One man's excuse…
As I’ve said elsewhere, do something more than once and it’s a tradition. So, here’s my traditional (as of now) round-up of the boozy April Fool’s day treats that I’ve seen/had inflicted on me by my social media feeds. Happy Easter.
The internet is a dangerous place and Facebook is a collapsing mine of peril. Be wary of participating in ‘discussion’ as sometimes a throwaway comment can lead to blogging…
Continue reading “Mustard and Coffee – an analogy taken too far”
There has been much discussion of late about the creations of Lost Spirits, a company working on speeding up the ageing of spirits. While the process and ideas, and the surrounding recent furore, are interesting, the discussion unearthed a few things for me that dig much deeper into the world of drinks.
In case there’s anyone I haven’t told in person/on Facebook/by email/via carrier pigeon/etc: I’m going to the Islay Festival of Music and Malt this year. If you’re going, you should come and say hello.
Continue reading “I’m going to Islay – Feis Ile Pop-up Bar!”
While almost every news item that has popped up over the past few months has seemed like an elaborate ruse put together by bored copywriters, 1 April is the day where there is some vague excuse to actually make up a story or two. Here’s 2017’s crop:
It worries me where simple questions can lead. “What is an average bottle of whisky?”, I innocently asked myself recently when the Scotch Whisky Association produced their yearly pre-budget report on how damaging spirits duty is to their industry. While I’m on the fence on lower alcohol duty, and am still working out what I think of Minimum Unit Pricing, I always like to see what the SWA say about the world of whisky, especially when they’re pushing for duty to be lowered in budget. One of this year’s headline numbers was that 79% of the price of an average bottle is now tax. “That sounds like a lot,” I thought to myself, leading inevitably to my earlier question – “What is an average bottle of whisky?”.
Continue reading “A (Below) Average Bottle of Whisky – Tesco Everyday Value Blended Scotch”
In a previous life I lived on the edge of the finance world. Very much on the edge, as I only ever really played with numbers in a naive fashion, ignoring what they meant and focusing on how fun it is to play with numbers. I also rather like Lego. Anyway, after abandoning the world of computers and finance for a world of booze and, well, computers, I started looking back fondly on those numbers and wondered what they meant.
In a recent attempt to find new podcasts to listen to I was pointed at Planet Money, currently towards the top of my lists of favourite listens – short bi-weekly shows explaining what the numbers mean and how finance works. The most recent episode brought up something that got me thinking about booze. It’s title – What’s a Bubble?
This post has been sat, unfinished and many times rewritten for over a year. Sparked off by a conversation on Twitter it was originally about how blended whisky has changed over the years, but as is often the way it spun into something else in my head. Originally I was just trying to be contrary but on further thought I found that I sort of agreed with myself, a situation that I try and avoid as often as possible. With further prodding and poking I’ve realised that my opinion truly lies between that of the whisky geek mainstream and my argumentative internal voice. So, what is the question that my brain asked me? Simple:
Who decides what we drink?