Good Whiskey

[WoodDragon]

Talisker.

[Teljkon]

ddfgdfgf

Edited December 19, 2021 by Teljkon

[Horus]

I fancy myself as a whiskey buff......I have sure drunk enough to qualify.

This stuff is the BOMB and its aussie.

Just released this week I have got my bottle (got 1 bottle last year also )

It will sell out quick, just 1 cask release 336 bottles 53.2% alc

Malted at Coopers brewery

distilled at Yalumba

Matured in the best freakin cask they could get in australia.

I must have a Smiths every Christmas and Australia day, its a tradition I hope I will never have to break.

http://www.nicks.com.au/Product/View/2000-Smiths-Angaston-11-Year-Old-Cask-Strength-Single-Malt-Whisky-%28700ml%29/486650

Edited October 22, 2011 by colhawk

[Psylo]

SOmethinhg from Islay is worth trying, even a cheaper Ardberg. SOme nice flavours of peat and salt, with the product absorbing some of the physical location.

You can buy an Ardberg for under $100 a bottle.

[Foo]

^ the best single malt whisky imo

Legend tells that alcoholic beverages of one kind or another were produced in and around Tain since the Middle Ages.[4]

It is said that the production of alcohol started at Morangie Farm in 1738, when a brewery was built that shared the farm's water source, the Tarlogie Spring. A former distillery manager, William Matheson, acquired the farm in 1843 and converted the Morangie brewery to a distillery, equipped with two second hand gin stills.[2] He later renamed the distillery Glenmorangie.

 

Oh my, i am a fan of the GM SM. Im far too poor to have sampled many, but that one is my FAV.

On a side note, never found any american wisky worth my time or money.

[Psylo]

On a side note, never found any american wisky worth my time or money.

 

When you say American Whiskey, are you referring to Bourbon (which is made from corn) or are there USA distilleries known for their Scottish type whiskeys (which is made from barley) ?

I was speaking to the owner of a new deli/bar/cafe near my house recently, and he was raving about a South Australian distillery's Scottish (ie Barley) style whiskey.

Edited October 22, 2011 by Psylo Dread

[Horus]

Hey Psylo see post #28

That is the SA stuff I am raving about.

Edited October 23, 2011 by colhawk

[Alice]

Great suggestions, thanks everyone.

Has anybody ever joined a whisky club? As in a purchasing club, so each month a different bottle is delivered to your door with tasting notes and region information etc. Was having a look at this one http://www.singlemalt.com.au/ for example. Seemed like a good idea to sample lots of diverse single malts, but maybe a bit too in depth for a beginner?

Edited October 26, 2011 by Alice

[CβL]

Loch Lomond is apparently the best, or so a certain captain would argue.

Edit:

But old monk rum is well worth trying. I know its rum and the name sounds terrible.

Second that. Got a bottle as a gift, and was very pleased.

Edited October 26, 2011 by βluntmuffin

[ballzac]

Definitely a fan of the Islay malts. the Ardbeg 10 yo is my favourite out of the Islay malts that I've tried. I do like less peaty ones too. In fact, the highland park 18 year old is possibly my favourite whisky. I bought the 21 year old and found, to my taste, it had lost some spunk in that extra three years. The 12 yo is good too.

Glenmorangie original is a little bland for me. Though I love the lasanta. It tastes of fairy floss to me The quinta ruben is nice too. A lot of people whinge about the different finishes, but to me, that's where it's at with glenmorangie. Also don't mind the occassional cognac. American whiskeys seem to be oak and not much other flavours. I'd rather a malt or grape flavour in there too somewhere.

Not too big a fan of rum either. Ron zacappa 23 centenario is meant to be top shit, but while I was drinking it I couldn't help feeling that the 80 bucks would've been better spent on an Ardbeg or something.

[ballzac]

Anyone want to suggest an ok whisky for under $50? I don't think at this stage I'd be able to appreciate anything more expensive so probably a waste if I spend any more than that.

 

Highland park 12 yo is about $50 at some places.

[dworx]

abandoned

Edited April 4, 2013 by dworx

[dworx]

abandoned

Edited April 4, 2013 by dworx

[Slybacon]

Got a bottle of this for my birthday yesterday, also heard Im to get a bottle of fine cognac this weekend. Gonna start to build up the collection.... Also found a good vodka on the weekend,

Was a realy nice warm drunk. No hangover. Finished the whole bottle between 3.

