I've had a few pleasant whisky adventures lately. The story starts a few months back on my Birthday when I dug in to my collection and opened up a classic bottle from my favorite distillery . . .
This is pretty much a bottle of pure unobtanium these days. Having a friend locally who enjoys the odd dram, I thought I'd invite him over to sample it. He appreciated the gesture and we started to discuss resurrecting a whisky tasting group I had hosted previously.
Anyway, this particular friend works for a well known local tech company. They just happened to have a whisky tasting evening lined up with the area rep for Moet Henessy who own Ardbeg and Glenmorangie. He invited me along as a guest, and very good it was too! In doing so, I met one of his coworkers who expressed an interest when we mentioned the tasting group, so he got an invite.
For our first tasting, we started off easy with a 'bargain bottles' theme and had eight people turn up with some interesting choices, all of which were duly sampled. We had quite a diverse group, some total beginners, one or two longtime enthusiasts, and the rest somewhere in between. We ended the night with a sample of the '77, and a couple of other bottles I retrieved from my collection.
A few weeks later I was invited back to another tasting with my friend's company. This time Benriach, Glendronach, and Glenglassaugh. Once again, I bumped into another coworker who had heard about our other group. It would be rude not to, so I invited him along to our next session.
After the enthusiastic reception the 'bargain bottles' had received, people expressed an interest in trying a wider variety of flavor profiles. For this event I organized a 'Whisky Tour of Scotland'. This was a virtual road trip, starting in the Lowlands, heading up through Speyside, into the Highlands, up to Orkney, then back down to Cambeltown, and finishing off on Islay. This turned out to be a bigger group of friends with several new faces. I can tell you, sampling 14 single malts in a 3 to 4 hour session is a challenge. My tasting notes started to run out of inspiration at about #12.
We already have our plan in place for the next session - a vertical tasting of different single malts, all from the one particular distillery. This is as much an educational experience as it is a social event, depending on what each person wishes to get from it. I've changed the way the bottles are supplied to, so we limit the samples to a manageable number. Tasting in a group setting is so much more fun!
Anyway, after several years where I haven't been paying enough attention to my whisky collection, I'm now getting back up to speed and appreciating it again. I'd be happy to share some of our selections if anyone's interested.