Emboldened by my relative sucess with the Black Elijah I thought I’d give the whole boursky-thing (bourbon and whisky, a variation on Ralfy’s Rumsky) another try. Here follows my thought process:

I: ‘Right, so what’s a nice characteristic of this here Elijah Craig bourbon?’ Me: ‘Why, for one, it has a pleasant bitterness about it.’ I: ‘That’s right! So what whisky do I have that also has this bitter note?’ Me: ‘I think I see where I’m going with this, what about this here Ardmore?’ I: ‘Yes! I think we’ve got a winner there! These flavours must surely enhance one another in hitherto unfathomed ways!’

Both of me couldn’t have been more wrong. Below is the report on the trainwreck that followed.

I decided to mix these on a 50/50 basis and let them marry for about a week in a small 5cl bottle. Full of expectation I poured myself a drink only to be greeted by…  the smell of glue. And this was no ‘whiff’ or ‘trace’, this was the complete stick-your-head-in-a-vat-of-superglue-experience. Alright, not a very good start then. But surely the taste would not be as bad? It wasn’t, by a small margin. The taste of model airplane kits (or warhammer figurines, depending on how nerdy a child you were) receded slightly to reveal a tiny bit of fruit and some light floral notes. Adding a few teaspoons of water made the blend drinkable, getting rid of most of the nasty stuff, but leaving a fairly bland drink.

All in all, I think you’ll agree, this was not very successful. I tasted both whiskies separately after the fact with the intent of finding out what happaned, but couldn’t really detect the components that conspired to produce this ‘special’ dram. I was very tempted to give this 1 dram. In the end it is only the certainty that I can do worse which prevents me from doing so.

Have you tried a blend that didn’t work in a spectacular fashion? Let us know in the comments or on twitter.

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