We went to Jura on our festival visit. Its an amazing place, it makes Islay feel like a bustling metropolis. Very beautiful, although it has tipped down both times we have visited.

So it has taken me a while to get round to tasting it, primarily because I wanted Pat and/or Dom to try it too. Could not pin down Dom long enough, but last week Pat and I got together to do some end of term tastings. We also tried Superstition (which is going in a soon to be released Islands pack) for contrast.

Jura mystery dram –

Pat’s notes:

Nose – orange cream on the nose, gingersnaps, vegetal, burnt sugar, white chocolate, Caramac.

Palate – very different from the nose!  Light, fresh, smooth, creamy, honey, mint.

Finish – light spices and light tingly wood spices.

Tony says: There is no beating about the bush, I don’t like the nose on this. I am overly sensitive to sulphur, or at least a type of smell I call sulphur, and this has it in spades. Brimstone! It put me off big time. However, the taste is very surprising and unusual. There is a light, minty flavour on the roof of the mouth and edge of the tongue. Tastes almost like an Armagnac.  After the initial light touch it develops a tickly spice on the middle of the tongue that persists pleasantly. Minty length too. No peat discernable to me. This is clearly a complex and interesting whisky which I think I would like a lot more if the nose was not so grim…

Jura superstition – Pat’s notes

Nose – white chocolate, lychee, v distant peat, green fruits, figs, Marmite

Palate – minty, creamy, slowly building peat, liquorice, spice

Finish – vanilla, mint, fireplaces, slightly bitter notes at the end.

Tony says: This is a nice whisky, but the first thing I noticed was how less complex it is than the secret dram. It is also very different and much more what I associate with Jura. So thanks Jura for the sample, I’d love to try the secret one out again,  maybe the nose was an aberation of the sample I had.

Dominic’s notes:

Duhh-de. Duhh- de…. Just when you thought it was safe to go back to The Bowmore…

This is Bon Jovi playing Queens of The Stone Age, an X Factor contestant playing stoner rock…all scuzzy, oily, dirty rock and roll malt with its heart in the gutter. The cask strength is the whisky equivalent up to turning your amp up to11.  It’s loud, proud and a savoury monster mash. One PR girl reckoned I didn’t like it. Hell, girl, this is Hunter S Thompson, Millwall, Neil Warnock, Liam Gallagher and Rab E Nesbitt rolled in to one. No, I don’t like it.. I love it!

But I’m not sure how normal I am…

Tony adds:

So we have batch 1 tempest in our Islay pack and we also tasted it at the 2010 festival when it was their feis ile bottling. We were all big fans of the Batch 1, classic Bowmore flavours with more punch and peat. The Batch 2 was a lighter, sweeter affair. With this batch 3 they have gone right the other way, its a more full on peaty number. It is more old style peat (think Bowmore/Uigeadail hybrid) with a rough hit but tremendous length. The nose opens up a lot with water, and overall I prefer it slightly diluted. Initially I thought I preferred batch 1, but the more I have the less sure I am. At £40 a bottle I would say its worth a go, its going on my next order.

They make some amazing truffles, we are particularly keen on the Raspberry Ecuadorian.  Now at this point we thought we should do a chocolate and whisky tasting. Rather than get lots of chocolate and see which goes best with a popular whisky, we got loads of Booja Booja truffles and set out to decide which whisky went best with each flavour. We are after all a whisky tasting club.

1. Raspberry Ecuadorian Truffles

This is a dark, zingy chocolate we found went really well with the Dalwhinnie 15 year old. It is sometimes described as one of the gentlest whiskies around. The light fruity floral character of the whisky perfectly combines with the coconut and raspberry of the truffle. We also thought the Aberlour 12 year old was a great match. The raspberry flavour of the truffle and the sherry notes of the whisky team up to sunning effect, making a fruity trifle in your mouth.