[ballzac]

I'm a bit of a skeptic when it comes to 'premium' vodka. I mean, the whole idea of vodka is that it's neutral. Neutral alcohol is very easy to make. You can distil it three times, or preferably reflux it, and then charcoal filter it. Yes, there are crap vodkas out there, but the majority of $30 vodkas are going to be as good as an $80 vodka.

Whereas the difference between cheap whiskey and good whiskey is night and day.

Cheap: 20% malt liquor mixed with 80% grain alcohol (read "vodka", lol). Aged 3 years in a cheap virgin oak cask.

Pricey: 100% peat-smoked malt liquor aged in ex-bourbon or oloroso sherry casks for 12 years.

[Slybacon]

I'm a bit of a skeptic when it comes to 'premium' vodka. I mean, the whole idea of vodka is that it's neutral. Neutral alcohol is very easy to make. You can distil it three times, or preferably reflux it, and then charcoal filter it. Yes, there are crap vodkas out there, but the majority of $30 vodkas are going to be as good as an $80 vodka.

Whereas the difference between cheap whiskey and good whiskey is night and day.

Cheap: 20% malt liquor mixed with 80% grain alcohol (read "vodka", lol). Aged 3 years in a cheap virgin oak cask.

Pricey: 100% peat-smoked malt liquor aged in ex-bourbon or oloroso sherry casks for 12 years.

 

Totally disagree- Just on taste alone, and feeling of drunk. Try shooting $30 Vodka- end up feeling like you shot metho, now try the $85 dollar bottle, mmmmmmm. I used to be on the same page as you, untill I started drinkin vodka with Polish and Slovakians. Now I can tell the difference as much as I can with Borboun or Scotch.

[devance]

Just starting to develop more of an interest in Scotish and American whiskys. Haven't really tried anything too expensive. But have stopped buying the absolute cheapest rubbish and mixing it with cola etc. Just water and 1 ice cube. Working my way to no ice and just a touch of water, but I think I have a while to go yet as I can't seem to pick the flavours too well yet if it's too strong. I guess it comes with time.

Anyone want to suggest an ok whisky for under $50? I don't think at this stage I'd be able to appreciate anything more expensive so probably a waste if I spend any more than that.

As I've only really sampled the more affordable ones they've all been blends not single malt. Can you even get a decent single malt for under $50?

As far as affordable blends go, picked up some Drummer whisky recently, I was very impressed with how smooth it was and quite flavoursome really. Even just smelling it you can really tell the difference between that and say Ballantines (horrible without a mixer) which was in the cupboard. It's got that nice old smell, quality red wine and ports also have this, not sure exactly what but it reminds me on Old Sydney Town, visiting the blacksmith shop. Kind of a smoky, beeswaxy, aged smell. Like an old book smell maybe. Or an antique shop, old furniture. That solid, timeless scent. Well not really smelling exactly like all that, but reminds me of those things. Triggers something in my brain.

Drummer doesn't rate too well online strangely, I guess it is bottom of the scale ($32) and more experience whisky drinkers probably want something less smooth and with more of a bite? I reckon it's pretty decent compared to others in that price range.

Tips or suggestions for a beginner?

http://www.whiskymag.com/magazine/issue10/12005018.html

Whisky Extras

This article is available in full as part of Whisky Extras, visit now for more free articles and information.

Awards

Blended Whisky

Cigars

Distillery Focus

From the Editor

History

Production

Travel

Whisky and Food

Whisky Magazine Issue 10

Whisky Magazine Issue 10

June 2000

Buy now £5.95

Subscribe

Issue 98 Out Now

Back Issues

This article is 11 years old and some information provided may be time sensitive. Please check all details of events, tours, opening times and other information before travelling or making arrangements.

Copyright Whisky Magazine © 1999-2011. All rights reserved. To use or reproduce part or all of this article please contact us for details of how you can do so legally.

Northern lights

There's a noble tradition of whisky making in Canada based on the superb qualtiy of its grain. Kathleen Sloan and Ted Mcintosh pay tribute to a unique spirit.

Northern lights (Issue 10)

With more than 85 per cent of Canadian rye whisky exported to the US alone, there’s definitely more than four and twenty Yankees singing the praises of this pale amber spirit that is exclusively associated with Canada.

Canada is the perfect place to grow grain, so producing quality whisky from it came a natural second. The country’s involvement in the world of whisky can be traced back to the small, water-powered grist mills of Upper Canada, the original name for the province of Ontario. These mills were also the country’s first distilleries, as canny millers turned their stores of excess grain into whisky. This happy invention grew out of a necessity to use grain that would otherwise rot or be devoured by rodents if stored for any length of time.

