We’re doing some cleaning up getting ready to go to England and I see a crumpled (from travel) piece of paper on my desk… It’s the tasting chart from scotchbuddy.com as I was part of this tasting group.
Rather than continue to live with a crumpled piece of paper on my desk, I’m going to preserve the results in my blog where you can refer to it in case you ever wish to buy me scotch. 🙂
The categories were as follows:
Sherry: (Macallan, Dalmore)
Nutty: (Aberlour, Aberfeldy)
Tangy: (Glenlivit, Balvenie)
LightFruit: (Auchentoshan)
LightBlossoms: (Glen Moray)
Malty: (Tomatin, Bushmills)
Floral: (Glenfiddich, Speyburn)
SweetSmoke: (Old Pulteney, Glenmorangie)
DrySmoke: (Bowmore, Highland Park)
Peaty: (Laphroaig, Talisker)
Here’s how it went down for me:
Round 1:
Sherry v. LightBlossom -> Light Blossom
Tangy v. Dry Smoke -> Dry Smoke
Peaty v. Floral -> Peaty, (but by a small margin)
Round 2:
Light Blossom v. Dry Smoke -> Light Blossom
(Peaty had a bye)
Round 3:
Peaty v. Light Blossom -> Peaty.
Further tests revealed the following preference chain for me (From best to, well medium — no point delving to the dregs):
Peaty
..
Floral
..
Malty
..
Sweet Smoke
..
Light Blossom
For more details, see http://scotchbuddy.com/ or even “Whisky Classified: Choosing Single Malts by Flavour” David Wishart, Pavilion Books, London 2002.
And yeah, I haven’t mentioned it here, but we’re getting ready to go to England for a couple months. I’m going there to do hiring and team building for the Brighton office of Linden Lab, my employer. I can think of better times of year to be living a coastal town in the UK. But still, this is my first experience living abroad, not just quick vacation trips, so it’s quite exciting. We’ll be back in the country for Christmas and back in the bay area in early January.