Kushiyu – Spicy Tuna Rice Cake
Took a friend out to try sushi (and even use chopsticks!) for her first time; thought it’d be best to ease her into eating raw fish with this…. it worked.
Link: Kushiyu
Took a friend out to try sushi (and even use chopsticks!) for her first time; thought it’d be best to ease her into eating raw fish with this…. it worked.
Link: Kushiyu
I finally got around to trying the whiskies that came with my SMWS membership pack. The first mini bottle I opened came from cask number 3.171, which is also referred to as Peasant honey and lime flowers. It’s been aged for 20 years and was bottled at 55.8% ABV.
Originating from Bowmore, the oldest distillery (est. 1779) on Islay, this independent bottling was quite a treat!
The Society’s tasting notes:
The nose is varied and generous; treacle toffee, incense, beeswax, heather twigs and cakes (syrup sponge, ginger cake, Battenburg). The palate is big, sweet and smoky; toffee apples, roasted peppers, leather, honey and chocolate limes.
If I could add, chewing this whisky neat reminded me of lychee, while the finish gave a hint of rubber, durian fruit, and xylitol gum. This dram definitely had a unique flavor profile, and since it is sold out, is one that I will miss greatly.
Cheers!
On this bright day, I’m sipping some of Compass Box’s Great King Street – Artist Blend. As its name suggests, this is a blended Scotch. That is, its single malt mixed with some grain whisky. However, what differentiates this blended whisky from others is that they use a higher proportion of single malt (50% vs 30-40%), which supposedly imparts greater character and complexity. Does it?
Well, it definitely is a refreshing dram. Though still not as complex as single malts, it is unique among the blends. It’s sweet and fruity, think freshly sliced Gala apples and Asian pears. There’s the usual vanilla nose, as well, with a subtle peatiness. The finish is in the medium spectrum, and as good as it gets for a 43% ABV whisky. Overall, I like it.
This would be a wonderful to have in the Spring time at a park picnic or outdoorsy concert.
Link: Compass Box
Instead of getting the tasting menu, this time I ordered a few a la carte items that interested me.
le animelle. crispy sweet bread, gnocchi, huckleberry, rapini.
Tried the new tasting menu….
From the 2012 Winter Cocktail Menu, had the Remedy X. rosemary infused bushmills black bush blended irish whiskey, ginger infused agave, lemon.
JL and I captured in a slideshow at WWD (Women’s Wear Daily). This was sometime in November of last year. We went to this art auction slash benefit party. Here, we were just talking and waiting for the auction to start, when I suddenly noticed someone about to take our picture. We were caught off guard. Oh well. At least someone deemed us worthy of being part of their slideshow, right?
Copy + Paste of the article that went with the slideshow:
In a season full of black-tie benefits, it was at the more dressed-down art events where Los Angeles’ most interesting fall fashion could be found. Last week’s LAX Art’s benefit auction, held at The Brick Building in the Culver City, Calif. gallery district, drew a mix of street-chic looks and vintage flair — from colorful coats and tights to quirky accessories to, of course, the requisite black.
Link: WWD
I finally cracked open one of my bottles of A league of its own, as the SMWS titled it.
From the website:
Islay, South Shore
Wet peat, raw oysters, almond oil, smoked mussels, crispy duck, heather smoke, hot diesel engine, earthy dunnage floors and a whiff of perfumed new make made a diverse first nose. Diesel, dirty like a burnt pan, white pepper, rock salt and grilled mackerel or sardines to taste; while water made it sweeter and perfumed. There were mentions of Brylcreem, cinder toffee, flake (Australian gummy shark) and one Panellist was ice fishing with Grumpy Old Men Jack Lemmon & Walter Matthau. To taste this was ‘easy drinking’, smoky, salty, sweet, earthy; one Panellist had radicchio or red chard. Prince Charles’ favourite whisky.
Drinking tip: A brilliant Islay and a very interesting example of the make
Colour: Platinum gold
Cask: Refill hogshead
Age: 12 years
Date distilled: April 1998
Alcohol: 58.5%
With 238 bottles in existence, only 150 of them made their way to the U.S. I got 2 for myself. However, after tasting it, I think I need to create a stockpile before it’s sold out! Tastewise, it’s similar to my open bottle of Laphroaig’s 10 year Cask Strength (Batch 002; Dec. ’10), but sweeter.
As a side note, I find it curious that there exists another 29.100 bottle with the label Sticky toffee pudding ecstasy. Apparently, it’s a 20 year old Laphroaig casked in a refill sherry butt that was unveiled at 2011 Whisky Live Taipei.
Over the holidays, I had the great fortune to find the much talked about Johnny Walker Double Black at the local Costco. Now, I’m not that big of a fan of Johnny Walker, or blended Scotches for that matter. Nevertheless, given all the talk and marketing for this whisky, I was curious to see if the hype was justified….
As its name suggests, Double Black is a much more intense version of the Black Label. Or rather, it’s a much smokier experience. Black and Double Black do share the same blend components though, just in different proportions — in an interview, Johnny Walker’s Master Blender Jim Beveridge shared that in Double Black, the smaller proportion of Cardu‘s fruity and floral whisky is offset by more peatier malts from Islay distillery Caol Ila…. interesting, but makes sense.
…so, is Johnny Walker Double Black worth the hype? In a word, maybe. It is definitely fun to do a Black vs Double Black taste comparison. I see Double Black as kind of a gateway whisky to nudge whisky drinkers into developing a palate for the smokier and polarizing Islay whiskies (i.e. Laphroaig, Ardbeg, Lagavulin, etc.), and there’s definitely nothing wrong with that! With that said, I do prefer the Double Black for the nose and the taste.
However, because I regularly drink my scotch at cask strength and neat, I found Double Black a bit underwhelming. Nevertheless, it is worth a try.
Link: Johnny Walker
I first tried Oban 14 last year, while watching the M-1 Grand Muay Thai Championship at Nokia Center; it was the only single malt Scotch they had at the bar. Preoccupied with the event, I can only recall that the drink was satisfactory, and that the bartender’s generous pour lasted me for half the night. So, when I encountered a bottle of it at Costco for a relatively good price, I thought I’d give it a whirl and try it again…
..and having sampled it a handful of times in the past 3 weeks, I can say for certain that I’m not liking this that much, or really, at all……Sorry.
I guess I can take solace that Jim Murray also gave it a 79 score, and thinks that it’s “absolutely all over the place. The cask selection sits very uncomfortably with the malt…”
Yea, Oban, to me, is an “eh” whisky. Oh well.
