pop & pour

Merry Christmas!  I am NOT blogging tomorrow.

49 different reviews, covering two totally different types of drinks and written by 4 different people, have now been posted on this site in the month of December.  It has been the most Herculean effort in the history of Pop & Pour and I’m unabashedly thrilled to be at the other end of it, but as these things always are, it has also been rewarding without measure.  It’s been a new experience to blog with others and share this space with alternate viewpoints and different frames of tasting reference, but to also be able to share what goes into getting something down on paper and then up on the site has felt like a weight off my shoulders, and when those other authors contribute as consistently and impressively as Tyler Derksen has, the burden lifts even further.  Massive thanks to Tyler for a killer blogging debut.

Our Christmas reward.

I usually round off the KWM Whisky Advent experience with two things:  a heartfelt kudos to Andrew Ferguson and the Kensington Wine Market team for somehow making this remain fresh and interesting year after year, and the list of my top whiskies of the calendar.  I emphasize the first even more than usual this year, because the breadth and diversity of whiskies in 2017 surpassed any previous year I’ve tasted through, lacking only (IMO) something from Japan to round out the lineup – maybe next year?  I may de-emphasize the second this time around, because my whisky podium for this calendar ended up decidedly weird.  But I’m sticking with it, because that’s what you do with traditions.  Here goes.

• Best Value Dram:  Glengoyne 15 Year (Day 21) — An utterly delicious 15 Year Single Malt Scotch, from a distillery that once invaded Islay as a marketing ploy, for $77?  In.
• Honourable Mention:  Gordon & MacPhail Connoisseurs Choice 2004 Caol Ila (Day 5) — Tyler gave the most props to this out of his lineup of whiskies, and Caol Ila is one of both of our favourite distilleries, somehow managing to balance Islay peat and surrounding flavour just right time and again.
• Honourable Mention 2:  Ardbeg Corryvreckan (Day 18) — Look.  I may have been in an apocalyptic mood while drinking this whisky; it may also be that this whisky inevitably puts anyone drinking it in an apocalyptic mood.  Ardbeg is decidedly not my thing, but a week later I can objectively recognize that this was the most layered, Ardbeg-est Ardbeg I have come across.  I will never buy it.
• 3rd Place:  Cadenhead’s Dailuaine-Glenlivet 12 Year (Day 1) — This was as rugged and rustic as a lumberjack living on the beach, but there was something gripping and honest about it that I still remember 24 days later.
• 2nd Place:  Hyde 1938 No. 6 Black Label Special Reserve (Day 6) — The best Irish whiskey I’ve ever had?  Almost assuredly.  Hyde keeps impressing calendar after calendar, and this was the most complex and noteworthy thing I’ve had from them.
• 1st Place:  Shelter Point Artisanal Single Malt Whisky (Day 11) — OK, I’m seriously not trying to make this a Whisky Bible/Crown Royal Northern Harvest Rye thing, and I’m not sure I would say that, if I blind-tasted all 24 calendar whiskies side-by-side, I would rate this as objectively the best one.  BUT:  without a shadow of a doubt, it incinerated my expectations far more than anything else I tasted in December, possibly in all of 2017.  Since Day 11 ended, I have gone back to KWM to buy more Shelter Point because it opened my eyes to the promise of Canadian whisky to such a degree.  And that is why it is my winner for 2017.

If you vehemently disagree with the above, just remember that I have no real qualification or standing to be evaluating whiskies.  Let me know what your top 3 was for #KWMWhiskyAdvent 2017!

We end Advent, as we always do, with a double-sized bottle from the secretive and obviously influential Scotch Malt Whisky Society, which has incredible reach across the world of whisky and the ability to source top-end single casks of whiskies for bottling only for their own subscribers.  Rather than reveal the identity of the initial distiller overtly on the bottle, the SMWS does so quietly, in code:  each bottle is given two numerals, with the first being the Society’s identifier for the distillery in question and the second being the sequential numbering of the SMWS release from that distillery.  Tonight’s whisky, oddly titled (as they all are) “Smoky, Salty, Sweet Porridge”, is No. 10.117, making it the 117th SMWS bottling from…Bunnahabhain, as previously visited in this calendar on Day 17.  I’m not sure if I was supposed to reveal that, but the information is available in any one of a thousand Google searches, so I hope I haven’t crossed any lines.

Our final whisky is a faint straw colour and offers up layered yet balanced aromas of leather, candle smoke, lemon drop and kerosene, the latter coming across with impressive subtlety for an Islay whisky.  Fiery yet pristine on the palate, its brain-blasting 61.2% cask-strength ABV leaves a lasting warming impression but not at the expense of briny, grassy, spicy, peppery flavours that roll across the tongue, continuing even long after you swallow.  I don’t normally use “approachable” to describe 60+ percent alcohol peated Islay scotch, but I feel fairly confident in saying this would have mass appeal.  I don’t quite get the porridge noted in the title, but I was otherwise all over this.

Pens down!  Advent complete!