2021 – The Whisky Boys Year

It is now early in January 2022 and time to look back on last year.

2021 started with a full-blown lockdown, but I do not want to talk about Covid-19, let’s talk about Whisky

Both Nicola and I had some fine experiences in 2021. These included a few private and corporate tastings. The largest of these was for 150 delegates attending the Cop-26 in Glasgow, a four-dram tasting which was enjoyed by one and all, a great event with many delegates asking for seconds.

As most of you know Nicola and I are both Brand Ambassadors for The Scotch Malt Whisky Society and throughout the year hosted External Members Tastings and a couple of festivals, including a very busy festival in Aberdeen with fellow SMWS Brand Ambassador Andrew Reid.

One special thing that we did in 2021 was to go an around Britain cruise, yes, just the two of us. We sailed from Greenock visiting Belfast, Southampton,   Portland, Liverpool, and returned to Greenock. We both had balcony cabins with full board drinks and tips package included. We had a great father/daughter 8 days with some fabulous food and excellent malt Whiskies and an exceptional range of cocktails. This 8 day cruise on the MSC Virtuosa was great, some days sitting on the deck with a beer watching the dolphins swim past.

Other highs included tasting and reviewing some excellent drams which included, AnCnoc 2009 Vintage, Glen Moray Elgin Heritage 15 Year Old, Glenfarclas 25 Year Old to mention just a few. The other side of the coin was a couple that we did not rate, for example, Abrachan Blended Malt from Lidl and Kyasuku a World Whisky blended in Japan from Aldi.

Nicola and I together with our partners and my granddaughter Carla went on a road trip to Campbeltown, staying at the great Ardshiel Hotel. Nicola and I together with Nicola’s husband Scott, thoroughly enjoyed the vast range of drams which The Ardshiel has to offer. As my wife, Jacqueline does not enjoy Whisky, Flora, Marion and Julie put together a five-dram gin tasting which went down a treat.

Whilst in Campbeltown, myself, Nicola, and Scott went for a Cadenheads Warehouse tasting which was hosted by Donald, this was fantastic getting back into the warehouse with other whisky lovers and enjoying some amazing drams at a safe social distance.

Whilst 2021 had probably more lows than highs, we did have some fantastic times. During the cool winter/spring days we insisted on maintaining Whisky Boys standards and would get together in the freezing garden to sip exceptional drams.  We sampled many new visitors to our collection and rediscovered how a wee dram does not only warm the heart it warms the whole chilled body.  Another family joy for us was the wedding of my oldest granddaughter, which was a delightful and memorable August day.  Interestingly at the wedding, the drams of choice was from Glen Moray Distillery, Elgin Heritage 12  Year Old and 15 Year Old.  Discerning palates indeed.

We would like to take this opportunity to wish all our followers/readers a healthy and safe 2022 and that we all have more wonderful Whisky adventures to look forward to.

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