My colleague asked me to go with him to check out Whisky Live, an annual tasting event bringing together all the top whisky* brands. We got hooked up with comp passes (thanks J.C.), but normally, for US$25, it's an all you can drink affair. So we made the rounds to each booth and sampled as many as we possibly could.
The most expensive bottle I saw was a vintage Dalmore, priced at US$80,000, which was part of their Constellation Collection - 21 bottles of their rarest and finest, dating from 1964-1992. They said within the first few hours of the event, some collector had already come in and snapped up the entire collection for I think close to half a mil U.S. (things were getting a bit blurry for me by that point, so my memory may not be 100%, but it was a hefty chunk of change nonetheless). Dude just bought the equivalent of an entire house to put in his cigar room..
I finally learned the difference between Scotch (it's made from barley) and Bourbon (it's made from corn and rye). And also the proper way to taste it (not in little shot glasses after you lose at a round of dice games):
1. Pour into a short stemmed glass that has a bowl and a narrow neck.
2. Coat the inside of the glass by tilting and rotating the glass slowly. Beads or 'tears' will fall back down the glass. The faster it falls, the younger the whisky. The smaller the beads, the higher the alcohol content.
3. When smelling, or 'nosing', make sure the whisky is settled. Don't swirl it around like wine. The high alcohol content will naturally evaporate on its own, allowing the various flavours to travel up the glass at different rates.
4. Taste slowly and work it around your mouth to hit all your taste buds. Pay attention to the finish for further flavours.
5. Re-evaluate the nose and taste by gradually pouring in a small amount of water, which disrupts the composition of the whisky and can release new flavours.
I skipped the Chivas and Johnnie Walker, as they just reminded me of going to a ktv. Of all the ones I tried, my favourites were probably the Glenfarclas and Glenrothes. But to be honest, after knocking back the first few, they all started tasting pretty good..
*I never noticed that there are 2 spellings. Americans and Irish tend to spell it whiskey with an "e", while Canadians, Scottish, and Japanese spell it whisky.
