement of tonic waters

It's time for another (heartwarming) tasting! I admit, conducting events like these are my sweet spots. I love the idea of taking a group of x and sampling them with friends and along the way find those little things that matter. Be it cognac, vodka, rum, bourbon or whatever, today I took quite a different approach.

Everyone knows the famous Gin & Tonic. But in the last years (if not decade) the amount of different styles of gins and tonics has skyrocketed. People want more. People want different. For many, the good o' "London dry + the only tonic available + lemon slice" does not suffice anymore. A good example is the rise of Hendrick's Gin with not only a cucumber twist but a "high-tier" tonic. Another one, I've noticed how Gin Mare (a Spanish gin) has bubbled up to the surface and as far as I'm concerned, trying to be the next big thing in the G&T business. Not to mention a mediterranean tonic on the side. This is the present day, my dear readers!

So what better way do I have but to sample some of these exclusive tonics with a few more common on the side with two of my friends? Exactly. My tonic set was built from seven different tonics, two of which from the same manufacturer but different in style. These tonics were:

1. Aqua Monaco tonic (in German) - German  (n/a/100ml)
2. Aqua Monaco Extra Dry (in German) - German (21kcal/100ml)
3. Fever Tree Indian tonic - British (38kcal/100ml)
4. Hartwall tonic - Finnish (38kcal/100ml)
5. Fentiman's tonic - British (34kcal/100ml)
6. Schweppes Indian tonic (in Finnish) - Danish (made in Finland under a license) (37kcal/100ml)
7. Rainbow tonic (in Finnish) - Estonian (36kcal/100ml)

The reason why I put the "kcal/100ml" in the end is for a reason; tonic water has sugar in it and not just a little but quite a lot of what would think. Surprisingly, most of these had a distinctive smell of Sprite! The citrus aroma combined with sugars was just like that soft drink. Of course taste-wise the quinine made it completely different.

#2 was the driest of them all and it showed. You had that bitter palate and with less carbon dioxide it was for the "more adult taste", if you please. Its companion, #1, was like bitter sprite but its mouthfeel was better.

I must say though that #3 was a big disappointment! I would've thought that a brand like Fever Tree could produce a top-tier tonic but no, it was quite bland in the end! For me it was quite a shocker. Especially when you look at a price for one bottle (at least in Finland), one could say it's an outrage. Aroma-wise, #5 was truly exceptional! No wonder, since they used juniper/kaffir lime leaves in the production. One could smell the difference. Bubble-wise, this tonic was almost flat.

#4 and #6 made solid results. Sure, they're not hipster tonics hand-crafted in micro breweries but neither are they noticeably bad. They're tonics that have a lot of potential; they're not unique and suit just about everyone. #7 on the other hand, just didn't quite cut it into the big boys' league. Mediocre at best, a tonic good for big(ger) party where you don't want to pay ridiculously for just a 200ml bottle if making more than one G&T...

In the end it was quite fun trying new products and albeit we didn't try (all of) these with gin, just learning and understanding that there are different tonics out there and it is not just a marketing trick that gins make interesting combinations depending on the tonic used. Quite the tasting!

BREMEN TOUR (part 3)

BREMEN TOUR (part 3)

"Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"

Another heart-warming welcome and greetings from Bremen! It had been almost exactly one (1) year since my last expedition to this wonderful city and this time instead of my wife I had two close friends to tag along! Our excursion included longs walks on the beach, romantic candle light dinners drinking, food and a bit of culture on the side! As I've "seen the city" before, I wanted to show my friends the local cocktail bars and a couple of "must-see" places, otherwise I was okay with whatever decisions they made. Blog-wise, I will probably go off tracks more than often here (which, I guess isn't too bad) but I try to take a more in-depth look regarding Bremen as a cocktail city. Of course on both trips (now and last year) my opinions consider all of this from a week-day POV, I can make a safe assumption that on a weekend everything goes bigger and louder. That said, let's get this excursion started! By the way, never mind the random pics along this post, they're for your entertainment, I swear!

Bremen on a Sunday night in a nutshell

We arrived on Sunday evening and naturally wanted to go for a drink. The problem is, on a Sunday...pretty much everything is closed. We did find a few places eventually, which was nice.

