Scotch Addict

My day job involves writing a personal finance blog and a message I’ve written repeatedly on that site is that you should start with the basics and work your way up. By this I mean that when you first start experiencing something, whether it’s your first dram of Scotch or your first investment, start with the basics. Start with something that is inexpensive, representative of the style, and work your way to the more luxurious items.

The perfect analogy is coffee. You can start with a cup of instant coffee or you spend $10,000 for a state of the art coffeemaker that will absolutely blow you away. The problem with starting at $10,000 is twofold:

• What if you don’t like coffee? If that’s the case, you just wasted $10,000 on something that a $1 cup could’ve taught… that you don’t like coffee.
• You won’t appreciate the coffee from the $10,000 as much as you would if you started drinking $1 cups of instant coffee and worked your way up.

So at the heart of this there’s a bit of frugality involved because you want to enjoy the things in life but you don’t want to spend all your money on just a few things. This extends perfectly into the enjoyment of Scotch, and other spirits, because you can’t appreciate just how good a dram is unless you’ve had a chance to start at the beginning.

So don’t run out and buy an 18-year or 25-year bottle, start with something from the lower end of the price spectrum so you know what you are getting for your money. You’ll learn to appreciate different aspects about a 10 year that you won’t get in a 25.

For example, I recently purchased a Glen Morangie 10 Year after a visit through Costco. Despite it’s seemingly younger age, it’s only slightly cheaper than a 12 year Glenlivet (I attribute that to production size), yet it’s a relatively smooth dram for not yet being a teenager.

Start with something cheap and slowly graduate yourself as you learn to appreciate.

General Glenmorangie

Do you know how to pronounce Lagavulin? Glenfiddich? Glenmorangie?

If you know those, you’re in pretty good shape. How about Bruichladdich? Caol Ila?

Now, visit this website and play all the names. They have an audio file for a lot of distilleries (many of the majors, most of the smaller ones too) in both .wav and .au, though some are only in .au file format.

How many did you get right? If you got the pronunciation right did you accent the right syllable? Glenmorangie is easy to say but I bet you accent the wrong syllable like I did.

Learn how to pronounce scotch whisky names from an expert.

Reference Bruichladdich, Caol Ila, Glenfiddich, Glenmorangie, Lagavulin

I only recently discovered the fine work of the The Sixteen Men of Tain in the form of Glenmorangie: The Original (their ten year expression) and was impressed by the depth of flavors. It stood up quite nicely against my “daily” dram of Glenlivet 12 (I don’t drink it daily… but I easily could!) and was comparably priced, so it was nice to discover something I could enjoy if I wanted a slight change of pace.

So this weekend, in a trip to New York, we stopped by Viscount Wines and Liqours with some friends to pick up wine for their wine tasting party. As they shopped for wine, i wandered over to the scotch section and took a look. I wasn’t specifically looking for Glenmorangie but when I saw the unmistakable amber box, I noticed there were several right beside it.

As it turns out, Glenmorangie has about half a dozen special finishes:

• Lasanta – Finished in Spanish Oloroso sherry casks
• Quinta Ruban – Finished in Portugese port pipes/casks
• Nectar D’Or – Finished in Sauternes casks, Sauternes is a French dessert wine
• Sonnalta PX – Finished in Pedro Ximenez Sherry casks
• Astar – Matured entirely in “Artisan casks”

Several other distilleries offer finishes in sherry and port pipes, after years in a bourbon cask, but Glenmorangie is the first one I’ve seen that offers a version finished in Sauternes casks. (upon further research online, I see now that several distilleries offer Sauternes finishes)

(Photo: rollanb)

General Glenmorangie

I mentioned last week that having a Scotch Night was a great way to sample a wide variety of scotches without spending a wide variety of dollars. I must admit, the idea to write the article come from the fact that my friends and I would be having one of these Scotch Nights the very next day! (1/16/09)

So, the roster was:

• Jura 18
• Laphroiag 10 & a quarter casks version
• Glenmorangie 10
• Chivas Regal 18 (our only blend)
• Macallan 15
• Highland Park 12

The Jura 18 was a bottle I picked up coming back from England last Thanksgiving and I was eager to try it because it wasn’t available here in the United States. The Isle of Jura 18 Year Old is a 40% abv scotch and the only scotch from that island. My memory of the Jura is that it’s sweet and very soft, no doubt a product of its age, and it definitely captures the mood Jura tries to invoke, which is a celebration of the island life.

The Isle of Jura itself is 16 miles off the coast of Scotland, near Islay, and measures only 30 miles long by 7 miles wide, a population of only 185. The main settlement on Jura is a village known as Craighouse where they distill Isle of Jura. What’s most interesting is that there is no ferry connection to mainland Scotland, travel must be done through Islay, though that connection, or its heavy peat, doesn’t come through in the whiskey!

The Chivas Regal 18 was the only blend of the bunch and headquartered in Speyside. My novice palate had trouble with the Chivas Regal 18 because the spiciness tripped up the fruity flavors, having both really threw me for a loop. I could definitely taste both but I couldn’t get past the spiciness to really enjoy the fruit (I love spicy food) and spiciness isn’t something I typically taste in scotch, further confusing me a little.

A little bit of history, Chivas Regal is produced in the oldest working distillery in the Highlands of Scotland, the Strathisla Distillery.

Those were some notes I had from our Scotch Night. With each night, I’m slowly developing a better palate and a better sense of the scotches that I enjoy. In prior scotch nights, I discovered I enjoyed peatiness and smokiness in moderation (Laphroaig and Lagavulin!) but liked the fruitier and more vanilla-y scotches for longer stretches.

Oh, one other thing we did during scotch night, besides eat and drink, was watch The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly… which was a lot longer than we thought it was.

Events Chivas Regal, Glenmorangie, Highland Park, Jura, Laphroaig, Macallan