Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2020 i Whisky Magazine

We face uncertain times,” “The future is going to be different,” or “Who knows where this is all going?” Are just some of the new, already worn phrases you hear in the media, both printed and social, and this got me thinking a little as the world slowly lifts its restrictions due to the coronavirus. One thing I think is certain: the world has changed. Various industries have been decimated by the last few months, and that’s all it has taken…a few months. I saw a very glib, but accurate, comment the other day about how you can ask people not to travel because it is affecting the climate and they say no, but throw a virus in there and pretty much everyone decides to stay home and the airline…

I write this from my desk in New York City on the 36th Day of Quarantine. It is Tuesday, but that seems irrelevant. At some point soon, some authoritative body will declare that there are now officially three days to the week – yesterday, today and tomorrow. Within a few days, I’ll likely forget how to apply liquid eyeliner. It seems certain that at some point, global leaders or the UN or a scholarly association will have to formally bestow a name on our new normal. If I may offer some input, I suggest rendering the BC and AD eras one and the same, and christening the time after stay-at-home orders are lifted ‘MITH’ (Made It Through. Hallelujah.) Or for the sake of simplicity, perhaps just ‘AP’ (After Pandemic) will…

Behind every great problem lies a question, and for Geoff Palmer it led to one of the greatest brewing innovations the world had ever seen. Sir Godfrey Henry Oliver Palmer OBE, or Geoff to those who know him, is many things: The first European to be honoured with the American Society of Brewing Chemists Award of Distinction (considered the ‘Nobel prize’ of brewing); Scotland’s first black professor; and founder of the International Centre for Brewing and Distilling at Heriot-Watt University (alma mater of almost all the new generation of distillers and craft brewers in the UK). I sat down with this spirited octogenarian to ask him about his life, the industry and what really matters to him now. Sir Geoff, how would your friends describe you? Easygoing, for life in…

Almost everything about our daily lives has changed since the last time this magazine was published. The pandemic has swept across the world, leaving us scrambling to combat it while still retaining some semblance of normalcy. Those still working are either doing so remotely, or have taken on a certain level of danger in order to work in-person. In the global whisky community, bartenders and brand representatives alike have found themselves out of jobs, at least temporarily, as bars and certainly large gatherings of whisky lovers have been deemed too unsafe. Distilleries across the world have shifted gears to meet the global demand for disinfectants, particularly hand sanitiser. Stateside, we are also reeling from police brutality and reckoning with generations of inequality that have erupted into nationwide protests, and distilleries…

Denis Charpentier may not be a name that’s yet well known to whisky drinkers in the USA and UK, but in Asia and especially in Japan it has been recognised for being attached to some of the finest independently bottled Cognacs, brandies, whiskies and wine for more than 25 years. After concluding his career as a night-ops paratrooper commando for the French Army, Denis, who is every bit the figure of a classically charming, refined and well-dressed Parisian gentleman, became a wine broker and, in 1986, founded what was at the time the largest French wine agency in Japan. “I have long admired, respected and loved Japanese people, ever since I first travelled to Japan in 1982,” says Denis. “Through encounters with a variety of people, even though I couldn’t…

Midleton Distillery in Cork, Ireland, makes the majority of Irish whiskey by volume, and by the range of globally recognised brands-Jameson, Redbreast, Midleton Very Rare, Green Spot, Method & Madness and more. Before the whiskey, I wanted to understand the man. I think a person’s character seeps into their management style, and thus for a distiller, into the product-I asked how his friends would describe him: “I suppose I’d be very passionate about anything I do, I have a keen interest in sport, I played quite a bit when I was younger – GAA (Ireland’s national sports) hurling and football, nowadays I do a lot of running, and I play golf with full enthusiasm. I’m a very loyal person. I’m a good family person, they are very important to me.…