Pink Gin & Tonics

We stumbled upon a place called "Im Lu". A very lounge-style bar, I ordered a set of Pink Gin&Tonics (G&Ts with dashes of bitters). At first the bartender wasn't quite sure what I meant when I asked for Angostura Bitters, but caught my drift eventually. The funniest part being that instead of coating the glass with bitters (and then building the G&T), he came with the drinks, put the bitters bottle on the table in front of us and said "There you go pals, put as much as you need!" and left the bottle there for us to use!

Pink Gin&Tonic in a close-up

The thing I love the most with these smaller joints is that the bartenders are always so openly friendly and the whole atmosphere is amazingly relaxed. At least they've been both times I've visited Bremen! In the smaller hours of Sunday, strolling in the empty, rain-coated streets of Bremen (read: we got lost) we finally found our way back to our hostel to get some well deserved rest.

No love allowed!

In the two days of cocktailing, I can only be reassured of the points I made last year (see #5). I could redefine them a bit, though. When looking strictly from a cocktail-POV (price-quality/general specialization), there are actually three different kinds of cocktail bars in Bremen, as follows:

1. Happy Hour - tier
2. Middle-EarthGround - tier
3. Quality - tier

Funny how reading my post from last year, things haven't really changed with the exception of a little tweak. So this is how it works. You have your 4.5€/cocktail happy hour - places where consistency varies the most. Or what would you say about the Manhattan I had last year and this year from the same bar?

A Manhattan...I guess?

Also, from the same bar the bartender didn't know how to make a Japanese Slipper because "It wasn't on the list." I do understand that things are tend to change in a year's time (different workers/experience/etc.), but here is a classic example of "consistency gone awry".

Then you have the Middle-Ground - tier. These are places where consistency stays pretty much the same but it is "odorless". Per cocktail you probably pay 2-3 euros more and they don't let you down but there's that little "oompf" missing. In my experience, most bars in Bremen fall into this category. Usually located in places where you can eat as well, since people want to go wine&dining outside (Schlachte *cough*) and have a few drinks in the process.

Looking a place to wine&dine

Piña Colada, Mai Tai and a Lady Killer, note the same garnish in each one

Finally, you have your cocktail bars. Fair enough, on both times I've visited I haven't had the opportunity to experience most of the bars but there are two that shine like a diamond and need special mention.

General Gin Fizz @ Blauer Fasan. With roasted herbs in it, every sip from the straw was also an explosion of aromas in the nose!

Blauer Fasan is one of them. In comparison with the one I'll discuss later is that in my opinion Blauer Fasan is more inclined into molecular cocktails. I could be wrong, but looking at the drink menu just gave off that wibe. Twists from old classics, spicy Bloody Maries (with wasabi) and so forth. Price-wise, again a 1-3 euro bump higher from the Middle - tier, fluxuating around 10€ ±1€.

Me and my homies at the Blauer Fasan

I got to say, consistency and overall rating was top-tier just like from last year but I have to put on a negative mark as well. The place is quite small and with only one smoker huffing and puffing...The place smells, pardon my French, like shit. As a non-smoker, being drenched in cigarette smoke...not cool. 

 

The face of disappointment

I found the winning lyrics of the Eurovision 2016 contest from the hostel!

Finally, you have The Lemon Lounge. Hands down, in my sincerest opinion, it is the best cocktail bar found in Bremen. I wasn't disappointed last year and heck, wasn't disappointed this year either! Here you have the ~same price range that of Blauer Fasan, with their drinks listed in yearly order! That means, starting from the...1920's all the way to the 2000's.

What's important is to see the ingredients list of Zombie and specifically the first two words; "A lot of rum...and top that with overproof rum..." Made me chuckle. Well played.

Secretly and subconsciously this was the place I wanted to show my friends the most because in the Lemon Lounge the true essence of cocktails can be seen and tasted. Not to mention the barkeep, who effing remembered me from my last visit! I was sincerely and heart-warmingly surprised by this!

Three Old Fashioneds, s'il vous plaît!

The Chef at work

"The Making of a Mint Julep"

Voilá!

And the result

Mai Tai

How can you not love a place like this? With all the love and amazing-ness the Lemon Lounge has, it has two flaws, of which one is a "permanent", as it is not the easiest place to find. I remember from last year how I entered this place via the "back" without realizing I walked past the front door the first time. This year I was prepared though and we found it much easier. Secondly, their bathroom tap sprouted water like a badass mofo but yeah, that can be fixed :D

Espresso Martini

Aftermath

Bremen has a lot to offer when it comes to drinking and cocktails. Not to mention (like last time) Becks, which you will get from every bar, even the ones mentioned here! It also offers a lot of culture and a place worth seeing is the Schnoor with its narrow streets, handcrafts and restaurants, a few to mention.

