A lovely time was had by all at the Burns Night whisky tasting held with my good friends at the 1722 Waggonway Project, a fantastic local history museum here in sleepy East Lothian. A few carefully selected drams tied to aspects of the Bard’s life, paired with some of his poetry.
I’ve never been much of a Burns fan. He’s Scotland’s national poet but I’ve always been more of a McGonagall man. But doing the research for this tasting session, plus some encouragement from our in-house declaimer Gareth Jones, has made me warm to him a great deal.
I still can’t stand the standard Habbie though. Awful verse form. Even McGonagall knew to stay well away.
Whiskies selected by yr. humble corresp. for this event were:
Three old favourites in the middle, but both the Lochlea and the Edradour #2 were brand new to me. I didn’t even know that Edradour had built a second distillery, but there’s no better time to find out than when they’ve just released their first bottling.
And while I’m confident in my ability to select an appropriate dram, I was completely blown away by the quality of these two.
This grin is the grin of a man trying Lochlea’s core expression for the first time. Sources claim that I stayed like this for about five minutes.
There was candlelight, a log fire, camaraderie, and some excellent poetry expertly recited. There were some terrible jokes and some great laughs. And there were a series of bloody good drams. If you’re looking for something similar for your own event, you know where to find me.