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New iteration of the unpeated living bottle:

• 5 mL Glendronach 15 sherry cask
• 10 mL Aberlour a’bunadh, euro bottling (heavily sherried)
• 15 mL Glenturret ‘80/’00 (Blackadder)
• 20 mL Glen Moray 12 Chenin Blanc finish
• 25 mL Glen Moray 16
• 30 mL Glen Garioch 8
• 35 mL Aberlour 100
• 40 mL Aberlour 10, bourbon casked, Duncan Taylor bottling for Trader Joe’s
• 45 mL Balvenie Doublewood (aged in bourbon and finished in sherry)
• 50 mL Macallan 10, bourbon casked, for Trader Joe’s

Nose: Oiled leather, sherry, honey, sweet, soft, white rum

Palate: Leather, strong honey, very sweet, almost raisiny (but in a good way), lychee

Finish:  Leather, perfume, oak.  Enticingly sweet.

Notes:  Really a charmer.  92/100

This is the best it’s been so far.

This will cover two incarnations of the bottle.  A couple weeks ago, I tried the next iteration of the living bottle.

1. 6 mL Glendronach 15 sherry cask
2. 13 mL Aberlour a’bunadh, euro bottling (heavily sherried)
3. 19 mL Glenturret ‘80/’00 (Blackadder)
4. 25 mL Glen Moray 12 Chenin Blanc finish
5. 31 mL Glen Moray 16
6. 38 mL Glen Garioch 8
7. 44 mL Aberlour 100
8. 50 mL Aberlour 10, bourbon casked, Duncan Taylor bottling for Trader Joe’s

It’s not very good.

Nose: Light sherry, cherry sours.  Spirity, fruity.

Palate: Simple.  Tastes spread out and vatted.

Finish: Undistinguished.  Slight fruit.  Grainy.

Finish: I hope this improves on subsequent iterations, as it’s not very good right now.

Score: 80/100

Tonight I’m tasting the next iteration, after adding Balvenie Doublewood a couple of weeks ago:

1. 6 mL Glendronach 15 sherry cask
2. 11 mL Aberlour a’bunadh, euro bottling (heavily sherried)
3. 17 mL Glenturret ‘80/’00 (Blackadder)
4. 22 mL Glen Moray 12 Chenin Blanc finish
5. 28 mL Glen Moray 16
6. 33 mL Glen Garioch 8
7. 39 mL Aberlour 100
8. 44 mL Aberlour 10, bourbon casked, Duncan Taylor bottling for Trader Joe’s
9. 50 mL Balvenie Doublewood (aged in bourbon and finished in sherry)

I’m writing the notes as I taste.

Nose:  Much improved.  Oiled leather, sherry.  A bit spirity.  Cherries.

Palate:  Maraschino cherry, book leather

Finish:  Still getting a lot of cherry and leather.  Vintage port.

Notes:  Really very nice.  I’m glad I didn’t give up on the bottle.  I wouldn’t have pegged it for a vatted malt.  I might have even guessed it as port casked Speysider.  Now the question is, how much of this change is the composition, and how much is variance in my tasting apparatus from week to week?  Could adding 20% Balvenie Doublewood really swing the profile this far?  I think it’s possible.  It certainly is responsible for emphasizing the leather.  In any case, I would buy a bottle of this.

Score: 91/100

I’m adding another whisky.  I’ll bring another installment in a week or so.

My pours haven’t been precise up to this point in my unpeated living bottle.  The figures I gave last time about the relative volumes of the constituent whiskies were close but not perfect.  They summed to 175 mL (but I did not measure it) before I poured off a tasting sample.  My sample was probably about 25 ml, then I found another bottle to add (allegedly) 50 mL of to it, then poured off two tasting samples on two nights.  Now I’ve measured the volume, and it’s, as far as I can tell, exactly 200 mL.  I’ve made a measurement error.  Assuming my errors were constant up until now (a significant assumption, but reasonable since I’ve been doing the same equipment), I’ve been off by about 25% in my pours.  But I have calibrated my equipment now, and now we can begin newly calibrated.

What we need to do is to pour off enough of the existing bottle so that it matches the series as we want to continue.  Currently our formula for the total volume before the pouring should be ((7*8)/(2*7))*X=250, where X is the size of the pours I’ve actually been making.  Solving for X, we get X = 250/4, or 62.5mL.  I measured the amount I think I’ve been pouring, and it’s very close to this number.  We’ve already poured off 50 mL of this, or 20%, so we have therefore poured out 20% of our largest pour, 62.5 mL, leaving us at (ta da) 50 mL.  So what’s the amount we have to pour out to make this fit our series?  The hard way to do this is with division, but since we now have a bottle with 50 mL of the largest contributor in place and everything else in line, we can intuitively see that we just need to pour off a standard tasting sample, 25 mL, and our bottle will be ready for the next contribution.  Seen another way, (1/7 + 2/7 + … + 6/7 + 7/7) * 50 is (56/7)/2 * 50, or 4 * 50 is our current volume before the pour  (200 mL).  So hold on while I go pour one.

