Billy's Booze Blog

Ardbeg is a bit of a strange distillery. They’re small but scarily well known, with fanatical fans (although I suspect that’s a tautology), scarily high prices for some of their bottlings and the backing of a big corporate. I’ve only recently started learning about them and haven’t really tried any of their whiskies since I first encountered the brand a few years back at a whisky evening around Adam’s house – he’d gone on their website, joined their members club (The Committee) and accidentally ordered one of each of the whiskies they had available. An expensive accident, but one that kept us happy with a range of whiskies covering their entire production of the time.

Ardbeg’s had a spotty recent history but started officially started out in 1815, distilling on Ardbeg farm on the south coast of Islay. They produced whisky right through until the start of the 80s, when production started to slow until the distillery was mothballed in 1981. Allied Distillers, owners at the time, also owned Laphroaig and felt they had enough ongoing production from there, along with stored whisky from Ardbeg to meet their needs. It started producing small amounts of spirit again in 1989 but closed its doors seemingly finally in 1996, after several years of uncertainty. Allied put the distillery on the market, to great interest, with Glenmorangie buying it and reopening production in 1997. In 2004 Glenmorangie was acquired by the LVMH group (Moet Hennesy – Louis Vuitton) and Ardbeg went along as part of the package, giving it a big corporate backing. Glenmorangie and Ardbeg are generally left alone by the group, although they do get the backing money needed to push their increasingly well known brands. In addition they pool their technical resources, with Glenmorangie’s Bill Lumsden also acting as Ardbeg’s master distiller.

The whisky’s style is quite simple – very peaty. Using malt peated to 50ppm they are one of the peatier on the island and they relish in this distinction, pushing themselves as a peat lover’s dram.

Along with the reopening of the distillery Ardbeg also formed The Committee, a distillery ‘club’ with a bit more to it than many. Starting with the Very Young, their 6 year old bottling released in 2004, many of the releases have first been made available to the members of The Committee first, with their comments being solicited before general release. They go further than many distillery clubs with a members room at the distillery and all members receiving a book of Rules and Regulations, with special attention brought to paragraph 17:

17. The office of a member shall be vacated if:
He becomes of unsound mind to the extent that he develops a preference for a different spirit; or
He is directly or indirectly connected with the dilution of any dram of Ardbeg Islay Single Malt Whisky with any substance other than water.

I recently joined The Committee having heard that they were holding their 10th anniversary celebrations. I’d not tried any of their recent bottlings, but had a sample of one of their new releases and had been occasionally delving into SWMS bottlings when they appeared, so didn’t feel too bad about jumping on a free drink bandwagon a little late. The celebrations also showed me how they’ve upped their game online – the venue for both Edinburgh and London parties was revealed slowly via cryptic clues on twitter, with a goody bag going to the first person to guess -  annoyingly I didn’t have enough of a clue to even guess the London location and was about 2 minutes walk away with my guess as to the Edinburgh one.

In the end the London party was held at The Worx, on Heathman’s Road, near The White Horse in Parson’s Green (from the clues: ‘on the Ardbeg tube line’, ‘down south, however didn’t dare cross the river’, ‘Wretched Rector after a bumpy sail through Corryvreckan‘, ‘Poor Shortie [the Ardbeg dog and mascot] nearly got trampled by a fair stallion on the way’, ‘where the peat cutters of the heath reside’…obvious once you know the answer). The format of the evening was simple – turn up, have a cocktail and wander around the venue playing fairground games (I won a nice cashmere scarf on the hoop-la), eating food and drinking copious amounts of whisky.

The initial cocktail of the evening was simple and remarkably effective, especially as peaty whisky is a very difficult thing to mix effectively (and that act against paragraph 17, above). It was a combination of Ardbeg 10, crushed ice, simple syrup and bruised mint leaves. It was a bit like a sticky mojito with a slab of peat, but was also very refreshing and a great palate cleanser.

On the bar they had a selection of Ardbeg whiskies and I started off with the Ardbeg 10. On the nose there was a touch of acetone with the inevitable peat, along with a strong alcoholic sweetness,  a touch of woodsmoke and some butterscotch. To taste it was buttery with a sweet orangey peatiness and coal dust. Water dropped out a lot of the sweetness, compacted the coal dust into briquettes and brought out a woodsmoke finish. Not a subtle dram, but a good smoky, peaty whisky for those who like it quite sweet.

Next I tried the Rollercoaster, the most recent Committee bottling, bottled for the 10th anniversary, and one that won’t hit the general public because it’ll sell out before it has a chance. It’s a vatting of 10 casks, one from each year between 1997 and 2006 – Chris and Lucas have a complete list of the casks over on The Edinburgh Whisky blog. This was the one that I was most wanting to try, as I suspected it’d disappear before I got another chance. On the nose it had sulphur, sea salt, sea weed, oranges and a very hard edged peatiness, almost stony. To taste it had wood ash, eggs, more stony peat, coal smoke and a smokey sweetness. A bit of water toned everything down a bit and brought out more sweetness, with a hint of smoky bacon and sweet butter. I really rather liked it and have worryingly found that you can still buy it from the Ardbeg shop. I must resist.

Next I went for the Corryvreckan, another former Committee bottling that was brought in to replace Airgh name Beist, their previous top cask strength whisky. On the nose it had the BBQ chicken smell that I’m starting to think is my brain’s interpretation of woody wine/sherry influence, as well as white sherry, eggs and sea weed. To taste it was spicy with apples, burnt toffee, raisins and a lingering smoky peaty finish. Another good’un and one that deserved its win as best single malt whisky in this year’s World Whisky Awards, as well as numerous other gongs.

Finally, as I’d missed the last of the Supernova, Ardbeg’s super peaty whisky, that they had on the bar, I went for the Blasda. This one was described to me as “a lady’s dram”, with only 20ppm of phenols in the malt and a move to a lighter style. On the nose it was light and sweet with a hint of fruit that might have been cherry. To taste it was buttery and prickly, with sour peat and red berries. Most of all it was surprisingly light for a peaty whisky, especially an Ardbeg, even though this is the intention. Water brought out both cream and a bitterness from the wood as well as touch of cardboard and some struck matches. An interesting experiment, but not one that really grabbed my attention.

Overall it was rather a good night, although the free flowing whisky (there were tokens for some drinks, but by the end of the night the giant bottle of Rollercoaster they had on a smaller bar was being tipped into any glass that came near) meant that there was some drunkenness. If Jerry, the nice Glaswegian chap who tried (unsuccessfully) to teach me some Scottish toasts, is reading this then please drop me an email – I owe you a beer or two and I have the glasses you won, you left them in the pub. Yes, there was a pub after, which was probably a mistake.

Some gorillas. It was safer not to ask.

While I may have missed the previous release of Supernova, I added a sample of this year’s one to my most recent Master of Malt order and thought I’d add it on the end here. Supernova is intended to be the peatiest whisky that the distillery produces, using 100+ppm malt, and the last release had a hint of the Marmite effect to it – many people didn’t seem to rate it, but those who liked it really liked it. After the success of the last bottling they’ve rolled out a new one for this year – Supernova 2010. It’s pale gold and has no age statement, but with the intensity of flavour I would guess it has a good range of whisky in it. On the nose it has (as expected) lots of peat, along with salted butter, fresh mulch and some wet grass. To taste it’s spicy and every bit of its 60.1%. It starts with a big burst of sherried caramel sweetness and then moves through coal dust to a bitter burnt wood finish. In the middle there’s a bit of a fizzy citrus flavour which the chaps at Master of Malt describe as being like Starburst chews. I see what they mean but a) still reckon they should be called Opal Fruits and b) reckon that the flavour is more like fizzy orange and lemon Chewits. Water kills a lot of the bitterness as well as bringing out more of the fizzy fruit. This release has generally been considered inferior to the last one from what I’ve read, but as I didn’t get to taste the old one I can only assume it was really good (it does now change hands for about £125 a bottle) – I rather liked this one, with its peatiness being mellowed, but not too much, by some of the younger flavours and with a depth that I didn’t necessarily expect.

