The Living Bottle Project is slowly picking up steam. In the last iteration we ended up just a tad too much peat, as expected. This one, then, is all about bringing balance back to the Force. To this end I have chosen from among the ranks of sherried whiskies (I’ve checked, the ingredients say nothing about Midi-chlorians, but I guess it’ll have to do. Those of you who get that reference, congratulations, you are just about as nerdy as I am. Those who do not get it, you lead blessed lives). This is partly because I would like to get some of that sherried nature from the first version back and partly […]

As I have hopefully conveyed in the title of the blend, this one is supposed to be quite a bit more peaty than most of the blends on this blog. To achieve this goal I have selected two peated whiskies: Lagavulin 16yo, the sophisticated but savagely peated malt from the southern coast of Islay and, from a few kilometers along that same coast, Laphroaig Quarter Cask. This very medicinal single malt has been aged a further while on small quarter casks, which serves to couple the peat to a strong wood influence. To counterbalance the peat I based the blend on a sweet speysider: Glenfarclas 10yo. And last but not […]

Yes, I know, i’ve been gone for a while. I love you too, I’ll never leave you again and let’s get to the drinking, shall we? Actually, I’ve been working on another whisky related project (my dutch visitors may know it: WhiskyVinder), which has been taking up a lot of my spare time. As a result I’ll be posting a little more infrequently here, but the upside is my experimentation is going on at the same pace, so you will be seeing only the cream of the crop (and occasionally, for comic relief, the bottom of the barrel). Right, this week I have two variations on a theme. Both are based […]

So, you want to start blending whiskies (you do, really). Good on ya, mate. I suspect by now, however, reality is slowly sinking in and you’re realising that you have no idea where or how to start. Oh, of course you can just randomly put some whiskies together (the ‘blend-n-pray’), and while that can net surprising results at times, most of what you produce will be… not so interesting. A better way to go about it is to have some sort of plan. Decide beforehand what type of blend you want to end up with. You can opt for a single dominant taste: for instance a sherrybomb, a blend with […]