Not so naff drink makeover: Whisky

Neil Sedaka was a wise man.  He wrote the immortal words “Breaking up is hard to do” in a song of the same title, and as anyone who has broken up with someone knows, it is hard to do, no matter which side of the dumping you are on.

I grant you, Sedaka made the song fit the time he released it, so his words weren't expressed properly.  It was the early sixties and the future was all bright and joyful, so a depressing song about a man pleading his departed love to return to him was unlikely to bring in the dollars!  Therefore, Sedaka threw in some up tempo music and a lot of “down dooby doo down downs” and the off “camma camma” to make it a bouncy sing-a-long number. 

But last week I was listening to the radio and heard a slowed down version of this classic.  I don’t remember the singer, but the track had a very melancholy feel to it.  It was as if the singer was a person that had just been torn apart and they were singing to try and win back their lover.  Yet not a word was changed from the Sedaka original (except for the omission of all the dooby doobies) and the power of the original lyric was released from the song.  This all goes to show that if you look at the raw materials of something, and rejigged them, you get a totally different end product.

Take Tequila.  Most people will throw it into cocktails or down it in copious quantities on a hen night in Newcastle with the bride to be wearing a neon yellow tutu and ‘L’ plates.  Tequila is used purely for fun.  It is the Neil Sedaka version of the song, fun, simple and not particularly serious. 

But then there are some serious tequila drinkers taking the same raw ingredients, getting rid of the pop music element and sipping tequila and savouring the flavour.  There is not a dooby down in sight, and there is certainly no beer chaser.  These people have made the drink serious, the exact opposite of the hen party drink.

Whisky drinkers tend to inhabit this latter camp.  They sit, savouring their whisky.  Sipping their malt, sniffing it occasionally and swirling it around the glass.  But why can’t they inject the fun into the product, making it a cocktail rather than a sipping whisky? Adding the odd ‘dooby dooby’ isn’t going to ruin whisky, and introducing it to the inebriated hen party will only do the industry good.  This is why we are going to do a “not so naff drink makeover on whisky”!

Hoots Mon
1 ½ oz Scotch Whisky
¾ oz Sweet Vermouth
1 tsp Benedictine

Pour the Scotch whisky, vermouth and Benedictine into a mixing glass half-filled with cracked ice. Stir well. Strain into a cocktail glass, garnish with a twist of lemon peel, and serve.

Aberdeen Angus
2 oz Scotch whisky
1 oz Drambuie Scotch whisky
1 tbsp honey
2 tbsp lime juice

Stir all but the drambuie into a coffee mug. Warm the drambuie, ignite it and pour the burning liqueur into the mug. Stir rapidly and drink.

Old Moorhen's Shredded Sporran recipe
1 oz Scotch whisky
1/2 oz Drambuie® Scotch whisky
1/2 oz Mandarine Napoleon® orange liqueur
1 tsp Parfait Amour® orange liqueur
2 oz pineapple juice
1 oz guava nectar
1/4 oz lemon juice
1 tsp almond syrup

Shake briefly with a glassful of crushed ice. Garnish with a slice of lemon and a cherry, and serve in an Old-Fashioned glass with straws.

All Cocktails from Drinks Mixer


Post this...

6 Questions with... Gary Horner of Erath Winery

With a background in Pharmacy Science, he left his first career behind in 1988 and moved his family to the Willamette Valley in Oregon to make wine.  Between then and 2003, when he joined Dick Erath in Dundee, he held numerous posts at various wine establishments and even created his own wine label, Destiny Vintners.  Now at Erath, he is the winemaker for the company that pioneered Pinot Noir in Oregon.  But what does the man drink at home?

What would you do if you weren't in the wine trade?
Probably still practicing Clinical Pharmacy 

What was the best wine you have ever made, and what is the worst?
2006 La Nuit Magique Pinot noir was the best, 1986 Washington Cabernet Sauvignon (made as an amateur winemaker in my garage) was the worst.

Describe yourself in three words.
Tall, sensitive, confident.