Ardbeg 10
Single malt Islay Scotch whisky, 46%. ~£35

Ardbeg Rollercoaster
Single malt Islay Scotch whisky, 57.4%. £50 from the Ardbeg shop

Ardbeg Corryvreckan
No age statement
Single malt Islay Scotch whisky, 57.1%. ~£60

Ardbeg Blasda
No age statement
Single malt Islay Scotch whisky, 40%. ~£45

Ardbeg Supernova 2010
No age statement
Single malt Islay Scotch whisky, 60.1%. ~£80

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It is well known that I consider the adding of whisky to any situation a positive thing and it would be much remiss of me to exclude desserts from the list of situations. So, when the planning of a pudding for this year’s NomNomNom cooking competition came up there was really only one choice for me – Cranachan.

Cranachan is a deceptively simple pud – whipped cream with a touch of whisky, toasted oats and raspberries. It’s the scottish Eton Mess and with the recent revival of that dish at the finer end of dining cranachan has tagged along, adding a touch of regional flair to the creamy dessert spectrum. However, there are a number of variables to consider, so using my finely honed scientific mind (poetic license) I decided to do some experimenting before putting together a final recipe.

First up was the fruit. One of the aims of NomNomNom is to use locally sourced and seasonal ingredients where possible, and while raspberries are in season I thought it’d be good to add a twist. One of my favourite summer fruits is the gooseberry – we had a bush in the garden when I was a kid and due to a distinct lack of enthusiasm for them in my family I pinched many straight from the branch, revelling in the stolen painful sourness. I didn’t want to exclude the raspberry, so my first experiments pitted it against stewed gooseberries (cooked on a low heat in some simple syrup until they started to break up) and quartered raw gooseberry. The plain gooseberry had a good crunch, but was a bit too tart for the sweet dessert that we planned; the raspberry was good and classic, but again slightly too sour; the stewed gooseberry was perfect – a centre of caramel sweetness surrounded by the rounded sourness of the gooseberry.

Next was the oats. Plain toasted oats were a bit boring and the large quantity of floury bits in the bag I bought led to a dusty oatiness that wasn’t really what I was after. A quick think later and a couple of tablespoons of soft brown sugar went into a dry pan with the toasting oats. I stirred it carefully as it heated, keeping the oats moving so they wouldn’t burn, until the sugar melted, at which point it came off the heat and I stirred a bit more frantically to mop up the dust to make a simple, crunchy, sugary granola. This was a bit of a winner and I may have eaten most of it on its own once it had cooled.

Finally we came to the cream – whipping cream is easy, but what whisky should I use? I dragged out 4 to choose from – Greenore 8 year old, Laphroaig Cairdeas, Benromach Organic and Yamazaki Sherry cask. The Greenore was, as might be expected, very light and added a pleasant whisky sweetness to the cream without overpowering it too much; the Cairdeas lost a lot of its flavours when combined with cream but the iodine peatiness came through, which was quite unpleasant; the Benromach was almost excellent, but the main flavour to cut through the cream was the woodiness of the new barrels used for maturing, overpowering the sweetness I was looking for; the Yamazaki was also really good, but not what was needed here – if I ever need to make a sherry trifle then this will be going in with the cream, as it had a very concentrated sour sherry flavour that cut through the fat. In the end I decided on the Greenore, although this would mean that I was making a Scottish dessert using English cream, English gooseberries, English oats and Irish whiskey, which felt slightly sacrilegious.

It’s said that no plan survives contact with the enemy and my recipe was no different. On the day minor issues with exploding stewed gooseberries (they go everywhere when you drop a bowl onto a hard work surface) were quickly swept under the carpet (almost literally) and plans for using Greenore were discarded when my cooking buddy Melanie, the other half of our most excellent team – The Tarragons of Virtue, pulled out a miniature of Glenmorangie 10 year old that she’d got from work – the combination of sweetness and wood cut through the cream perfectly making it the obvious choice. Melanie also added a touch of icing sugar to the cream while whipping to add a little more sweetness.

Recipe:
Some whisky
Some cream
Some oats
Some brown sugar
Some sugar syrup
Some gooseberries

Add the gooseberries to a pan and fill to half way up their side with a 1:3 sugar:water syrup. Cook over a low heat until they are a gooey sauce, although with some gooseberry lumps still present, and then leave to cool. Toast some oats in a frying pan with some soft brown sugar, making sure to keep the oats moving to stop them burning. Once the sugar has started to melt remove the pan from the heat and stir until the sugar starts solidifying again. Leave them to cool, breaking them up with a spoon a bit before using them. Whip some cream until light and fluffy and fold in a little icing sugar and some whisky until it tastes good.

To assemble: place a spoon of stewed gooseberry in the bottom of a serving glass. Fold together some cream and oats until slightly crunchy, then add some gooseberry and stir once to give a gooseberry swirl. Spoon into the serving class and top with more oats and a quartered fresh gooseberry.

We didn’t win, but I did eat a lot of whisky cream.

NomNomNom is an annual cooking competition and charity raffle in aid of Action Against Hunger. I also did it last year and didn’t win, ho hum. There will be a post up about our efforts on the day on the main NomNomNom website soon, along with some audience award voting. Please vote for me and Melanie, we’re lovely.

There’s also a post on my other blog about our main course – a stuffed pork loin. It was very nice.

Now be good and go and buy some raffle tickets.

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Young’s may have run away to Bedfordshire, but there’s still more to London brewing than just the mainstay of Fuller’s and the chemical plants of Annheiser-Busch. We’ve got Brodie’s in Leyton, Sambrook’s in Battersea, Meantime down in Greenwich and now The Kernel in Bermondsey.

With my mate Bob living round the corner I’ve heard about The Kernel a few times, along with a recommendation to visit, and after a recent tasting at The Whisky Exchange I stopped in at The Rake and had a taste of The Kernel London Porter ‘forced’ on me by one of the regulars, which moved it up the list quite a way. So, last weekend I braved the sun to wander over Tower Bridge and make my way to the brewery.

It’s hidden under the railway arches that run east out of London Bridge and is an almost literal hole-in-the-wall. Every Saturday brewer Evin, a man who I’m fairly certain I’ve bought cheese from at Borough Market before, opens his doors from 9am until 3pm, selling beers from a table set up in front of his office. They are currently brewing once a week and there’s a range of earlier batches as well as whatever has appeared recently – on my trip I picked up a couple of IPAs as well as a London Porter and a bottle of ‘White Ale?’, which from the quick chat I had seems to have not entirely gone to plan, but was bottled as it tasted pretty good anyway.

I’ve had the bottles sitting on the side waiting for an excuse to be drunk, so I was very pleased to hear some news this week – The Kernel picked up a gold medal in the best bottled porter category and a bronze in the overall bottled for the Export Stout, and gold for the IPA Simcoe in both beer over 5% and the overall bottled beer categories at the SIBA South East Beer Festival. Rather pleasingly my random purchasing from the previous week meant that I had a bottle of The Kernel IPA Simcoe, so I cracked it open this afternoon for a taste.

Being an IPA it’s going to have a chunk of bitterness and this is at least in part (although as I don’t know Evin’s recipe, how much I’m not sure) from Simcoe hops, hence the name. The beer pours (at room temperature, anyway) with a good solid head and it has a good malty hoppiness on the nose. It also tastes really rather good – a great hoppy IPA with a kick from the 7.9% and a nice citrus-ness leading to a bitter finish. It’s got a more to it than just the hops, unlike many IPAs, with a good body and slight sourness. It’s bottle conditioned so my school-boy error of pouring half of it before letting the yeast in the bottom of the bottle mix with the remaining beer meant that my second pour was a bit on the cloudy side. If anything it tasted better with a touch of haze as the sediment softened the bitterness a little, but it was good either way.

I really like it and will definitely be making the pilgrimage over to the brewery next time I find myself over Bermondsey way on a Saturday, and with Glyn from The Rake pinging Evin congratulations on his blog I might even be able to grab a bottle when I’m out for a beer.

The Kernel IPA Simcoe
7.9% IPA, £2.50 per bottle from the brewery.
The brewery has a webpage of other suppliers if you can’t make it over there on a Saturday.

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Tequila is much on my mind in recent times. I went to a tasting down at The Whisky Exchange and since then have started noticing it more and more in bars. Bartenders love it, extolling the virtues of their favourites at the drop of an interested hat, friends of mine have recommended me places that they discovered an appreciation for tequila in and I’ve even managed to try a few new ones (as well as some interesting mezcal). So when an invite came through asking if I wanted to take part in a cocktail competition to both celebrate the opening of the new branch of Benito’s Hat and choose a cocktail to go up as their first monthly special it would have been rude to say no.

