hello you multi monashy mountain malt mates miners uh welcome to alfie review 920 extras in the bothy
where i give extra additional overview opinion perspective content over and above specific
whiskey and other quality spirit reviews and thank you to wayne lundberg for that mention
thanks wayne um and i've just review reviewed a single malt whiskey in ralphie review 920 excuse
me slight hiccups that's the whiskey that caused it it was hot whiskey it was burnley whiskey
and it wasn't the alcoholic strength it was the quality of alcohol um it wasn't good and
it's really turned me off glenn grant as a brand for the foreseeable future which isn't a problem
because i've got plenty of other liquors to choose from there's never been so many as there is now
that are available to us all wherever we are although i have to caution you that if you're in
australia um i would suggest you have a look at what's around you rather than the very expensive
scotch whiskies for example binley beanly rum i'm going to be reviewing that shortly
the next few weeks australian five-year-old rum fantastic stuff far better than the number of
whiskies that i've tasted and reviewed recently um and um if you're in canada
seriously look for what you've got locally which are going to be cheaper for you and are going
to deliver a good expositive experience um all the canadian distillers need to do is actually
bottle a higher strength bottle more single cask and put them out accessible and affordable it's
not rocky science and if you're in scandinavian countries norway where everything's expensive
well i look forward to seeing you know a norwegian distillery or two but you never know
um
when we're buying whiskey the landscape has changed from a few years ago
because whiskey's changed the accessibility the availability the prices the quality of
what's bottled i've seen this firsthand being at the center of the scotch whiskey culture
and being very close being in scotland for most of my life and it's been a fascinating
journey the journey in itself even putting the actual physical whiskey consumption aside it's
been a very rich rich experience of landscape and characters and stoic buildings and beautiful views
and long glorious days ending at the fireside with a drum and a glass of good quality beer that
malt makes i'm just telling you right now that's quality of life that is serious quality of life
it's not how much you've got it's the quality of how little you can manage with
and i want to say i want to share just a small overview of changes
carrying on from my extras last time in ralphie review 919 where i talked about the
quality of whiskey in terms of continuity of flavor or continuity of quality
because making single malt whiskey in pot stills is a very delicate skilled process
it's enormously skilled actually particularly when it comes to matching with casks sourcing
of the quality of casks reworking the casks you've got knowing what casks you need and what ratio for
what age of whiskey you're looking to produce how you season your casks how you maintain your casks
the enormous value of actually having a cooper on your premises who's time served with experiences
with experience and just can get on with it because they know exactly what they're doing
that is gold dust to any distillery anywhere in the world that produces brown spirits
good matured spirits and i really want to emphasize now that when distillers are putting
caramel colorant and chill filtering their whiskey what they're doing is they're trying to fudge the
variable variability due to the cask policies and other cost constraints they face
in order to give the appearance of consistency in their brand now when they are catering to
a passive consumer it's no problem because the consumer is judging that bottle of whiskey's
in exactly the same way that they judge a big mac a can of coca-cola or a packet of crisps
chips if you're in the u.s they're saying something which is utterly predictable utterly
the same as the last experience and the way they do this is to actually
remove the experience in terms of sensation of smell and taste and replace it with the
branding the visibility of the branding so that your sensory perception perception
is on your eyesight rather than your smell and your taste that's the way the passive consumer
operates the lazy consumer now this sounds terribly snobby but i'm not being snobby i'm
just calling it out as it actually is i'm being realistic and i'm not criticizing it i'm just
showing as it actually is because you need to be clear that you're no longer a passive consumer
with the money that you're spending on the quality spirits you buy whatever spirits they happen to be
bourbon rye rum whiskey irish whiskey japanese whiskey and this makes us the proactive informed
customer and what we're spending our money on is to feed the experience of our
not our eyesight so much although we do like the familiar of the appearance of brands
but our sensation of smell and taste which are emotional subconscious driven sensations a very
very primitive sensations the two sensations that we have that are chemoreceptor sensations
smell and taste and as such the complexity and the fantastic array of smell and taste
that you can get from matured brown spirits is unrepeatable in any other consumable context
bar none sure you get some amazingly complex white spirits like a rested rum or a grappa for example
but they're not the same they're different and
all the better for it because they're part of the variety but as proactive consumers
we we've got to identify clearly the two variables that we can get in the whiskey we buy and one is
where it doesn't taste quite the same as last time but it's still good quality for what it is
and you'll find this with spring bank and by the way i'll be the first to tell you
spring bank doesn't produce 100 percent great bottlings all the time no distillery does
although i have to say aaron are doing a pretty pretty damn good job of it
