I know that Valentine’s Day is tomorrow and hopefully you’re able to celebrate that with a dram or two, but the very next day is Ernest Shackleton’s 137th birthday. Ernest Shackleton was a famous polar explorer who, if you’ll remember, shipped himself 25 crates of Mackinlay’s Rare Old Highland Malt for an expedition in 1907. Three of those crates were abandoned in Antarctica after the expedition was aborted and discovered a century later. Amazingly, despite being subjected to minus 30 degrees Celsius, the whisky itself was still a liquid and Master Distiller Richard Paterson, of Whyte and Mackay, recreated it, down to the label, – calling it Mackinlay’s Rare Old Highland Malt (of course!).
It only has limited US distribution but you can find out more about the whole story here. The Whisky Exchange has a great little piece on the whole thing too.
If you have a minute, this little video sums it up nicely too:
So, in celebration of Shackleton’s intrepid nature, and well preparedness, I hope you’ll raise up a dram with me this Wednesday!
Earlier this month, Glenfiddich auctioned off a 55 year old Scotch that fetched £46,850 (approximately $72,632 USD) and set a European record. It was one of the 15 bottles of Glenfiddich Janet Sheed Roberts Reserve (the first to be sold), named after the oldest living Scot. Put into cask 1955 and bottled last month, it was estimated that the bottles would go for 30,000 and 35,000 pounds – it exceeded that price (fortunately for Water Aid, who gets the proceeds).
On a recent trip to LA, I was meeting up with a friend to go to some dive bar/performance area to see his friend perform. It was down an alley to a non-descript little place called “The Smell.” The show was OK, not really my scene, but it was fun hanging out with my friend there.
As it turns out, I was just a few hundred feet from a Los Angeles institution – the Edison. Fortunately for me, that was our next stop. Opened in 2007, it’s a steampunk theme nightclub inside the Higgins Building. The Higgins Building was LA’s first power plant, so there’s a bit of history there as well.
What’s amazing about the Edison is that the front of it is a little unassuming. It’s down an alley and it doesn’t betray what lies beneath, as the Edison takes up the entire basement area. When you walk in, the steampunk themed decor is magnificent. Walking down the stairs is a treat in and of itself, especially if you were like me and had no idea what to expect.
The first thing you notice is the bar… the next thing is how enormous the whole area is, much bigger than you’d expect, and then you see the projection screen playing movies from a bygone era. If you want to see what that’s like, here’s a cool virtual tour that gives you a feel for the place.
There are expensive bottles of scotch… and then there are expensive bottles of scotch you could actually buy (well, if you had two hundred grand). When it comes to the most expensive scotches, they’re usually extremely rare and not available in stores.
This is the most expensive bottle available in a retail store, in this case it was the duty free shop in Singapore’s Changi Airport. This bottle was available in 2002 for $39,000; making the $200,000 sale price an appreciation that beats the stock market quite handily. There were, of course, only 12 of these bottles ever produced.
This breaks the previous retail record of $188,000 set just three months ago in London for a bottle of Dalmore 64.
It doesn’t take long but anything of value is bound to be counterfeited. Whether it’s money, designer handbags, or scotch, being able to tell the genuine articles from the fakes is important whenever you’re about to part with your money. Much like you wouldn’t expect to see a fake one dollar bill, chances are you won’t see many fake budget scotches. However, when you consider that your average 12 year old single malt Scotch is going to run at least $30-35, there is a little incentive to make fakes. The real money is made on higher dollar bottles though (why fake a $35 bottle when you can fake a $350?).
That being said, there is now a technique, developed at the Strathclyde University in Glasgow, that can detect whether a sample is a fake or the real deal. It doesn’t use expensive lab-analysis techniques (or testing for radioactive material!), it just tests for levels of ethanol and colorant. They tested a small sample size of 17 blended whiskies and were able to find the eight authentic and the nine fake samples.
While I doubt we’ll see many fake Glenlivet 12′s floating around, this does change the game for counterfeiters.
Earlier this month, I attended the SAVOR American Craft Beer & Food Experience held at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C. It was the first time I’d gone and it will certainly not be the last. There wasn’t any scotch at the event but we all know that beer is but the younger brother of whisky and I’m a fan of both. The Savor event is amazing and it always sells out.
This year, it was held at the enormous National Building Museum, located on F Street between 4th and 5th St NW. It’s a few blocks away from the Gallery Place/Chinatown Metro stop and the Verizon Center. We stayed at a nearby hotel, walked by the Verizon Center (which was hosting a New Kids on the Block/Backstreet Boys concert… two groups we didn’t know were still touring), and made our way to the venue.
