I’m enjoying reading it.
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So am I
Very informative @Malarkey. Thank you. It maybe too late for me to stock up on Crested Ten. That fella has been banging on about it for months now and I think he’s cleaned out every off licence in a 30 mile radius!
Precisely. Those sort of moments are exactly why so many of us enjoy whisk(e)y. I would say my own interest derived, eventually, from the fact that the father, back in the 1970s, would occasionally get himself a Crested Ten rather than a Jamesons or a Powers.
It’s making me thirsty 
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Whisky, making the oddest of allies for centuries.
Great topic. But I would say that…
I wouldn’t be an aficionado, but I think Green Spot is a lovely drink. I have a bottle Midleton Very Rare knocking about the house somewhere
No bother. I could bore for Ireland on whiskey.
Funny enough, there is a bottle of Crested Ten (as opposed to Crested, the new offering) behind the bar in the James Stephens Clubhouse. Had a drink in there a fortnight ago with a Village friend and ordered, out of curiosity, a shot of Crested Ten. The bottle is less than than a third full and the whiskey is just starting to turn. The shot was grand but it tasted like I had put water in it when I had not.
I was given an I presume very expensive Japanese whisky last year. I tasted a glass, didn’t like it, and gave it away.
Is japanese whisky any good?
I’m only presuming it was expensive because of the box it came in mind.
There’s probably a very good reason that bottle sat there unused for so long mate.
Green Spot was my favourite too but I genuinely reckon it is not as good at present. Still excellent, though.
The Redbreast 12yo cask strength is mighty stuff but you need to give it time.
Whiskies do change. Back in the 1990s, three or four of us used to gather on a Sunday evening and slowly try a few different whiskies. Eventually Longmorn 15yo became a particular favourite (not hindered by the fact it was only about 20 quid in the Co-op at the time and no one seemed to know about it — I came across it by accident, due to price). That bottling is now a collectors item:
Then some bright spark in Longmorn decided to change a winning formula and bring out a 16yo. We quickly decided the new bottling was nowhere near as good — and most nearly everyone agreed, as I later read, once whisky discussion took off online in the 2000s:
People forget that single malts are as much an example of the blender’s art as, say, Johnnie Walker Gold. A single malt might be down as a 14yo but would probably contain some 18-20yo malt for ‘weight’. All the age statement means, unless it is for a single cask whisky: no whisky younger than 14 years old in this bottle.
One of the finest whiskies I have ever tasted is Springbank 21yo. For a long time, Springbank were the sole remaining independent distillery. They took Springbank 21yo off the market for a couple of years in the early 2000s because they felt they did not have sufficient stock of 30yo distillate to ensure consistent quality.
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I’m away up the town in a few mins. I’ll start with 2 pints of Hop House. Then Karate water all the way.
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Why is that? Green’s, as you well know, is one of the finest pubs on the planet.
You’re not wrong there mate.
Same point applies with Japanese whisky as with the other kinds. You have your Junior B stuff and you have your Joe Canning (namely, Karuizawa). I have had lovely Japanese stuff on occasion. There is a view that Japanese whisky is on the up precisely because they have persisted with more old-fashioned (‘less efficient’) methods but I do not know enough about what is big in Japan to say anything sensible on this point.
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Informative rating.
I’m going to ring him and check it wasn’t that karuizawa stuff. If it was, I’ll tell him to bring some back.
PS, you need to be careful with that Joe canning talk round here. There’s lads take grave offence to him being the best hurler about, and being decent with it.
Karuizawa has become the crack cocaine of whisky collecting. If my lottery number comes up, this yoke will be a port of call:
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Joe is the finest and as clean a striker of a sliotar as the gods ever made.
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Yawn
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