Netflix and Distil 2

The full line-up

For October's tasting club member Dan brought us a sequel to his 2019 event Netflix and Distil, with another selection of drams connected to film and TV.

It wasn't whisky in our glasses to start with. Accompanied by the snowbound opening sequence of A View To A Kill we had an old style 1980s bottle of Stolichnaya, as enjoyed by Roger Moore shortly after biffing some Bolsheviks in deepest Siberia. These days it's been rebranded as 'Stoli', presumably to play down its Russian origins. But there was no doubting the pedigree of this particular bottle, imported to Italy at 40%. We paid £23 but post-Brexit fees brought it up to about £50. Not being a group of vodka connoisseurs, the sole tasting notes for this were "it's nice" and "it's very nice" but it was a very enjoyable way to ease into the evening.

Our six new friends (plus a vodka)

Drink number two, and the first whisky, was an even bigger curveball. Having watched a clip of Rwanda-themed drama Black Earth Rising, Dan produced a bottle of - yes - Rwandan whisky. The bottle was from the extremely little known 1000 Hills distillery and was supposed to be a 3yo, although on tasting it we really couldn't be certain it was actually whisky at all. It smelt unpromising ("terrible") and tasted like schnapps. A bit of liqourice in there, and shoe leather, with trace notes of vomit (!).

Things improved quickly with the next dram, a 3yo Old Overholt straight rye accompanied by a clip of James Cromwell playing that distillery's owner in Boardwalk Empire. Very pleasant, this, with pepper, cumin and aniseed all coming through on the nose. It was perhaps a little light on flavour on the palate, although it was definitely sweet. We picked out little bits of orange too. It was 40% and cost us £43.

In the classic series The Wire, everyone's favourite Baltimore cop McNulty (improbably played by Old Etonian Dominic West, but that's acting for you) is a noted Jameson's drinker, and in one scene describes Bushmills as "Protestant whiskey". Dan took us to one of the show's most memorable moments, the wake for officer Cole, when his colleagues toast him with a dram and a sing along to Body of an American by The Pogues. For our own purposes, we had a glass of a Single Pot Still Jameson's. It was quite sweet, with toffee apples, vanilla, orange and ginger all coming through. At £49, this was 46%.

A packed crowd!

The newest Batman film was the theme for the fifth drink. Lots of product placement in the movie for Dewar's, but instead we went to the sister distillery Craigellachie for a 13yo finished in Armagnac. It smelt absolutely great on the nose: we got nectarine, orange and toffee. Then it was waxy with a touch of smoke on the palate. A bit of heft to this one, we absolutely loved it.

Think whisky movies and it won't be long before you come across The Angels' Share from veteran director Ken Loach. There's loads of the good stuff in the film of course, and Dan produced a 17yo Ledaig for us, produced at the Tobermory distillery on Mull. This was from a bourbon hogshead and independently bottled. Mango, pineapple and slightly smoky as befits a Ledaig, but there was a lot more than just peat to this one. Really good we thought! It was £105.

We finished off the evening with a clip from the film Constantine and a drop of Ardbeg. They drink the 10yo in the film and we've had it before, so instead we had a bottle of Ardbeg Bizarre-bq, what I fear we are duty bound to call a 'collab' with someone called DJ Barbecue (presumably not his birth name). This was meaty and smoky with an undoubted barbecue flavour profile. Puffs of charcoal and soot supposedly, but we definitely got smoked ham, cinnamon and coffee. It smelt absolutely superb. This was 50.9% and it's available for £76.

That brought us to the dram of the night voting, and it was an absolute triumph for the Ardbeg with 14 votes. In second was the Craigellachie with the Ledaig third.

Thanks to Dan for picking out such a great range of whiskies and sourcing some highly appropriate clips for us all to enjoy. Also thanks to all at the Britons Protection for hosting us once again, and to all club members for attending and making it such a successful evening.

The Science of Sherry

Six whiskies and three sherries!