We have already had some stunning days here in the United Kingdom. I know for those of you in certain places in the world hot weather is not a stranger, but it can be here. So it tends to be that once the threat of a day’s rain is over I will fire up the Egg barbeque and start to mess about with meat cuts, smoking and whatever else I can come up with. I would really like to try the hot stone oven technique, but I’m fairly sure the landlord would not appreciate me digging a pit in the back garden. I picked the whisky for this edition because it goes to the heart of a question I was asked a while ago: “If you could only eat one…

Cask finishes should no longer be classed as innovation. Having dominated new releases for the past decade or so, with everything from wine and beer and now Tequila being used to impart flavour, they’ve certainly added complexity and variety to the whisky landscape. But are they really all that innovative anymore? Let’s face it: Balvenie, Glenmorangie and Diageo were playing with cask finishes back in the 1980s. We’re now 40 years on, and have exhausted almost every cask type. Let’s reserve the word ‘innovation’ for creations that are truly progressive. That was my argument when discussing the most exciting developments in Scotch whisky with Scott Adamson, brand ambassador for Tomatin, on his Softer Sessions video series. We covered a variety of subjects, but it was one of Scott’s folow-up questions…

Captain William Bligh’s reputation as a cruel and petty disciplinarian saw him suffer the indignity of not one mutiny, but two. In both mutinies, whisky played a pivotal role, either in precipitating the mutiny or bringing it to a fateful end. Bligh’s second mutiny transpired in Sydney on January 26th, 1808 bringing his term as the fourth Governor of New South Wales to an ignominious end. Half a century later an abolitionist Quaker inaccurately designated this the Rum Rebellion; in fact, its causation had its origins in a whisky altercation. The grievance that originally set this mutiny in motion was the illegal importation of a pair of pot stills from London to distil whisky. Bligh’s antagonist was the equally mercurial and autocratic junior military officer John Macarthur, who arrived on…

The road ended suddenly at the steps of the towering, twin-spired Saint-Augustin church in the small Acadian Peninsula town of Paquetville, Canada. Davin wasn’t here to seek spiritual guidance, but he sure could have used some. He’d lost his way while searching for an even tinier Northern New Brunswick town called Petit-Paquetville, where devout whiskey maker Sébastien Roy plies his trade. He founded Distillerie Fils du Roy here in 2011, 132 years after Saint-Augustin was built in 1879, and eight Roy generations after the British began deporting Acadians from the region in 1755. Roy’s passion for distilling and his drive to celebrate his past began when he was 14 and eyeing the jar his mother used to pickle eggs, an eastern Canadian delicacy. “I started making alcohol a long time…

Before the global pandemic ground international travel to a halt, anyone passing through an airport dutyfree store would probably have noticed Glenfiddich making quite a lot of noise about its latest high-profile release: the 23-year-old expression called Grand Cru. Named for the influence imparted by partial maturation in ‘French cuvée casks’, the launch of Grand Cru also marked the creation of a new ‘Grand’ collection of venerably aged Glenfiddich expressions, which will include the rum-cask matured Gran Reserva 21 Years Old and a third whisky, also aged for more than two decades, that is expected to appear in late 2020 or early 2021. This new ‘Grand’ range will sit apart from the Core range (12, 15, and 18 Years Old) and is also distinct from the distillery’s Experimental family of…

Taster biographies Rob Allanson Rob is editor-at-large of Whisky Magazine and formally held the position as a global brand ambassador for William Grant & Sons' whisky portfolio. His experience in the industry, which has seen him explore whiskies from around the world, has given him a keen and well-versed palate. Becky Paskin Becky has been writing about food and drink for over a decade, after stepping out from behind the bar to take up her pen. For her industry work, Becky has been made a Keeper of the Quaich and is now a freelance sprits writer and co-founder of Our Whisky. THE PROCESS All samples are blind tasted, with ABV and style the only information disclosed. Samples are tasted individually over a two-week period. Tasters are provided tasting and scoring…

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