Whisky Live

Posted on 2008/03/02 11:01:47 (March 2008).

[Friday 29th February]
I booked the afternoon off work today so I could attend Whisky Live, which, conveniently, was being held in walking distance of where I live / work.

I got there just before it started - just before 3 - and began to wonder what I had let myself in for. The other people in the queue seemed to be almost unanimously grumpy old men, complaining about having to queue, complaining about how it wasn't going to be as good as last year (before they'd even got in), complaining about having to fill in their names and addresses which would no doubt be used for sending them all sorts of junk mail... and so on. The marketing material for Whisky Live is somewhat misleading - they put on a load of pictures of young ladies etc to try, in vain, to dispel the myth that whisky is an old man's drink. Well, I suppose this did change slightly as the day wore on - in the evening it probably was a younger crowd - perhaps it was only really the hardended veterans who were prepared to actually take the afternoon off for the event.

Once actually inside the main exhibition hall I have to admit to a slight sense of disappointment initially - there weren't really that many stalls. I had expected it to be bigger than the one I had been to in Tokyo, but on reflection that didn't necessarily make sense - as several conversations throughout the day seemed to confirm, whisky just isn't as popular in England as it is in Japan.

I had booked to attend one of the "masterclasses" which started shortly after I arrived, and things did definitely begin to improve at this point. It was basically a tasting session focusing on heavily peated/smokey malts, with three guys also doing a bit of a talk on how the smokey / peaty notes are introduced. The three of them were all people who actually make the stuff, rather than connoisseurs, so they weren't particularly verbose in describing any of the six drams we tasted, but given that they were all favourites of mine I didn't really need any flowery prose to help enjoy them.

One of the guys doing the masterclass was the manager at Port Ellen maltings. Not many distilleries have their own maltings now, so this is a part of the process you don't always get to hear much about on distillery tours etc. So that was very interesting. I had wondered how different levels of peating (PPM for those in the know) were achieved, and it turned out to be fairly simple - it was just a question of how long you smoked the malted barley for. The other interesting revelation (although one I had probably heard before) was that initially the whole process of drying out the malted barley using peat fires was just a means to an end - not an intentional thing to introduce flavour. To make whisky, you want the barley to release sugar, and to do that it needs to begin to germinate, but not keep on germinating - so the smoking / drying process is there actually to stop germination at a certain point in time. Peat was used for this purpose simply because there was a lot of it lying around on Islay, not initially because of the flavour it would impart.

The malts at the masterclass were, from start to finish - an unpeated 8 year old Caol Ila (surprisingly nice), followed by the regular editions of Caol Ila, Lagavulin and Talisker (no surprises there, but still nice) and then a coouple of real treats on the end - a 28 year old Port Ellen and a 30 year old Brora. In retrospect I wish I'd just skipped the first four (with the possible exception of the unpeated Caol Ila, which was very interesting) and then spent the rest of the time lingering on the final two. I find the more whisky I drink, the less I'm able to really appreciate all the nuances etc.

Emboldened with some fine whiskies, I then returned to the main exhibition in an unsurprisingly more positive frame of mind. I took another sweep of the stands, trying a surprisingly good Mackmyra (Swedish whisky!), a Douglas Laing Port Ellen (my favourite independent bottler for that malt - they were responsible for the legendary Fortnum and Mason bottle), and each of the two Japanese companies' (Nikka and Suntory) offerings, where I also profited from the opportunity to practice some Japanese. One of the exhibitors on the Nikka stand rather kindly said he overheard his colleague involved in a conversation in Japanese, and assumed he was talking to a Japanese person.

It is easy yo get carried away at these sorts of events (my previous visit to Whisky Live Tokyo was a testament to this), so I thought after a while of sampling I ought to take a bit of a break, and sit down to watch some demonstrations. First off was a demonstration of making cocktails using whisky - I have to admit to being hugely cynical in this regard, but must confess I had a quick sip of a couple (one a sort of Manhattan made using Bowmore, and the other a lemony hot toddy with some other malt in - maybe An Cnoc?) and they were actually pretty good. Following that there was then another talk/presentation/demonstration/whatever you call it done by the legendary Richard Paterson (who I'd also met in Tokyo) where he got three people up on stage and had them make their own blended whisky on the spot. I hadn't actually seen Richard present in Tokyo, and so this was the first time to witness one of his shows - and he was absolutely fll of energy and pazzazz (if that's a word). Very entertaining to watch.

Some time after 6, a guy who I work with came along to join me for the evening portion, and I tried as best I could to provide him with recommendations on where I thought all the highlights were - although naturally by this point my judgement may have become somewhat impaired. We got talking to one of the exhibitors from the Suntory stand and spent a while lamenting the fact that people in England basically aren't interested in whisky - he said he had been surprised when he first came to the UK that nobody drank whisky in pubs here, and I embarked on my usual rant about the total lack of whisky bars (apart from the old faithful SMWS) in London.

The day's proceedings came to a close at 9, and we were all booted out. Although we had vaguely eaten at the exhibition (a rather uninteresting ciabatta roll filled, in my case, with a slice of nut roast), we were both still peckish, and decided to go to get something to eat. We settled on the tapas place near our office (not to be confused with the one near my flat), and from there on the conversation predictably devolved into talking shop.

A remarkable description, especially when you must have been half-cut three-quarters of the time :)

Posted by John's Mum at 2008/03/03 17:33:54.

Now that's an interesting, inspiring stuff! You should try to win me over. I mean, to convert me to whisky. Those I tasted didn't truly *persuade* me...

Posted by Sheri at 2008/03/04 09:45:43.

A great recounting of the day. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it! :)

Posted by Nigel at 2008/03/04 21:33:06.

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