Are we finished with "finishes"?

[Kraaijeveld A.R.]

On a slight tangent re. finishing: since starting my job at the university here in sunny Southampton (well ...), I joined the staff wine-tasting club. They get together once a month, taste 6-8 wines (usually organised by a certain theme, which can be anything from grape varieties to wine-producing regions, etc) and, most importantly, just have fun. A few months ago, the discussion turned to whisky and someone mentioned I knew a bit about the stuff. To make a long story short, they were very keen for me to host a whisky tasting, but to keep the link with wines, it will be a tasting of whiskies finished/matured in various wine casks (no fortified wines, so no port, sherry, etc). The way I decided to do it is to have 6 malts, 3 from a red wine cask, 3 from a white wine cask. I'll offer the malts in pairs, one from red, one from white, and let the people first guess which is the red and which the white. First pair will be easy, last pair will be pretty difficult.

Tasting is Dec 8 and I'm curious as to how wine-finished whiskies will be regarded 'from the other side' (i.e. the wine buff's perspective). I must admit it was a fun puzzle to get 6 malts from 6 different distilleries and 6 different wine casks and still stay within the budget they gave me. But I think I've got a nicely varied line-up: Glen Moray - Chardonnay, Celtic Connexion - Monbazillac, Glenmorangie - Burgundy, Bruichladdich - Rioja, Bowmore - Claret, Longrow - Tokaji. Also, this will the first time I'm hosting an 'official' whisky tasting (I mean one where people come to and pay for rather than something impromptu at home with friends or colleagues), so I'm quite excited about that!
 

Cheers, Lex



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Fly, you greatest fool
Why can't you say what they want you to
Why can't you do what they taught you
And show what they wanted of you      
       
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Dr Alex R Kraaijeveld
School of Biological Sciences
University of Southampton
Bassett Crescent East
Southampton
SO16 7PX
tel: (+44)-(0)23-80593436
fax: (+44)-(0)23-80594459
http://www.sbs.soton.ac.uk/staff/ark/ark.php

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-----Original Message-----
From: MALTS-L at RZ.UNI-KARLSRUHE.DE [mailto:MALTS-L at RZ.UNI-KARLSRUHE.DE] On Behalf Of ronsmith at tiscali.it
Sent: 08 November 2006 08:56
To: MALTS-L at LISTS.UNI-KARLSRUHE.DE
Subject: Re: Are we finished with "finishes"?

Hi Alex, hi all

I bought a bottle of the tabasco malt years ago and still have most of 
it. I tend to use tabasco rather than the whisky when I want Tabasco 
(bloody marys and on cold pizza for me). My main use for the whisky is 
when you get the usual pontificate telling me how "whisky's whisky - it 
all tastes the same", and so on. After a light glenlivet, a decent 
sherried and a peaty monster, I give them a small sip. It seldom fails 
to convince people that malts can vary widely in their flavours.

As to finishes, I agree with evryone so far. If they are good they 
will find a market, but I prefer my variation in the cask strength, 
unfiltered, etc. bottle. The finishes are mainly gimmicky and tend to 
irritate me (not to the point of refusing to drink them of course). If 
the marketers were interested in variation they wouldn't be busy 
vatting the individuality out of the casks in the first place. Has 
anyone questioned just how long a 'finish' is in any case? In the early 
days there were statements of a couple of years and so on, but you 
seldom see any mention now ('stainless steel finish' over the time it 
took to truck the stuff south to the bottling plants perhaps?). How 
long constitutes finishing? Half the time I am pretty hard pressed to 
tell the differnce between a finished and unfinished bottling, so i 
wonder just how long it sat in the different wood.

Ron


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