#394 - 10 Most Wanted Whiskies (?)

Bugger! When I read Whiskyfun a few days ago, I saw Serge's top 10 of tasted malt whiskies. That reminded me of an ad I saw for the site www.minibottles.eu - and that in turn reminded me of the log entry about the "10 most wanted malt whiskies" (well, at least according to Google) that I had promised to write. 

When I tried to make the Malt Madness site even more Google-friendly a few weeks ago, I noticed that Google provides rough indications of the number of search queries for any given topic. The numbers Google provides are notoriosly unreliable, but perhaps the relation between the numbers in itself could be interesting. Or it cold be complete bollocks - we'll see... 

Anyway, I'll gather the raw data first, and will leave the actual thinking about those results for next year. So, according to the information on the Google AdWords dashboard, most searches (world wide) were done for these single malt whisky brands... 

1) Lagavulin (my "amazing discovery" of single malt Scotch whisky in 1991.)
2) Talisker (although Google indicates even more hits for Jameson - which is Irish.)
3) Cardhu (which surprised me, but perhaps it's because these are worldwide results.)
4) Macallan (which sounds about right - although J&B scores even higher than Big Mac.)
5) Glenfiddich (I expected the world's biggest brand to score higher than Crown Royal.)
6) Oban (but I have my doubts - Grant's, Dimple and Black & White score higher.)
7) Glenlivet (which came right after Canadian Club, so that's another question mark.)
8) Highland Park (which scored a little higher than the Teacher's blend.)
9) Laphroaig (which is a little surprising, considering it's difficult to spell.)
10) Bowmore (which scored higher than "Cutty Sark" and "whisky fun" to name a few.) 

I should point out that the basic search query I used for this list was "malt whisky" - and I've only included the brand names of Scotch whiskies. If I had used the broader search query "whiskey" (and if I had included all whisky and whiskey brands), the list would have looked fairly differently. I'll get into that research on the Malt Madness site itself - for the upcoming year I'm going to devote this liquid blog to a very specific topic. 

That topic will be my struggle in finding a new balance between my passion for and consumption of malt whisky on one end and a healthy lifestyle on the other. Because I can fully understand how that would be utterly boring for some, I've confined my rants on that particular topic to this blog for now. If you are one of those young and/or lucky bastards than are still able to combine whisky and health without any sort of compromise, I reluctantly congratulate and salute you - and point you to the main Malt Madness site...

And that's it for now. More later, HAPPY OLD YEAR!

Sweet drams,
 

#393 - Age Doesn't Improve Everything

The contents of my top shelf, circa 2003

 

I was pleasantly surprised when I received an unexpected present this morning: The inaugural edition of the official Malt Maniacs whisky calendar for 2010. As it turns out, Krishna takes his official title of "Trinket Master" more seriously than we had anticipated. He had a bunch of calendars with "maniacal" pictures made and sent a few to every team member. 

What a great initiative! Thanks very much, Krishna! 

And to my surprise I saw a picture that Krishna had taken during his first visit to Amsterdam: my very own top shelf and the cautionary remark that hangs on the wall above it. (Indian tourists are just as bad as the archetypical Japanese tourists with their camera's ;-)  I was surprised by the fact that so many official bottlings were on there - in recent years the number of independent bottlings in my drinking collection has increased considerably. I was also surprised by the poignancy of the phrase "age doesn't improve everything" above the bottles. When I hung it over there, I meant it as a sardonic reference to some overpriced older single malts - but my doctor has recently informed me that I should start acting my age now as well. 

I'm very good at sitting behind my PC - I can do it for hours without getting tired. However, this superpower has caused my weight to increase from less than 80 kilo's in 1995 (when I stopped playing rugby every week and started Malt Madness) to a whopping 112 kilo's right now. So, with my dwarf-like build (I'm only 1,73 meters small) I'll need to lose some 30 kilo's to reach a somewhat healthy weight again. I've had a few days to get used to the idea, and I now actually look forward to the challenge. And I'm also looking forward to trying to write some interesting words about the experience as well. From quite a few personal messages I received after my previous post I've learned that I'm not the only one struggling with the transfer of a relatively wild, hard drinking lifestyle to a more moderate consumption pattern and a slightly healthier lifestyle. 

