Remember the Pepsi Challenge, back in the 80s? When people would be offered a blind taste test to see which they liked better between Pepsi and Coke? We just had the opportunity to do one that was way, way better than soft drinks. The folks at Chivas sent us a bottle each of their Chivas Regal 18-year-old and Johnnie Walker Blue, daring us to try both and see which we liked better.
We, of course, were up for the challenge, so we got out our tasting glasses and set to it after asking an intern to pour so we didn't know what was in each glass. We did the tastings blind, and then once we were finished we paired up our notes with the proper whisky. In the verdict below, we give more info about our thoughts before we knew which was which.
Chivas Regal 18 Year Old
Blended Scotch
80 Proof (40% ABV)
Typical Price: About $60
The Look: Squat, clear bottle that's different than a lot of the scotch brands we've seen. In the glass, it's light amber, looking a bit like honey. The Nose: We smelled very little peatiness, with the major notes being caramel, toffee, and spices. The Taste: Still very little smoke or peat until we added a drop of water, and then we got a hint. There were more caramel notes, with citrus peels and the dryness of oak. Big oaky finish, long and complex.
Johnnie Walker Blue
Blended Scotch
80 Proof (40% ABV)
Typical Price: About $150 at the lower end
The Look: Signature Walker bottle, in green glass. The whiskey looks like honey in the glass. The Nose: We smelled a bit of caramel, with hints of smoke, peat, and the sea, with some dried fruit in the mix as well. The Taste: Big and round, with a lot of smoke once we added a drop of water. Continues the peat and sea theme, with almost no sweetness. Notes of malt and spices.
Overall Verdict: Both of these are fine whiskies, and ones we wouldn't hesitate to order for ourselves or recommend for the blended scotch lovers in our lives. The Johnny Walker had the big smokiness and bold flavors we want sometimes, but at triple the price tag. We were impressed with the Chivas, with its nice soft notes and delicate sweetness, and we felt it held its own against the Blue.
Never having had either, we would have been hard-pressed to say one scotch was better than the other in our blind taste test. We tend to like a smokey whisky, so we liked the Blue, but there is definitely something to be said for the fruity mellowness of the Chivas Regal (and being Scotsmen ourselves, we're extremely interested in that significantly smaller price tag).
We forced one of our interns to live blog the Johnnie Walker Webinar while we're tasting. We know he doesn't know a thing about Scotch, but...don't miss anything Vito. And now, we give our full attention to Andrew Ford, master distiller for Johnnie Walker.
3:06 - Finally get online - with sound no thanks to our stupid speakers. Come in late for Johnnie Walker's history.
3:07 - We've been good. When will this nice Scottish gentleman let us start drinking whisky?
3:09 - Alexander Walker invents the square bottle. Other stuff.
3:16 - Someone asks a question about the legality of blending in Scotland back in the day. Let's get to tasting.
3:17 - Lowland whisky, lighter. Smokey whiskies out in the north coast...e.g. Islay. Speyside is full of distilleries...which is where the first distillery the Walkers bought was. We check out the flavor map...very science-y.
3:18 - Did he say time to taste?
3:21 - Forgot to follow directions -- running into kitchen for water
3:22 - "The right way to drink whisky -- Any way you like it." We love this guy. But if you're tasting go half strength (1/2 water, 1/2 scotch)
3:23 - Yum. Grain whisky. Feeling like a mad scientist using a graduated cylinder to measure out booze. "Grain whisky is the unsung whisky of Johnnie Walker"
3:27 - More science.
3:29 - Lowland malt is still a light whisky, but far "scotchier" than the grain. Someone tries to guess which malt we're sipping...and nails it. Turns out this little bottle has 12 year old whisky or more.
3:32 - On to Speyside malt. Still light and fruity compared to the smokier guys higher up the scale. So basically a breakfast scotch.
3:34 - Cardhu Speyside representing in Johnnie Walker but not the biggest factor.
3:36 - Scottish guy talks about how he went into a cold Scottish moor to get sherry cask malt delivered to us in time for this presentation.
3:38 - Sherry cask malt is f'ing delicious.
3:40 - The size of the cask affects the taste of the liquor. Or in other words, it's the size of the wood AND what you do with it. Also, things tend to happen slower with Sherry than with Bourbon, which we knew.
3:42 - Nosing...do you keep your mouth open or closed? The answer - figure out what works best for you to really hit that scent button and figure them out.