It was club chairman Adam's turn to lead us through January's tasting. And what a line-up he produced for us as part of his look at the science of sherry, and the particular role sherry often plays in the maturation of whisky. Yes, those are nine glasses on the (rather fetching) new club mats, six of whisky and three of sherry.

Gonzalez Byass Fino

And it was one of the sherries we began with, a 10yo Fino sherry from Gonzalez Byass. Fino is the driest and palest sherry, and along with other sherries, has featured prominently in the story of Scottish whisky for decades. The traditional popularity of sherry in Britain led to widespread availability of sherry casks, which were convenient for the whisky industry, giving many of our best-known whiskies a familiar sherry character.

The Gonzalez Byass was indeed obviously very dry, even to those of us without much sherry knowledge (sherry reached its peak popularity in the UK back in the 1970s - "around the time my nan was absolutely caning it" - as someone suggested). It was certainly distinctive, with a butteriness about it. Some drinkers liked it, some didn't. It's £40 for a 50cl bottle, and the ABV is 16%.

Deanston Fino Cask

Adam took us on to the second drink, and first whisky, of the night. And the Fino theme continued, this time with a 2006 Deanston, finished in Fino casks. It was matured for 12 years in total and this occasion the 'finish' amounted to a very decent two-and-a-half years of that time, having been in ex-bourbon casks initially. Deanston is considered a Highland distillery, although in reality it's just a short way from Stirling in central Scotland.

There was a lot going on here, with a fresh, sweet, taste. The lengthy time spent finishing in the sherry casks perhaps made it seem older than it actually was. It's true to say we liked this one very much. It's 55% and is well worth the £65 price tag.

Aberlour A'Bunadh

It was Aberlour next, for a taste of what used to be one of the best value whiskies around. I say 'used to be', because A'Bunadh, which was once available for not much over £40, will now set you back £80, much to the understandable irritation of long-term fans of this particular cask strength drop, matured in Oloroso sherry butts.

It really hits the big, rich, sherried notes of fruitcake and raisins. The ABV is 61.2%. It's arguably still worth the £80, but if you know how much it used to cost, it's possibly a little harder to justify parting with the cash. The particular bottle we drank was from batch 56, although they're up to number 63 now.

Craigellachie 10yo PX

Having experienced Fino and then Oloroso, we moved on to a third well-known variety of sherry, with Pedro Ximenex (typically known as PX, in case you ever see it on a bottle and wonder what it stands for). These are sherries with a dark, juicy, intense sweetness, and the PX casks are often in real demand for certain whiskies. The dram Adam had picked out for us was a 10yo from the Craigellachie distillery on Speyside, bottled by the independent Whiskybroker.

And this certainly was fruity, although if anything perhaps a little lighter than some club members had anticipated, and it had a bit of cocoa about it as well, along with a shortish finish. It had spent most of its maturation in a sherry butt before switching to a PX octave (a small cask holding just 50l, ensuring more of the flavour transfers to the liquid inside). It was £44 although they're all gone now, and was 54.9%.

Nectar Pedro Ximenex

Next it was back to sherry and an opportunity to try some actual PX. We had a Nectar Pedro Ximenex, so sweet according to Adam, it is officially 3.7 times sweeter than even the old recipe of Irn Bru. This particular bottle was again from Gonzalez Byass, and was 9 years old.

And the proof of that came when we got to actually try it. "Like concentrated raisin juice" as someone suggested. Certainly memorable, although not exactly a session drink. At 15% and £15 (for a full 75cl bottle this time), it's one to invest in for when the family comes round next Christmas, maybe.

Matusalem 30yo

The third and final sherry was next, and we went to a 30-year-old Oloroso from Matusalem, also a Gonzalez Byass (based at Jerez in southern Spain, the centre of the sherry producing region). The grapes here were some PX alongside Palomino, a drier variety.

It was less raisiny and sweet than the PX we'd just had, and was perhaps all the better for it. This was 20.5% and £21 for a 37.5cl bottle. At this point we held, unusually for us, a 'sherry of the night' vote, and it was the Matusalem which just edged out the Nectar PX in a close decision.

