Restocking whisky
It's been a year and a half now since my last trip to Islay and my whisky stocks are starting to run low. Well, the no-guilt bottles anyway! Those are the ones I can drink without needing to consult The Canadian first! This time I've decided to buy something not distilled on that wonderful Scottish island – shock, horror! My aim with these bottles is to have some undemanding but interesting bottles for more regular consumption. OK, let's go then!
Down the years my brothers have picked up on my love of whisky and gifted me with some wonderful bottles. A couple of years ago, one of these was my first (and to date only) Japanese whisky bottle. Suntory's Chita whisky is, unusually, billed as a single grain whisky, distilled from corn rather than malted barley, and matured in a combination of wine, sherry and bourbon casks. I found the honeyed sweetness of it a nice counterpoint to the peaty Islay behemoths I normally drink so in that regard it certainly fits the bill of what I'm looking for!
The second bottle I'm ordering from The Whisky Exchange is the 2019 bottling of Cragganmore Distiller's edition. If you drink Scottish single malts you'll be familiar with Diageo's Classic Malts collection, with Cragganmore representing Speyside. All of these Classic Malts come in a Distiller's Edition, finished off by maturing in a different cask to normal. For Cragganmore it's port. Years ago, The Canadian embarked on a quest to find a port-finished whisky that met the ideal she had in her head. The closest she came was a sample of the 21 year old port-finished Balvenie – I think we tried it at Heathrow's World of Whiskies while waiting for a flight to Canada... but the price is a bit steep for me to justify for regular drinking. The next closest was the Cragganmore, which stuck in my brain as a good dram. Let's see if that mental marker delivers all these years later!
There's something immensely satisfying about being stocked up on good whisky, especially as the nights draw in and the weather gets colder – slàinte!
Entry 44 of my participation in the “100 Days to Offload” challenge – find out more and join in!
2020-11-25 #100DaysToOffload #whisky
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