Take your mind off post 7

Take your mind off – Post 7

Special occasions and celebratory bottles.

When people start digging into their stash during the lockdown just a quick note to ‘take your mind off’ World over there is a common phenomenon of saving that special bottle for an occasion to celebrate, to grieve, mark the day, remembrance etc. The level of madness is directly proportional to the ‘exclusivity’ or ‘specialty’ of the bottle. In the subcontinent I think specialty is often synonyms with the cost of the bottle, the more expensive the bottle will be preserved for a very long time. With unabashed regularity have seen Blue Label and King George V versions of JW being used as celebratory drams, and don’t get me wrong they are good whiskies, but maybe exposure to the true blood fanatics has shown me what celebratory bottles can be. Large classifications would be: Date based –Bottles which have a vintage on them relating to a special date in your calendar, birthdates, anniversaries, retirement dates etc. If you couple this with a distillery of your choice (Provided they were distilling back then) the notches on the madness meter goes up along with the zeros on the price tag. For example I would love to have a Ardbeg from my birth year in my stash but a quick glance at the prices for those old bottles is enough to keep that as an ‘aspirational goal’ Age – An off shoot of the above category, this one is more appealing to the folks who quite enjoy drinking their whiskies rather than or bar table or in a cellar. A 25 or a 30 year old whisky is still reasonably affordable compared to a vintage release. You get a blend of the same age and the cost is almost halved. You get some very good over aged whiskies at reasonable costs and are quite impressive as well. Till a few years back I remember the Glenfarclas 40 Year old single malt used to see at around 400- 500 US$ which was a fabulous deal. While the age statement whiskies are relatively easier to find, once you cross the 30 year old range they get difficult to acquire and expensive too. Bottle Numbers – Limited releases with bottle numbers catch the fancy of some; numerology being a driver for a few and just plain exclusivity for others. Bottles with numbers such as 001, 007, 111, 101 and 69 too are popular collectables. Significance – Now here is one categorization that has the widest price range and perhaps any bottle can fit into the category. Starting from historical significance of the bottle such as from a silent still or perhaps the last bottle from a renowned master distiller before retirement to as simple as a bottle of JW Black Label gifted by someone important. The significance may be to you as a consumer and not the general fraternity which allows the marketing gurus to weave their stories to create this significance. A simple note on the bottle from a prominent person is again valued differently by history buffs who follow the cult There are far many categories that I have not listed, but best discussed over a dram. Today’s dram of ‘significance’ is the Bere Barley 2008. Now as I have said before Bruichladdich is one distillery who have perhaps a mass appeal and their core ranges are quite enjoyed by all, they have wonderful character and some of their stories are even better! cis a range of whiskies they offered in 2006, 2008, 2009 & 2010. Very delicious and tasty whisky which has the lovely malty flavor that is typical to the distillery but the bare barley adding additional flavor and zest giving it a freshness and citrus character to it. Its 50% ABV and I think it’s a great bottling strength giving the whisky just that bit of ooph to cut through the maltiness. It’s been rated quite high in the 90’s by most and is not overtly expensive. But cheers to the guys at Bruichladdich for sacrificing yield for flavor with this type of barley. This type of barley is a 6 row barley and is grown on Orkney of Scotland. There was an attempt to grow this at Islay but unfortunately the weather did not support. Anyway this was my bottle of significance for the day, significant cause I was locked down on the same day in the same year by my better half.