A good friend of ours (and fellow whisky fan), the brilliant photographer Tomas Whitehouse was over in the UK from Helsinki to visit family. He stopped in for a dram or two during the Christmas period with his partner Tuuli, and we talked long into the night about all manner of things.

Along the way, we had a few real treats: a New Zealand whisky, the Thomson 17 year-old which is surprisingly light and citrus; the Jura Superstition (a default dram – especially when I’ve run out of the Prophecy); the Ardbeg Still Young committee bottling; and – since it was a special occasion – I cracked open the Lagavulin 12 year-old Special Release (cask strength, bottled in 2008) – which I certainly don’t regret.

As we sipped our whisky and listened to some good jazz, the conversation turned to tobacco. Tomas had recently started exploring the flavours of a range of pipe tobaccos and cigars with a friend of his in Finland, and began to fill me in on the knowledge he’d gleaned about different types of pipe, the ways in which to dry out the tobacco, how best to go about developing an appreciation of it, and where to get the best stuff online for a decent price.

Despite having been a non-smoker for about a decade, and desperately cautious of anything containing nicotine, the topic was fascinating to me. I think it’s fair to say that challenging the senses and exploring new tastes and aromas is one of the things that really draws me to whisky – as is the chance to sit down, relax, think, and have an interesting conversation. Pipe and cigar smoking definitely falls into that category as well.

By the end of the evening, I’d bookmarked a dozen or so websites, had a few names of things to try, and even a pipe or two in mind to acquire and get to work on.

In the cold light of day, however, my caution took over and I decided against it. I strongly suspect that having spent fifteen years as a pack-a-day smoker, I’d find it hard to make the enjoyment of a pipe an occasional indulgence, as whisky is.

Like anything, I guess, it pays to know where your personal margins of safety lie. Alcohol and tobacco are the two biggest killers in Western society, so (without wanting to sound like a public service announcement) it pays to have a healthy respect for them.

I feel a twinge of envy for Tomas, who is enjoying a whole new range of experiences and flavours that I’ve decided to deny myself – but to be entirely honest, I was also a bit worried that it might detract from my exploration of the world of whisky, which has seemingly infinite variety and surprises around every corner. I’m happy to keep my focus firmly there.

Of course – it’s always so great to have such interesting conversations over a few whiskies. That’s what it’s all about – people, stories, and sharing a glass or two of something nice. Don’t you think?

Putting the finishing touches on the year and thought I’d pause to raise a toast to everyone who helped make 2011 a good one for Clutch and I. We visited some lovely places, drank some astonishingly good whisky, met some wonderful people and had the opportunity to taste and write about some incredible drams.

Not every experience was a good one in 2011, of course. Every year has its ups and downs. Not every person we met was delightful, and not every dram was to our liking, but the positive far more than outweighed the negative and you don’t want to read about two blokes having a miserable time anyway, so we’ll gloss over that stuff.

Besides, look back over the blog and you’ll see how lucky we’ve been – and what unique experiences and opportunities that a love of whisky has brought to us over the past year.

So I just wanted to wish you – and particularly Clutch and family now tucked away in their brand new home way up in the north of Scotland – a very merry Christmas.

This is a Dalmore 1995 – it’s sweet, a little nutty with marzipan and dried fruits – with a medium to long finish of sherry trifle. The perfect Christmas dram, actually. To your health – and to a wonderful and prosperous 2012.

Sláinte.

Earlier this week, we made a special, one of a kind blended malt whisky while we were at the Glengoyne distillery. We tasted it and we’re very happy with it, and it’s utterly unique.

And this is it right here: the only bottle of Dubber and Clutch Premium Blend whisky in the world. We’d like to send it to you.

All you have to do is tweet a link to this page, and you’re in the draw. We’ve made it exceptionally easy for you to do so as well.

Over on the left of this page (scroll up a bit – you’ll see it), there’s a button that says ‘Tweet’. It’s blue. Found it? Click that, send out the message, and you’re done.