Aside from your own wines, what do you like drinking on a regular basis?
Crisp and tropical New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, Barrel fermented Oregon Chardonnay (Chehelem & Adelsheim) made from Dijon clones, 2005 Canoe Ridge Merlot, 2006 Canoe Ridge Chardonnay.

What is next for Gary Horner?
Tomorrow!  

Name three people, real or fictional, living or dead, that would be guests at your dream dinner party, and what would you be drinking?
Albert Einstein, Bill Horner my deceased father and my wife Sarah.  Not necessarily in order of importance.  If the party was today we would be drinking 1998 Argyle Extended Tirage Sparkling wine, 2006 Erath Oregon Pinot Blanc, 2006 La Nuit Magic Pinot Noir, 2006 Soter Mineral Springs Pinot Noir, 2006 Spring Valley Uriah Red Blend, 2005 Col Solare Red Blend & 2008 Erath Pinot Blanc Late Harvest.

Erath Winery Website

With thanks to Stratford's Wine Agencies

Previous 6 Questions with
Geoff Hardy
Ernst Loosen
Dan Aykroyd
Paul Draper
Dan Connolly
Sir Cliff Richard

Post this...

You don't know what you are doing! But Gordon & MacPhail do

YOU WILL NOT MAKE MONEY IN WHISKY! You may be the greatest salesman on earth, but the fact is that if you buy yourself a cask of whisky and keep it for a decade, you won’t be able to get it bottled and sell it to a whisky shop for masses of cash. You might offload a few cases to your friends, but you are going to be left with more whisky than you could ever imagine and you’ll be drinking the same liquid until you shuffle off this mortal coil. Leave whisky to the distillers, they know what they are doing.

But there is another sector of the market that also knows what they are doing, and they are called independent bottlers. There are two main types, those that buy barrels of whisky from all sorts of sources and bottle them, and those that take a risk that the whisky might go bad, and get empty cask filled by a distillery and control it’s evolution from as near as birth as they can get, right through to bottling. To understand it easier, imagine the first type as a person who buys free range pork, adds herbs and produces a sausage that sometimes is good, and other times not so, depending on the quality of the pork. Nothing wrong with that sort of company, but imagine the second as a person who buys a baby pig, rears it on a special diet of finest root vegetables, tickles it's ears (pigs like that!), allows it to grow in perfect conditions, takes it to a slaughter house, has it despatched and then adds the herbs and produces a good sausage with the pig's name on the packet. That is the sort of company I like.

Gordon & Macphail (G&M) are such a company. Based in Elgin, they have an unbelievably large selection of whiskies available under their own label, from many famous distilleries, as well as owning the Benromach distillery. Gordon & Macphail’s independently bottled whiskies tend to offer a different choice of style to the consumer. They may use sherry casks for a whisky that the distillery only uses bourbon, or they will experiment with other casks that contained tokaji, burgundy or rum. In doing so, and the fact that they are production led so they release what is ready for drinking, regardless of what it actually is, it means that alongside, for example, the half dozen distillery releases of Caol Ila, you may have something as strange as a sherry/zinfandel/rum casked thirteen and a half year old Caol Ila, unchillfiltered and bottled at cask strength by G&M! They also can offer older whiskies at a fraction of the price of a distillery bottling, an example being when Highland Park released their 30 year old at £300, and G&M’s was £90!

Old Pulteney is a distillery near Wick in the far north of Scotland. G&M’s 1970 Old Pulteney (refill sherry), bottled 2008 at 43% was very clean, with toasted corn and vanilla, with citrus peel, some sea salt and a long, lingering light finish of lemon and grapefruit skin. The distillery’s whisky now is, to me, has too much sweet vanilla elements, and isn’t as good as their older style which was all about freshness, sea air and citrus. This harks back to the good old days of the distillery, with that delightful lightness, despite spending 38 years oxidising in a barrel. And at £90, this is a steal, 8/10.

And things get better with a 1969 Glenrothes, heavily sherried, bottled at 39 years at 43%. Insanely sweet on the nose, lots of furniture polish, almonds and some orange coming through. Lots of herbs on the palate, with dried fruit and some dried orange as well. A bitter element on the finish, reminds me of a bitter digestif. £80 per bottle, and whilst I preferred the Old Pulteney, this is a good, rich, sweet malt. 7/10.

