Whisky review No. 3 - Springbank 12 yo Cask Strength Scotch - Batch No.6

I spent the last seven days working night shifts, which is great because I get to enjoy a dawn whisky everyday before bed. I took this picture today to show you how nice my walk home is if it isn't raining, but it didn't come out that well.

Ants!

I just had a look at the statistics section. It seems I've had a whole lot of hits, which makes me feel like a genius and was really quite unexpected. 39 from the USA, 32 from the UK, 6 from Germany, 2 from Canada and 1 from Russia! Thank you all so much for reading!

Spirit review No.1 - Linie Aquavit

Here's another little review. I wasn't quite sure what to put as the title at first. I'm planning on doing lots of whisky reviews with a few cigars, beers and maybe pipe tobaccos. This one doesn't really come under any of those categories. There's no point in "Aquavit review No. 1" if I never do a number two (hee hee). I decided it's "Spirit review No.1" because that leaves the door open to have a crack at tequila, brandy, gin, rum and whatever else might catch my attention in the future. I just realized that after I post this less than half the posts on my whisky tasting blog will be whisky reviews. Don't get too upset, I now have a bottle of 12 year old cask strength Springbank to peruse so that'll balance the equation in a few days when I've examined it thoroughly. Here comes the aquavit review. Brace yourselves, you're in for a rough ride....

Cigar review No.2 - Hawk 1968 Robusto

Here's another rather ill informed cigar review for you. I was going to wait a little while before ordering another cigar, maybe til my next payday, but I got a bit over-excited and before I knew what was happening I'd made another purchase from sigar.com. I enjoyed the Chess Maduro Corona I got for free with my last order and I read that fatter cigars have space in them for more leaves (makes sense) and can therefore have a more complex blend of tobacco. That sounded pretty interesting to me so I ordered a Chess Maduro Robusto. You get a small fee if your order is less than 300 kr (Håkon has to make a living after all) so I added another cigar to the order. I read somewhere that robustos are a good size to go for since pretty much every company produces a cigar in that size, it's thick enough to get a good mix of leaves and not the most expensive. I decided that's the size I'm going to try to stick with for now so I can explore the difference in the tobacco flavour and know it's the tobacco and not the size or shape that's causing the different tastes. Went for a Hawk 1968 because it's made in the same factory as Chess cigars, so the biggest difference should be the tobacco itself.

Whisky review No.2 - Talisker 10 yo Scotch

There's a lot of waffle at the start of this. Something about having a blog compells you to write about details of your life that no one else is interested in. I won't be offended if you scroll down to the tasting notes right away, they're about halfway down. There's two sets of notes because I added too much water to the first glass and had quite a different experience. I thought it might be interesting to include both to compare.

Trying to develop my palate a bit No.1

Just wanted to keep the content coming and since I'm not quite there with the Talisker review I thought I'd drop this one in. I was in the supermarket just now buying some smoked salmon to try with the Talisker and I saw these Norwegian sweets.

The future....

Just thought I'd do a quick post about what you can look forward to in the future when everything's chrome. "You" being my old friend Mr. Tiffen and PigHog from the straightrazorplace.com forums. I appreciate you both taking the time to read my waffle. If you're not either of those people I still appreciate you taking the time to read my waffle, but they're the only two I know about so far. Tell your friends, guys!

Cigar review No.1 - Don Tomas Maduro Robusto

My first cigar review already! It seems almost arrogant to be writing a review of what was only the third cigar of my life, but then I'm going to be sharing my own subjective experience, not an expert opinion based on years of experience. As I'm very new to cigars my equipment isn't the best you could get, and I wanted to show some pictures of my kit. There seems to be a fair bit of posing in the cigar world with all kinds of fancy accessories (which do look pretty awesome so it's fair enough I suppose) but I'm aiming to keep it about interesting flavours and aromas. Maybe it's because I'm British and traditionally cigar smoking in Britain has been about pleasure not status. Anyway, this is my setup at the moment:

My new blog!

I just started this incredibly exciting blog. I like to taste things. Good scotch whisky is probably my favourite thing to taste, but I'm just beginning to get interested in cigars and pipe tobacco. I also quite like cheese. In fact I like eating and drinking in general. The other day I mentioned to my old friend Mr. Tiffen that I was considering writing tasting notes for various things and he said he thought it would be an interesting blog. So here's the blog. I hope it's as interesting as my old friend Mr. Tiffen thinks it might be. I'll have a go at a whisky review later.