Inside, you’re greeted by these four enormous columns and then about twenty tables consisting of four breweries showcasing two beers. For those doing math at home, that’s one hundred and sixty different beers. There’s also a huge center ring of tables held by the sponsors (supporting partners and supporting breweries) to bring the count to close to two hundred different American craft beers. At each table (it’s really a square of four tables, a brewery at each edge), there is a beer and food pairing. The beer outshined the food, which consisted of hors d’oeuvres, in every instance.
In addition to the main area, you can purchase optional “salons.” These were one hour long sessions with various brewmasters, founders, and experts. We chose the one in which Jim Koch of Sam Adams and Sam Calagione of Dogfish talked about their collaboration beer, Savor Flowers, for the Savor event (it was also the parting gift). That salon was a lot of fun as they each talked about how they came to the idea to work together. What was nice was that each brought a member of their team to get on stage and talk about the work they did on the collaboration.
It’s not every day that Jim Koch of Sam Adams pours you a beer!
All in all, the event was fantastic and I’ll definitely be going again next year.
Last week, I had the opportunity to join Whisky.com as their resident blogger and I took it. Whisky.com is one of the premier sources for information on whisky and I hope to bring my experience and love of Scotch to their new Whisky.com Scotch Addict blog. The blog won’t be entirely about Scotch whisky, we’ll probably experiment and discuss a variety of other spirits that tickle our fancy (including other varieties of whiskies), but we hope that you’ll join us there as well!
I was surprised to learn that 90% of all whisky sales are towards blended Scotch whiskies and not single malt whiskies. While The Star doesn’t cite a reference, I’m inclined to believe them because many of the most famous brands in whisky belong to blended scotches.
Who in the United States doesn’t know the name Johnnie Walker or Chivas Regal?
In fact, for the longest time I thought that Johnny Walker Blue was the pinnacle of whisky (this was when I was younger and long before I discovered whisky). I’ve since learned that while Blue is delicious, it’s usually a mistake to equate pinnacle to price and there are certainly far more expensive Scothes out there!
90% of whisky sales are blends… pretty surprising!
I discovered GlenDronach on Twitter, of all places, and learned that the distillery has been in business for almost 200 years. Founded in 1826, GlenDronach Distiller become the “largest duty paying distillery in the Scottish Highlands” in the 1860s. By 1920, the distillery was purchased by Captain Charles Grant, the son of the founder of Glenfiddich. After another change in ownership, GlenDronach was mothballed in 1996 until 2002. In 2005, the Chivas Brothers took ownership from Allied Distillers.
After all that, I was saddened to learn that no local liquor store carries them (at least the ones I visit regularly). They have several age expressions as well as special finishes (they may have been mothballed but the barrels were still waiting patiently it seems!):
12 Year: Described as Rich, creamy, silky-smooth. Warm, rich oak and sherry sweetness, full mouth feel, raisins, soft fruits.
15 Year: Described as Incredible concentration of aromas. Treacle toffee and chocolate orange.
17 Year: Described as Sweet aromatics of fudge and muscovado sugar. Fruit compote and glacier morello cherries provide added complexity.
33 Year: Described as An avalanche of chocolate and mocha coffee, laced with spices, pineapple and raisins.
Sauternes Finish (14 yr): Described as Apple and rhubarb drenched in homemade custard, sweet deset wine with ripe sultanas and creamy heart.
Virgin Oak Finish (14 yr): Described as Spiced ginger and cinnamon cake with a beautiful smoky twist.
Moscatel Finish (15 yr): Described as Sweet summer fruits of melon and pineapple with sweet ripe raising and alcohol infused figs.
Tawny Port Finish (20 yr): Described as Stewed fruits of prunes, pears and apples balanced with an injection of liquorice and aniseed.
If you’re a local Marylander (I live in Howard County) and know of a place that sells them (I can’t wait to find out they’re available in my neighborhood store and I just missed it), please let me know!
If you’ve ever walked into a liquor store and seen several scotches lined up on the shelf, you’ve probably seen The Classic Malts Selection. Sometimes they’re on a little wooden pedestal, each bottle with a small plaque that identifies it (as if you couldn’t tell from the bottles) as one of The Classic Malts, sometimes they’re just shown together on the shelf. If you’ve ever wondered what makes them Classic Malts, it’s because the original set of six were all owned by Diageo. The original were Dalwhinnie, Glenkinchie, Cragganmore, Oban, Talisker, and Lagavulin. Since then, the Classic Malts lineup has been increased to include Caol Ila, Cardhu, Clynelish, Kockando, Royal Lochnagar, and The Singleton of Glendullan. Again, they are all owned by Diageo, which is why they were added to the Classic Malts selection.
This year, they’ve also released some 2010 Limited Edition releases in time for the holidays. Here’s the list along with their descriptions: Read more…