at the moment with her entire range my goodness they've got some serious skills at that distillery
and it's showing bottling after bottling this is part of the knowledge it's not
so much which switch whiskey you should buy next malt mates it's
what's my list of distilleries that are doing it better than the others
it's like investing in the stock market you don't invest in the stocks you invest in the companies
you invest in the companies which clearly show and are visible that they've got the right team doing
the right thing in the right way all the time time after time after time and this is exactly the same
with with whiskey distilleries and it's not just in scotland it's all around the world now but it
takes time it takes experience it takes a range array of skills to learn all this and you can only
learn a little bit at college and university it's the practical skills and the actual raw
talents of the individuals that make up the team involved in production
maturation and delivery into the market i know i'm often cited rightly so
that i'm slagging off marketing i never slag off marketing departments i slag off what they do
but the flannel and the superficiality but they're
doing a job and their job is to appeal to the passive consumer who needs to be entertained
proactive customers don't in fact we get increasingly irritated at the flannel because
we can see through it we've heard it before and it no longer works on us because we've graduated
we're doing our own apprenticeship our apprenticeship from consumers to customers
so you have two types of delivery the consistency of quality but variable slightly
variable marginally variable how do i know this well look at all the talk about batch editions
bottling codes so many people are talking about them now because bottling codes and batch editions
really really matter what's your bottling code in this when was it bortled which year which time of
the year which market did it go to that was a good version why because the percentage of more
active casks a higher percentage went into that batch to make up the volume so is that
a little bit better is it a lot better no it's marginally better but a marginal betterment of
a whiskey makes a huge huge difference when you're sitting there in your third or fourth
glass nosing and tasting and mulling it over and asking yourself did i pay the right price for this
do i feel that i got good value am i still getting good value now that i'm getting through the bottle
the other consistency that distillers are i think making a mistake about is the consistency
of continuity of absolute presentation in which they are sacrificing quality of flavor
so that you have a bottle of whiskey which looks like the last one you bought
smells a bit like the last one you bought tastes a bit like the last one you bought but
something's changed and you can't quite put your finger on it and it takes a few
glasses before you have that eureka moment and suddenly become aware of it you've got
a gradual batch variation now with batch variations you get the extreme variations
one good batch followed by a rotten batch a bad batch bad batch so pepper you wonder why they
actually bottled it and i'll tell you why the distillers bottle per batches because they know
eventually they'll sell it because uninformed customers will buy it not knowing any better
because when a bad batch comes in the market the the grapevine online and reddit facebook
wherever your forum wherever you're getting your information will be very quick to tell you
so distillers believe quite rightly at the moment all that's beginning to change because of online
visibility of these practices that they can get away with a bad batch so they'll see a group
of of under active casks in the corner of the warehouse and they'll just say i just bung them
into the next batch just get it out of here get i've got it out of our way go and burn the casks
you can do that in a blend when you're producing tens if not hundreds of thousands of bottles
in a batch but you cannot do that in single malt whiskey i guarantee you
i'm just telling you because you need to know this you already know this but i'm going to remind you
people who drink blended scotch whiskey no way do they spend as much time and as much commitment
to their time and as much passion and precision to analyzing and connecting with the smells and
tastes that is down to the single malt drinkers totally absolutely you go to the auction houses
which are the bottles of whiskey that everybody really really really wants to buy as an investment
blended whiskey no no sure a few obscure bottlings of johnny walker
deco for example yeah scottish place in the market but you look at the top of the list
all single malts all japanese single malts not japanese blends single malts
this is
an important part of the journey is when you're going along moving from the unknown towards the
knowing and part of the value and importance of me sitting here on my fat arse in the bothy
bang in the barrel telling you all this stuff is to help you with your journey so
you arrive at your destination sooner having made fewer financial mistakes
that's why after 12 years as an online reviewer i still appear to be relevant and i'm happy to still
be providing that information and helping you with your journey i tell you what mock makes
this is a journey life's a journey the purpose of life is to experience the journey
time time is the dimension that separates events there you go should we thought for the day
i hope you've enjoyed this if you have click subscribe i do have a patreon channel you might
want to join me there you'll be made most welcome i have a big announcement coming up on my channel
and um thank you for watching please subscribe i think i've said that and click the like
likey likey thumbs up and if you don't like it that's fine
um you know still showing your care if you press dislike is absolutely fine by me not an issue
you take care of yourself malt mates and keep it quality
not quantity and i'll always be here to help you with that see you soon