WHISKY!!

[phorbesie]

:grin:

[fluffhead77]

Been rocking this one at home for past couple weeks. Just beautiful...

[Esau.]

Shackleton's whiskey returned to Antarctic hut

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/01/19/shackleton-whiskey.html?cmp=rss

Talk about whisky on ice: Three bottles of rare, 19th century Scotch found beneath the floor boards of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton's abandoned expedition base were returned to the polar continent Saturday after a distiller flew them to Scotland to recreate the long-lost recipe.

But not even New Zealand Prime Minister John Key, who personally returned the stash, got a taste of the contents of the bottles of Mackinlay's whisky, which were rediscovered 102 years after the explorer was forced to leave them behind.

"I think we're all tempted to crack it open and have a little drink ourselves now," Key joked at a ceremony handing over the bottles to Antarctic Heritage Trust officials at New Zealand's Antarctic base on Ross Island.

The whisky will be transferred by March from Ross Island to Shackleton's desolate hut at Cape Royds and replaced beneath the restored hut as part of a program to protect the legacy of the so-called heroic era of Antarctic exploration from 1898 to 1915.

Bottled in 1898 after the blend was aged 15 years, the Mackinlay bottles were among three crates of Scotch and two of brandy buried beneath a basic hut Shackleton had used during his dramatic 1907 Nimrod excursion to the Antarctic. The expedition failed to reach the South Pole but set a record at the time for reaching the farthest southern latitude. Shackleton was knighted after his return to Great Britain.

Shackleton's stash was discovered frozen in ice by conservationists in 2010. The crates were frozen solid after more than a century beneath the Antarctic surface.

But the bottles were found intact — and researchers could hear the whisky sloshing around inside. Antarctica's minus -30 Celsius) temperature was not enough to freeze the liquor.

'Such a lovely aroma'

The bottles remained unopened as they were returned Saturday — if Shackleton couldn't have a dram, no one could — but their contents nevertheless formed the basis for a revival of the blend.

Distiller Whyte & Mackay, which now owns the Mackinlay brand, chartered a private jet to take the bottles from the Antarctic operations headquarters in the New Zealand city of Christchurch to Scotland for analysis in 2011.

The recipe for the whisky had been lost. But Whyte & Mackay recreated a limited edition of 50,000 bottles, costing about $157 each. from a sample drawn with a syringe through a cork of one of the bottles. The conservation work of the Antarctic Heritage Trust has received five per cent of the proceeds from every bottle sold.

The original bottles had flown in two combination-locked containers with Key to Antarctica in a U.S. Air Force transport plane from Christchurch on Friday.

Antarctic Heritage Trust manager Lizzie Meek, who was part of the team that found the whisky, recalled its pleasant aroma.

"When you're used to working around things in that hut that perhaps are quite decayed and some of them don't have very nice smells, it's very nice to work with artifacts that have such a lovely aroma," Meek told the ceremony by radio from explorer Robert Scott's Antarctic hut which she is restoring.

"And definitely the aroma of whisky was around very strongly."

[phorbesie]

weak sauce...literally

Make it a double! Maker's Mark won't get you as drunk as it used to

If you like to enjoy your Maker's Mark with a little water, then there's good news. You won't need to add your own water anymore because the distillery will do it for you. The Kentucky distillery behind Maker's Mark is taking some of the alcohol out of their product, going from 90 proof to 84 proof. "Fact is, demand for our bourbon is exceeding our ability to make it," wrote Maker's Mark executives Rob Samuels and Bill Samuels Jr. in an email to clients. It's really a pretty ingenious way to deal with supply and demand. If you water down your bourbon, you can make more bottles to sell, and when you've lowered the alcohol content of your bourbon, nobody will buy it anymore. Problem solved!

[Davey Boy 2.0]

BLUNDERING workers flushed whisky worth £½million down the drain during a botched factory clean-up.

Around 18,000 litres of Scotch poured into a local sewage works after the gaffe by staff at Chivas Brothers bottling plant.