Don't worry, I can still enjoy the occasional dram or two, but tasting a dozen drams per day is off the menu in the foreseeable future.So, instead of tasting notes you'll find opinions and information on a wide variety of other whisky related topics here. You'll need to wait a little longer for that piece on the most popular whisky brands - but I'll leave you with a link to a web page that can be very useful for people who are beginning to write tasting notes; http://flavornet.org/flavornet.html.

Sweet drams, 

#392 - Facing an Angry Doctor

Well, it has been a week since we've published the final results of the Malt Maniacs Awards 2010 - and by matter of coincidence I had a meeting with my doctor this morning. As you may remember, I was diagnosed with a mild case of diabetes two years ago, so I already had to reduce the intensity of my dramming quite significantly. 

So, I had already curtailed my whisky consumption from roughly a bottle of whisky per week to 3 or 4 drams a week. However, the parsimony ended 6 weeks ago when 262 samples arrived from France. 

The Malt Maniacs Awards 2010 may have been our biggest competition yet - but it also was the heaviest test, physically and mentally speaking. The fact that three jurors had to drop out of the race somewhere along the way is a testament to that. Last year's awards effort already showed up as a sizeable dent in the gradually rising trend on the graph with some of my health indicators - but as it turns out that was negligible compared to the shock to my system that I received this year. Apparently, my blood pressure is through the roof now as well...

That means that I'm now on extra medication - which means that the number of fresh tasting notes in this Liquid Blog will be limited further in the foreseeable future. But with Serge still publishing fresh tasting notes on Whiskyfun almost every day (not to mention dozens of other whisky bloggers sharing their opinions), I think my often sketchy notes won't be dearly missed anyway. Don't worry, I'm still mad about malts (and I can still sniff as many of them as I want), but the focus of the Malt Madness site will shift away from tasting notes towards stuff like liquid links and the Advanced Beginner's Guide. 

And that's just the stuff on Malt Madness. Meanwhile, the maniacs are almost ready to launch version 1.0 the interactive whisky monitor. If all goes according to plan, a vast number of tasting notes by almost 20 maniacs will be unlocked in the coming weeks. Coming up next:
A look into the "brand pressure" of some of the most famous single malt whisky brands.

Sweet drams,
 

#391 - The World's Best Whiskies

Surprise! This is the third book review within little more than a month - it would almost seem like this whisky blog has turned in a whisky book blog. But while I've been dramming heavily for the upcoming Malt Maniacs Awards 2010 whisky competition, I didn't have the stomach (or liver) for any additional whisky tastings for my blog at the moment. 

So, it's just a coincidence that three very different whisky books happened to be published this autumn; the expected fresh issue of the Malt Whisky Yearbook (see entry #390 for a small review), Dave Broom's World Atlas of Whisky (entry # 388) and now Dominic Roskrow's "The World's Best Whiskies". Just like with Dave Broom's Atlas, the price is 30.- GBP.

I'll be the first to admit that I've only read (or browsed through) four or five other new whisky books this year, but as far as I'm concerned these three books are the best choices amongst the material that was recently released. Ingvar Ronde's Malt Whisky Yearbook is the odd one out in this trio; the relatively small (168x236mm) soft cover guide costs less than half of the price of the bigger, hard cover books from Dave and Dominic. The yearbook provides plenty of interesting trivia about the malt whisky world and the distilleries in the main whisky countries. That makes it an excellent choice for experienced malt whisky aficionados - but it's not the most practical whisky guide for novices. Because a big chunk of the information doesn't change from year to year, they certainly wouldn't have to replace their copy each year.

The two larger books feel more like investments - and very wise investments too.
Both Dave's World Atlas of Whisky and Dominic's "The World's Best Whiskies" are comparable in price, format and size - much wider, taller and thicker than the yearbook. In fact, both could be described as "tomes"... Both books are very well written and both feature beautiful photography - although the atlas features a lot more more of it than Dominic's book. Both books should provide useful for many years to come as well, because they both offer so much more than their titles suggest...

In fact, in both cases, dozens of pages at the start of the book are dedicated to an in depth treatment of various aspects around the topic of whisky - although the focus is different at times. In Dave's whisky atlas, the focus is arguably a little more on the theory and a structured approach, with particular attention for flavours and the differences in production technique in various countries. Dominic's book leans in a slightly more practical direction with attention for one topic in particular that rarely gets some much deserved attention: the glassware that is used to enjoy the whisky. 