Chorlton Coig Deicheadan 17yo

Not that the evening's entertainment was over. Far from it in fact, with still three whiskies remaining to try. The first, and whisky four overall, was from Manchester-based bottlers Chorlton Whisky, in the shape of a 17yo blend called Coig Deicheadam, drawn from constituent parts including Glenturret, Macallan, Highland Park and Bunnahabhain.

We didn't think this tasted all that sherried, although seeing as we'd just had two sherries back to back, perhaps it's hardly surprising some of the sherried subtlety may have got a bit lost in comparison. And besides, the Islay flavour of the Bunnahabhain seemed to come through too. It was very tasty all the same. Sadly, it's no longer available, although when you could get it, it was 46.5% and cost £75.

SMWS 10.162 9yo

The Scotch Malt Whisky Society often features during club tastings, and tonight's SMWS bottling was 10.162, entirely from Bunnahabhain and aged 9 years, having been matured in a first fill Oloroso Hogshead cask.

Considering it's an Islay whisky and clocked in at 61.2%, this was surprisingly mild mannered. It certainly didn't taste its ABV, which was no bad thing at all. This one went down very well with the membership, although again it's no longer on sale, although we picked ours up for £63. Fans of the amusing names the SMWS gives its bottlings will want to know this particular one had the official title Big Wave Sofa. No, us neither.

Cask Islay

As is often the case, the night ended on a bit of a peat monster. The Cask Islay was this month's choice, and the Cask Strength Sherry Edition from bottler A.D. Rattray.

Considering the sherry maturation, this one was surprisingly peated. Like an ashtray in fact, was one comment. It was certainly a tasty drop if not perhaps the best one we enjoyed all evening. It's 59.9% and is £44.

And so we moved on to the traditional dram of the night voting. And we had a rare tie, with both the Aberlour A'Bunadh and SMWS bottling picking up nine votes apiece, with the Deanston next on seven. In a second round of voting, the A'Bunadh beat the SMWS 14-11. Maybe it's worth the £80, after all.

Thank you to Adam for another brilliantly selected and produced evening, as well as to all club members old and new for attending, and to the staff of the Briton's Protection for looking after us once again.

Wish You Were Beer

August's line-up of whiskies.

New club chairman Adam led the tasting for the first time in August, and he had a selection of paired whiskies and beers for us all to try. He also produced a club first - a PowerPoint presentation - to showcase the research he had put in to each of the chosen drinks, which Adam ran through after we'd tasted everything blind.

Teeling / Galway Bay

The effort was much appreciated as we got stuck into the first of the evening's 12 glasses. The opening pairing got us off to a stout beginning. The beer was clearly something black and chocolatey, although not all that strong. And the whisky, which tasted kind of familiar to many in the room, must have been finished in stout casks, we guessed.

This was a particularly close pairing as it turned out. The whisky was from club favourites Teeling, finished in casks from Galway Bay stout. The beer was also Galway Bay, their milk stout called Buried at Sea. The members' noses were certainly on point at this early stage of the evening, as sure enough the stout is a certainly drinkable 4.5% (it's £2.49 a bottle) while the Teeling Stout Cask is 46% and available for £40, again offering decent value. Perhaps best of all, nobody felt the need to break into a few bars of the song Galway Bay, although if Adam had saved this pairing until the end no doubt someone would have had a go at it.

Weller / Welde

Pairing two gave us a whisky that immediately put us in mind of a bourbon, with that classic sweetish, vanilla sort of flavour. The beer was what got more of us talking, in so much as it smelt terrible. Lots of people didn't like the nose at all, and that extended to the palate as well. "It tastes of regret" was one of the more charitable tasting notes, but certainly not inaccurate.