Did I mention the narrow streets?

Where to next? (spoiler: the wind mill cafe)

At the town hall cellar enjoying a drink (and I had dessert!)

5/5 would visit again

Mother's Day Special / Green Goblet / Orange Fury

MOTHER'S DAY SPECIAL

Mother's Day Special for...you know...

The weekend is here and I am perfectly late for this Mother's Day Special! Then again, this cocktail needn't to be for any specific occasion as long as we're celebrating!

Last Sunday was our national Mother's Day and I wanted to make a drink for my wife. In addition to the cake I baked (and card I made), I wanted to make a cocktail that is both luxurious and sweet enough (she prefers sweeter drinks over sour/bitter ones). Well sparkling wine is thus an easy component. For the others I decided to go red and hence:

• 2.5 cl wild strawberry liqueur
• 2.5 cl creme de cassis
• 1 small-ish strawberry muddled
• (dash lime juice)
• sparkling wine
• orange zest for garnish

What I did was put the four first ingredients in a small cup and let them "soak" for ~ day. Truth to be told, this I could've left out and I doubt it would've made such a huge difference. Stir them quickly with ice and strain into a champagne flute. With the sparkling wine be careful since it reacts with sugary components thus foaming a lot. Finally garnish with a orange zest and give to your loved ones.

GREEN GOBLET

Just experi...I knew what I was doing, trust me!

So I had almost half a pint of freshly squeezed orange juice at my disposal. I really wanted to make a few cocktails using said stuff so I went to my liquor cabinet and randomly with extreme precision and knowledge picked a few extra bottles to whip up this Green Goblet (name courtesy by my co-worker! :D)

• 6 cl freshly squeezed orange juice
• 2 cl absolut pears
• 2 cl melon liqueur
• 1 cl maliby
• 2 maraschino cherries for garnish

Shake all except the cherries with ice, double strain and drop the cherries last. The Green Goblet works as a good dessert drink. It is soft, has a distinctive melon-pear bite to it with coconut flavors following to the end.

ORANGE FURY

Another wild exp-, cocktail made with determination

Here we have the second one, called Orange Fury (again, name courtesy by my co-worker!) Let's face it, two green drinks would be such a shame. Using the miniature bottle(s) I found, this is more suitable as an aperitif:

• 6 cl freshly squeezed orange juice
• 2 cl absolut ruby red (grapefruit vodka)
• 2 cl maraschino liqueur
• bitters for garnish + orange zest (flamed)

Shake the three first ingredients with ice, strain into a coupe, drop a few dashes of bitters on top of the drink and garnish with a flamed orange zest. Serve.

This cocktail is quite different than its green counterpart, Similarly soft but much more bitter, it has more "oompf" to it. The essential oils from the orange peel work wonderfully in this drink. Also, I liked the bitters floating on top giving this Fury its kick.

 

Sampling the unknown

SAMPLING THE UNKNOWN

What could these be?

Hello again and welcome! It's been quite a while since my last post and I do apologize for that. With our now 6-month-old daughter and my wife having a two-week work shift I haven't really had much time to taste new products, make new cocktails (I don't even have ice in the fridge at the moment!) or explore the vast world of alcoholic beverages in general.

Today that changed. But first let us rewind a bit and ie. one week. A tasting was held at work but alas, I could not attend. It's not that didn't want to but I couldn't because on the following day I had my blood tested and that meant no alcohol for the previous 48 hours. So I bought these little sample bottles that hold 3.5cl (35ml so a healthy measure) from a drug store and brought them earlier to my workplace so I could later sample them. From what I heard one of them was going to be the last of the legendary Valhalla series, Odin. So a colleague of mine was kind enough (<3 !) to fill these bottles for me but never told me which bottle had which product! That meant, I had five samples and no idea (not even the type [whisky, rum, cognac etc.]) what they were. A true blind tasting that is. 