2. Dark Ecuadorian Truffles:

This chocolate is more traditional, and hence can handle a more full on whisky. We liked it with Compass Box Spice Tree. The flavours of the whisky and the Ecuadorian truffle interleave to create a long, smooth and cocoa dusted experience with an almost rum and raisin kick at the end. We also went for Lagavulin distillers edition. Perhaps the ultimate whisky with chocolate, the sherry finish worked well with the Dark Ecuadorian.

So what a nice way of spending an evening. What next? What else goes well with whisky? Beer? Sushi? Hangovers? watch this space.

Two return tickets to London: £60  

Couple of pints each in a London pub: £20  

Jacket inexplicably lost in the restaurant: £50  

Two singles to Colchester after we missed the last train home: £50  

Cab from Colchester to Norwich £80  

Auchentoshan dinner: Priceless!  

Oh dear, bit of a fiasco at the end. It all started simply enough with train to london is a  journey I make about 25 times a year. Dom turned up at the station with a grin and looking like a bookie as he clutched a bag full of whisky and cash. A few excellent drams on the way down (more on these later) was followed by a tube across London to South Kensington to the land of tourists and rich folk.  

The event was held at Racine restaurant, which claims “Racine Restaurant is a return to a cook’s roots, it is the elusive neighbourhood restaurant you search for in Metropolitan French cities and so rarely find today” Well I dont know about you, but I was delighted my search was over, and when we opened the heavy curtain to gain access, the waiters certainly gave us a look reminiscent of French restaurants. Not sure how many Swedish chefs there are in France though…  

Having been shuffled off into the back room, we were met DK, the kind lady who invited us to the event, and joined a group of about 20. An interesting mix of folk, combining trade and bloggers. Cask strength boys were there and I was happy to meet WTC member   Billy Abbot who actually now works for the Whisky Exchange. Billy is (or was) a programmer who studied computer science, so we spoke geek for a while. Billy definitely has the same definition of smart casual as me …   

The event started with a cocktail. A splendid way to start any event. The cocktail, created by Marcis from 69 Colebrooke Row was a Auchentoshan Three Wood liquorice whisky sour. 50 ml Auchentoshan, 25 ml lemon, 15 ml sugar syrup, 15 ml liquorice syrup (this was his own creation I think), bitters. Dry shake, then add ice and shake, serve with a straw.  

I love a whisky sour and this was good, but you really need to be a fan of liquorice to like this. Since I regularly scoff whole packets of allsorts, this was a hit with me. Bar work has moved on since I were a lad, apparently they all have food science degrees these days. Auchentoshan are running a competition for cocktail barmen, chance to swap places with someone in the states for two weeks. Sounds a bit like work experience; the American barman may be disappointed with the tips. “you will be met by a panel of judges who will put you through a series of challenging mixology tasks”. Blimey, the mind boggles. To be fair, Marcis was himself not a huge fan of the term “mixologist”. I may scoff, but this growth in fancy cocktails, particularly whisky based ones,  is a fantastic development. It seems London has some amazing bars these days (we went to one called Purl recently with Laphroaig and I hear there are many others). I only wish it would spread to us poor provincials. Still, there are at least nascient signs of improvement in cocktail provision even in Norwich. The Plough  do an excellent Gin and Tonic, and the newly refitted Ten Bells are experimenting with creative uses of their superb whisky list (a whisky bar in Norwich! Hurrah). I fear it will be a while before we get a Rhubarb Gimlet though. 

Anyway, I digress. This blog is about Auchentoshan. We then tasted the three wood. Three wood is dom’s favorite of their range. Its rich, fruity and sweet with lots of oak and sherry. It retails at around £35 and has twice nearly made it into one of our tastings: we considered it for both regions and wood. Didnt quite make the cut for either, but I’m sure we will find a tasting for it soon. The whiskies were described by Auchentoshan senior blender Jeremy Stephens (I wonder if blending is a subdivision of mixology? Surely it is a higher art form. We need a formal taxonomy of drinks makers!). Jeremy imparted plenty of interesting information, but since I didnt take notes and was drinking, it has all sadly left me. Hopefully someone more responsible will blog about it. 