3:43 - Highland Malt from the West coast. Tend to be a bit more robust than lowland/Speyside. Definitely getting peatier, with some sea tastes. w00t!
3:45 - Admits he has no idea how flavors of the sea get into it. We're guessing magic.
3:47 - You'll be happy to know that peat is not going to run out anytime soon.
3:48 - Welcome to Smoke Town, population Island Malt
3:49 - Pouring all the malts we're supposed to dumping out into a pint glass science experiment
3:51 - Islay malt. Holy smokes. Tastes like your pants smell after a campfire.
3:52 - Starting to get buzzed.
3:54 - Color of scotch has more to do with the cask it was aged in than anything else. Who knew?
3:58 - It's interesting to try Black Label after tasting all those whiskies. We've always gone for big, smokey whisky, but this has opened up a lot of doors for us.
3:59 - Time to make our own blends. Argument has begun among the interns whether we're going to use the beaker/mad scientist route, or just make "mouth mixes" directly from the bottle. We'll probably land somewhere in between.
4:01 - Question about Andrew's favorites for singles - Talisker is at the top. Hmm...he seems to like Diageo brands...good thing he works for them.
4:05 - Black label is a blend of ~40 whiskies (malts and grains).
4:06 - Off to blend. Thanks Andrew!
If you're anything like us, the word "webcast" makes you want to head for the hills. As cubicle- and office-dwellers for the last decade or so, we've been to our share of these things, and they're usually relatively dry affairs, and by "dry" we mean there's no booze. Not so the one we've been invited to next week - there will be, and that booze will be scotch. It will be scotch, in fact, that comes out of this box:
The affair in question, with the jaw-busting title of "Johnnie Walker Black Label Centenary Journeyman Blending Webcast with Master Blender Andrew Ford," is entirely about blending scotch, not sitting around drinking it. But guess what you do with scotch after it's blended? That's right! Fedex dropped off our blending kit today, and we're not usually ones for unboxing posts and booze porn (y'know, like food porn but with liquor) we just had to share what we got. More pics after the jump.
A friend of ours sent us this excellent promo for Johnny Walker, a six minute opus on the history of the brand. Six minutes seems like a long time for a video with no exploding cars, girls on trampolines, or the other hallmarks of the Web, but this video, you'll notice, is done in a take with no cuts. Legend has it that means a full two days of shooting and 40 takes from a certain Mr. Robert Carlyle, and he absolutely nails it. We kind of wish Carlyle had gone just a little bit Begbie from Trainspotting and hit at least one dude with a pint glass, but we'll take it...at least he didn't go the Full Monty.
Thanks Doug - we're glad Tool Snob has time to drink in between playing with power tools.
As the chief intern at Liquor Snob, I'm going to come right out and say there's nothing more appalling than a naked Scot. That's based mostly on the fact that I'm mostly Scottish and the sight of my nekkedness in the mirror on the way from the shower to the closet is pretty much what drives me to drink.
Hopefully, however, Naked Scot whisky will have a little bit more curb appeal than my birthday suit. No promises, but we're thinking pesticide-free whisky made in Scotland is a damn sight better than the flab and fur I'm sporting (hey, it gets cold in Scotland). Also, the reason it's called naked is because it's free of herbicides and pesticides, which the creators claim leads to a hangover free dram.
Back in October, we told you about Glenfiddich's Vintage Reserve 1997 bottling, and said we were excited to try it. We got a little something in the mail yesterday that has us actively frothing at the mouth. No, it's not a bottle of the stuff - that's too much to ask for even the mighty Liquor Snobs.
No, instead they sent us a hunk of the barrel in which the whisky was aged. It's about as big as our fist, and it smells like fried gold. Sweet and spicy, with just the right hint of whisky, it's everything we can do not to chew on the wood like some kind of deranged beavers. We're this close to hanging it from our rear view mirror as an air freshener, but we're not sure how we'd explain the smell if we ever got pulled over by the cops. This seals the deal - we have to try this stuff.
We found out about Glenfiddich's bottling of their Vintage Reserve 1977 this week, and it's got our tastebuds all atwitter about thirty-plus year old scotch. We're hoping we get the opportunity to give this one a try, because every single tasting note we've encountered sings its praises. Here's the info we got from Glenfiddich:
The cask selected was a second or third fill European sherry butt (the age of the cask precedes the time when the distillery began keeping records on the number of times the casks had been used). In early 1977, Dan stripped and rebuilt the cask at the distillery's on-site cooperage before lightly charring the inside surface of the wood. It was then filled with new-make Glenfiddich spirit on the 7th March 1977 before being laid down to mature in one of the warehouses.