The whisky I added was Aberlour 100, a nice, Christmasy, sherried malt.

To run down the contributions so far, it’s:

• 7 mL Glendronach 15 sherry cask
• 14 mL Aberlour a’bunadh, euro bottling (heavily sherried)
• 21 mL Glenturret ‘80/’00 (Blackadder)
• 29 mL Glen Moray 12 Chenin Blanc finish
• 35 mL Glen Moray 16
• 43 mL Glen Garioch 8
• 50 mL Aberlour 100

Nose: Candied fruits, spiced apple cider, raspberry fudge truffles, rye crackers.

Palate:  Prickly, warm, reminiscent of a young sherried Glenfarclas, cinnamon imperials.

Finish:  Somewhat muddled at first, then resolving into licorice and hints of cherry sours.

Notes:  As you can see, the sherry casks are back, making up 36% of the volume, letting the worse whiskies take on filler roles.

Score: 86/100

I’ve added one more sample to the bottle, which I’ll leave to marry for a week and have another installment of the series.

Click “living bottle” below (grey metadata box on the site itself) for the other entries in the series.

Inspired by a friend, I’ve begun two “living bottles” of scotch whisky, to populate as I finish bottles.  This is doubly cool: it allows me to have living bottles, of course, but it also gives me an excuse to finish off bottles, which I otherwise would leave with two pours left in them for all eternity.

It’s essentially a solera system.  Every time I get close to finishing a bottle, I’ll pour 50 mL from the bottom into a living bottle.  Then I’ll shake it up, let it settle, and pour off 25 mL as a tasting sample.  I worked out the math, and the solution for concentrations is really elegant.  To wit: count the number of generations; let’s say there have been six generations.  Then, the oldest contribution will have 1/6 of its original contribution, the second-oldest 2/6, and so on, until the newest, which has 6/6, or one times the original contribution, namely 50 mL.  I’ll leave the proof as an exercise to the reader.  If you need help send me an email.

I started two bottles.  No grand theme.  One is “peated”.  One is “unpeated”.  I did this because a little peat (for non-afficionados, that’s the phenolic flavors generated by burning peat moss to dry the grain) goes a long way.  (It’s a good way to stretch your peated whiskies, actually: mix a splash of peated stuff in with a bunch of cheap “carrier”.  Your detection of phenol concentrations is not in any way linear, so you’ll get the peaty enjoyment without the cost of the peaty whisky.)

I added the sixth generation to my unpeated bottle tonight.  I’m going to post tasting notes.  I’ll maybe make this a regular feature depending on the reception.

It contains, roughly:

1. 8 mL Glendronach 15 sherry cask
2. 17 mL Aberlour a’bunadh, euro bottling (heavily sherried)
3. 25 mL Glenturret ‘80/’00 (Blackadder)
4. 33 mL Glen Moray 12 Chenin Blanc finish
5. 42 mL Glen Moray 16
6. 50 mL Glen Garioch 8

Nose: The sherry monsters are in low concentration, and it shows.  No discernable sherry note.  Malty, mellow highland grain, with a hint of marshmallowy lowland character.  Golden raisins, Malt-O-Meal, American oak.

Palate: Sharp at first, then cabbage soup, malt, leaves.

Finish: Toasty, marshmallowy, malty, slightly briney (odd).

Notes: Not showing the best right now, as it is more than half really mediocre whiskies (Glen Garioch 8 and Glen Moray 16, both of which are good cooking whiskies.)

Score: 79/100

I don’t think anyone has gotten around to formalizing this, so here goes.  Collecting 5cl screw-cap miniature liquor bottles is a popular and relatively cheap hobby.  Among the major considerations are whether the seal is intact (this is imperative), how much has evaporated from the bottle (the “fill level”), the condition of the label or labels (tears, stains, peeling, etc.), and whether there is any unsightly sticker residue (this can usually be addressed by careful use of solvents).  The problem of fill level is that the screw-caps are notoriously gas-permeable.  To formalize the fill levels (unless otherwise listed, assume fully intact seal), select the best applicable from the following:

aa: Fill level obscured by bottle cap (most bottles are not filled this high)
a: Fill level to mid-neck or above (the normal original fill line)
b: Fill level above the shoulder
c: Fill level at the shoulder
d: Fill level less than 1 cm below the shoulder
e: Fill level at or above the midpoint of the main bottle body
f: Fill level below the midpoint of the main bottle body
g: Empty, with seal intact
z: Seal is broken, cap is present (disregard fill level)
zz: Seal is broken, cap is missing (disregard fill level)
x: Ceramic or otherwise opaque bottle, difficult to judge (may accompany a guess of whether the bottle is (1) more than 2/3, (2) more than 1/3, or (3) less full)

Therefore, a grade of a would be an excellent item, a grade of c would be acceptable to many collectors, a grade of e or f would be a space-filler until a better example comes along, and a grade of x1 would possibly be good, depending on how much you trust the vendor’s skill of estimation of volume.