To a lot of people, Macallan is whisky, and old Macallans usually involve lots of Christmas cake aromas, dried fruit, chocolate and leather. This whisky, a 1972 Speymalt Macallan, bottled 2008 at 43% from 1st fill sherry casks, however was very fresh. Yes it had fruit cake, but much lighter, cloves coming through. Vanilla toffee mixed with some citrus. A very different Macallan, and also showing G&M’s ability to bring a thirty six year old whisky to the market for a third of the price of Macallan’s own bottling! 8/10

Finally, the best whisky of the day. A 1971 Longmorn Glenlivet, bottled in 2008 from first and refill sherry casks at 43%. This sweet, luscious, Christmas cake in a glass, with dried fruit, subtle aromatic spices and citrus and muscovado sugar aromas. The palate has bitter sweet flavours, some tar and dry tree bark, but then honey, sweet candied orange and blood orange juice coming through a malt loaf palate. This is devine and £90 per bottle. 9.5/10

Please don’t think that everything G&M produces is old or outstanding quality. They do release some whiskies of dubious quality, but in their defence, these are usually from distilleries that shouldn’t be seen outside of a blended whisky. Their 10 year old Miltonduff is pretty poor, as is their 10 year old Glenburgie, but, if you are a whisky enthusiast, the G&M bottling is probably the only time you will get to see these whiskies as a single malt, so G&M are certainly doing whisky geeks a favour here. But for every Miltonduff, there is a very good Glentauchers 1991, a Glenturret 1997 (far better than the distillery’s 10 year old!) and a Glen Grant 25 year old.

So if you see a leaflet enticing you to buy a cask of whisky, please don’t. You are wasting your money and are more than likely going to have some hideous liquid to drink in ten years. By buying a cask, you are trying to be a sausage maker when you can't operate the machine that fills the sausage skin. Leave it to Gordon & Macphail, they make good sausages...

... and whisky.

Share this page

"My wine merchant has no nose." "How does he smell?"

Sorry there hasn’t been any posts this week, I’ve had a cold for the past two days and I have noticed that the reactions from people have been interesting. Most men have immediately jumped to making jokes of me having chicken or swine flu, whereas most women have told me to get over it, basically attributing my illness to being man flu and therefore I'm exaggerating my symptoms! Either way, whatever I have, it has resulted in me not being able to smell or taste a damn thing, and my hearing has taken a severe battering too.

But the taste and smell loss is what really bugged me. I had the opportunity to try a bunch of Rhone wines yesterday and all of them tasted bitter and made me feel ill. I went out for dinner and had what I think was an excellent steak, but couldn’t taste much and that resulted me feeling I’d wasted the money I spent on it.

But then this morning, I had breakfast cooked for me and realised that my taste is coming back. Not only did I taste the strongly flavoured smoked bacon, but the scrambled eggs were amazing! I knew that they contained a little chilli, I could taste the heat creaping through the creamy eggs, and I even noticed they needed a little more salt than they had! I have never been happier eating scrambled eggs in my life, I had my senses back!

And this got me thinking. We wine folk are often mocked for coming up with flowery language and ‘overthinking’ the wine they are tasting, and sometimes it is justified. We can be a bit too pompous, the sucking air over the wine in your mouth really does look stupid and the endless over swirling of wine in the glass, that we all do, even annoys me! But what we winey people have, is worth all the ridicule and teasing. We have a gift of smell and taste, that everyone has, but they rarely use it to it’s full potential. We experience more flavours, aromas and get more pleasure from a sip of wine than most do from a case, and it is only when that joy has gone do we miss it.

Thank God I’m getting better and strange that it was bacon and eggs that showed me I was on the route to recovery, as they come from the same animals that gave me the damn flu in the first place.

I like my job...

It is on days like this, I like my job... a lot! I try a lot of wines, am fortunate to get to experience some outstanding wines, but one of the things that gives me the most pleasure is when I find a wine that doesn't cost the earth and beats the living daylights out of other wines at it's price bracket. Today I found one.