Feel free to click that Like button while you’re up there as well – but that’s not one of the conditions of entry. We’ll draw the winner at random this time next week.

Best of luck!

We spent the afternoon at Glengoyne distillery yesterday, which enjoys a reputation as the world’s most beautiful distillery. It really is a lovely place to visit and walk around. As you can see from the photo, it’s at the bottom of a hill – actually an extinct volcano – and at the foot of the burn (a Scottish word for a stream) from where they source their water. It also gave the distillery its original name – Burnfoot.

Glengoyne pride themselves on their entirely smokeless whisky flavours. The malt they use in their distilling process is air-dried, rather than dried over a peat smoke fire. The resulting whisky is smooth, sweet and light.

It’s the silent season, so everything is shut down for maintenance, repairs and a jolly good clean.

It’s quite amazing to walk around and see the inside and workings of the machinery that makes the whisky – to actually look inside a still, rather than just admire it from the outside.

The shop has been refurbished and they have a ‘fill-your-own-bottle’ of single cask, unique to visitors of the distillery.

We tried a few drams – the 10 year-old, the Isle of Skye 12, the Glengoyne 17, and two single casks, one of which was an exceptional port-finished whisky.

We had a look around the warehouse as well as the distillery – perhaps most interesting because of the charcoal on the floor, which is there to retain moisture so that there’s less evaporation from the barrels.

But the highlight of the tour was the master blending session.

We were taken into the tasting room, and given samples of a range of different whiskies to nose from all of the whisky-producing regions of Scotland. We were talked through the process of making a premium blend whisky, consisting of primarily grain whiskies, but flavoured with a range of different malts.

Clutch and I made competing whiskies using different proportions and measures of the different malts, adding the Lowland malts to bring up some of the citrus notes, Highland to add a touch of dried fruit, Speyside for the sweetness and sherry, Island for pepper and honey and Islay to add a smoky, peaty air to the proceedings – and of course the Glengoyne itself for apples, vanilla and toffee.

Not that it was a competition or anything, but I totally won. Mine earned the right to be known as the Dubber and Clutch Premium Blend, and we think it’s really very good. We filled a 100ml sample bottle and then shared the remainder.

And this coming weekend, we’ll give you the chance to WIN that very bottle – the only bottle in the world of Dubber and Clutch Premium Blend.

Stay tuned here, and follow @twhisky on Twitter for details of how to win that unique whisky, made by the very hands that typed this blog post that you’re reading right now.

I’m in California this week, working with a music website called Bandcamp. I thought the least I could do was bring a bottle of whisky, so I snuck a bottle of the Jura Prophecy into my suitcase. Of course, my hosts had done their homework, and there was a bottle of Lagavulin 16 waiting for me on my arrival.

The team are having something of a retreat. They often work from home and only communicate with each other online most of the time, so periodically, they rent a big house in Inverness (coincidentally), just out of San Francisco – and stay for a week working together, and just generally hanging out. It’s a privilege to be included – and a whisky tasting seemed appropriate.

We added a Bowmore 15 and a local single malt called St George (made in Alameda, California) to the selection, and we sat around the table on our first night in the house tasting, discussing and comparing whisky.

We started with the St George, which this website describes as a ‘very girly’ whisky, moved on to the noticeably smokier Jura Prophecy, followed it up with the raisiny, rich Bowmore 15 and finished on the Lagavulin.

Of course, it was a bit of a late one and tasting whisky quickly just became drinking whisky. They all had work in the morning – including presentations and tech talks, and at 9am the next day, this was the opening slide.

The Lagavulin was the hands-down favourite, and over the course of the week, we’ve had to open the back-up bottle of that one. I think Diageo might start to notice a spike in local sales after this week.

But while we’ve mostly been hanging out together in the house, I have also managed to get out and about and explore a bit of the local neighbourhood.