The bourbon in the bottle was from the Buffalo Trace family. As Adam explained, this is quite an extended family, with a huge range of brands familiar in the US (although perhaps less so here) all being produced at the distillery in Frankfort, the historic capital of Kentucky. This one was under the Weller name, and we liked it a lot. It's 45% although the price is highly variable because it's so scarce over here, so good luck getting hold of it. The beer, which evidently went down less well, was Bourbon Barrel Bock produced by German brewer Welde which spent time in bourbon, rum and tequila casks. At 6.6% and £2.49, you can probably give it a miss.

Glen Moray / Windswept

We finally visited Scotland for pairing three, and while the whisky seemed a little bland, it was certainly highly drinkable. "A young Speyside" was one guess from the membership, and indeed the distillery in question was also correctly identified! The accompanying beer was a strong brown ale, and we liked this one too.

Indeed, it was a bit of a surprise to discover the beer was 9%, because it again seemed nice and easy to drink. The common thread between these drinks was the Glen Moray distillery, with the whisky a 40% expression finished in port casks and available for the very reasonable £25. The beer was made by brewery Windswept in nearby Lossiemouth and called The Wolf of Glen Moray. It's £8 plus postage though so it's probably one to save for when you happen to be passing, unless you're ordering a job lot.

Highland Park / Harviestoun

After a half-time break and a chance to get further refreshment, as if it were needed, from the bar at the Briton's Protection, it was on to pairing number four. And what stood out immediately from the two was the beer. Sticky and meaty, this was like an intense, spicy barbecue. The whisky was perhaps a touch less immediately memorable, lightly peated, and a little more pleasant on the nose than the palate.

The beer we enjoyed so much was an Ola Dubh black ale produced by Harviestoun, and finished in whisky casks from Highland Park. Sure enough, the accompanying whisky was indeed Highland Park, on this occasion the standard 12-year-old bottling that you can probably pick up in your local supermarket for £30 or so. The beer is 8% and £4.49, and Harviestoun has been something of a pioneer in cask aged brews so there are plenty of versions to try if you want to investigate.

Double Barrel / Wild Beer

There was another distinctive taste to beer number five. On this occasion it was salty, "like being hit by a wave in the sea", or munching on some salt and vinegar crisps. This did divide opinion a little, but overall this was the first beer of the night to actually be preferred to a whisky (although given we're the Manchester Whisky Club, this probably wasn't entirely surprising). The whisky was a bit peaty, but overall certainly seemed more conventional.

As it turned out, the whisky was not exactly conventional, being a 'double barrel' blended malt concoction of Ardbeg and Craigellachie, bottled by Douglas Laing. At 46% and £48 this got a general thumbs up. The beer, a Belgian Dubbel from the Wild Beer Co. called Smoke 'n' Barrels involved casks of both Islay whisky and red wine, which helps to explain the real mixture of flavours on the go. Certainly worth trying once even if you don't like the sound of it, it's £5.49 and 7.4%.

Smooth Ambler / KBS

As is often the case, by the last dram of the night the tasting notes that I managed to record had become somewhat less expansive. All I really ended up putting was that the beer seemed quite treacly, and that the whisky tasted like a bourbon. But these were both accurate statements so there's no harm in leaving it at that.

It turned out that both of these were American. The whisk(e)y was a blended bourbon from the Smooth Ambler brand, sourced from the huge MGP distillery in Indiana. At 50% and £70 this was certainly good, but not as memorable as the beer, which was Kentucky Breakfast Stout. Whether anyone would actually drink a 12.3% bourbon-finished beer for breakfast or not is another thing, but at £6.99 it's worth trying at any time of the day.

Overall the whiskies won the day, but within that it was a triumph for the whiskey over the whisky. The voting revealed our top choice was the Smooth Ambler after it initially tied with the Weller, while the leading beer was the Smoke 'n' Barrels despite the love-it-or-hate-it reception it got from the membership.

Thanks to everyone for attending another successful tasting and in particular to Adam for choosing and then explaining such a fascinating selection of drinks. Thanks also to the Briton's for hosting us once again.

The full line-up!

Scotch Malt Whisky Society Special

The line-up of SMWS bottlings.

