Tag: scotch

Whisky of the Week: Glenglassaugh is the unkillable scotch and its revival is well earned

Glenglassaugh is back in business with a major marketing push. Are their malts worth it?

Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.

Glenglassaugh has a classic scotch story — one that nearly ended multiple times. It was one of Scotland’s many coastal distilleries, a whisky mill in a classic stone building turning water into something better. The northeastern fishing town, a breezy mix of salt and sand, saw its brewer shutter its doors twice since its 1875 founding. Once in 1908 and once as it faced the hardships of the whisky crash of the 1980s.

But the stills roared back to life in 2008. Now, a little more than 15 years later, Glenglassaugh has pushed its way back onto the marketplace with a proper dram. 2023 marked an aggressive marking strategy revolving around a new 12-year whisky to complement the distillery’s other standbys. Its place as a coastal Highland suggests it could hit the sweet spot between the inland’s smoother, full-bodied malts and Islay’s salty, smoky, brassy offerings.

I love both those styles. Let’s see how Glenglassaugh holds up.

Beverage of the Week: Benriach’s $4,500 The Forty scotch tastes smooth, expensive

A 40-year malt lives up to the hype, if not the price tag.

Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.

There are perks to my job beyond just being able to say I’m living a 15-year-old’s dream by writing about football and beer each week. A rash of PR emails hits my inbox each day, and while most aren’t anything worth covering here there’s occasionally a gem in that minefield. An offer to sample some great beers. A month’s supply of caffeine in a single UPS box of energy drinks.

And, as happened this summer, a bottle of scotch older than I am.

Benriach reached out with the opportunity to try a whisky I could otherwise never afford. The Scottish distiller’s mailer consisted of a 100 milliliter package of 40-year-old scotch, roughly the size of a shampoo bottle you’d find waiting at a nicer hotel. With a suggested retail price of $4,500 for a fifth, that put the estimated price of this mini-bottle at $600.

And they sent it to me, the guy who compares every drink he reviews to Hamm’s.

I’m not a scotch expert, but it is one of my favorite spirits. I tend to steer toward the peaty, salty Islay malts — one of my rare trips overseas involved a trip to that lovely island and what felt like 400 drams in a three-day period — but for the most part there’s no such thing as a bad scotch. Like pizza or sex, even when it’s awful it’s still better than most things.

This stands as my introduction to Benriach’s offerings and, damn, what a way to start. Well, it’s time for me to go drink a car payment’s worth of whisky. Let’s see how it is.

Beverage of the Week: Glenmorangie’s got a whisky for everyone (and a wonderful 14 year malt)

The $55 14 year brings an explosion of flavor — and holds up compared to the smoother, more mellow (and expensive) 18 year.

Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.

I started this column for two reasons; to write what I love (and continue living a life in which I have the job described by a 15 year old dirtbag) and to get paid for sipping whisky. Friends, today is the realization of that dream. We’re drinking scotch.

My typical malt comes from Islay, where you can taste the ocean air in each warming dram of Laphroaig or Lagavulin or my personal favorite, Bunnahabhain (where, sadly, I can no longer find my preferred Ceobanach, which absolutely ruled). But I’m happy to drink anything from the wonderful sovereign nation, particularly from Glenmorangie’s region to the north of Scotland.

My normal Highland malt is Dalwhinnie; a distillery capable of making a $80 spirit at a $30 price tag (their former Game of Thrones branded House Stark scotch) and a $120 one for $60 (their 15 year). But Glenmorangie retains a presence in my brain, even if I rarely drink it. First off, it’s because it’s available everywhere and at a ton of different ages and price points. But secondly, it’s because it’s the favorite whisky of New York Giants punter Jamie Gillan.

Gillan, nicknamed the Scottish Hammer, is a native of Inverness and a former rugby player who worked his way up from little-regarded high school prospect to veteran NFL special teamer. When I talked to him four years ago he covered everything from how he ended up on scholarship at Arkansas-Pine Bluff (via Facebook post and accepted sight-unseen) to his Scottish roots. And his favorite malt? Glenmorangie.

So we’re gonna do a quick distillery tour, sipping whisky that ranges from 10 years to 18 years in age.