I went to a saloon (the Old Western, no less) and I was pleasantly surprised to find Laphroaig on hand, though when I noticed the photographs above the bar of the visit paid to that fine establishment by Charles and Camilla, the pieces fell into place. Laphroaig is Charles’s favourite tipple.

But I’ve tried Laphroaig before, and wanted something a bit more appropriate to the context, so I selected a straight rye whisky called Old Overholt. Surprisingly sweet and smooth.

It’s been a great few days, and sharing the new tastes and understandings about whisky has definitely contributed to the experience of the event. I’ve managed to convert a few new whisky fans along the way, and made a few new friends in the process.

Every now and then, somebody emails us, offering to send us whisky to review on this blog. Which is lovely, of course, and much appreciated. But every now and then something reminds us to make clear that writing reviews of whisky for promotional purposes is not actually what we do.

Yesterday, we received a kind offer of a delivery of some samples, to which we responded immediately and positively. We like whisky, after all. The PR person who sent us the email then responded with their expectations of a review, a request for links to a couple of different pages on their client’s website, and a 7-day turnaround time for the review, after which they would follow up with further enquiries.

Two links and tweet? That’ll be four drams please
And so we declined with thanks. Chances are, had they sent the whisky, we would have reviewed it promptly, with links and in an interesting and hopefully entertaining manner. But it brought into sharp focus for us what this blog is and isn’t. We don’t write for whisky – we write about whisky.

Not only did setting up the expectations (I won’t use the word ‘demands’) in exchange for a small sample bottle or two clearly flag up the fact that we were essentially being paid for a review in this blog. It also reminded us that while we love whisky, this blog isn’t a marketing platform and nor is it analogous to a whisky magazine with a clear commercial imperative.

Send in the amateurs
We write about whisky mostly because we are interested in it. This is what we like to do. We’re interested in the stories, the ideas, the culture, the people, the places… as well as both the art and the science of whisky. We don’t give scores out of ten and nor do we only write about whisky that we have been given for free.

Not only that – but nor do we only write positive things (not least about ourselves). Some whisky is, let’s face it, horrible. And sometimes we do dumb stuff that makes us look foolish – which is always great web content.

In other words, this is an outlet for our passion. We are both storytellers and we believe that whisky provides both the occasion for storytelling, and more than enough in the way of topics. We love to get involved in whisky-related projects – especially when we can shoehorn music into it as well. And of course, along the way, we have had (we like to think) positive promotional benefits, and when there’s an interesting story, we do have a lot to say. We know that thousands of people read this blog (no, really) and follow us on Twitter. We like to think that’s because what we write is interesting.

But there are other blogs that are set up as promotional channels for whisky brands. Blogs that have thought about their ‘marketing funnel’ (we had to look it up when we first heard the term, and it still makes us laugh). Blogs that are clearly online versions of whisky magazines, that rely on regular supply of press releases, samples and advertising copy for their ongoing sustainability.

Why you should (perhaps) send us whisky
We blog when we feel there’s something to blog about. When we go whisky places, meet whisky people, have something surprising to say about whisky, have thought about whisky things in a different way, or when we get together to do something whisky-related.

Being sent whisky is wonderful, of course, but we were pleased to have the opportunity to decline as well, as it reminded us what this blog is, and isn’t. We hope you find it interesting – but we’re here to share our enthusiasms – not just to sell you stuff.

A lot has already been written about the discovery, recovery and restoration of the cases of Mackinlay’s Rare Old Highland Malt that Ernest Shackleton took with him on an expedition to the South Pole over 100 years ago. It was buried under the ice for over a century, before being dug out and returned to its point of origin. A time capsule of whiskies gone by.

As the Mackinlay’s brand is a property of Whyte & Mackay, some of it ended up back in the hands of their master blender, Richard Paterson, who sampled it, presumably took a few notes, and then set out to recreate it as faithfully as he could.

