[MM-MALTS-L] Organising a whisky nosing event

[Jonas Steverud]

Hello.

I am currently entertaining an idea to hold a whisky nosing event at  
my office, a number of my colleagues are very found of whisky (and  
quite knowledgeable of what they drink) and I had the idea to have a  
presentation of whisky and its production and give the participants  
an option of tasting a few whiskies and discuss the taste of them.  
The intended audience is both those that enjoy whisky, those that  
drink it but don't know anything about it and finally those that  
never has tasted it but would like to try.

The event will be in our office and none of us are any kind of  
experts, or snobs for that matter. I presume about ten people will  
attend.

I now turn to the list for a bit of help:

My plan was to make a presentation where I discuss the history,  
making, nosing and the regions of whisky. When we discuss a region,  
one or two specific destilleries will be shortly described and then  
everyone will have the possibility to taste a dram of a specific  
whisky and we will discuss what the whisky taste likes - to help both  
the more experienced but also the novices (that doesn't have tasted  
whisky before) to realise the differences between whiskies.

What I would like to get some help is:

* Which whiskies would you recommend (I would prefer those in the  
range of 200-350 SEK/70 cl bottle as I want to present whiskies  
people might want to buy and to keep the cost down for the event -  
the company will pay but it is easier to make them pay the lower the  
cost is...)? The target is 4-6 different types and most of the  
regions should be covered - Lowland, Highland, Speyside, Islay and  
Campbeltown. I can accept to remove one or two regions in case not  
suitable whisky can be found. I would also prefer to include a blend  
to show that blends does not mean "bad", they can be as good or  
better then the single malts. Please keep in mind that we are all  
amateurs so the whiskies should be quite different in taste.

* Any suggestion for resources I should use for researching the  
presentation? I own Malt Whisky by Charles MacLean (ISBN 1-85732-683-0).

* Any suggestion for (web) resources where I can find pictures to add  
in my presentation (see below about copyrights)?

* Any other ideas, suggestions or comments?

The idea is to make the presentation available on my website under  
the GNU Free Documentation Licence. This means that any picture used  
needs to be authorised by the copyright owner to be distributed  
according to the FDL. The application of choice will be Apple Keynote  
and the presentation will be done in both Swedish and English.

Thank you very much!

/Jonas