Benito’s Hat is part of the new wave of Mexican restaurants that have been slowly building up in London for the last few years, pushing more towards authentic Mexican food rather than the Tex-Mex through a twisted British lens that has been the mainstay over here, pulling in insults from American and Mexican visitors alike. Benito’s stick very much to the taco/burrito ‘flat bread with stuff in’ side of things, and having now had some soft tacos pushed towards me (actually, forced on me by my tablemates who were worried that I was paying too much attention to the tequila) they’re not bad.

The original Benito’s hat, opened by Ben and Felipe, is down the road from Goodge Street station and much loved by food bloggers. It has a cocktail menu but is very much more focused on the food. They’ve now decided to expand and their new branch is on New Row near Covent Garden. The intention with this one is to combine the food from the first restaurant with a focus on the bar, which in a mexican restaurant is going to involve tequila. They’re working with Alex of Barrio Brands to provide good drinks, add to their cocktail menu and provide a changing tequila and cocktail of the month. The plan for our visit, attended by some bloggers and regulars from Qype, was to learn some more about Tequileño tequila, Benito’s Hat’s ’standard’, eat some tacos and then mix up some cocktails for judging by Ben and Alex.

Some tequila with a plate of cucumbers sprinkled with lime salt and chilli – a tasty accompaniment

El Tequileño was founded in 1959 by Jose Salles Cuervo, part of The Cuervo Family, who moved, as many tequila producers have, from being an agave grower to also using his plants to make his own spirit. He set up two distilleries in Tequila, La Guarreña and La Regional, and started producing tequilas from field to bottle. I managed to get a taste of the blanco, rested for a matter of days in steel tanks before bottling, and was rather impressed – slightly smoky and lightly peppery on the nose it had a big caramel sweetness to taste with a core of vegetal sourness. It had a very fresh ‘green’ taste to it which was not overwhelmed by the pepper of the agave – a remarkably smooth and sippable blanco.

To give us some inspiration, and to make sure that we got enough booze inside us, Alex did a run through the current cocktail menu, letting out the secrets of the recipes. First was the mainstay of tequila cocktails – the Margarita. Taking some inspiration from the Tommy’s Margarita, this one has a touch of agave syrup in with the tequila, triple sec and fresh lime to sweeten it up a little.

Next was the drink we were served on our way in, the Paloma. Put together by Don Javier Delgado Corona at La Caprilla in Tequila in the 1950s (he even has a Facebook appreciation page) this was designed to be a long cocktail involving tequila to take on the fashion of short drinks and shooters – half/half tequila/lime, a sprinkle of salt, all topped up with grapefruit soda. Alex used Ting, a Caribbean brand, but in Mexico they use one called Squirt. Cue laughter.

Next up was the Watermelon Margarita. I was expecting to find this a little boring – watermelon, lime, sugar, grenadine and tequila. However, the various ingredients drew out the cucumberiness of the melon, hiding its sweetness behind their own more directly syrupy nature. Really refreshing and very nice indeed.

The next one was quite disappointing – the Pomegranite Margarita. Grenadine, lime, tequila, fresh pomegranate, shaken with ice. The pomegranate flavour really didn’t come through, although the grenadine did stain everything pink, and it tasted like a slightly more watered version of the regular margarita.

Second to last was one that hooks in with something I’ve seen in a few bars recently – replicating Pimm’s without using Pimm’s. Pimm’s No 1 Cup, the base for a traditional ‘Pimm’s’, is an infusion based on gin (with peel, fruit, spices and whatever other voodoo the sekrit recipe requires) and many bartenders have been putting together their own versions , often combined with something other than lemonade, to give their unique alternatives. Benito’s Hat have jumped in with the Juarez Summer Cup, named for Benito Juarez, the stove-pipe hat wearing Mexican president from the mid 1800s who also gives his name to the restaurant. It’s a quick and dirty cup (a dash of Campari, dry vermouth, tequila, lime and lemonade, garnished with mint and cucumber) but tastes surprisingly complex with lots of vegetableness and a hint of coconut…

Last, but not least, is the obligatory ‘pick me up’ cocktail, the Mexican Espresso – tequila, kahlua (which is also Mexican), espresso and agave syrup, garnished with some coffee beans. The coffee blots out most of the other flavour (as you’d expect with kahlua and espresso involved) but it seemed to go down well in the room.

Also on the bar Alex had brought along some other tequilas from brands that he works with. First up was 7 Leguas, 7 leagues, named after the distance that a horse could run without getting tired which was used as the distance between towns in the early days of new world colonisation. The bottle features a picture of Pancho Villa’s horse, celebrating the Mexican revolution as many tequila companies do. They were founded in 1952 by the Gonzales family, the original producers of Patrón (and generally considered to have produced the best version, from the tequila boards I’ve been reading today) in the highlands to the east of Guadalajara. The soil is quite different to that around Tequila, with a much more heavy mineral element which leads to much larger agave plants, which in turn changes the flavour of the tequila. While I’d heard about this at the last tequila tasting I’d been to I was very interested to try it first hand.

I managed to taste my way through most of their range, starting with the 7 Leguas Blanco. On the nose it had a much deeper vegetal smell than the Tequileño with a light pepperiness and underlying sweetness. To taste it was spicy and sweet with a burst of ashy smoke and lots of fruit – almost strawberries and bananas. To finish it went slightly citrusy and soapy – a touch of yellow fairy liquid. Really interesting, up until the finish, I think this is the first Benito’s Hat tequila of the month and it’s definitely worth a try to compare to the lowland Tequileño.

I went through them in reverse order and next had some 7 Leguas D’Antaño, their extra anejo, aged for 5 years. On the nose it has dry oak and a light agave-ness with only a hint of pepperiness. To taste it’s sweet with sweet wood, a touch of menthol and a similar soapy/citrus finish to the blanco. I think this is further evidence that I’m not that big a fan of old tequila, with the woodiness generally changing the fresh agave a bit much for my liking.

I then shifted down the line to the 7 Leguas Añejo, aged for two years. The nose had pepper but also a burst of sweet woody vanilla and the taste had thick caramelly wood leading to a vegetably agave finish. A nice thickly sweet tequila that was on the right side of my taste for the combination of wood and agave.

This led me naturally to the last in the range – the 7 Leguas Reposado, aged 6-8 months. This was again rather sweet on the nose but with more of the fleshy agave and pepperiness than the older tequilas. To taste it had an icing sugar fizzy sweetness, a honey/agave syrup stickiness and light smoke leading to a bitter wood finish. If it wasn’t for the fizzy sweetness this would have been my favourite of the range, but definitely one if you like sweet spirits.

By this time the bar had started to pack down and there was one bottle left for me to try, one that I’d been keeping my eye on – Mezcal Vida from Del Maguey. This was a, as the name suggests, mezcal rather than a tequila and it’s made by a modern-day shaman near Wahaca, or so said the tale that Alex spun. I’ve recently tasted Forever Oax (at Wahaca, the restaurant named for the town where Mezcal Vida originates) and this was the next step along. The Forever Oax is a smoky mezcal but this stuff was a punch to the face – peppery and smoky on the nose, but with tobacco, rubber and dark chocolate to taste. My notes say ‘like chewing on a chocolate coated tractor tire in a badly kept humidor’, but the tequila was very much getting to me by that time. Really interesting and something that I think I need in my cupboard.

Anyways, before I moved onto that slow slide beneath the table that tasting a bar of tequilas naturally inspires, we made cocktails. The group split up into groups of four or five and armed with a table of ingredients (as well as anything else we could beg from the kitchen) and our mission was to make something to head up the opening cocktail menu. I teamed up with TehBus, TikiChris and Annie Mole and the plotting began. I started by wanting to make something with gooseberries and squished some up with the Tequileño blanco that we had on the table only to find that even strongly flavoured gooseberries didn’t really stand up to the agave pepperiness, disappearing in a lightly fruity flash. While I started tinkering with tabasco, worcester sauce, and green and red salsas (making a few spicy and tasty but not particularly inspiring shooters) Chris started on the recipe that would become our entry – the TiKiLa. After some experimentation with various proportions, and the acquisition of some Horchata from the kitchen, we came up with our final recipe:

The TiKiLa:
2 parts tequila
1 part triple sec
1 part horchata
3 parts crushed watermelon
Agave syrup for extra sweetness (if needed)

Shake all the ingredients together with ice (adding agave syrup to sweeten if necessary) and strain into a tumbler over fresh ice. Edge and garnish the glass with a bruised mint leaf.

