The Malt Cask

After 3 posts without any tasting notes, I thought it was time to get back to it. Today, no Scotch whisky, but something from the other side of the Atlantic, yes, a Bourbon. I have never been too attracted to Bourbons, purely because of a preconceived idea I had about it. Bourbon to me was a cheaper quality, less enjoyable drink compared to Scottish single malt. My dad might have influenced my opinion too as he never really liked the taste of Bourbon and despite having always had a decanter of Jack Daniels in the drinks cabinet, I was never really tempted. My opinion completely changed and my preconceived idea my shattered when I attended one of my first tasting sessions at the Whiskyshop Manchester. 1 of the 6 bottles we tried that night was a bottle of True Blue from the Balcones distillery. This is a Texan Bourbon made with blue corn and bottled at 50%, and it was absolutely fantastic, rich, buttery and sweet. I must actually try to get hold of a bottle at some point! That experien

Last November, we decided with a few friends to organise a whisky trip to Islay during the Easter weekend. Even if I will have the two weeks following that weekend off, some of the people I am going with will be back at work on the Tuesday, so we decided to head North on the Thursday afternoon, hop on the ferry Friday morning and head back to Manchester on the Monday. This means our trip will be rather short, and it left me the tricky task of organising our time as best as possible. Looking on several websites and forums, I have found some information about people who have already been, but often, it tended to be answers to specific questions, that is why I thought I would share my experience. Today is therefore going to be about the organisation of the trip and I will update you on the actual visit probably when I am back after Easter. So as I mentioned before, our starting point was as follow: -5 people going to Islay  -leaving Manchester on the Thursday afternoon  -returnin

As I have mentioned in a previous post, despite the fact that I mainly buy whisky to drink it, I have also bought some bottles to keep for a while and see how prices evolve over time. If they end up rocketing up and I need the cash, I will sell them, if not, I will open them and enjoy them.  I have now been following auction results for the bottles I own since August 2015, mainly through the Scotch Whisky Auction (SWA) website and app and decided that after 7 different auctions, it was time for an update.  What I have witnessed so far is relatively close to what I had anticipated, in other words I have noticed different trends depending on different types of bottles. 1. Some of the "hype" bottles such as the Ardbeg Perpetuum (Standard release) or the Laphroaig 15 (200th anniversary release) went up in price just after their release before dropping after a few auctions. I would think the reason for this price change is that at first everybody wants to get hold of a bo

After the tasting notes, the culinary tips, the feedback on tasting sessions, I thought I would include a "resource" section about whisky. I am a teacher after all! In that section I will present books or websites I use to get general information about whisky or to get more specific information about a bottle or a distillery before I decide to part with my hard-earned cash (I am now waiting for comments about teachers vs hard-earned cash...!) In this first post, I am not going to present the first book I bought about whisky (Dave Broom's The world atlas of Whisky ) but one many people consider the reference in terms of whisky: Jim Murray's Whisky Bible 2016. As its name indicates, this book is a bit of a reference for tasting notes of around 4,600 whiskies from around the world. I had never looked at one before the 2016 edition, but considering the fact that it comes up so frequently around the whisky industry, I thought I would order it. I am not goi