An insider said: “It was like someone turned on a tap and it just ran straight down the plughole.†Fears that the booze ended up in the River Leven near the site in Dumbarton turned out to be off the mark.

But Scottish Water chiefs said the sheer volume of spirits could hamper its waste treatment centre in the town.

The bungle came during a routine cleaning operation in the early hours of Tuesday at the whisky plant which employs 600 workers. The insider went on: “It happened on a night-shift washout — that’s when the equipment is cleaned for a changeover between different products. Instead of draining the water and cleaning solution, they flushed out all the whisky. What’s even more shocking is no one noticed until 11am.â€

He said bosses were “lividâ€, adding: “The guys responsible will be lucky to keep their jobs.†A spokesman for Chivas Brothers — makers of Ballantines, the world’s second biggest selling Scotch — said a probe is under way.

[Blane]

have been loving this recent purchase:

Normally prefer the heavier and more peated stuff (and not usually a Bowmore fan) but this one just has so much going on. Serious flavour country.

Edited April 15, 2013 by Guest

[TheSloth]

Mel is moving into the beer and whisky portion of her sommelier certification, if the amount of wine we drank during the last eight months for "studying" purposes is any indication of what is in store for us then things should be pretty amazing at our place for a bit.

[Davey Boy 2.0]

[Booche]

I think we have all seen this movie once before.

Edited April 15, 2013 by Guest

[Blane]

Mel is moving into the beer and whisky portion of her sommelier certification, if the amount of wine we drank during the last eight months for "studying" purposes is any indication of what is in store for us then things should be pretty amazing at our place for a bit.

Sounds like a tasting session is in order! Am heading to the UK Friday for a couple of weeks and planning to make a visit here:

http://www.thewhiskyexchange.com/

Hope to come back with some tasty new treats

[fluffhead77]

Oh god.

That place looks amazing, Blane.

WANT!

[Booche]

A photo was just taken of Sloth trying to break into that place.

[Blane]

find this really useful

[Davey Boy 2.0]

Thanks Blane! A bit more legible:

[Davey Boy 2.0]

http://life.nationalpost.com/2013/03/15/heavy-drinkers-get-extra-jolt-of-brain-energy-from-booze-yale-study-finds/

[Esau.]

[Davey Boy 2.0]

http://youtu.be/1naXHTHiHZc

[c-towns]

Is it just me or did the price of whiskey just go up in the lcbo by almost $2/btl?

[Esau.]

Is it just me or did the price of whiskey just go up in the lcbo by almost $2/btl?

 

 

Probably increased. Perhaps due to season, or maybe a new brand, or new owners of an existing one have been redrawing deals. Considering the Auditor General's 2011 annual report which included a section about the price fixing going on between the LCBO and the suppliers via "needs letters" I'm no longer surprised when I see prices change suddenly, and at times dramatically. Pissed off and suspicious, but no longer surprised.

[bradm]

Ottawa has a distillery:

 

http://www.northof7distillery.ca/

 

They make whiskey, vodka, gin, and rum.

 

Aloha,

Brad

[Davey Boy 2.0]

THE HUMANITY!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/liquor-store-shelf-collapse-in-whitehorse-spills-50k-mostly-fine-scotch-1.2818189

[Davey Boy 2.0]

What do you call a man that has drowned in a cask of Islay whisky?

 

Pete

[Davey Boy 2.0]

Anyone try this yet? I picked one up at the lcbo the other day, first time I'd seen it. I'd say it's a bit over-hyped, doesn't really "taste like a single malt" and the flavour doesn't really have a lot of depth. Quite good for a rye though. In case you missed *that* article

 

[phorbesie]

yes, we got a few bottles of it before Xmas.  i don't really care about it either way, but i am not much of a straight whisky drinker (yet).

we also got the Bulleit rye (which i hadn't seen before) and i quite like that one. 

[Davey Boy 2.0]

Whenever I've mentored people through straight whisky drinkin I start out advising the mentee to add plenty of ice at first then gradually reduce that ratio until you find the right balance for your taste/lifestyle.