Our second whisky was the main event: a new limited edition 1999 Bordeaux Cask Matured Auchentoshan. Yes, thats cask matured, not finished: this has spend 11 years in a Chateaux Lagrange cask (in the St. Julien region of Bordeaux).  

Now, neither Dom or I are big fans of wine finishes generally, but I’ve never had a whisky thats lived its whole life in a wine cask. Google tells me that Bowmore have also done a 16 year old wine cask matured expression (Is this a Suntory thing? Someone in the company a big fan of wine?),  but even that apparently spent 6 years in bourbon cask and I cant find reference to anything else. 

So its a very unusual and interesting expression. It is cask strength (58%) and  of course rich in colour. It has a delicate nose, that opens up and for me was really nutty. Dom thought it a confusing nose, going in or out, something he finds commonly in wine expressions.  One thing I generally dont like about wine finishes is they tend to be poorly integrated, but this whisky does not suffer this problem; it is much smoother and coherent than the majority of wine finishes I’ve tried. Not stunningly long or complex, but to be honest I liked it more than I thought I would. Overall I would say that its better than many a wine finish, and if you are a fan of the flavours wine brigs to whisky this will be right up your street. Its going to retail at £46.99, which  seems very reasonable to me for such a limited and unusual release. Official notes:  

“To the Eye: Autumn sunset  

1 Warehouse 24 Given they inspired the blog, they go first. On joining you get sent a pack of tasting notes (only just joined myself so not seen what these are like), and you are entered into several competitions on joining. They let you enter your whiskies and score them, which is a nice feature, but there doesn’t seem to be any communication/forum mechanism, which is a shame. Very professional looking site though.

2. Friends of Laphroaig. As a FoL you get 10% discount from their online shop which increases to 20% on your birthday. You also get given a notional square metre of land in the field opposite the distillery, and if you visit can claim your ground rent of a minature and if you wish plant a little flag on your plot. They also instigated the Gathering in 2010. Michelle and I went and blogged about it here. They don’t seem to mailshot at all. They have a FoL log in area and have experimented with interactivity and messaging between FoL, but I think they got hit by spam bots so turned it off. There are over 400,000 FoL and 130000 of them are in the UK! They should all buy our Laphroaig tasting, but unfortunately they wont let me spam them all  Website is functional but not flash like. Log on to the members area and watch a video of Dominic, filmed by our friend Deanna in the Whisky Shop Norwich.  Go on, watch it! They have a Laphroaig TV area with various slide shows and movies.

3. Ardberg Committee Membership of the committee gives the occasional chance to buy a limited releases, although they have not done this since the Rollercoaster release crashed their servers. They post you a nice pack on joining and send you an annual update and info on special releases. At the 2010 festival they were giving away baseball caps and free drink coupons to committee members (they checked against a print out of names and there are 50k+ members!). Website has a login for committee members, but there isnt much on it. Stylish though.

4. Bladnoch Forum. Bladnoch have a fairly active forum and membership gives you a 10% off Bladnoch Single Malt Whisky and the opportunity to buy their “Bladnoch Forum” Bottles, wide range of choice of their own independent bottlings at reasonable prices. I bought a Caol Ila 25 year old for about £50, and very nice it was too.

5. Glenlivet. I joined the Taste the Glenlivet club when they offered me a free minature 12 year old for doing so. What’s better is they then offered me a free minature 18 year old for recommending someone! So Pat joined too As far as I can tell there is no log on area, I’ve had a few emails since joining but thats it.

6. Makers Mark Ambassador Scheme . Sign up to this and they send you a large pack and apparently other freebees, but we have had nothing after a year. They also put your name on a barrel, which is pretty cool.

Thats all I know about. So what other clubs are there?