First a few facts: It’s bottled at 47.3% – the original strength – and both the recreation and the whisky it is based on have been sampled by Dave Broom, another top whisky tasting expert, who has independently verified the likeness.

Clutch and I have each done a tasting and have ended up concluding that it’s very nice indeed. However, what we can’t tell you is how similar it is to the “real thing”. And in a way, that’s absolutely fine. Because we will never know – and it’s perhaps more interesting that way.

The work of art in the age of whisky reproduction
The whole situation got me thinking about recreations, facsimiles and copies. I sampled another recreation recently, and found myself not wanting to know what the original had been like. Had it been absolutely identical, or completely different – I would have been disappointed.

Walter Benjamin’s much quoted 1936 essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction‘ talks about the “aura” of an authentic work, and the difficulty faced by a replication in approaching that sense of authenticity. The technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition, the context of its production and the cultural meanings it holds.

In other words, this is not a whisky that allows us any real insight into Shackleton’s adventures or the man himself, and nor does it allow us any real access into his world. It’s a souvenir from the gift shop, if you like. There is the “real thing”, and then there is “just a copy”. And no matter how similar they are, there is a real difference between owning or drinking the copy – and owning or drinking the original, which must be (one assumes) utterly priceless.

There is no authentic original
But if you go beyond Benjamin, you meet Jean Baudrillard, who talks about the ‘simulacrum‘ – an object that is a copy for which there exists no original. And that’s really what this whisky is – since there is for us no reference. No comparison to be made. This is the whisky itself; we know it’s “just a copy” – but equally, we know that it is its own marker of authenticity.

Because if we go into a gift shop and buy a poster of the Mona Lisa, having just seen the original hanging in the gallery – we know the extent to which our purchase is a copy. How it differs as well as how it is similar. But that’s not our experience here.

And no matter how trustworthy and reliable our authenticators and “forgers” might be (and they are the finest the whisky profession has to offer), it almost doesn’t matter what the “real” Shackleton whisky is like – because for us, it is just an idea. And we buy and taste this Mackinlay’s Rare Old Highland Malt simulacrum in the knowledge that what we have bought is access to an idea – a social object around which we can tell stories of adventures, and the miraculous discovery of a museum piece that we can never directly experience.

And while we tell these stories, we can share this whisky as if it connects us with the legend of Shackleton and his epic quest for knowledge, adventure and, ultimately, lasting significance. Whether it is an exact match – or even a close approximation of the whisky he brought with him is less than irrelevant. It is unknowable.

But what can be known is the quality and the experience of this simulacrum. The copy. What I actually have come to think of as the “real” Mackinlay. And the good news is that it is excellent.

The taste of reconstruction
Nose: Lemon grass, pencil shavings, cinnamon sticks, ground pepper, touch of thin woodsmoke
Palate: Fresh lime soda, acid drops, sherbert, paprika with a touch of poached pear, plums and nectarine
Finish: Medium. A little parma violet, some of the pepper and a little residual warmth of the fruit.

Water softens it considerably, but doesn’t take anything away from it – simply gives it more body and emphasises the sweetness while mellowing out the pepper.

A superb and surprising whisky from the Whyte & Mackay stable. Well worth experiencing. But you are not only buying a whisky of quality and pedigree, you’re also buying a story to share and, if not an actual heritage artefact, then at least a piece of history.

And just as Shackleton’s failure to reach the Pole on this expedition does not detract from his place in the imagination as a central figure in the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, our inability to sample the whisky he brought with him does not diminish our connection with that story, and the symbolic (and thoroughly rewarding) experience of a dram created in his honour.

Recreating old whisky must be a tricky business. I can taste and smell things in a dram that seem to me to be the flavours and aromas it contains (or suggests). But to work the other way and engineer a whisky to capture subtle notes and undercurrents once contained by a whisky gone by takes a rare skill and depth of understanding.