Euwen, Chris and Me. Photo from Chris Osburn’s flickr stream, shot by Annie Mole

Somehow we managed to miss out on winning (we at first thought that we’d managed to put in too many ingredients to make it a do-able cocktail, but having seen both the ingredients list and Ben’s reaction to the winner, Jules’s Marvellous Margarita, it seems that it wasn’t something that had crossed his mind while judging) but our recipe did produce a good enough quantity of cocktail to pass around the assembled throng, although it did mainly end up back with us.

Anyways, a nice new choice for the Covent Garden area and, more interestingly for me, a new place to grab tequila. After 7 Legues the next tequila of the month is going to be Conde Azul, complete with ridiculously ornate bottle, so I may be visiting again soon.

El Tequileño Blanco
40%, 100% blue agave tequila. ~$30 per bottle

7 Leguas Blanco
40%, 100% blue agave tequila. ~£50 per bottle

7 Leguas Reposado
38%, 100% blue agave tequila. ~£50 per bottle

7 Leguas Añejo
38%, 100% blue agave tequila. ~£55 per bottle

7 Lequas D’Antaño
40%, 100% blue agave tequila. ~£150 per bottle

Mezcal Vida
42%, 100% organic agave mezcal. ~£45 per bottle

These aren’t easy to find to buy by the bottle, with TheDrinkShop having the 7 Leguas and Royal Mile Whiskies the Mezcal Vida, but El Tequileño seems to be only really being available to trade (unless you want to buy a case from Amathus or bring some back from the USA). If you’re interested in finding any of them in bars then ping Alex, as he probably knows a few who can help you out.

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I rather like The Rake. Not only do they have many interesting beers on tap, but they’ve joined forces with Melissa Cole to put on tastings of interesting beverages under the banner of lovebeer@borough. It surprised me how few booze tasting there actually are in London that are available for regular consumers and lovebeer@borough is the only group that I’ve seen doing regular beer tastings (please let me know if I’m being rubbish and there are more) and as such making my way along to one has been on The List for a while. The latest to pop up on the schedule was a tasting of beers from The Otley Brewing Company, accompanied by company director Nick Otley and head brewer Charlie Otley, so the telephone was used and a place grabbed.

To be honest I didn’t have much clue who the Otley Brewery were. I’ve heard of them and seen their stark branding but assumed, as many do it seems, that they were from Yorkshire. Otley is actually a Welsh brewer, based in Pontypridd. They take their name from the family who do the brewing and push themselves as a national brewer rather than a small regional (apart from the occasional burst of Welsh pride), which causes occasional confusion – a story was related where a friendly yorkshireman recently picked up some of the their barrels from The Bree Louise while grabbing some of his own, to help the Otley boys collect them a bit closer to home. Otley, Yorkshire, is 250 miles from Pontypridd…

The Otleys had been running pubs for a while, picking up a portfolio of three since the late 70s, so it wasn’t much of a jump to move into brewing – they had the distribution channel waiting so ‘all’ they needed was a place to brew and someone to make the beer. They found a unit down the road from The Bunch of Grapes and sent Charlie off to Sunderland to learn how to make beer. While he was away the brewery was finished and Nick and Matthew (also an Otley, but one who didn’t make it over to London for the tasting) started experimenting, producing the prototype of their first brew, the O1. Charlie applied his new know-how and in 2005 their first commercial beers were produced.

The first one we tried, appropriately, was the O1. It’s a pale golden ale. It’s light to taste, with a pleasant sweetness and slight nuttiness drifting to an orangey hoppy finish. There’s not a lot to it but it’s an easy drinking beer that’s great for a rather hot and sticky afternoon, like the one we were hiding from.

Next up was the O5 Gold. It’s another golden ale and was originally brewed as a one-off for Pontypridd rubgy club. It used a combination of US and UK hops and went down rather well, selling out rather quickly. It was promoted to the seasonal list and from there up to the regular beer portfolio. It’s brewed with lager yeast and, according to the little booklet I grabbed, now brewed with just american hops. It’s, predictably, a light gold colour, and tastes good and hoppy – a chunk of lemony hops and a rounded bitterness providing most of the flavour. This one sits perfectly in my regular favourite beer category (hoppy golden ales) and it’s one that I’ll keep an eye out for.

We then moved on to the first of the more regularly named beers of the day – the O4 Columbo. Their branding is quite stark and the names were equally stark to start with, being simply numbered. Charlie likes beers with names though, so the punning has begun. This is the next on their numerically ordered list after the unpunny Boss and it is, as with the last couple, a golden ale. Melissa’s choice for the tasting range was very much towards the more summery side of things, and this sat happily next on the list. Bitter hopped with Columbus from the USA, hence the name, and then dry hopped in the barrel with Chinook and Cascade it has a lot of floral bitterness and mushy hops on the nose. To taste it has a sweetness that fades to a chewy hop bitterness, finishing with more floral hops. You can really taste the effect of the dry hopping and it’s a good, if a little cloying, pint.

Next was the Motley Brew, inspired by a beer brewed at the brewery by Glyn from The Rake. The original was intended to be an 8% double IPA and it became a 7.5% IPA launched last December. The beer is now a more sensible 5.5% and is in the brewery’s portfolio as their April seasonal.  It was (deliberately) slightly hazy with a dry and bitter hoppy flavour. It had a prickly spiciness to it, reminding me of the air in Horsham on a brewing day when I was a kid, with the Marmitey hop smell rolling over the school playground.

Some hops, yesterday

Hops are a subject close to the brewery’s heart, with the first four beers showing a dedication to golden hoppy ales. The price of hops has risen considerably in the last few years and while the quality of British produce is improving, years of production to the specification of the mass market has made the plants less suited to the needs of microbrewers. As such Otley, like many others, import a lot of hops from the US, and in recent times New Zealand. This requires good forward planning, with brews not only needing to be alterered based on the state of the recieved hops, but also various varieties running out due to demand, forcing defensive buying. Otley use whole hops, rather than pellets, which also adds difficulty to storage and keeping them fresh. It’s not easy producing hoppy beer…

Next up was the O-Garden, the current champion beer of Wales. It’s a wheat beer with orange, coriander and cloves, with the peel and spices cooked for a bit in a kiln to remove some of the immediate sweetness. On the nose it was spicy, with a gingery note. To taste it was quite medicinal, with menthol/clove and citrus – like an orange studded with cloves ready to be dunked into some wine for mulling. It was nice, reminding me a bit of Umbel Magna, but much lighter.

Continuing the spicy theme we moved on to the beer that Melissa recently brewed with Otley – thai-bO. The name came first for this one, after some late night pub based plotting between Melissa and Nick Otley. Working within the Thai remit they brought in lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, lime peel and galangal to do the flavouring, drying the peel and then rubbing some of the ingredients together to make a fragrant mix. The galangal went in at the start of the boil, with most of the rest going in halfway through and the lime leaves at the end – the first batch used 500g of lime leaves, which is quite a scary amount. The beer has been popular, especially amongst those, like Nick’s wife, who don’t normally like beer. As such it’s now part of the seasonal portfolio, appearing this August on a more general release. It’s got a lot of floral citrus on the nose and is similar to the O-Garden in taste, although veering more towards the citrus. Unlike other asian influenced beers I’ve tried this one isn’t particularly sweet, the kiln drying helping moderate to that, making it much more drinkable. It’s not one for me to drink all-night, but it’s certainly an interesting and tasty addition to the list.

We then moved on a fairly new brew – the still anonymous O7. It’s a cloudy wheat beer, with discussion in the room over whether it was more Belgian or German in style (it used Belgian style yeast and is referred to as Belgian, but is being described as a weissen on the website…the consensus seemed to be German), with lots of different hops – a blend of three for bitterness and another three for aroma. It smells sweet and spicy and has the distinctive citrus/grainy wheat beer flavour with a chunk of sweetness. It switches quickly from that to a quick bitter hoppy finish. My notes suggest that it runs from bananas to Angostura bitters, but that’s overselling it a bit.

To finish we had a try of the bottle conditioned version of the O8. This is one of their first beers (the number is not necessarily consecutive), an 8%er brewed for the Great Welsh Beer Festival in 2005 before they were eligible to enter competition (you need to have been brewing for 12 months). It was a hit, selling out before its official release time of 8pm, and was the champion beer at the festival the next year. It’s fruity and sweet, with a fizziness from both the bottling and alcohol content. It has a bitterness that rolls around the side of the tongue and it’s thick in the mouth – my note suggested ‘Custardy?’. To quote Charlie, it’s ‘half tidy’. Which is, apparently, Welsh for good.