Whisky-themed neckties. Unfortunately the Euro exchange rate makes them $43 apiece. (Have you seen the exchange rates recently? $1.34 to buy a Euro; $1.95 to buy a pound.)

I’m thinking of writing a book called So Many Bunnies at the Scotch Whisky Distillery.  I’ve got the beginning worked out:

1 was named Ashton.  He slept in the mash tun.

2 was named Beryl.  She slept in a barrel.

3 was named Carol.  She slept in a barrel.

4 was named Darryl.  He slept in a barrel.

5 was named Errol.  He slept in a barrel.

There are a lot of barrels, you see.

OK, that’s a point-oh-one percenter.  The intersection of the set of scotch aficionados and the set of parents of infants.

We could go on. 16 could be Pete, who slept in the peat. 19 could be Sherry, whose butt slept in the sherry butt. And we could rewrite 4 to be “Daniel, who slept in the hogshead.”

OK, that’s a 1 x 10^-7 percenter.  I’ll stop now.

Quote 1: We [at Macallan] started back in … 1996 with an 1874 bottle which was, at the time, the oldest bottle of Macallan we’d been able to track down. We’d bought it at auction … [and I] thought wouldn’t it be a great fun to be able to taste a whisky that had been made all those years ago. So we opened it and were amazed to find that it was similar — not identical — but similar to some casks we come across today. — David Robertson, Macallan distillery

Quote 2: The Scotsman has learned that far from being some of the oldest whisky in the world, the liquid inside the bottles [at Macallan's whisky museum] is not Victorian at all but dates from the late 1980s.… After a year-long investigation by the Macallan board, during which sample bottles were sent to Oxford University for … testing, it emerged that the liquid content inside the bottles is “modern”, in some cases as young as ten years old. — William Lyons, The Scotsman newspaper

Hmmm.  Maybe we shouldn’t be entirely amazed that the “ancient” Macallans taste so modern.  (This is just speculation. There is no hard evidence as of yet that the particular 19th century Macs used as templates for the replicas series were fakes. And in any case, no one I know of is accusing Macallan of intentionally perpetrating a hoax — seems like they were scammed just like everyone else.)

For the Scotch collectors, Specialty Bottle has 50 ml glass sample bottles, with caps, for $0.28 apiece when you buy eight or more 12-bottle cases at a time. This quantity discount essentially means you’re getting 96 bottles for the 75 bottle price. The price for eight cases, including shipping to California, is lower than the price before shipping and handling if you were to buy them from Essential Supplies.

(Scotch collectors use them to trade samples with friends or take specimens home from tastings.)

Diageo has backed down in the Cardhu fiasco.  Now let’s all watch the “Pure Malt” become an $800 collector’s item.

According to Alex Kraaijeveld on MALTS-L, Tullibardine is set to reopen at the end of this month (click to find Tullibardine bottles.)

I lost my favorite scotch glass in the move this past January.  It’s not really a scotch glass.  Not designed to be, anyway.  It’s a wine tasting glass from Andrew Murray Vineyards in Santa Barbara County, California, the one that they give you as a souvenir when you pay to taste their wines.  It’s copita-shaped, much like the Riedel port glass, but with a slightly shorter, not as bulbous bowl, shorter stem, and narrower base (the big disc of the base is the ugliest thing — the only ugly thing — about the Riedel port glass.)  I know we have it somewhere, in some box I haven’t yet found.  It’s probably hiding with the two Riedel port glasses I’m still missing.

Much sadness abounds.

The most to-the-point article thus far on the row over Cardhu.  It’s unbelievable that Diageo are still sticking to their guns in the face of such immense industry opposition.

One of the bits of fluff TV I like to watch is the BBC’s program Cash in the Attic.  If you’ve never seen it, the concept is simple.  A couple or family will want to raise some money for a particular project, so they call in an expert appraiser and a bubbly, good-looking host to rummage through their oldest and dearest possessions in cellar, closet, lounge, and the namesake attic, and quote a ballpark value for them.  Then two weeks later said possessions are shipped off to auction where the host, expert, and participants watch with glee (or horror) as strangers battle (or not) to acquire these goods.  The producers then append a 30 second segment on what the family has done with the money.