For April's meeting of the Manchester Whisky Club we were in the hands of committee member Martin, who had been squirreling away bottles from the Scotch Malt Whisky Society for us over a period of months.

The drams.

Some club members were already part of the SMWS, but for the uninitiated it's a society which offers exclusive bottlings from distilleries right across Scotland, as well as access to various events and the club locations in Edinburgh and London. Basic membership is £65.

All of the bottlings produced by SMWS are given wacky names based on the tasting notes, and so it was that we began the evening by drinking an Alluring and Amusing - in reality a Tullibardine. Coming in at no less than 60.9% it was quite a way to get the night started, and a welcome one as we think it's the first Tullibardine we've ever had at the club.

Alluring and Amusing.

This was "sharp" and "gorgeous on the nose" with bits of pear drops and stewed apple. Perhaps in fact, we preferred the nose to the palate, which was particularly spicy. This held true even with the addition of a few drops of water, although this did open things up a bit. It's £48, although as with all SMWS bottlings it's members-only, unless of course you can pick one up on an auction site, where chances are you'd be paying a good deal more.

Big Boozy Trifle.

Big Boozy Trifle was next, an alias applied to a 15yo whisky from Cragganmore.

This was as peppery as the first dram was spicy, so dry and peppery in fact the mouthfeel was more like a savoury popping candy than a typical drink. Matured in first-fill French oak, and a weighty 56%, with other comments from the room comparing it to Rich Tea biscuits and having "a light bit of smoke" about it. It was £61.

The third whisky of the evening was perhaps inappropriately timed, as it's known as Winter Is Coming. Underneath the label it's a 10yo from Craigellachie in Speyside.

Winter Is Coming.

This one also packed a bit of a punch, at 59.3%. It was "sulphury" with a "sharp apple nose". This was a real livener of a drink, certainly interesting, although it probably divided the room a bit more than the previous two, which had admittedly both gone down very well. The general consensus was that this was still a good whisky, but maybe just lacking a bit of the quality of the earlier drams. It's £51.90.

There are plenty of sherry monsters in the club and we got to try a whisky of the same name after the mid-tasting break. They actually called one A Real Sherry Monster. This time, it's a 19yo from the Ben Nevis distillery.

A Real Sherry Monster.

"My God, that's a sherry monster and a half" was one of the early comments, suggesting there's no danger of the SMWS being hauled in front of anyone over the Trade Descriptions Act. The distillery has a reputation for going particularly well with sherry casks, Martin told us, and so maybe it was no surprise that this whisky proved popular with us. Huge on the nose, albeit with a slightly short palate, but at £75 this was quite the bargain for a bottle of Ben Nevis.

Dram number five was a bit of a mouthful - Peat Smoke, Pipe Ash and Pata Negra was the title (the latter means 'black hoof' in Spanish and is usually used to mean some kind of high quality pork product). At 53.2% this was, incredibly, the lowest ABV of the night, and it came from the Bowmore distillery on Islay.

Peat Smoke, Pipe Ash and Pata Negra

This was billed as "moving into the peat zone" and so we were, with a lot going on here. Comments included "superbly smoky" as well as "gorgeous" and "a lovely dram". At £70, this was considered another bargain.

And we stayed on Islay for the last dram of the evening, moving to Laphroaig for a bottle called Sailing Ship in Stormy Seas.

Sailing Ship in Stormy Seas.

This was an 18yo, heavily peated, clocking in at a mighty 60.9%. This left us with the taste of saltwater all over our lips, indeed it was "lip smacking". Frankly, you could tell it was the end of the night because that was all I actually managed to write down about it, but suffice to say we enjoyed this one very much too.

On to the dram of the night voting we went, and amid a great field it was a big win for number five, the Bowmore, which notched 11 votes.

Thank you to Martin for collecting such a fine array of SMWS bottlings, and of course thanks to the Society for producing them in the first place! Thanks also to everyone at the Britons Protection for hosting us once again and all the members and waiting list guests who came along.