O1
4% golden ale

O5 Gold
5% golden ale

O4 Columbo
4% pale golden ale

Motley Brew
5.5% IPA

O-Garden
4.8% clear wheat beer with orange, coriander and cloves

thai-bO
golden ale with Thai flavours

O7 Weissen
5% Belgian (German?) style cloudy wheat beer

Bottle conditioned O8
8% strong pale golden ale

Otley’s bottled beers are available from various outlets, including their own beer selling website – Real Beer Box
The Rake often has them on tap (keep an eye on the twitter feed for details) and Charlie also mentioned that the Bree Louise sometimes gets a barrel in.

If you want to try them all, then get up to the Otley (Yorshire) beer festival in November. Otley (the Welsh brewer) will be turning up with a full range to try and confuse the locals…

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This is one that’s been on my radar for a while. I’m a big fan of hoppy beer, having worked my way up through golden summer ales to hoppy British IPAs and then on to the more extreme US craft beer stakes, and also a fan of experimentation and novelty ales, so Stone Ruination IPA ticks a bunch of boxes for me. Coming in at over 100 IBUs, and thus into the realms of the unknown, it’s about as hoppy a beer as you can find on the market (even beating Brewdog and their love of having records) and thus definitely sitting on my list.

The Rake at Borough Market maintain a twitter feed on which they post what beers are on each day. This is excellent, as it shows me if there’s anything interesting I’m after, and terrifying, as I am a stupidly compulsive person who will travel across most of London (as long as it’s near the tube) to grab a taste of some booze that I’ve been looking for. So when I saw them announce that they had Ruination on tap, having been out of town on the other occasions I saw it pop up on the feed, I jumped on a bus and head London Bridge-wards to have a taste.

At over £3 a third it’s not one that you’re going to be drinking all night, and that’s before you get a taste of it. It’s quite a murky beer, with an orange bronze tint and the nose powerfully hoppy – like sticking your head through an attic hatch into a dry hop store on a hot day – floral but heavy and bitter. To taste it is a combination of every type of hope I can think of – purely bitter hops, dry hops, concentrated hop pellets, wet hops and hops growing in a field. It finished with more hops and little else – there is one category of flavour in this beer and it is the hop. At 7.7% it has a bit of a kick and combined with the over the top bitterness this isn’t one that you can drink much of – after 1/4 of a pint I had a pain behind my right eye, after a half I’d decided that I’d had enough.

I then of course ran straight around the corner to Utobeer and bought a bottle to take home.

In the bottle it looks the same but is a little bit different. The nose is similar, although not quite so flabby, becoming a smaller hop store with fresher hops, but the taste isn’t quite so varied across the range of hops as on draft. It has a coherent and pure citrusy flavour, with a hint of mustiness, running right through the middle of the palate and dropping off to a mushy bitter ending with a touch of malty sweetness and bitter orange. It feels more restrained and less like a novelty beer, and while by the end of the bottle your palate is still shot, it’s also quite refreshing.

The tap version is something to be tried at least once, although probably not more than once, but the bottled version is actually something really quite nice. You need to like hops but if you do then it is, as it says on the bottle, a liquid poem to their glory.

Stone Ruination IPA
7.7 % India Pale Ale from the USA
~£3 per 1/3rd pint on draft at The Rake and ~£3 per 330ml bottle at Utobeer

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It’s incredible how important one’s sense of smell is when tasting things. I have, of course, heard from numerous people (including my anosmic mate John) about how taste is predominantly smell, with the tongue painting in wide strokes while the nose adds the detail, so it was rather annoying to discover the actual extent to which my own sense of taste is reliant on my nose on the same day as I finally made it along to a Whisky Squad tasting.

The Whisky Squad is a monthly meetup set up by Andy of Good Drinks Etc and Jason B. Standing to be more informal than most of the tastings out in the wild, with a focus on learning, talking about whisky in a small group and generally having a good time. With assistance from Darren, The Whisky Guy, as whisky expert (a title he veraciously denies, despite working for Master of Malt and having hours of whisky related anecdotes to roll out at the drop of a segue) and moustache wearer extraordinaire, they take over the upstairs room at The Gunmakers (thanks to Jeff the easily bribed with whisky landlord) on the first Thursday of each month to taste through a bunch of whiskies focused around a theme. This month’s was Islay, Andy having just returned from a weekend up there and thus laden with bottles.

Islay is one of the most concentrated areas of whisky production in the world, with 8 distilleries dotted around the 240 square miles of the island floating just off of the Kintyre peninsula on the west coast of Scotland. Famed for their peaty whiskies it’s a bit of a whisky connoiseurs paradise, with each of the distilleries a short drive from each other and each offering something quite different.

I wandered along certain that my worst day of hayfever in about ten years wouldn’t hinder the tasting of pungent island malts. However, within seconds of the first dram being placed in front of me my worst fears were realised – I could smell nothing at all. Even the strongest snort did nothing but hurt the back of my nose as the physical reaction to the alcohol remained, but no twitch of sensory cells to inform me of what I was sniffing. Luckily, Andy acted as my seeing nose dog, pinging me tasting notes, and I grabbed a couple of samples to take home and try later on.

First up was a sample from Master of Malt to keep us going while Andy and Darren kicked off the evening with some talk of Islay and the makings of whisky. The Master of Malt 12 Year Old Islay is a blend of malts from the island and is peated to about 15ppm. On the nose it has bitter-sweet peat, a touch of sweet wood oil and digestive biscuits. To taste the peat is more subdued and joined with a hint of woodsmoke and wet cardboard. There’s a bump of malty sweetness in the middle, with a touch of orangey citrus, before a it trails off into a subdued, short caramel orange finish. Water brings out some vanilla sweetness to fight against the wood smoke, adding a prickly damp bonfire edge to the taste. It’s smoky and peaty, with a hint of citrus and some sweetness – a classic example of what is thought of as a ‘typical islay malt’, even if such a statement doesn’t really mean anything, as the whiskies to follow will demonstrate.

As a special treat before we started the tasting proper was a very small amount of Master of Malt Bowmore 26 Year old, accompanied by a parma violet. Unfortunately I didn’t get anything off the glass other than a burnt nose, but it was quite obvious to everyone else why a parma violet had accompanied it – it has a distinct sweet violet smell sitting in amongst the other flavours of a sweet shop.

The whiskies that are put on for the tasting, excluding random samples and donations, are tasted blind, with paper wrapped around the bottles to obscure labels and details, in an attempt to remove prejudices and prejudging of the flavours. Unfortunately for me I recognise the bottle shapes of most Islay distilleries, but having no sense of smell this was my main way of trying to work out what everyone was drinking before the big reveal.

Next up was a bottle that I didn’t recognise, the Bunnahabhain 18 Year Old. The Bunnahabhain (bunna-har-ven) distilleryis unique amongst those of the island in that its standard expression is pretty much unpeated , coming in at 1-2ppm. They do, however, produce a good quantity of peated spirit but other than for special bottlings this generally goes to other companies for blends, including Black Bottle which it makes up a significant component of. Andy had picked this up at the distillery, along with an armful of leaflets, maps, tasting note cards and other assorted propaganda, and had really liked it due to it being so different to the peat heavy assortment that he tried up until then. From everyone else’s tasting notes it had cheap chocolate brownies, honey and sherry trifle on the nose and was dry and woody to taste, with a salty buttery finish.

To follow this we moved on to the Bruichladdich Peat, a whisky that was difficult to tell from the bottle shape alone due to the distillery’s habit of doing so many releases – it was suggested around the room that it’s almost as if whenever Jim McEwan, the production manager, has a crazy idea they drop what they’re doing and make a batch of it. The Peat is a back to basics version of Bruichladdich – peated to ~35ppm, matured in bourbon casks for an unspecified amount of time and bottled without any of the finishes that have become their trademark in recent times. The notes I have for this are that it combines peat and wood smoke on the nose, with a nice balance of the two combined with some sweetness and dry vanilla wood to taste. One that I want to revisit, as I’ve been a fan of all the ‘Laddies I’ve tried so far.

