A whisky tasting we did go!

Well... once again I've not blogged for a while. Got quite a few photos to go through and publish but no. Have other things to catch up on. Could do a recap of the year but hey... I could also just go back and read the blog which was the point in the first place. Enough self involved rant... this post is to publish the results of a whisky tasting as done by Mr Nw, Anti Ob and myself.

Ob had a box of 6 "classic malts" which are classic because they are representative of the 6 whisky regions of Scotland (editor's correction). Or they happen to be sold by the same parent company and can therefore be easily sold in the one box. Ob had already sampled one of them, but luckily I had a little of that very same whisky stashed away in my own whisky collection.

We selected stemmed tulip-shaped glasses since that was what we had on hand, and also since they are supposed to be better for the tasting with the open space around the liquid concentrating to a small opening to smell through. We took an initial taste and then added a tiny amount of water to "open out" the taste. We also left the previously tasted whisky glass around while tasting the next one so we could enjoy the aroma left behind a little later. This turned out to be surprisingly strong and sweet in most cases, and explains a lot about why you always want another glass when you've finished. In this way they were tasted pair-wise in the order below (which was the order in the box). So.... to the whiskies and their results:

Talisker Very peaty. Floral. Strong aroma. Rather impressive. (For some reason we didn't comment much on some of these. Possibly because we hadn't done this before).

Oban Smoother. Less peaty. Sweet. Very pleasant. Long finish. Strong aroma left behind in glass.

Glenkinchie Light aroma. Sweet caramel/oak (chardonnay like characteristic). Diluted made it more honey like although made it too subtle. According to the booklet, this is not just a lowlands whisky, but the driest and smokiest meaning that clearly the lowlanders don't like dry or smokey. After leaving it the aroma was still weak although it had become rather floral.

Dalwhinnie Low aroma. Malty. Honeyish. Water brings out the honey.

Lagavulin Darker colour. Peatiest of them all. Smokey aftertaste. Full of flavour. Sweetens with water. Afterwards smelled caramel-like and smokey.

Cragganmore Dry aroma. Smokey. Mellow. Easy to throw back (was difficult not to just drink it all in one go). Spicy-peppery aftertaste.

We seemed to agree that Talisker was the nicest, and Oban was not too far behind. After this tasting, we were also forutnate enough to compare the refular edition Talisker with the 1991 Distillers Edition Talisker. There was in fact enough difference to make it a different whisky. Not sure if I'd call either superior, just different enough that it's worth keeping a bottle of each, and that maybe I could collect a whisky from every year.....