How to Pronounce Lagavulin, Bunnahabhain, Auchentoshan & Other Scotches

A few years ago, I shared a resource on how to pronounce certain scotches. It basically had every single scotch I’d ever heard of, including some I hadn’t, and an audio file that helped you along with each term. As we know, the names of the distilleries are Gaelic and that is the origin of our pronunciation woes.

In American English, we expect Glenfiddich to be pronounced “Glenfiddish” and not “Glenfiddihck.” By that same token, we’d then guess Bruichladdich to be Brooshladdick… it’s actually closer to Brookladdy. It’s the Gaelic pronunciation that messes us up and the fact that we just don’t have the class that the Scots seem to have when they’re sipping on scotch. 🙂 Fortunately we can lean on the classiness of one Brian Cox as he says the names to 40+ scotches.

Here’s how you pronounce Lagavulin, which is actually straightforward:

Auchentoshan:

And my personal favorite, Bunnahabhain:

Bruichladdich: The Botanist Islay Dry Gin

The Botanist Islay GinDid you know that Bruichladdich, a famed distillery on Islay, made gin? My first favorite drink is whisky neat, usually a single malt but I’m hardly a Scotch snob, but my second is a gin & tonic. My favorite gin is, by far, Hendrick’s. I bought it once for a friend of mine who is a much larger gin & tonic aficionado, since it came in a really nice looking bottle, but upon trying it with him I fell in love. The cucumber is fantastic.

So, imagine my surprise when I saw that Bruichladdich makes a gin called The Botanist, a small batch artisanal Islay gin.

… we use nine of the classic gin aromatics – orris root, cassia bark, coriander seed, etc – and augment these with a heady harvest of 22 wild, native island botanicals, hand-picked by our expert foraging team from the windswept hills, peat bogs and atlantic shores of this Hebridean island of Islay.

I’ll have to keep an eye out for it and give it a whirl.

NY Giants Player Gifts Teammates Johnnie Blue for Super Bowl Win

Justin Tuck, star defensive end of the Super Bowl champion New York Giants, gave every member of the team, including coaches and front office staff, an engraved bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue. At $220 a pop, the total bill came to around $17,600. Pretty awesome, though I shuddered a little when I heard this quote:

“Johnnie Walker is kind of a working man’s drink,” defensive end Dave Tollefson told the Post. “Johnnie Walker and some Coke. It just speaks to the attitude of our team and the type of guy he is.”

Mixing Johnnie Blue with some coke makes me want to cry.

Man Busted Smuggling Heroin in Chivas Royal Salute

Four bottles of Chivas Royal Salute, a 21 year vintage worth about $180 a bottle, were used in a failed attempt to smuggle 25 pounds of heroin into the country. Wilfer Bohorquez Rojo was busted at Newark Liberty International Airport on New Year’s Eve trying to smuggle in twenty five pounds of heroin in a random bag search.

Hopefully he got to enjoy a little of the Chivas Royal Salute… since he won’t be getting the opportunity to do so for a long long while.