This one brought up a point for discussion – the difference between peat and smoke. As peat is introduced into the malt by way of smoke people often assume that the two flavours are the same, but there is a distinct difference. In addition to peatiness there is also smokiness in the flavours introduced by the barrel used for maturation and this is a different kind of smoke to that introduced by the peat. Generally the peat will bring in more medicinal flavours, such as the TCP-like tang that Laphroaig is known for, or a sweet smoke, such as with Bowmore, whereas the wood will bring in more campfire tastes and smells. As ever, the various different bits of the whisky making process, from water to finishing, all have their effect on the finished product, all working together to produce interesting flavours.

After this I threw my contribution to the evening into the ring – the remains of my young Kilchoman sample, which Darren identified as having been in wood for 6 months. Kilchoman have recently produced their first 3 year old bottlings to quite a lot of acclaim (I have a bottle of an upcoming Royal Mile Whisky single cask bottling reserved, as recommended by Jason, which I’m very much looking forward to) and their new spirit is a great indicator of how Islay whiskies mature in the barrel. I usually describe this as tasting like ‘cattle feed and death’, but with a bit more delicacy it has lots of malty grain with sweet peat and a hint of woodiness that isn’t particularly developed in this young sample.

After that interlude we got back on to chosen whiskies with a Caol Ila 10 year old ‘Unpeated’ expression. Strangely for an evening of Islay malts half of the whiskies we tried weren’t heavily peated, with this one having little or no peat in at all, rather than the usual ~15ppm that the distillery uses. I grabbed a dram of this to take home, Caol Ila being a whisky that I’ve been intrigued by in the past (with a cask strength Tokaji finish being one of the most orangey whiskies I’ve ever tasted). On the nose there’s candy floss, a wisp of smoke and something almost toffee appley. To taste it has dry prickly wood, orange juice concentrate (a flavour that I’ve found to be especially strong in the Caol Ila’s I’ve tried) and sweet wood smoke. It’s cask strength, at 65.8%, so can happily take some water which opens the nose to add more oil and sweaty socks and a slab of sweetness to the taste, along with some coal dust, bitter oak, sweet butter and orchard fruitiness. A fearsome dram neat, but one that mellows nicely with water.

The citrus nature of many of the Islay whiskies seems a bit strange, but Darren explained it as coming from the saltiness inherent on being matured on the island. The salt interacts with the wood of the barrels creating citrus-like flavouring compounds which are picked up by the wood, thus introducing not only briney notes into the whisky but also the lemon and orange flavours that are often present.

Next was the last of the night, which by a process of elimination was the distillery only edition that Andy had promised us – Lagavulin Distillery Only 2010. This is a cask strength bottling that you can, as the name suggests, only get from the distillery. 6000 bottles were produced and it was released in time for this year’s Feis Ile. Along with the limited nature of the bottling it’s also quite special as it was finished in port casks. On the nose it’s pure Lagavulin, with seaweed, brine, a background of sweet peat and a hint of meatiness. To taste it’s spicy, with the port wood very obvious at the back of the mouth. It has seafood risotto, seawater, caramel covered twigs and a mixed spice tail. A drop of water takes the edge off of the prickle, bringing out big sugary sweetness, revealing the background woody savouriness and adding a chunk of smoky sweetness, like burned sugar. This is a really rather special dram and one that it’s worth going to the distillery to grab.

An interesting array of whiskies, with only 2 of the 4 actually being particularly peaty, showing just how big a range Islay actually produces. The guys know how to run an evening and having finished the tasting the conversation continued in the Gunmaker’s bar until the pub closed. I’m signed up for the next one (and am even missing a day of the GBBF to make sure I can go) which should be an evening of summer whiskies with Diageo’s Colin Dunn, who led the Talisker tasting I went to last year, which promises to be an event – putting Colin in a small room strikes me as a recipe for enthusiasm overload, in a good way.

Master of Malt 12 Year Old Islay
Islay Blended Malt Whisky, 40%. £34.95 from Master of Malt

Master of Malt 26 Year Old Bowmore
Single cask Islay malt whisky, 53.4%. £99.95 from Master of Malt

Bunnahabhain 18 Year Old
Islay Single Malt Whisky, 43%. £48.95 from Master of Malt

Bruichladdich Peat
No age statement Islay Single Malt Whisky, 46%. £31.95 from Master of Malt

Caol Ila 10 Year Old ‘Unpeated’ 2009
Islay single cask single malt whisky, 65.8%. £51.95 from Master of Malt.

Lagavulin 2010 ‘Distillery Only’
Port wood finished Islay single malt whisky, 52.5%. Only available from the distillery – £70 for one or two for £130.

If you want to come along to a Whisky Squad tasting then keep an eye on their website and sign up when they announce the next event. The group is small (~15) and it’s first come first served, so you need to be quick. They do run a waiting list so it’s worth letting them know even if they have run out of spots.

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For many people drinks have a bit more associated with them than just their ingredients – there’s a slab of experience surrounding the drinking, ordering or making of said drink, all unique and tied up to memory. One of those with the most baggage for me is the Whiskey Sour.

I’d known of the existence, although not the composition, of the drink for many years, having heard it mentioned in a film sometime. It was embedded in my brain as a drink to be ordered in a hotel in the USA, basking in hot weather, perched at a bar, wearing a shirt unbuttoned a little bit too far down, messily eating shrimp cocktails and hearing the life story of man who travelled the 48 contiguous states selling brushes to gullible housewives. I wasn’t sure what a whiskey sour was, or even really what a shrimp cocktail was other than it involved something that looked like prawns and McDonald’s special sauce, but it stuck in my head as a romanticised drink attached to my obvious future as an internationally jetsetting business man.

Luckily for the first few years of my career I did do quite a lot of travelling to the USA, although confined to Connecticut (with occasional jaunts to New York), and shortly after starting I was confronted with an opportunity to turn my American dream into reality. I was visiting to attend my company’s first worldwide engineering conference, dragging all of us computer pounding folk from all over the world together in a hotel and letting us talk crap together for a few days. These days that’s a logistical nightmare, with our last conference involving me coordinating 62 flights from the UK as part of our 550 strong worldwide party, but back then it was a much smaller affair and all 5 of us from UK turned up a few days early, staying in the Old Greenwich Hyatt Regency.

The Gazebo Bar, from the Hyatt website

This was my first proper US hotel and being used to the more family run affairs found in the seaside resorts of the UK and the plasticky package holiday filled hell holes of the Mediterranean it was a bit of a shock – the hotel is an enclosed courtyard containing a small forest, complete with river. My room’s window opened onto the inner courtyard, a 100m long ‘room’, and looked down onto the leafy canopy. Downstairs, once you had walked over a bridge to it, there was the ‘Gazebo Bar’ which I found myself sitting at on my first night. To my right were a couple of guys, shirts unbuttoned just a bit too far, messily eating shrimp cocktails, drinking Martinis and laughing. This was the time for me to unfurl my dream – I ordered a whiskey sour. Rather than the look of respect I expected from the barmen, a young englishman asking for a drink with such history should inspire something, I got a cherry plonked in a glass with a handful of crushed ice, some whiskey and a cloudy green liquid that squirted out of a postmix tap.

It tasted marvellous.

I may have been assisted back to my room by my boss that night, his offer to buy me a drink leading to the largest ’shot’ I have ever experienced being poured, but my love of the whiskey sour continued. However, after a while it waned as I spoke to barstaff and realised that I was just getting something about as sophisticated as a whiskey and coke, and that the green sour mix that they were pouring was just citrus flavoured sugar water. I then discovered that not all American beer was rubbish and the whiskey sour disappeared from my internal menu, replaced by the works of Magic Hat, Dogfish Head and the questionable output of the Southport Brewing Company. This weekend I suddenly remembered their existence and having a bottle of Jack Daniels and a couple of limes to hand I decided to have a go at constructing one.

The first step to making a whiskey sour is the creation of the sour mix. I did a bit of research to find out what was actually in this green nectar and found that in general it is just powdered citric acid, green food colouring and sugar (with foaming agents), rehydrated and then poured into an unsuspecting glass. However, ‘real’ sour mix is not hard to create – equal parts of citrus juice and sugar syrup. As ever, proportions are quibbled over and some like to add egg whites to make sure that you get a foamy drink when it’s shaken, but I decided to leave that out (especially as my simple syrup is quite sugary and foams nicely on its own with a bit of a hard shake). My first attempt used a couple of rather wrinkled limes and tasted a bit stale, but I went out with a mission to find good citrus fruit and obtained 3 limes and a couple of lemons to make attempt number 2.  Unfortunately my mission didn’t lead to my finding a juicing device (specifically something looking like this, but I couldn’t even find a standard fruit reamer) so I squished my fruit using a hand and a fork (which is a) painful on the squishing hand after a bit and b) really painful if you have a cut on your hand) producing about 200ml of juice. I then mixed this with 200ml of syrup and made it up to 500ml with more syrup and some water (previously poured on the skins of the squished fruit and shaken around a bit to get as much citrusyness as I could), tweaking the taste to be sweet and sour, but not too strong.

