Hello

Hello and welcome to the first post of the Whisky and Writing blog.

I enjoying drinking single malt scotch whisky and I enjoy writing so I thought I’d combine the two things to create this blog. Now I’m aware that the world probably isn’t crying out for another website reviewing whisky, and it definitely doesn’t need another blog from an aspiring writer.

So I’m sorry that it’s not what you asked for, the world, but putting up a blog within the infinite realm of cyberspace can’t seem to do any actual harm so I thought I’d go ahead with it.

If anyone reads this blog and likes it I’d be delighted, if no-one reads it at least I will get some writing practice.

Mainly I’m planning to review whiskies that I come across, I’ve got a few to start me off so this blog will last at least 4 or 5 posts. I will also put up any musings about whisky in general (the drink, the industry, the idea) as they occur to me; hopefully these will prove to be interesting and/or enlightening.

For structuring the reviews – as an enthusiastic amateur I hardly feel in a position to slap numbers on a distillery’s years and years of hard work. So I’m going to steer clear of using a scoring mechanism; I’ll leave that to Jim Murray.

Equally, the Scottish Malt Whisky Society has the business of leftfield, scatological tasting notes sewn up, and they’re very good at it too, so I’ll side step that approach as well.

What I’m aiming for is to do a traditional review, but in reverse order. Starting with the Finish if you will. I think the most important thing is how the whisky makes you feel once you’ve had a drink of it. So that’s where I’ll start.

Then I’ll try to write about what has contributed to that feeling. The key thing obviously being the taste, followed by the smell and finally the look.

I’ll mention the bottle and packaging too. It seems daft but it all counts towards the experience of drinking whisky. I wish I could honestly say that the liquid is the only thing that matters but I would argue that you’re predisposed to enjoy a whisky that is well presented. In the same vein you might baulk at being poured a glass from an old jam jar. If I’ve got any thoughts on the distillery I’ll throw that in too.

Finally I will mention the unpleasant business of the bill. Value for money is a highly subjective concept and I’ll only be able to give my personal view on it. I may need to devote a blog post to explain how much I think whisky is worth at a later date.

So on to Review No 1…