There is no such thing as bad whiskey. Some whiskeys just happen to be better than others. But a man shouldn’t fool with booze until he’s fifty; then he’s a damn fool if he doesn’t.
William Faulkner
Having come to Single Malt whisky late in life via my experience with wine, I learned a hard lesson in 2009…when the sign says ‘limited to 815 bottles,' waiting to re-order something quite delicious leads to nothing but sorrow.
I’ve acquired a taste for spirits relatively late in life, most likely delayed by slamming shots of Canadian whiskey on the sly during my late teens. Oh yes, I consumed my share of rum and coke at frigid football games, high balls, gin and tonics and what have you during my early twenties, but just a whiff of any brown spirit straight up would make me gag. Later in life, when I had acquired a love of well crafted wine, I believed that a civilized person just had to be able to appreciate Cognac and Armagnac, so I had to give brown spirits another try! Many of my trips to Europe connected through Heathrow, and I found myself buying a single malt or cognac in the duty free shop, bringing it home, opening it, taking a sip and gagging. Eventually, I had about a dozen bottles each with barely a sip missing. It just wouldn’t go down.
About five years ago, I became intrigued by two artisan spirits from the New World, Blue Agave tequila and Rhum Agricole, either because of an article I read or a documentary I saw, but I no longer remember which. I found that if I approached them like a glass of wine, focusing first on the nose, with a lot of inhaling, not only was there no gagging, but I actually really enjoyed them. At the time, I made no connection between this discovery and all the bottles sitting in my cupboard, that is, until about a year later when I gave away a bottle of single malt, Glenmorangie 18-yr old actually, that I had bought at least 15 years earlier. A few days later, I tried a small glass of Balvenie Double-Wood just as a lark, approaching it as I had Blue Agave, and with just a few sips I was hooked.