Tony

The Whisky Tasting Club, which is launched today, offers malt drinkers packs of five different whiskies in 5cl bottles. The whiskies are accompanied by information and comprehensive tasting notes from a number of sources including from whisky writer Dominic Roskrow and the three other club directors.

The club grew out of Roskrow’s regular Norwich tasting evenings and he has worked with the other directors to choose exciting and attractive malts. People buying whisky packs are encouraged to score the whiskies on-line and discuss them on the club’s forum.

The club’s founders plan to release a new whisky selection each month as well as special one-off packs. People who choose to buy a set of five whiskies do not have to sign up to club membership or commit to buying whisky more than once should they not want to do so.

“But obviously we hope people will want to come back again and again,” says club founder Tony Bagnall. “and to make it worth their while we will offer incentives to people who sign up for regular tastings, including a copy of Dominic’s new book The World’s Best Whiskies, worth £30, and membership of The Whisky Shop’s Glenkeir Club, worth £25.”

Each pack of five whiskies cost £25 plus £2.95 post and packaging. The first three topics are The Regions of Scotland, Whiskies of the World, and Get Wood.

A special vertical Laphroaig containing six malts including the 2010 Cask Strength 10 Year Old, the 18 Year Old, Quarter Cask and Triple Wood is being offered at £30.

Plans for the club include broadcasting Dominic Roskrow’s tasting evenings live on the web, inviting distillers and whisky makers on to forum sessions, offering selected regular purchasers special complimentary samples including new releases and even ‘works in progress’ and working with individual distilleries to offer unusual and special vertical selections.

For more information visit www.thewhiskytastingclub.co.uk or contact The Whisky Tasting Club at  help@thewhiskytastingclub.co.uk

Mines a large bone please

Arby is a regular in Micawbers, it’s an old style boozer with excellent real ales (including my favorite pint Nelson’s Revenge) and an eighties jukebox. Dom was in his element, at least he was until Pat got at the jukebox and for some reason put on 6 tracks by The Doors.  Attendees were Tony, Pat, Michelle, Derek, Susie and Andrew. Opinions below are Tony’s unless otherwise attributed.

Anyway, the whisky. I’ll do the two rounds as separate posts. The way it works is that Dom tells us what all the categories are, but we don’t know the actual whiskies and we taste them randomly. This is good because preconception cannot effect our votes, but it does mean upsets are likely. It also means we cannot control the order and some whiskies over power others.  Oh well, it’s all just a laugh anyway.  We also mark quite harshly on these events and tend to use the whole range from 0-10. I will perform a spline point adjustment if I put these on the Connosr website (hey, its just like an exam board!) 

Group 3: (in the order we tasted them)

Australian:  Bakery Hill Peated:

Official notes say: “Rich gold russet of evening sunset. A rich subdued peat aroma combined with a natural leathery earthiness with overtones of kumquat and fruit mince tart.” Yes, well. We say: Sherbety, lemon and honey, peated but rounded with a spicy middle. I thought it tasted quite young and barley, only partially masked by the peat. Michelle thought it was slightly floral with a soft smooth finish. I’ve always been very disparaging about ozzie whisky and some we have had have been truly awful. However, this goes some way to bringing me round, it was very drinkable. I had a quick search and I can’t find it on sale in the UK, let me know if you better. It retails for 8oAUSD, which is about £45.  

Australian score: 7.17

Scottish Blends: Johnny Walker Gold Label.

 (err, isnt this a blended malt? Ed.) So lets say straight off that we were all really surprised when Dom told us what this was, because none of us liked it that much! I love black, green and blue (fly first class with Thai Airways and they will pour you a healthy dram of JW Blue and leave you the bottle, but that’s another story).  However, the Gold was not to my taste. Licorice nose, some porridge (when pressed on what type, Andrew says Ready Brek). Creamy taste, slightly oily with a bit of an unpleasant aftertaste (Tony). Creamy initially, spicey, pleasant bitterness, very long complicated finish, quite harsh though (Michelle). We generally thought it complex, but not all that nice! Its available from the Whisky Exchange for £48.95, but I dont think they will sell many off the back of this review!