Centuries ago, millers in Italy turned a surfeit of milled grain into a rough flour before boiling, cutting and drying the dough to create what we now know as pasta. Canadian millers, many of Irish and Scottish descent, instead chose the ancient art of distillation. Whisky was cheap, plentiful and potent and was also believed to contain valuable medicinal properties. So much so that non-drinkers were unfavourably assessed by life insurance companies.

It was the undeniable beverage of choice among Canadian pioneers. Whisky fuelled the farmers, who often carried a crock along with them when working the land and it sat in communal pails at barn raisings and in barrels at the entrance to general stores where customers would help themselves to a ladleful. It was even judiciously dispensed to school children during the winter months when they were faced with a long, chilly hike to school.

Along with its close relation, beer, and the odd bit of cider, rum or home made fruit cordial, whisky was it, as far as drinking went. This early whisky was from pot-stills, the product of a single distillation with an alcoholic strength similar to that of fortified wine. Compared to today’s version, which is generally 40-45 per cent abv, it would have registered around 20

per cent.

By 1840, there were at least 200 small, licensed, distilleries in Ontario. But in the 1850s, these small fry were edged out by the same four players that continue to dominate the whisky scene in Canada today: Seagram, Hiram Walker, Corby and Wiser. Oddly enough, the Molson family, the only distiller that did not start out milling flour, was originally a big part of the whisky scene in Canada. While responsible for sending the very first shipment of Canadian whisky to England, it eventually abandoned the operation in favour of beer-making, the field that made the family’s name and subsequent fortune.

Another well-known name in Toronto, Gooderham & Worts, has the distinction of being the oldest distillery in Upper Canada, opening its grist mill in York (now Toronto) right on the shoreline of Lake Ontario. Gooderham, a miller from Suffolk and his brother-in-law Worts, also from England, opened for business in 1832. The grist mill was powered by a huge Dutch-style windmill, whose main shaft arrived by the steamer Great Britain. Today, long after the windmill was destroyed by a storm, the original millstone bears a commemorative plaque and sits only feet away from its original placement. It is surrounded by the majestic old red brick buildings that house G&W’s now silent stills, on prime real estate land in the heart of downtown Toronto.

This historic complex is currently home to a new affordable housing development bent on retaining as much of the original architecture as possible. Just north of here is one of the city’s most beautifully designed buildings, the Gooderham & Worts Flat Iron Building which was the home of the administrative offices for the distiller. By 1875 the company was responsible for a third of all the spirits in Canada, filling government coffers and shipping quality whisky to England, the US and South America.

While the unique spirit that is Canadian rye whisky continues to be more revered and treasured outside the country than within, Canada, nevertheless, has a glorious 200-year-old history of whisky production, filled with dedication, innovation, hard work, adventure, smuggling, intrigue and the not-always-helpful involvement of government. Today the words ‘Canadian whisky’ continue to be synonymous with fine quality spirits the world over as the collection of brands has steadily grown far beyond the ubiquitous, and perennially good, Canadian Club and Crown Royal.

Whether fully recognized or not, the whisky industry played a pivotal role in the building of Canada, providing thousands with employment, spawning new businesses and stimulating others, like farming and shipbuilding. This role has largely, and in characteristically Canadian fashion, been overlooked by historians and educators, perhaps wary of elevating or celebrating the subject and thereby lending it an undeserved respectability and esteem.

Throughout Canadian whisky’s long and highly colourful history, the Canadian government has collected a steadily increasing chunk of cash from the industry. In 1788, inspired by the lucrative business of whisky making in Scotland and Ireland, King George III established Britain’s first still taxes, which netted the British government tidy sums. After John Graves Simcoe, Canada’s first lieutenant-governor, pointed out to him that Canadians were also becoming dab hands at distillation, in 1794 he followed suit with a similar scheme in Britain’s North American colony. The establishment of the first tax on stills created an important source of revenue that continued for the next 50 years, and even up to the present day.

Canada’s golden age of whisky lasted from 1850 to 1920 and saw a number of serious players joining the whisky production game. They were the Canadian, Joseph E. Seagram, J P Wiser and Hiram Walker both from the US, and Henry Corby from England. The combination of all four, plus the already thriving Gooderham & Worts, put southern Ontario firmly on the map as Canada’s most important whisky-producing region.

The country’s temperance movement fizzled out towards the end of 1920, at precisely the same time as it grew to full-fledged Prohibition south of the border. The passing of the Volstead Act put an end, sort of, to the production, sale and transportation of anything remotely alcoholic. For the 13 years that followed, 1920 to 1933, Canada became the whisky mecca for those nefarious Americans bent on slaking the thirst of a deprived nation, the notorious Al Capone included.

