The Scotch Blog

Driving & Drinking don't mix for Pernod

"Nascar sponsorships set off liquor industry spat"

That's the headline from a Dow Jones MarketWatch story. The bottom line is that Pernod Ricard has said it will pull out of The Century Council in a dispute over the council's support of liquor sponsorships in auto racing.

According to their website:

The Century Council is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to fighting drunk driving and underage drinking.

NYT - Stupid, Ignorant or just plain Arrogant?

On Sunday August 20th 3006, Sunday's New York Times, a media institution which I've taken to task several times*  featured a story about Venezuela entitled "Venezuela’s Cup Runs Over, and the Scotch Whiskey Flows". The story included numerous misspellings of "whisky". Here is but a sample...

Scotch whiskey holds a rarefied place in the collective psyche of this status-obsessed country of 26 million. Per capita consumption outstrips that in relatively prosperous neighbors like Brazil and Argentina. Venezuelans, both young and old, often drink Scotch over a leisurely lunch, at family gatherings, at nightclubs, or as an aperitif, their ice-clinking glasses filled to the rim.

“Scotch whiskey has a mystique for Venezuelans that is unmatched by any other drink.”

Best of Scotch Blog - Art of the Blend

I arrive today in Paris to attend this weekend's Whisky Live. This will be the farthest I've ever traveled for the express purpose of drinking whisky.

After that I'm going directly (by way of London & Glasgow) to Islay to attend the Bruichladdich Academy. I will be hauling my computer along, and hope to post from both Paris and Islay.

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Today we'll have a best of story -  a story which looks at the art of the blender - whether blending single malts into a vatted blended malt or a blended whisky.

Originally Posted - November 11, 2005

Art of the Blend

I'm a single malt guy. My early exposure to blended whisky consisted only of the cheap blends found in my friends' parents' liquor cabinets - had I believed that those blended whiskies were indicative of all Scotch whiskies, chances are excellent that I would not have revisited the world of Scotch and The Scotch Blog would not exist today.

SingleMalt.tv

On September 29th, an interesting new site will kick off - that's the day that SingleMalt.tv launches.

Not really "television", it's an online channel - which is, in my estimation, the next logical step for the integration of infotainment and edumedia.

From the press release:

SINGLEMALT.tv is an Internet Protocol Television channel (IPTV) hosted by Narrowstep (UK), one of the world’s leading IPTV service providers. An IPTV channel brings video  programming directly to the desktop or laptop via the Internet. Viewers who visit www.singlemalt.tv have access to programming 24 hours a day with scheduled events and video on demand including news, features and ongoing series, all drawn from the world of Scotch.

Announcing The ABV!

I'd been reading Basic Juice, (Beau Jarvis' excellent site on wine) for a while when I asked him to write a post on Sherry - so we whisky folks could get a better understanding of the mysterious liquid which has such an impact on Macallan, Aberlour, Glenfarclas, et. al.

After Beau and I continued to correspond, we discovered we had more in common than our love of fermented liquids - we had a similar view on how to write about those fermented liquids.

After a while we decided that it would be interesting to form a loose coalition of independent people who wrote passionality about the finer things in life. Today, we proudly announce the launch of The ABV network.

Members of ABV retain their independence, and continue to write in their own inimitable style, but by joining forces, we are able to bring to you a network of sites which (we hope) will cover the spectrum of dining, adult beverages, etc - all with a straight-forward style and without simply regurgitating press releases.

Read OUR press Release here: Download theABV-PR.pdf .

Robbo - Confirmed at W&M

On August 2nd I was the first to announce that Dave Robertson was leaving JMR.

On August 5th I let you all know that Dave was going to Whyte & Mackay to run the innovations group.

Today Whyte & Mackay finally got around to telling you what I told you over 5 weeks ago:

UK: W&M appoints Easy Whisky's 'Robbo'
11 September 2006 Source: just-drinks.com editorial team

Whyte & Mackay has appointed one of the founders of the Easy Whisky Drinking Co. to drive innovation at the UK spirits distiller.

Drambuie makes their move...

Just-Drinks.com reports that Drambuie is about to kick off their "rejuvenation" campaign - kicking in a tidy sum to do the job - GBP10m (US$18.6m) will be invested in the international marketing campaign and will focus the product for younger consumers.

I talked about Drambuie in July 2005.

What is Drambuie?

In case you are one of the people who has never tried it, Drambuie is blended whisky, along wih  honey, and added "secret ingredients." It is sickeningly sweet when taken neat, but as a mixer it can be quite tasty - chances are that your grandparents drank it over ice.

Colorado event

Marty & Dave Coffey asked me to tell you Coloradans (or at least the ones near Castle Pines) about an upcoming event with Willie Tait of Isle of Jura.

Read on.

Whisky Season = News Stories

If you are a regular reader of The Scotch Blog, then you know that Scotch Whisky is much more than a fantastic breakfast beverage - it's big business.

And as we come out of the slow whisky days of Summer and enter the "whisky season"* the business stories start to pick up.

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What IS in that bottle?

For example this story about a European Union proposal to lift an existing exemption that allows alcohol companies to avoid including ingredients on the labels of their drinks.

This would be bad enough for single malt distilleries, who would have to disclose the addition of caramel to their product - and It's not clear if blends would have to disclose which individual malts and grains went in to the mix (I doubt it) - but it would certainly affect companies like Drambuie (as per the story), who use the secrecy of their recipe as part of their marketing.

UPDATE: Sherry; "Spanish Oak" - which is it?

On Monday I had a story about the effects of sherrry vs. Spanisk oak on sherried single malts.
The story resulted in a great comment from wine & sherry expert Beau Jarvis of Basic Juice.

Caspar MacRae, of The Macallan responds:

Hello Kevin,

Great - this is the sort of question that those of us involved with The Macallan can really get our teeth into!

Beau is largely right. The vast majority of sherry matured in the soleras of Jerez is matured in American Oak (Quercus alba) sherry butts. The oak is imported from the States prior to coopering and creating the large Bota Jerzana's sherry butts. A producer like Gonzales Byass will have in excess of 150,000 butts, of which the majority will be American oak.