For our next meeting, we've got six old Cadenhead's dumpies bottled in 1989 and 1990. The group will taste them blind, with the following exceptions:

One of them is one of the best whiskies Chris and I (Adam) have ever tasted. Alas, a taste was all we got, and it took us years to find our own bottle.  It is reviewed on this site; however, since we've got a competition coming up, we won't tip off too much info here.

The other "known" bottle is one of the worst whiskies Serge Valentin (the humble yet mega-tasting personality behind WhiskyFun.com) has ever tried. At least, he disliked it enough to call it "Perversity at cask strength" and "One for Dr. Evil." Accordingly, he awarded it 66.6 points.

So, yes, it's a rather random tasting, the only similarities being that the bottles are all cask strength representations from the same Cadenhead's series circa 1990. The fun of it will be that four of the whiskies have never been reviewed/rated by any critics/bloggers/etc. past or present, one of them is awesome (according to me and the Duke at least), and one of them may very well be lethal. It's Russian Roulette with whisky!

Stay tuned for the results.

This past meeting featured a blind tasting of 8 vatted malts.  Well, now we're all supposed to call them "Blended Malts" according to the SWA. Whatever. Is it whisky?  Good! Let's drink some.

The guys were challenged to match up each whiskey with a description of its component malts. Our new, not-quite-yet-a-member Sku showed us all up and won this difficult competition with an impressive 6 out of 8 correct. He takes home bragging rights and mild hangover.

Favorites of the night were the economical (and of course not-USA-available [as of March 2010 it will be, but at a non-economical price unfortunately]) Big Peat, and the semi-collectable Murray McDavid Islay Trilogy.

The vatted blended malts tasted are listed below, click for the component malts in each one. Buy your own bottles, and play along at home!

(Notes/ratings will appear when members get off their asses).

 

Wow, it's been a while since LAWS has officially gathered -- we were busy with events like WhiskyFest, Whisky Live, Speakeasy, and the SMWS Extravaganza.  But we finally got back to our usual shenanigans this month with an informal meeting featuring a mix of single malts we called the "Holiday Potpourri."

Basically, it was an excuse to open a 42-year-old Glenfarclas, distilled on Christmas Day in 1959. We thought it would be cool to drink it nearly 50 years to the day it was distilled. Typically we'd try to arrange a theme around this -- like "Christmas Whisky" or something -- we even toyed with the idea of "December Distillations" (which is meaningless) -- and finally we just figured, ah heck, let's just pick a bunch of rare, old whiskies and sit around and drink them unblinded for once.  So the lineup was:

It turned out to be a stellar evening. The Signatory dumpies were particularly impressive, with the Benrinnes arguably winning the night, although the Talisker 1981 (sister bottling to the legendary Talisker 1981 UK) was massively well-received. (Give members time to recover and rejuvenate before notes/ratings are entered).

The challenge was simple -- Adam and Chris would each choose 3 bottles from their personal collections, have the group taste them blind, and determine whose whiskey expertise reigns supreme -- in a climactic battle to the death!!  Well, close, anyhow.

The submitted bottles could not be one of the 900 whiskies already listed on this website, and the combined cost of each collector's choices had to be about $600.

To mix things up, we also threw in a $30 bargain bottle we found at Binny's, and another old Signatory dumpy that Adam and Chris had previously tasted but had vastly differing opinions on (A- vs. C).  Thus, eight bottles were tasted blind -- six of them being carefully chosen, educated choices (theoretically), one of them possibly being rather lousy, and another being a complete wild card.

It turned out to be a great contest -- and Adam won, with a rare Macallan 1980 16-year Signatory dumpy leading his victory charge.  Perhaps not surprisingly, many bottles that were rated in the 90's by various critics ended up faring much differently mixed into a blind (and rather random) tasting.  Full results are posted below, click through for better resolution and a clickable version of the chart.