To construct the whiskey sour I put 50ml of whiskey in a shaker with 100ml of sour mix and a good handful of ice. I shook until the ice had cracked into smaller pieces and it had all gone a bit foamy, serving it unstrained in a round bottomed tumbler (cos it looks pretty) and garnished with a cocktail cherry.

It tasted marvellous.

This post was written while sitting on my balcony, drinking the pictured whisky sour and listening to The Rolling Stones’s Exile on Main Street, which I think might actually be the best album ever created. It’s getting cold now though, so I’m going inside.

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Numbers are helpful things when it comes to rating things. Over the years I’ve moved away from the idea of giving things that I talk and write about review scores, trying to give enough of a mix of fact an opinion (hopefully obviously delineated) to allow the reader to make up their own mind. While you can say a few definite things about pretty much anything you might want to review (music, games, food and drink in my case) in general you’re going to end up hovering around in the murky pool of personal opinion. However, people like being able to put a number on something to know how good it is in an absolute fashion, no matter how inappropriate that may be.

One of the way that people judge whisky is by its age. Now at first that seems quite sensible but, as the press release I just got sent by Chivas brothers points out, not everyone actually knows what a whisky’s age actually means. By the current regulations for most whiskies in the world (including at least Scottish, American, Irish and Indian whisk(e)y and probably most others) the age statement on the bottle has to list the minimum age of the whiskies that are used to make it. So in a blend like Teachers, which is specifically marked as 8 years old, you can be certain that no whisky that has gone into the bottle is less than 8 years old even if you can’t tell much more than that. When you get to the world of premium whiskies people take a lot more notice of the number on the bottle.

Single malt whisky just means that all the whisky in the bottle is made from malted barley at one distillery. Any whisky that isn’t a single cask, and it’s very rare for a single cask whisky not to be marketed as such, can come from any number of different barrels of varying ages, blended together to produce a consistent product. The consistency is the important bit, as every cask will taste a bit different due to differences in the wood, location in the warehouse, temperature variation during maturation, wind direction, number of times knocked by a fork-lift going round the corner, phase of the moon and pretty much anything else. This inconsistency leads to the thriving market in single cask whisky bottlings as well making the role of master blender something more than a button pushing job. In order to maintain a constant output of consistently flavoured product the blender needs to not only understand how to mix the various different whiskies together to make something that tastes nice, but also tastes the same as the last batch of thousands of bottles. This involves painstaking management of casks, constant tweaking of the recipe on a batch by batch basis and forethought when it comes to laying down spirit to mature to ensure that there is enough of the correct flavour components to make the whisky that’s needed. It’s an impressive job and one that people pay tribute to every day without realising it when they open a new bottle of whisky and it tastes the same, or at least pretty much the same, as the last one of the same type.

So, what am I wiffling on about? The key point of Chivas Brothers’ new campaign is that the age of whisky is important, which I agree with, and that older whisky is better, which I don’t. To be totally accurate they said this:

One of the greatest influences on the flavour of whisky comes from maturation. Much of the complexity of Scotch whisky comes mainly from its time in oak casks in Scotland; with outstanding spirit and excellent wood management, it follows that the longer the maturation period, the more complex the whisky.

Which is pretty much what I said if you equate complexity with quality, which I don’t necessarily agree with.

In the end all an age statement gives you is an indication of what has been done to the whisky. Something marked as a 5 year old might be made up of a splash of younger whisky and a body of a dodgy 40 year old that got lost at the back of the warehouse until its alcoholic percentage had dropped below 40%, meaning that it couldn’t be sold as whisky on its own any more – a dash of young strong whisky and you’ve got something that can go to market; a 30 year old can consist entirely of some 4th fill barrels that have imparted little but overly woody notes to a dodgy batch of spirit; a 5 year old can have sat in very active wood in the corner of the warehouse with the most constant temperature, maturing extra quickly and producing a fantastic whisky (one of my favourite whiskies of all time was a 5 year old single cask Arran that has more complexity than many whiskies 2 or 3 times its age) – you just don’t know.

Over the years the distilleries have generally settled on the convention that the older the whisky the better it is. This is understandable when you realise that every extra year in the barrel means that more spirit evaporates, another year of ‘rent’ needs to be paid for the storage and another year without realising the capital tied up in the whisky has gone by. This all adds up making older whisky more expensive no matter how good it is – as we all know though, expense doesn’t necessarily equal quality.

In general the distilleries try to ensure that their more expensive bottlings are better quality, but in recent times there has been a move towards putting out both younger whiskies and those without age statements. From Macallan’s Whisky Makers editions to Compass Box’s blends, from Chivas Brothers’ own Aberlour A’bunadh to Laphroaig’s Quarter Cask, more and more producers are leaving behind age statements in favour of producing whisky with certain characteristics and flavours that they hope will appeal to consumers. It strikes me as strangely opportune that just as this fashion is starting to catch on with other distillers Chivas Brothers, who claim to have 85% of the market share of whisky aged of 21 years, decide to come out with a campaign to start placing more importance on the age statement again. I was starting to like Pernod Ricard, the Chivas owners – Phil Huckle, the Chivas brand ambassador, seems like a nice chap and their whisky is generally pretty good (with the A’bunadh especially being very good indeed [in my opinion]), but I don’t like this latest move.

As ever with whisky you can’t tell all that much from the outside of the bottle. You can sometimes see the distiller, sometimes see the age, sometimes even see what sort of barrels it has been in (although with the regulations on what denotes a ‘cask finish’ being quite lax my idea of merely pouring whisky through a funnel made from an old sherry barrel into a holding tank may well count as a legal finish) but you can’t be certain what the whisky will taste like until it’s in a glass in front of your face. Just as we were moving to a more mature feeling market of whisky description, with age just being another factor in describing the process by which it was made, this feels like a regressive move from a big player in the market with enough marketing clout to push things back by years.

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The name of The Whisky Lounge seems a bit of a misnomer – rather than a loungey bar somewhere it mainly seems to be a guy called Eddie. He organises events up and down the country based, around tasting whisky and having a good time. I went along to his show in London this year, at which everyone seemed to know him and he knew almost all of them, and it was rather good. So, having stuck my name on the mailing list I waited for his next London event, which came up rather fortuitously – a tasting of the range of the Arran distillery’s whiskies, led by Céline Têtu. I’d spoken briefly to Céline at The Whisky Lounge London event, Arran being the first stand I went to, and was rather taken by her excellent scots/french accent so was keen to wander along to hear more and also learn about one of my favourite distilleries.

Arran is an island that I visited a few times as a child – popping over on the ferry (and on The Waverley at least once) when up in Scotland visiting people in Ayr. I don’t remember much about it apart from always asking if we could back every time we visited. When I joined the SMWS a few years back I saw that they had some bottlings from Arran and rather liking the style bought most of them until recently. I also picked up one of the distillery bottlings – the limited edition Peacock – and rather liked that as well, all of which has led me towards wanting to try more of their whiskies.

The Arran distillery is quite young, having been built from scratch at Lochranza in the north of the island in 1995, and is currently the island’s only distillery. The Isle of Arran itself is in a rather unique location, sitting between the mainland and the peninsula of Kintyre, home of Campbeltown whiskies, experiencing a relatively constant and mild climate thanks to the influence of the Gulf Stream. This helps in the maturation of the whisky, with the constant temperature increasing the effect of time, with Arran whisky often passing as older than it is (as I discovered with one of my SMWS bottlings – 5 years old, the colour of Irn Bru and tasting as rich as something two to three times its age).

It’s quite difficult for new single malt focused distilleries to pay for themselves to start with, with 3 years before you can call your spirit whisky and generally 10 years before you can start putting a ‘regular’ bottling on the shelves. To help augment the income from limited young bottlings (such as the SMWS ones that I tried, as well as ones from other independent bottlers) they built a visitors centre, opened by The Queen, and have become part of the tourist trail on the island. As a thankyou to Her Majesty they gave a couple of casks to Princes William and Harry which they’ve been looking after ever since, as seen in this video from back in April:

The distillery turns 15 years old this week and to celebrate they are having an open day on July 3rd with various events during the day, a ceilidh in the evening, a special whisky cask aged beer from the rather good local Arran Brewery, 3 single cask bottlings from 1995 and a generally available special edition bottling, but more about that later.