A brilliant wine for £7.49 with an interesting story! The Domaine de Montmarin was once a royal estate, and was bought in 1488 by Nicolas de Sarret whose descendants, Philippe de Bertier, and father Paul (who was one of the first in the south of France to plant unusual vines, such as this Marsanne) now own the estate. Lovely fresh fruit, lots of peach, pear and a little tinned pineapple syrup lifting the aroma and adding some sweetness. The palate is nicely creamy, with good pineapple skin, melon skin and peach coming through. A sprinkling of sandstone flavours (and yes, I have licked sandstone) towards the end of the palate, with a long, clean, savoury finish. I’d love this with some tapas! 8.5/10

I also tried a cracking Rose with an equally good story behind it. The 2008 Chateau de Fonscolombe. Owned by the same family for more than 200 years, Chateau de Fonscolombe is a tale of two halves, with the grapes being grown at the two ends of the Trevaresse Hills. A blend of Grenache, Cinsault and Syrah, this wine is candy in a glass! Smelling like candy necklaces, with hints of sweet, wild strawberries, this is such an easy drinking rose. It is light, well balanced with sweet fruit flavours being nudged at through the dry, minerally palate. I like this and it only costs a tenner. 8/10

However, for an alternative view, a colleague of mine says, and I quote, “smells like a baby has eaten dried raspberries and then barfed all over the place”. I didn't ask how she knew what that smelled like!

Drunken Horse Racing

I love it when people, who own a company that makes alcoholic drinks, get a new hobby. All of a sudden, you see them sponsoring the most silly events or making 'commemorative bottles' which bear no relevance to their product or marketing campaign. Bruichladdich, for example, sponsored a motor racing team, Benromach decided to sponsor the a round the world yacht team and now Kendall-Jackson is releasing a range of wines to commemorate the highly successful racehorse, Rachel Alexandra!

When I read the article on Decanter's website, it struck me that there are a lot of products or terms in the alcohol trade that would make a great race horse name, here are a few I came up with. (Put on your best Peter O'Sullevan voice to read the bit below!)
Tio Pepe leading Halfapint, followed by Chateauneuf, Cherry Heering, Tawny Port and Famous Grouse in fifth, Asti Spumante and then Knackersyard of Ale bringing up the rear.

If you think of any more, please post a comment.

Crap of the Week: The Booze Death Calculator

The Booze Death Calculator - a website that allows you to calculate how much alcohol it would take to kill you in 3 hours. What did they ever think this would do except challenge people to 'defy death'?

Click Here to see the Booze Death Calculator

Wakefield Promised Land - Not promising much

I don’t like doing this blog sometimes. Sometimes I like wines made or sold by people who I’d gladly put to the front of the queue when the Grim Reaper comes a-calling, and have to say that these wines are spectacular. And similarly, sometimes I dislike wines from people that I like. This is, er, one of the latter…

Wakefield’s Promised Land series of wines are, quite simply, too expensive. These should be a fiver per bottle, not £7.99 and the Chardonnay is really not worthy of a price point more than half the one it has. I wanted to like them, but didn't!

2008 Wakefield Promised Land Semillon Sauvignon Blanc
Lemon, some under ripe apple, a little zingy lemon and pear. The palate has pear drops, quite a bit of spice, some quite aggressive alcohol coming through too. Finish is just a bit boring! 6/10

2008 Wakefield Promised Land Unwooded Chardonnay
A lot of simple, fresh melon aromas, but reasonably closed. The palate is simple, a bit of apricot and peach but then bitter, burnt wood flavours and a really unpleasant finish, insanely zingy and a touch of rubber. 5/10

2005 Wakefield Promised Land Shiraz Cabernet
Rich, sweet cherry aromas, lots of bramble jam and polished wood. Also a bit of fresh bramble too and a little fried steak! Palate has a bit of green pepper on the front, lots of black pepper and quite an abundance of pencil lead. Not bad, quite savoury which I like but a tad crude on the finish. Doesn’t end well. 6.5/10

2007 Wakefield Promised Land Cabernet Merlot
Soft, a touch of veggies, but very soft, lush fruit with polished wood. Still some of the meaty element. The palate is not too bad but it just doesn’t mesh together. There is nice Cabernet, nice merlot but they are just battling together instead of complimenting each other. The start is all cabernet, the mid palate is soft merlot but the finish is the battleground with neither winning. A poor show after a promising start. 6/10

Con men getting creative!