On the other hand: I have one very big beef with Dominic's book; the title suggests that the book features the 750 BEST whiskies. It doesn't - unless you agree that Cutty Sark, Johnnie Walker Red Label, Jack Daniels and Slyrs are amongst the best whiskies in the world. Not a single independent bottling is mentioned in the book - which immediately makes it far less useful for the serious malt afficionado IMHO. Also, you can find so many tasting notes on-line these days that I fear that that aspect of the book might lose its sparkle relatively soon. Also, from what I've read so far, Dominic has tried to cram as much different topics, types of whisky and brands into the book as possible. Combined with the mismatched title, I imagine that this could be confusing for some readers.

Both books are most definitely worth the money.
Considering that you can get BOTH books together for the price of a bottle of Laphroaig 15yo or Macallan 15yo Fine Oak, my advice to serious maltsters out there would be to invest in both whisky books. There is some overlap of the content, but there's often value in comparing different perspectives on the same topic. However, if you HAVE to chose (and you're a fairly experienced whisky afficionado), I'd go with Dave's atlas. It goes a little deeper into a lot of the topics and I imagine it won't age as quickly. 

However, if you are a relative beginner (or if you want to give it as a gift to a potential whisky lover), I'd go with Dominic's book. For one thing, it's the finest looking check list you've ever seen if you're planning a voyage of discovery through whisky land. And here's the best part: I've just checked on the Amazon.co.uk site to add a link where you can buy the book and now I see that the book is already discounted to a friendly £17.25. That's almost half price! And apparently you can even get free delivery in the UK. I'd say that's an excellent opportunity to get a nice gift for Christmas.

As for suggestions for "liquid" gifts: only six more nights until the results of the Malt Maniacs Awards 2010 whisky competition are published...

Sweet drams,

  

#390 - Malt Whisky Yearbook 2011

A few hours after I had published my glowing review of Dave Broom's "World Atlas of Whisky", I received another eagerly awaited book in my mail box; the 2011 edition of the Malt Whisky Yearbook. If you have read my reviews of previous editions you know that I used to like the handy format and the friendly price of this small but useful whisky compendium a lot. 

This year, there are some small changes (for example, the height of the book is 2 millimeters less than previous editions) but the concept has remained mostly unchanged. And that's just as well, because the current format works quite well for me. The Malt Whisky Yearbook 2011 provides most of the essential details on the distilleries, and it seems that most of the relevant developments of the past year (new bottlings, etc.) are once again covered as well.

The price of the MWYB 2011 is still a paltry 12,95 GBP - which really is a very decent price, given the vast amount of current information on offer. In fact, compared to many whisky magazines, the yearbook offers much better value. Many whisky magazines fill around half of their pages with advertising, advertorials and promotions these days. Of course, many publishers will argue that they need several sources of revenue to make their business model work. That may very well be, but to me it still feels a bit like I'm paying for the privilege of looking at some pretty advertising that's designed to make me spend more money on something than I probably should. Something about that feels a tad masochistic...

Anyway, Ingvar proves every year that you can stuff an incredible amount of malt whisky information (facts, opinions and analysis) in a handy, flexible form for a very fair price. I'd say that you get the equivalent of information to two or three vintages of an average whisky magazine with the Malt Whisky Yearbook. So, should you spend the equivalent of three decent drams in a whisky bar on the Malt Whisky Yearbook ? I think that the question you should really be asking yourself is: "Can you afford NOT to?" 

I mean, it's simple mathematics. It's a well known fact that knowing more about the background of a dram enhances your enjoyment of that whisky considerably. So, let's say you are a mild imbiber and you consume one dram on every day of the week except for Sundays. That's some 300 glasses of whisky per year with an average value of 4 Euro's. That's a total value of 1200 Euro's of whisky per year. If the information in the yearbook increases your enjoyment of every glass by 10% on average, that represents a value of 120 Euro's - almost ten times your investment for the book. Like I said, it's simple mathematics...

Meanwhile, I'm actually a little ahead of schedule with my awards dramming because I feel a common cold breathing down my neck. The problem is that us jurors need to sample some dozen whiskies per day on average, and if you're out of the running for just a few days with a cold, it means you need to pick up the drams you missed later on. So, I'm running around taking vitamin pills and throwing salt over my shoulder - but I may have misinterpreted my grandmother's health advice in this matter ;-). Nevertheless, I'm trying to finish the blind tastings for the Malt Maniacs Awards 2010 as soon as humanly and humanely possible.

Sweet drams,