The distillery uses barley that is malted offsite and farmed on the east coast of Scotland between Dundee and Montrose. They experimented with using local barley but it didn’t work particularly well, leading to their initial importing of pre-ground unpeated malt from the mainland. Having decided that they needed more control over the grinding of the barley a mill and silo were built on site in 2007, allowing less frequent deliveries and grinding on the premises.

Their stills are quite squat, with long, thin, tall necks stretching up 3-4m to a right angled lyne arm, giving a light and fruity spirit. Eddie had managed to get some new make to try and there were a few glasses dotted around the tables. On the nose it was sweet with mulchy grain, hay, sweet malt and a hint of sugary fruit – maybe pineapple. To taste it was very buttery in mouthfeel, with lots of sweet cereals.

The first whisky to taste of the night was the Arran 10 year old. A mix of about 80% oloroso sherry cask matured whisky and 20% bourbon, this is the latest iteration of their ’standard’ malt, first produced in 2006 and taking over from the 8 year old which had been the standard until then. Since the first release they have slowly changed the proportions of bourbon and sherry oak, starting with 100% bourbon and potentially moving to a 100% sherry in the near future. It’s bottled at 46%, and, as with all of the distillery’s whiskies, has no added colouring and is not chill filtered. On the nose it has candle wax, salt, milk chocolate, raisins and some lemon sherbert. To taste it has polished oak floors, woody spice, a touch of dried fruit and a dry woody finish. Water opens it up a bit with sweet honey, big tannic winey wood, a hint of chocolate and a spicy finish.

Next up was one of their Icons of Arran bottlings – The Rowan Tree, the follow-up to the Peacock that I have in the cupboard. It’s named for the local profusion of Rowan trees, not a particularly common species in Scotland, more often being found in Scandinavia. It’s bottled at 46% as well and made up of whisky from a batch of 10 second fill sherry butts, producing about 6000 bottles of which 600 are allocated for sale in the UK. On the nose it’s slightly briny with spice and dried fruit. To taste it has black pepper, cumin and a touch of curry, as well as raisins and a dry spicy finish. Left in the glass for a bit some flavours of grass and stones started to emerge. With water more wood popped out and the fruit turned to candy, with sticky boiled sweets behind the oak.

Third of the evening was one of their cask finishes – The Arran Madeira Finish. This is bottled at 50% and consists of whisky matured for 8 years and then finished for 10 months in madeira casks. This is part of a limited run of 6300 bottles, but the cask finishes they tried was so popular that they’ve decided to compliment the growing Arran range with 3 of them as regular bottlings – Port, Sauternes and Amarone (a wine that I’d not heard of, made using partially dried grapes to concentrate the flavour). This one was quite spicy on the nose with dried and tropical fruit (pineapple, apple syrup/maybe mango). To taste it had a dry sweetness to start, quickly becoming fruity and syrupy before tailing off into a spicy wood finish. Water brought out more syrup on the nose, and added more wood and a touch of milk chocolate to the taste.

Being so young a distillery it’s quite difficult to have a wide range of whiskies at traditional ages. They will shortly be releasing their oldest regular production whisky – a 14 year old which we couldn’t try as it was still in the cask finishing its maturation. This will lead to the standard range of whiskies being the 10 and 14 year olds as well as the three cask finishes mentioned above. In addition to the single malts they also do a cream liqueur, Arran Gold, and a pair of blends, Robert Burns and Lochranza, the latter of which has been on my ‘to try’ list for a bit. In a few more years they will have an 18 to round out the age selection, but from there who knows what they might do.

In the meantime they’ve already been continuing their experimentation and the fourth whisky we tried was very much in that line – The Arran Pomerol Finish. Pomerol is an area in France near to Bordeaux known for producing expensive wine, making this an interesting finish both for the quality of the previous occupant of the barrel (a wine from Château La Conseillante) as well being a red wine finish, not particularly common due to it being hard to produce one that works well. This one is bottled at 50% and has a pinkish tinge that is surprising for having only been in the wine cask for 6 months. Again this is finished after 8 years in oak, split 50/50 between bourbon and sherry and married together before being put in the wine barrels. On the nose it is quite meaty with lots of heavy red wine woodiness. To taste it has a thick sweetness with more meaty wininess, hints of icing sugar, spice and a touch of lemon, rounding off to a woody finish. Water brings in more sweet vanilla and fruit but also more sour wood. Left in the glass for a while it opens up further with more sherry sweetness and red wine heaviness coming through. A bit of a divider this, with most of the room really not liking it. I was more on the dislike side, although as it developed in the glass it grew on me.

Next to taste was a bit of a treat – The Arran 15th Anniversary Bottling. This one is being specially produced for this week’s birthday, with 5640 bottles going on sale very shortly (although only 500 of them staying in the UK) – Céline had only had a couple of tastes of this before, showing quite how new it is. It’s from a batch of 1999 distilled spirit, matured in oloroso casks for 8-9 years and then finished for 2 years in Amontillado casks, my favourite kind of sherry. On the nose it’s quite savoury, with sherry wood mixing with a slight brininess to give rich salted caramel. To taste it’s thick and syrupy, with red grapes, spicy wood and a chunk of tannin, rolling towards a buttery apple finish. With water there’s more wine fruit and buttery biscuits, and the wood is tamed although still sits spicily in the finish. A tasty whisky and a nice celebration of the first 15 years of production.

The last whisky of the night was a bit of a curveball – The Peated Arran. Having made a point of letting us know that Arran produced unpeated spirit, Céline went on to explain what this dram was all about. It was first produced in 2004 and came about due to an accidental delivery of barley peated to about 14ppm rather than the distillery’s regular unpeated order. Rather than send it back they decided to have a go at making whisky with it, producing 5 casks. It was rather popular and as such the distillery now produce a few casks of peated spirit a year, having now upped the peat levels from the initial mistake to about 20-25ppm. They make them as the last batches each year before closing down for summer maintenance, giving a chance to clean any residual peatiness out of the workings before starting again in autumn with their regular unpeated spirit. This bottling was one of 253 bottles from a 2005 distillation from barley at about 14 ppm, matured in first fill bourbon casks and bottled in 2009 at 57.7%. On the nose it has a light smokiness laying on a background of grassy fields. To taste it was rich with some sweet peatiness as well as sweet oranges and golden syrup. Water brought out the more vegetal notes from the nose, with a some grass appearing, accompanying oily butter and some sweet mulch. It took water well, tasting younger as the water knocked out some of the peat, adding more cereal and mulchy grass. Being a younger whisky the peat overpowered the wood influence, making it taste quite a lot peatier than the 14ppm suggested.

Annoyingly I can’t make it up to distillery this weekend for the party, but it’s definitely on my list next time I’m on the right side of Scotland. Equally annoying is that the whisky doesn’t quite live up to the spectacular single cask bottlings I’ve had over the last couple of years – they’re all rather good, with the Rowan Tree and Madeira Finish coming in as my favourites of the evening, but none quite as rich and complex as the ones that I’ve found at the SMWS. That won’t stop me picking up more Arran in the future, distillery bottlings as well as single casks, as they are also very reasonably priced, with the most expensive whisky of the evening coming in at under £70 and most bottlings being around £30-£50. Excellent value for such good whisky.

Arran 10 year old
Scottish Island Single Malt whisky, 46%. ~£30

Arran Rowan Tree
Scottish Island Single Malt whisky, 46%. ~£35

Arran Madeira Cask Finish
Scottish Island Single Malt whisky, 50%. ~£40

Arran Pomerol Cask Finish
Scottish Island Single Malt whisky, 50%. ~£45

Arran 15th Anniversary Bottling
Scottish Island Single Malt whisky, 54.6%. Available soon

Arran 2005 Peated
Scottish Island Single Malt whisky, 57.7%. ~£45 (limited availability)

Eddie of The Whisky Lounge is Eddie Ludlow and he is in the process of putting together this Autumn’s event calendar. Keep an eye on his website for details.

Master of Malt have a good range of Arran whiskies, although they don’t have the peated. Eddie might have a couple of bottles of that, although I suspect they’re for personal consumption, but The Whisky Exchange have a few which they are more likely to sell you.

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