Water opens it up
This happened in a discussion I had with a bartender of a well-known pub in the NCR. I asked him, ‘What is more important to a whisky blend, the way the nose sensors behave or the way the taste buds respond?’ The bartender thought for a while and then replied, ‘What is more important to...
My whisky notes
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...
Art-forms for a brew
It is a speech that I am going to quote here in this post… a whisky speech… and then I am going to try to write the same speech as if it were a poem. I’m sure all those who love their malt are going to be nodding in appreciation. Noah “Soggy” Sweat made his...
Tones, textures, and an evening with a 12 YO
Words, aromas, and flavours have the power to evoke a sense of oneness if they are the right ones coming together. Almost like the time I sat with my wife on the terrace and poured from a bottle of Black Dog 18 YO. ‘Deep, golden, glossy, and mahogany,’ I said softly. My wife looked on...
Seductive Aromas
It was one of those evenings when the intense amber gold of the setting sun decides not to hide behind the darkness of the night until it has seduced you completely. The intense amber gold and the shimmering highlights enter your mind and pervade all the senses… almost the way Black Dog does. We were...
App tasting for a Black Dog fan
We were five friends coming together after a fairly long time and as we sat on the terrace taking up one past memory after another, we realised that each of us was peering into their smartphone after every few minutes. So I said, ‘Come on guys, let’s keep our official business away for this evening...
WHIZky – A crossword for whisky lovers
Yes, WHIZky is indeed a crossword for whisky lovers. Though you may need to take a print of the grid that I have added to this post as an image. The clues are given just below the grid image… and the answers? Well, the answers too are right on this page and you just need to...
Usquebaugh
Usquebaugh! I first read this word emblazoned on a tee-shirt and I thought, ‘Here is another one who is wearing something he probably doesn’t know the meaning of!’ I didn’t just go on thinking, I went up to this man and asked, ‘Sir, this seems to be an interesting word. What does it mean?’ He...
Blending truth, senses, and poetry
An approximately 130 years old brand, calling itself the perfect scotch is what Black Dog is all about. Yes, someone did once describe this scotch as sunlight held together by water… though I’m sure Sir Walter Millard, a Scot, might not have agreed to the technicalities of the phrase but would surely have loved the...
It’s my life, my taste
Taste. It exists in words, deeds, and non-verbal interactions. You have the right to remain tasteless, of course. Like so many of us. I’m sure you’ve noticed tasteless gestures, heard tasteless remarks, and have been tortured by tasteless relationships… they’re there everywhere. Therefore, taste has many forms. We’re literally surrounded by them and the way...
A case of exploding sizes
As the sun went down, darkness descended. It was a cloudy night with the moon peeping out once every few seconds. We were sitting on the balcony of a rest-house in a small mountain hamlet. Down below we could hear a river making its way through jutting rocks and another dark peak rose menacingly just...
The invasion of slogans
We all live our lives surrounded by slogans, captions, and taglines, don’t we? Switch on the telly and they’re there. Open your newspaper and they hound you. Go to the market place and you read them everywhere. Try and relax on the social media and all you notice are slogans. They’re there, for sure. Life...