The St Valentine’s Day Massacre was reputed to be linked to a stolen shipment of Canadian whisky. Spirits were smuggled into the US by truck and boat along the world’s longest undefended border, and especially across the two of the Great Lakes, Ontario and Erie. In the end, every one of the country’s distillers got in on the act and made masses of money thanks to Prohibition. One of the legacies of those times is that all these many years later, Americans still have a passionate love for the unique qualities of

Canadian rye.

The grain truth

Rye, the grain whose name acts as a nickname for Canadian whisky, plays a small but vital role in its production. It is rye that bestows most of its distinctive aroma and flavour on the spirit and it is rye that gives Canadian whisky its distinctive yet subtle spiciness and the aging in charred oak barrels that provides the sweet vanillins.

But Canadian whisky is not derived from rye alone. Corn, rye, wheat and barley malt are used, generally with corn as the base and the other grains providing the flavour notes. Because the grains in Canadian whiskies have been specially developed to stand up to the Canadian climate, they lend a unique character to the final product. Even though the Alberta Distillers produces just 10 per cent of Canada’s whisky, each year, it buys two million bushels of rye from 700 Alberta farmers, many of whom have been supplying the distillery for two generations. They produce Alberta Springs Rye Whisky 10 year old and Alberta Premium Rye Whisky, the only Canadian whiskies made with 100 per cent real rye grain. Glacier-fed spring water and rye from the Canadian prairies feature largely in Tangle Ridge, the Double-Casked 10 year old whisky based on 100 per cent rye, features a subtle spice content touched with campfire smoke, vanilla and honey. It is ultra-soft and smooth, with a flavour profile exhibiting its rye component along with natural sherry and caramel tastes with a hint of orange and a long, clean finish.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

canadian 200 small, licensed, distilleries in Ontario, investing.

You can drink water, but after the water runs out you need whisky.

 

[Horus]

Well I thought I would get interactive

This is one of my favorite subjects

My liquor cabinet

My prize bottle of this years release Smiths

Whiskey brick a brack

Top shelf of bookcase all the malts I have tried

Always happy to have a malt with somebody

[Alice]

Nice cabinet Col, I like the leadlighting, I helped my folks do a similar design on some doors when I was a kid. Beautiful instruments too. From all the photo's and vid I've seen, you have a pretty sweet house.

I notice lots of half empty bottles, does opened whisky have a shelf-life? Or does it last for years? I'd like to save some of each bottle for comparison to others, as I learn to develop my taste etc. What about unopened whisky?

[Horus]

Unopened Whiskey is static it does not improve nor degrade.It will keep for donkeys years

Whiskey only matures when in wood.

Kept in a cool place and resonably well sealed an open bottle can last a while a year or two

Some do oxidise if opened a lot.

For instance I have had a top shelf whiskey in an old pub that has sat there for ages

cause its too pricey or not popular and it tastes like shit as it is oxidised.

Also, cause a lot of pubs expect people to add a mixer they refill top shelf with shite and expect people

not to notice,,,,this gives malts a bad rep.

Its worth it to buy a nice bottle every now and then and savor it.

It may taste different each time you taste it.

A good whiskey should be a geological fingerprint of the area it is produced in.

The local spring water

The ancient molecules from the local peat

The new produce from the barley The local air and microclimate for the maturation.

For example the Islay malts have the iodine taste from the salt air,that literally blows thru the casks.

It needs to be nosed first to get the taste buds prepared.

Cheers anyhow.

[Psylo]

Noticed the unopened bottle of the SA whisky next ton an lmost empty one, and assume its last years. However from the label, are they actually from the same batch ?! Would they have at east kept it in the barrel for another year ?

[Psylo]

Also Col, I have very good hardcover pocket book guide to whisky styles written by Michel Jackson. Sadly its quite irrelevant as its 10 years old. Can you recommend a contemporary alternative guide to the malts available on the present market?

[Slybacon]

Always happy to have a malt with somebody

 

I might have to take you up on that next time I'm heading through Nice guitars too mate!

[mu!]

Un.Fucking.Believable...
Got my 100mL in the mail the other day by surprise, had completely forgotten I even bought it!
A beautifully balanced, award-winning Islay-style whiskey from Tasmania. Respect, tassy crews. They be pumping out the kickass whiskies..

[DiscoStu]

glen moray non age statement is the best under $50 single malt you can get in oz,

edit: glen moray "classic" it's called

Edited January 14, 2015 by DiscoStu