Glenmorangie Finealta is a recreation of a recipe from 1903, which is matured in a specific ratio between American white oak casks and Spanish Oloroso casks. There’s also a spot of peat to this – unusual for a Glenmorangie these days, but a hundred plus years ago, they dried their barley in a peat fired kiln, so it would have been standard at the time.

Having not tasted the original myself – being only forty-something years of age, rather than a hundred and forty something – I can’t speak to the exactness with which the whisky has been recreated. But I can tell you what I think of it.

First, the nose is quite citrus. Lime and oranges and a sugary note reminiscent of lemon drops, with a touch of dried fruit and a slight note of thin woodsmoke – like burning kindling. The sweetness comes through on the palate – still citrus, but more marmalade than fresh fruit. A little water takes the sharpness away – and too much quickly deadens it – but it’s still overwhelmingly marmalade with ginger and a little allspice.

The finish is an unusual one. Instantly baking soda and sugar – sweet, but unbalanced, like a misread fudge recipe. Not altogether unpleasant, but certainly surprising after the delicate start. An overall chalky floral ending, as if you’d inhaled your grandmother’s face powder – evocative of times gone by, certainly.

This may or may not be indistinguishable from the whisky served at the American Bar of the Savoy in 1903, but the attractive art nouveau inspired bottle, the stories that will accompany it, and the unusual nature of the dram (both in terms of its peaty air and its antique elegance) will pique the curiosity of many whisky enthusiasts.

If you’re interested, you’ll pick up a bottle for around the £60 mark. 46% abv.

Photo by Junnn

It’s worth noting that the collection has been created by Richard ‘The Nose’ Paterson, who is Whyte & Mackay’s talented (and world-renowned) master blender – and according to the blurb here, each expression is different and reflects the character of Scotland’s four greatest salmon rivers.

I have to be honest here: I don’t taste the character of the Spey river in this particular dram, and I didn’t taste any other river characters in the other drams – but this is a metaphorical reflection rather than a literal one, which I suppose is a good thing. I suspect I wouldn’t enjoy a whisky that literally reflected the character of a salmon river, no matter how pristine and well-preserved, quite as much as I enjoy these Dalmore drams.

All that said – on with the Spey. And as much as it’s a fine whisky, this is further up the floral end of the spectrum than you might ordinarily associate with a Speyside whisky – and that’s because it’s not a Speyside. Being a Dalmore means that it’s a Highlands whisky, regardless of how much of the spirit of the Spey the expression metaphorically reflects.

There’s a light note of jasmine on the nose, and not much of anything else. Perhaps a little lavender. The palate is fairly unchallenging – sweet and subtle with hints of macadamia and marzipan – and while the finish isn’t abrupt, it is rather light with just a touch of pepper and bergamot.

Rather disappointingly, since this is the Rivers Collection I’m finishing on, this is for me the least of them. Still, if you wanted to make a contribution to the upkeep of the Spey river – or indeed all of the rivers – or if you wanted to collect the set, this would certainly be one to get. But for my money, if you’re choosing just one of the four – go for the Dee dram, which was the second one I tasted.

I still have a sample of Dalmore to try that came in the same box, but it’s not one of the Rivers Collection. This is the one I’ve been saving for best: the Dalmore Castle Leod… and I’ll be tasting that one in a couple of days time. Look forward to that one.

Photo by christianvassdal

Known as perhaps the best and most prolific of the salmon-fishing rivers, the Tweed River is both celebrated and supported by the release of the third of this series of Dalmore rivers collection bottlings: the Tweed Dram.

A lighter and more delicate scotch than the previous two (Tay and Dee), this has a more honeycomb and marzipan nose to it, with a touch of pear. The palate is marmalade and allspice with barley sugars. Honey on the medium-length finish with a slight nut and caramel tone to the aftertaste.

If you’re looking for a slightly sweeter and mellower dram, this would be a very good choice, and you can feel good about the £4 or so that goes toward the preservation of Britain’s best salmon waterway.