A friend asked me, ‘You’ve been writing a lot of posts on whisky these days. Do you have any reason for this?’
‘Reason?’ I said, ‘You want a reason? By the time we reach the end of this month, I’d have given you at least thirty reasons to appreciate this alcoholic beverage. But in this post, let me give you a few that will make you sit up and wonder.’ With this I browsed the internet and selected a few quotes and arranged them all in a way that, if read in a sequence they told you a lot you need to know about a whisky. By the way, it is advisable to pour Black Dog TGR in a glass and sip it as you read my whisky notes… this helps, you know.
What do you mean by age and maturation?
Well, Errol Flynn said, ‘I like my whisky old and my women young.’ And this swashbuckling movie star hadn’t got it entirely wrong. Maturation does transform a whisky… and if there is a triple maturation involved, what you get is the delicate and subtle Black Dog TGR.
What makes whisky so fascinating?
Some people say that there is competition to pouring a double whisky and sitting down with your thoughts after a long day. Even Joel Rosenberg, the American author and strategist wrote: ‘I’m a simple man. All I want is enough sleep for two normal men, enough whiskey for three, and enough women for four.’
How will you define blend?
‘Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough.’ And Mark Twain is absolutely correct because he has also told us that a blend is when a malt whisky gets to cohabit with, let’s say, a grain whisky, they go through a maturation phase and emerge as a new blend that has ‘too much good whisky’… right?
How do I drink my whisky?
Well, this one is a difficult question because you are not a perfect whisky drinker if you don’t do it the right way. Haruki Murakami, a best-selling author, says: ‘Whiskey, like a beautiful woman, demands appreciation. You gaze first, then it’s time to drink.’ Remember, do not be in a hurry… let the woman… oops!… let the whisky purr first!
Does whisky change you?
It did try to change Igor Stavinsky, the Russian pianist and composer, because he has admitted: ‘My God, so much I like to drink Scotch that sometimes I think my name is Igor Stra-whiskey.’ So if you think you are going to remain what you are when you drink a whisky, you are wrong. You are certainly going to change into someone who will make the world go round. Well, Compton Mackenzie, a prod Scotsman and a writer, informs us: ‘Love makes the world go round? Not at all. Whiskey makes it go round twice as fast.’ So you will surely make the world go round faster… and who knows this may actually churn us into better humans.
Just one more thing that my readers need to remember… read this post twice and only then you’ll begin to get the real message.
My whisky notes
Black Dog Easy Evenings | Black Dog Scotch | Ginger Claps
Disclaimer: The content of this post is meant only for people above the age of 25.
Arvind Passey
25 May 2014
