Thank God

A confession -- I've had to stoop.to ten year old whiskey recently. I get the good stuff as part of my comission when I land contracts, and my contracts have been longer term for the last couple of years. Good news from a stability aspect, but it's been nicking into my bad habit. So I've been buying more pedestrian bottles.

I'm not proud of this.

With just a few weeks to spare before the gaming mini-con in Delaware I've once again landed the goods! And with a new prime contractor too. All is back as it should be, and I can break out the bigger two-player titles again.

S.

Laphroaig 18 then?

Cheers!

I'm not a refined enough palate to really appreciate a truly great scotch or whiskey, so it wouldn't matter to me... that said, I can tell a 10 or 12+ compared to blend, so maybe I'm getting there.

Congrats!

Frohike wrote: Laphroaig 18 then?

Cheers!

It's the Macallan. I introduced it to my boss and he's adopted it as his own as well. Very spicy, low on the peat. I don't care much for the peat.

It's odd I find I associate particular drinks (alcohol or otherwise) with certain games. Serious whiskey fits with heavier in-your-face games, say Tide of Iron and higher, though I'll reach it down to Storm Over Stalingrad or the like. My buddy Paul used to try to convince me to drink thematically appropriate beverages (schnapps if you're playing a German game, Cognac for the French, etc.) but that breaks down pretty quickly for War of the Ring and Nexus Ops.

I drink so little that the cost isn't so much of a factor. This bottle will likely last me a year. But it's gotten to be a thing with me to hold off buying the good stuff so the reward still has its intended celebratory feel.

I drink a lot of beer, but I have the same relationship as you with scotch and whisky with respect to rarity of drinking it. I have some redbreast 12, some scotch blend, and I just bought a bottle of 12 Japanese whisky. Unusually for me, though, the Japanese label is not a Suntory distillery brand so I'm very curious to taste it.

During our tour outside of Edinburgh our guide someone got onto the topic of scotch. He did the scotch tour as well. I learned and forgot more than I thought possible during the two-hour drive back to the city.

It would be great if every business offered very job-specific bonuses for commissions. So if you were a doctor, you might get leather racing gloves for your Porsche, or if you were an academic a bottle of Omeprazole.

One of the things I enjoy about the Punching Cardboard podcast is hearing about whichever scotch they're drinking that night. I even found a couple of bottles to get (I am in no way any kind of connoisseur ) based on their comments.

craniac wrote: During our tour outside of Edinburgh our guide someone got onto the topic of scotch. He did the scotch tour as well. I learned and forgot more than I thought possible during the two-hour drive back to the city.

It would be great if every business offered very job-specific bonuses for commissions. So if you were a doctor, you might get leather racing gloves for your Porsche, or if you were an academic a bottle of Omeprazole.

I wouldn't worry too much about the medical profession. Holidays in Barbados to 'attend' pharmacy conferences. Large bonuses for commenting on drug trials. Free plastic legs.

Get it while you can.

Age-statement whiskies are becoming a thing of the past, because most of it is already gone.

The rise of "expression" scotches with no age statement is unlikely to stop. Now, some of those are pretty good, and there's a lot to be argued about whether "older is better" given the tech advances since the casks involved in an 18-year-old bottle were made.

I've decided to just start drinking cheaper, and generally bourbon instead of scotch. There are tons of good bourbons, and they take less time to mature in Kentucky than in Scotland.

It also helps that my taste for "more peat, more better" seems to have gone away in the last few years.

Bourbon is a different critter though. Designed to be milder. I like to drink the bolder flavors more slowly.

I don't have a particular hang up with age or locale, good whiskey is good whiskey and there's some American stuff that is excellent. If you introduce a good cheap blended to me I'll buy your next bottle.

The Macallan has a real spiciness to it. It's good in the ten, it's hella good in the eighteen. One shot will go all night for me because I can just touch it to my lips and get the full flavor.

I've been watching Downton Abbey and it's killing me because they keep pouring three and four ounces at a time and then leaving half of it behind.

Sure, not suggesting you replace scotches with bourbons. Just that I mostly have for casual drinking. My main point was that age statements are trending away, and we're all going to be buying mystery scotches pretty soon. If you find something you like with an age on it, stock up.

For scotch, I used to be nuts over heavy peats like Lagavulin and Laphroaig, but that's wandered a bit. My favorites now are the Oban (especially the 18) and the Scapa 15. Scapa has an aftertaste like butter. Not in a rhetorical sense, but actually like butter.

The lack of good cheap options in scotch is what sent me more towards bourbon. I have yet to find a $25 bottle of anything that's better than Eagle Rare.