A sample bottle labeled "=)"

So what I had was five (5) different products. Each were labeled differently and only my colleague knew what was in each one. When I started pouring the products in the glasses I realized how much even ~30 ml was! So going with approximately 20 ml each, I ended up with a nice row of products:

The tasting was a great success! Just nosing them made me think two of them were whiskies, one a dark rum and one I just couldn't figure out but it was on the tip of my tongue. I actually thought the first one was a whisky too but after I wrote down my tasting notes and rated them, my colleague sent me pictures of what I had but not in any particular order. Using the power of deduction I then managed to collect the last pieces of the puzzle and finish the job!

1. Tres Generaciones Añejo tequila (the peppery notes, just astonishing!)
2. Highland Park Odin (cask strength, bitter chocolate notes)
3. No3 London Dry Gin (this had lemon peel notes in it making me believe it was some sort of triple sec first, I "almost had it right")
4. Brugal VX dark rum (sweet aroma but taste-wise much robust)
5. Glenrothes 2001 (a very "pure" single malt, extremely fast finish)

All in all, these were great products. Especially the tequila left me with an extremely positive impression proving once again that there are good tequilas out there but only the shittiest ones are exported abroad and the good ones are really effing expensive to begin with. Also the gin was very palatable and worked as itself quite nicely.

Inspired and motivated of all of this, I've gotten myself another 10 sample bottles so I can share some of my different spirits with friends in the future! Not to mention should I ever open up another whisky bottle for the first time, I can take a measure of it and store it in a separate container. This way, after a long period of time I can always "return" to the original product and see if the flavor has developed, if at all.

The Art of Whisky

THE ART OF WHISKY

A fine collection of different styles of whiskies

A good evening to each and everyone. I've been thinking about this upcoming blog post for quite some time now, trying to "plan" it to the best of my ability. I want it to be a bit more detailed and comprehensive than my usual "let's make a drink!" because the issue in hand needs to be explained better. Well, to be more exact I want to share this with you dear readers.

So where do I start??

Well, first of all, almost a year back I started taking proper notes regarding whiskies with the intention of self-quote "Not only do I find it interesting to take notes aka micromanaging with these kinds of products, I want to learn." This has been not only fun but also something very helpful and interesting. Moreover, last year I held my New Year's Resolution 2014 and pulled off the roughly ~70 whiskies (and other products in the process), learning more of the Art of Whisky. 

I'm no longer a 20-year-old lad. The liqueurs and other stuff (I could afford) have been put aside. My taste buds have matured with me and I can now afford the more expensive stuff as well! Don't get me wrong, I still love the creation and drinking of cocktails but in the past years they're turned from fruity and fancy long drinks into short(er) ones that have a bit of an oompf to it.

Also, with age and experience I've started to take a bigger and better liking to stronger alcohols i.e. cognacs and rums, but mostly whiskies. My collection has started to grow and I like it!

So why whiskies? The answer is quite simple. Of all the different types of alcohols in the world (rums, tequilas, vodkas, cognacs etc.), whisky is the only one which flavor spectrum varies so much depending on where you make it! Vodkas get smoother, cognacs/rums softer and fruitier but whiskies? Take any land where whisky is being made and you have a completely unique product at hand. Not to mention Scotland alone and its various types of different blends/single malts! You have the Islands, Lowlands, Highlands and Speyside and they're all so different. North American (bourbon), Japanese whiskies and in the last decades the rest of Europe has started to get some well-deserved recognition as well.

And I don't want to miss out on those flavors.

In September 2013 when I started my (first ever) bartending job at Teerenpeli I remember my boss ask me at the time "Would you be interested in becoming a whisky ambassador for Teerenpeli at some point?" I agreed with an open heart knowing this would be an excellent opportunity for me to learn more. To become more.

Teerenpeli Lahti restaurant & distillery

So in February, 2015, it happened. The Teerenpeli Whisky Ambassador course 2 was organized. I applied immediately, trying to summarize in the application my last two years of learning whiskies into four lines. I was accepted.

Three days ago I went to Lahti where the training was held. An intense two days of learning about our whisky and everything from the single grain of barley to the distillation process until you have a glass of whisky in front of your nose. We also visited the malting facility and the well where the whisky gets its ground water from.

Keep in mind that I am not any kind of ambassador at the moment. The training is still in progress but I shall keep you updated as soon as possible.

Not only am I sincerely happy for all of this to happen to me, but I feel confident about this too. I believe in our products and I can easily recommend our whiskies to people, especially to those who are living far away.

So if I were to summarize my feelings at the moment...Pride and moreover, a journey to a land of flavors that never end. Starting from our very own distillery in Lahti.