Infectious Charm. Devastating Wit. Below Average Looks.
Call me Mr. Old Fashioned, I just subscribed to my local newspaper. I now have a bundle of paper news sitting on my front porch every morning. I simply grew tired of consuming news in the digital realm we find ourselves in. I noticed that I increasingly read more headlines than actual story content. After... Continue Reading →
GlenDronach Distillery possesses a long past. This fact is not in and of itself special. Lots of distilleries go back a ways. But there is something special about a malt that stands on tradition's shoulders. Founded in 1826, it wasn’t until 1968 that the distillery released a single malt under its own name. In recent... Continue Reading →
While discontinuing several popular bottles in 2017, Highland Park has recast their image in Viking lore. The previously named Highland Park 12 Yr Old has been reborn as Viking Honour. The bottle has received a makeover, but this expression remains a core bottling for the company as it always was. With the effort to improve... Continue Reading →
The following statement might come across as shocking to some of you, but peated whiskey doesn't have to claw your very face off as you force it down your ravaged gullet. For the rest of you, it might also come off as shocking that there exists out there in the world people that prefer their... Continue Reading →
In my experience, nearly every liquor joint I sashay into displays all the available Irish whiskey bottles into a single, four to five foot wide section. A big store might have two of these sections at most. Because of this, it is easy for a schmuck like me to visualize the entirety of available options... Continue Reading →
I have cried only 3 times in my life. Dad's funeral, the day the music died, and the day I found out that Balvenie Single Barrel 15 was discontinued. I have a special love affair with a decent Scotch whisky with no sherry finishing. There is something pure about that kind of stripped down composition... Continue Reading →
You know what I like? Cocktails. And just between you and me, I sometimes enjoy a Vodka Cranberry. Yeah, you heard me right. But do you know what I don't like? Alchoholic Syncretism. If we are not talking about cocktails, generally speaking, this is expressed when you merge two standalone styles into a new creation.... Continue Reading →
My first recollection of Ardbeg Supernova occurred in 2009, the year of its first release, during an interview between Whisky Cast and whisky writer Jim Murray. Murray recounted his sensory experience with Supernova as intense, to say the least, but perfectly caught the moment when he described swirling his last sip in the mouth for... Continue Reading →
It was at one time customary for this blog to introduce a new brand with a quick history overview. That’s becoming less and less necessary in my view, so I will leave Westland Distillery’s story to the internet, as their story has been told already in numerous places (here's a good one). Let’s spend the... Continue Reading →
If we just stuck with our standard rotation of Scotch, American, Irish and the occasional Canadian whisky, we would have plenty to do content wise. But it seems like we would be missing out on a whole new world of whisky making. We don’t want to be that kind of group, endlessly dogmatizing only what... Continue Reading →
We find ourselves bathing in the glory of Laphroaig’s 200th anniversary. One of the distillery’s celebratory bottlings is this year’s Cairdeas, Laphroaig’s selected trophy in honor of this year’s Feis Ile Festival of Music and Malt. Each Islay distillery is given a day to during the week long festival to promote and celebrate its contribution... Continue Reading →
Whisky writer Dominic Roskrow remarked that marrying smoky, peaty flavors with sherry finishing is a tricky thing. He covered the Lahproaig line for his book 1,001 Whiskies You Must Taste Before You Die and mentioned this in his write up on Laphroaig Triple Wood. If we are talking about heavily peated whiskies it’s not hard... Continue Reading →
Micro barreling used to be kind of a thing in the American whiskey industry. More like a craft thing, but a big thing. Without getting into it too much, the idea is that new companies, needing to get a brand to shelf as soon as possible, turn to aging their new make spirit in small... Continue Reading →
The French wine industry coined the word “terroir” as a way to romanticize not just the wine but the very ground from whence the wine is derived. Terroir is defined as “the characteristic taste and flavor imparted to a wine by the environment in which it is produced.” Ever see that documentary “Somm?” The sommeliers... Continue Reading →
I think the American craft distilling scene could take a lesson from Benromach Distillery. Looking at the movement from afar, it seems that there are a number of things they can no longer get away with, but one in particular is simply this: no more riding on the coat tails of anything other than what you put... Continue Reading →
I hope the good people at Glenlivet never read this review. Not that there is any remote chance they would anyway, but hope remains. You see, we as a club have tried every readily available expression from Glenlivet with the exception of their 25 year old. We’re not dentists, so we don’t count the glass... Continue Reading →
So we move on from the sassy fest of our last post to a more reasoned approach this time around. We present today a rather invigorating rhapsody of whisky geekery on Auchentoshan Triple Wood. The issues raised by this particular malt’s style inspire a quick word or two on distillation, as Auchentoshan distills their Scotch... Continue Reading →
It seems we don't write blog posts about industry happenings, trends, or even the dumb controversies we are supposed to care about. Could we? Sure. We pretty much only do reviews. To strike a balance, we throw in our opinions, if relevant, in the write ups. The NAS controversy is one of those topics making the rounds... Continue Reading →
It is not without a sense of delicious irony that our selection today was volunteered by the one member of SWC who enjoys Irish whiskey the least. But where this story becomes less amusing is when this said member found himself at the Irish Beer and Whiskey Festival in, of course, Ireland, and speaking one on... Continue Reading →
Spokane Whiskey Club 