I received this email in my work email address today which was a welcome change from the usual "I have $20,000,000 which I want to give you 20% of if you deposit two grand in my bank first account for legal fees" con artist email.

Dear sir/madam,
I am interested to buy wines and spirit from you, for my daughter's wedding holding on 21st June 2009. I am Mr. M***** H*****, presently on island vacation with my wife.
MENU TIPS
1,Roast Lamb & Red Bordeaux
2,Rare Steak & Cabernet Sauvignon
3,Spicy, Asian food & Champagne
4,Fresh Fish & Sauvignon Blanc

Booking Request 60 Bottles of Red wine 60 botttles of White wine. 12 bottles of Champagne(if available) kindly get back to me with the total cost.I need a high profile wine so I wIll be glad to receive a suggestion from you regarding better options of wine from your list.

Get back to me with the total cost so that I can make payment immediately. Get back to me with your Prefered Mode of Payment.
1,Certified Secured Check or
2,Credit card Payment

If you accept check,I expect the money to reflect in your account before delivery to my agent. Do not worry about delivery because my agent will be coming to pick the items up for delivery. Include the taxes for clearing the check in the total cost,if you accept check then invoice me as local purchase order to avoid more spending on my side. I can equally supply my credit card details if you accept that as an alternative to check payment.

Thanks and awaiting your kind reply, Mr M**** H*****

Two minor issues with this email.
Firstly, I received the same email from someone else with a different name and secondly,

IT IS AUGUST DUMBASS!

What is the world coming to when even con men can't get simple things right. Henry Gondorff would be turning in his grave.

Tasting Notes & Personal branding

Wine writer Martin Isark is currently suing Majestic Wine for using one of his tasting notes. He claims that that the company used his tasting note without his permission and on the wrong vintage. Obviously, putting the note on the wrong vintage is not accurate, and, if true, could be considered misleading the public, but I can't help feeling that Mr Isark is shooting himself in the foot a little.

Wine writers are simply people who have an ability to put what they taste into words, and whilst they may not be the richest people in the world, I can understand them wanting to make money out of their work, and I can also understand their issues with other people and companies capitalising on what they write.

However, in an increasingly diluted media world, to use a phrase often used by another wine critic, personal branding is everything. If Mr Isark's name is seen on a neck collar on a bottle or on a shelf end tasting note, the person buying that wine will be exposed to his name - his personal brand. If they then like that wine, they are more than likely going to follow his recommendations in the future and that could result in them visiting his website, reading his columns, buying his book and increasing his income that way.

I know a wine critic who writes for a national newspaper and her views, expressed in the paper she writes for, will influence sales in my shop. If she writes about a wine and loves it, I know that at least half a dozen people will be in my shop within two hours of opening to buy that wine. These people hang on every word this wine writer says, and it is these people who, indirectly, pay her salary by purchasing newspapers and attending events she runs.

I looked at Mr Isark's website, and he, almost proudly, mentions the three times he has sued companies for using his website and that he charges £15,000 plus 2% of sales for use of his tasting notes. I don't know if this is the going rate for wine writers, but I couldn't find anything on any of the leading British wine critics websites warning retailers off using their notes. Only The Wine Gang mentioned a fee, which was £200 for a year's membership of their website and for that you could reproduce the notes of five of the UK's leading wine critics. Significantly less than Mr Isark's fifteen grand!

Using critics tasting notes is of mutual benefit to the writer and the retailer, with one getting cash for selling a bottle of wine, and the other brand awareness, and it is this last part that is too often forgotten.

It should be mentioned that any retailers reading this can use any of my tasting notes for free, all I ask is that you credit The Tasting Note.