Sometimes the goal is admirable, like the woman who wanted to go back to see her friends in the Canadian Arctic town she left 40 years ago.  Sometimes the goal is monumentally silly, like the parents who sold all their antique family silver, which could have been divided into several tidy lots, to purchase one phenomenally ugly modern painting that, I suppose, their three children will get to slice into thirds at some point in the future.

What is most breathtaking about the show, however, is when the expert (such as the wizardly Jonty Hearndon) will spot a piece of pottery from across the room and will instantly know what it is, how many of it were made, who made it (and when), and what it’s worth.  It just doesn’t seem possible.

But then I found myself doing something similar, albeit on a smaller scale, the other day.  I was watching another of my BBC shows, MI-5.  In the background of one of the scenes, out of focus, were three bottles.  I expect most people wouldn’t have even noticed them.  “Oh,” I thought, “That’s two Glenfiddich bottles — from the coloring I think the 12 and the 18 — and a Balvenie.”  Then I immediately wondered if William Grant & Sons had paid for the placement, as the two distilleries are owned by the same company.  (Note added 25 October 2003: I think they were paid placements.  A different episode of the show featured the same three bottles in the background of a different location.)  Yes, there are far, far fewer scotch whiskies than types of pottery.  But it’s still kind of cool pattern recognition.  How about you: do you surprise yourself with bits of instant recognition?  Post at the discussion page, if you are so inclined.

You know that scene from Doctor Dolittle when Rex Harrison is reading a volume from his bookshelf, is impressed by the astuteness of the author, checks to see who it is, and discovers that he himself had written the book?

Reading at the Celtic Malts site someone is quoted as saying that the best whisky match for a deep-fried Mars bar is Loch Dhu because by doing so one “can experience two culinary abominations at the same time, with a minimum of effort.”  After chuckling, I read on and saw that the quote is attributed to me.  Well, at least I amuse myself.

[I am writing this on my laptop on Tuesday night, but I will not be able to post it until tomorrow (Wednesday).]

Sunday through Wednesday of this week I am in Palo Alto on business.  Today, on my way back to the offices from a recommended lunch spot, I passed a used book store.  Or rather, I attempted to pass a used store, as I have never succeeded in actually walking past one.

I have a few collecting interests in books, among them nineteenth century editions of Concord transcendalists’ texts, books on scotch whisky, and editions of The Oxford Book of Carols.  So I navigated to my standard haunts.  Bell’s Books did not have any Oxford Carols.  It did have a copy of Scotch Made Easy by Wilson, a book I did not know existed; I picked this up (and, as it turns out, overpaid for it.)  One of the employees retrieved a stack of older Emerson and Thoreau texts, with a ladder, from high on a shelf, and I looked through them at the counter.  I found a Riverside Press edition of Emerson’s Essays: Second Series; I remembered that I had a Riverside edition of the First Series, but could not remember which printing (i.e., whether they matched or not.)  I asked them to set the Emerson aside and I would call back after I checked my online book collection.

So this story now finds me standing at the counter with the Perl Cookbook that I brought in, Scotch Made Easy, and a book of Emerson essays.

“This is a varied selection,” said the clerk as he picked up the scotch book to ring up.  “Scotch, Thoreau [sic], and Perl.  I’m not going to try to figure out the connection.”

I laughed as the oddity struck me.  “Well,” I said, “I have a website about scotch whisky written in Perl.  And of course there is the pleasure of pouring a fine dram while reading Thoreau.”

“And you said you had your book collection online, which is at least a vague connection,” he concluded.

Connections galore.  Perhaps I am not so odd after all.

I’ve done some work on ScotchFinder, including fixing the scripts for certain companies that have redesigned their sites, adding little flag icons next to vendor names, and (very cool) adding the stock of MARA Malt Rarities.  The proprieter sent me a very nice letter, and it was my pleasure to add his stock to the site.

Sleep………….

A single malt pointer for the enthusiasts among you: Lismore single malt, perhaps exclusive to the U.S. market.  No age statement, billed as “pure single highland malt scotch whisky”, unidentified distillery.  This is quite pleasant: a soft toffee nose, with a soft, Lowlandish, floral palate with hints of apple.  Bottled at 40% abv but with an edge that would make me guess 43%.  The main advantage?  The price: $13.

Nothing to write home about, but a fine and inexpensive everyday dram.  I wonder what distillery it hails from.

Liquor.com redesigned their website a couple of months ago.  In fact, I think the site is much improved.  However, this change broke the script used by ScotchFinder (which I run) so their inventory has been out of the ScotchFinder system since the change.  This is not ideal, of course, but I didn’t do anything about it until now.  So, if you care, Liquor.com is back in ScotchFinder.