Tastings of any kind have long been a favourite activity. I love to discover new things. In addition to the fun experience, there is an anticipation of potentially finding your next favourite food or drink. Whether it be sampling a restaurant’s tasting menu, attending a cheese or wine tasting, or tasting friends’ cooking, there are great opportunities to explore your palate. Certainly, you may find something that you could happily never eat again. However, most of the time hopefully you will be pleasantly surprised. Here is an idea for a virtual whisky tasting from your sofa.
We did this whisky tasting at home during the lockdown period, since we were unable to go out . It turned out to be a lot of fun and a way to virtually travel to Scotland! First of all, we learned that Scottish whisky is spelled without an ‘e’, whereas the Irish version is spelled whiskey. That may be obvious to some, but not to unseasoned whisky tasters like us.
What you need
First, we bought a sampler whisky pack. You should be able to find these online or even at some supermarkets. In our pack, there was a Talisker 10 years, Cardhu 12 years and The Singleton 12 years. For those who don’t know, the years refer to how long the whisky has been aged. Next, we searched YouTube for some interesting videos about each whisky. After screening through a few, we decided on Horst Luening (and sometimes also his son) of Whisky.com. He has a very relaxed, casual format, and shares a lot of useful information. Also, he seems to genuinely be enjoying tasting each whisky.
We found these three YouTube videos for Talisker 10 years, Cardhu 12 years and The Singleton 12 years. Amazingly, we easily found videos for the exact whiskies that we wanted to taste. We learned a lot and the commentary guided our tasting. My personal favourite was Cardhu, which was a little sweet and not smoky.
And to finish off the evening in the Scottish theme, we also prepared some Scottish haggis for dinner. Well, I have to admit it was the vegetarian version. Although I love the crumbly texture and peppery spice of haggis, I can’t get used to the aftertaste.
What other tastings would you like to do from home?