Over more than 31 years, the Glenfiddich single malt slowly interacted with the wood, developing the character and flavour that so appealed to the selection panel.
We just found a posting over at The Scotch Blog about a new Swedish malt whisky distillery, that goes by the name of Hven. Sounds interesting - we've had whisk(e)ys from all over the world, but never from the land of Vikings. We wonder if a dram will make us want to pillage?
The state-of-the-art distillery, which will thrive on local cultivated barley and water, is built on a small island in the middle of the strait which separate Denmark from Sweden. The island is the former home of the medieval Scandinavian astronomer Tycho Brahe, but was also a stronghold for Vikings.
For a long time, Scotch was a mythical and confusing beast to us. It seemed like something that was only drunk by railroad barons and other people who wore monocles. After putting some effort into it, and the tutelage of some friends, we were slowly able to piece things together, recognize flavors by region, and lose the intimidation factor that had kept us away from the drink in the first place.
We just received an email press release saying our comfort zone could change, due to some new rules being cooked up by the British government and the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA). We're drinking generalists here, not Scotch specialists, but even we can see a lot of the new rules could confuse issues and make it even harder for neophytes to understand what they're buying and ensure the high quality they might expect.
...some feel it's a smokescreen to further enhance the commercial interests of a self-regulated industry. "New rules are to strengthen existing laws, protecting whisky regions, targeting counterfeiters, and protecting consumers" says Bruichladdich's MD Mark Reynier. "Some are good rules, others more disingenuous; consumers are to be protected from counterfeiters only so they can be ripped off by the industry instead.
Strong words. But the item that really caught our eye was here:
(Under the new rules) Cardhu 'blended malt' could look exactly the same as the highly successful Cardhu 'Single Malt' (400,000 cases) and yet it could theoretically be 99% of unknown, lesser, single malts of a completely different even inferior style or flavour.
We don't have much to add to the sentiment of this fine ceramic mug. We love the fact that it's right in your face with its pro-whisky sentiments. We love the fact that it's dishwasher and microwave safe.
But most of all, we love that it holds 11 ounces, which breaks down to 8 ounces for coffee and 3 ounces for whisky (though we don't much like scotch in our coffee...we suggest bourbon or Irish whiskey. We're pretty sure that wouldn't make you a liar - you can still love whisky but drink whiskey in your coffee, private eye style).
There's something about drinking whiskey (and whisky for that matter) that really - pardon the expression - gets our rocks off. The taste, the smell, the experience...it adds up to greatness. We often like to drink ours on the rocks, but we've never heard of anything like this. They're pieces of Scottish granite designed to be chilled in your freezer and added to your drink without diluting it like ice.
Well, apparently they're finally here...the 12 Days of Scotchmas. If you're anything like us, we know what you're all thinking - you can't believe it was just Scotchgiving, and today's the last day of Scotchnukkah. Well, prepare for the big day itself with The Scotch Blog's 12 day gift guide countdown.
Day 1 - A lead on picking up a bottle the ever-elusive PC5 for the nice folks on your list
Day 2 - 2008 Scotch Blog T-Shirts
We'll do our best to keep this updated, but don't trust us...visit The Scotch Blog.
The Macallan has released a 55 year old scotch this year, one of the older bottlings we've heard of to hit the streets. You might like it because of the distinctive, perfume-inspired bottle. Or, you might be into it because the Macallan makes such fine scotch. Us? We're just pumped that we can finally live out our dream of drinking scotch that's as old as our parents.
Who wants to chip into some of the $12K we'll need to buy it? Let us know soon because they're only making 420 of these puppies.
We could go on and on about legendary one-man-band Bob Log III and how you should buy his albums, but the name of this video says it all. [Caution: This video contains actual boobs being dunked into actual scotch.]
Review: Chivas Regal 18 vs Johnnie Walker Blue
Chivas Regal 18 Year Old 
Johnnie Walker Blue
Continue reading: 
There's something about drinking whiskey (and whisky for that matter) that really - pardon the expression - gets our rocks off. The taste, the smell, the experience...it adds up to greatness. We often like to drink ours on the rocks, but we've never heard of anything like this. They're pieces of Scottish granite designed to be chilled in your freezer and added to your drink without diluting it like ice.
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