Month: September 2023
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Jura, again
Not only have I moved past my aversion to Jura, but I’ve fallen in love with it. Or rather with the idea of what a Jura could be if properly matured and respectfully bottled, but that I have yet to fully experience. Actually, I went ahead of myself and bought a 30yo Jura when I…
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The Beast of Dufftown
Another “character distillery”. Mortlach, by their own marketing, is the Beast of Dufftown. I presume, because contrary to the classical easy-going Speyside style, Mortlach is famed for a substantive, meaty, pungent quality. I believe I have experienced this profile on a couple of occasions. Last was at Whisky Fringe 2022, where I tried the 25yo…
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A comparison of Cambi
Cambus is one of those 19th century scotch distilleries with a long an history of being opened and closed, bought and sold. Then in 1993 the stills went still, forever. But the spirit lives on… and today shall be drunk! Cambus made grain whisky, what some consider the ugly stepsister of malt whisky. In the…
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A last (?) tweak to the scoring system
In May I wrote about my trials and tribulations with inventing a custom scoring system. In short, it’s gone from rather complicated to rather simple. Now, it’s about to get even simpler. Perhaps as simple as it will ever get. And then maybe I’ll start to make it complicated again. Until I change my mind…
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Dr. Tobermory and Mr. Ledaig
Some distilleries have a dual a nature. A normal side… and a dark side, if you will. I’m talking about the unpeated versus the peated incarnation. Peat really makes for a radically different whisky, so it’s no surprise that distilleries bottle their unpeated / peated spirits under different names, so as not to create chock…
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Tokyo whisky mission
One of the great perks of being a research scientist is that I get to travel the world for workshops and conferences. Often these are held in attractive locations. The first workshop I attended as a PhD candidate was held at a castle owned by the Montepulciano wine consortium, in the Italian town of the…
DuckDrams 