Scottish Blends score 6.08 Blimey, the Scottish blend scores worse than an Australian whisky and could be going out.

American Rye: Sazerac Rye Whiskey

And bang there go our tastebuds! I went back and tasted the first two again after trying this and they were completely different. It’s somewhat the luck of the draw really.  Anyway, this rye is really nice. “Smells like a small Greek supermarket” say Susie, and who can argue with that? Nose: malted milk. Taste: Woody root beer, soft easy drinking, says Michelle. We seem to be developing a taste for rye. This is very reasonably priced, its £26.95 at
The Whisky Exchange I think I will be buying a bottle.

American Rye score: 8.07  Scottish blends are out! Hard to beat this score.

French: Eddu Gold

Every single one of us who nosed this recoiled in horror. It reminded me of my mispent youth, loitering in parks sniffing Tipp- Ex thinners. Michelle said “Can’t nose it, it’s too disgusting”. It doesnt taste like whisky either, its more like cognac, but not a good one. There are two countries whose whisky I always slag off: France and Australia. I have to kerb my ozzie bashing  after the Bakery Hill, but this just reaffirms all my prejudices (although strangely it’s not full of sulphur like the other frenchies its been my misfortune to taste). I don’t know how much it costs and I don’t care, I’m not going to put a link to it!

French Score: 5. Say no more.

Irish Standard: Powers Gold Label 12 Year Old 

Guessing the countries in this round was easy, and the apples on the nose gave this away immediately, even after the palate numbing blast of the rye and the french paint stripper. It’s a lovely smooth dram, very easy to drink.  Not much more to say really, neither Michelle nor I are huge fans of Irish, but this is a very good example of why the style is much loved.
£39.95 from TWE

Irish Standard score: 8.08.

So an American rye and an Irish standard go through, a shock exit for the Scottish blend and the Australians put up a good show but don’t quite make it.

The other thing we are doing is getting an alcohol licence. For the business property (i.e. our house), you have to draw a diagram of the premises (i.e. our spare room), put an ad in the local paper and also put up a notice outside the house in addition to filling out a form more appropriate to nightclubs (I don’t think we need a plan for late night drinkers for example, unless it’s a plan for me to drink less). One of us then has to get a personal licence. Michelle is doing  this, she has to go on a day long course and confirm she hasn’t got a drink problem…. get through that and cough up a couple of hundred quid and we should be there. If we get rejected we have a problem, but I think it should be ok.

After that, the next task is to get the forum up and linked in and find someone to post there. Next is to tidy up and add to the content on the main page, everything is just dumped there at the moment.

Still looking around for online info. Amazing how many whisky websites there are. www.connosr.com is a whisky social network! Excellent site. All this online stuff is vital, but I don’t think it will drive that much business our way. Although I hope we get a lot of young uns, our real target demographic is 40+ men. A lot of blokes that age (i.e. my age) hate facebook/twitter/blogs. Word of mouth and direct selling will I hope get us to our first 100 punters. We aim to be selling 100 tastings a month after one year of trading. However, who knows, it might take of. This is really a part-time project for all of us, I’m enjoying it though. Tony

Update so far. WordPress and phpBB fantastically easy to install. Concentrating on getting Dom’s blog set up correctly, and although Wordpress is used by millions who presumably don’t have two degrees in computer science, it seems hard to configure. How I wonder do I change the banner to insert a picture? Do I need to edit the theme? And how do I put my menu bar along the top?  Sure I’ll sort it soon when I get some time, day job quite busy at the moment, must be easier than my fun with writing raw html with css. Next up to learn php.

Anyway, I’m trying to come up with a logo for the club. Being a computer scientist, this is not my strong point! My first effort is on the left. We will remove that line, make the font bigger and bolder and tweak it a bit, but I like it, although it is just writing on a warehouse wall!