This week I’ll be using Isle of Arran 10yo single malt as a base for blending. One thing I should tell you first, though: I’m Dutch (okay, stop gasping, it’s not as if I can help it). And one particularly Dutch foodstuff is liquorice. So you can gauge the extend of our preoccupation with this bitter-sweet candy: we tend to have a section devoted solely to liquorice in our supermarkets roughly the size of the coffee-and-tea-shelf. So you imagine my mirth when I first consumed a dram of Arran 10yo and found that it has a distinct liquorice-y taste and finish. Now, I happened to have a bottle of Ardmore Traditional Cask […]

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 […]