Category: whisky

  • A day with Charbay

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    Camper English
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    The other week I sat down on the patio behind Swirl on Castro with Marko Karakasevic and Jenni soon-to-be Karakasevic of Charbay and tasted through their line of products. Charbay is a family-run winery and distillery in Napa Valley. And boy do these people like to play with the still- in addition to wine, they…

  • Look at me, err, at what I wrote

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    Camper English
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    I have a story in the latest issue of Malt Advocate– my first one for them. Hooray! It's a round-up of whisky events at Tales of the Cocktail and the increased presence of whisky at the event in general. Run screaming to your local newsstand and read it. You'll find my story right beneath the…

  • Scotland Day Eight: Edinburgh and the castle

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    We had a nearly four hour drive from Speyside to Edinburgh for our last day on the trip, but it wasn’t drama-free by any means. Once again, the back door of the van popped open while we were going down the highway and two peoples’ luggage fell out. I watched as one tumbled behind our…

  • Scotland Day Seven: The real post

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    This was our final distillery day in Scotland, but it was a double-header. We started off the morning with a tour of the Glenlivet distillery. By this time distillery tours were old hat, so we just stopped off at the points that deviate from other brands. The we had lunch and a demo of an…

  • Scotland Day Six: Macallan and no bagpipes

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    Camper English
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    I was on a roll there with two bagpipe days back to back, but alas, the trend didn’t continue. On our sixth distillery day, we drove from Inverness to Craigellachie. On the way there, we stopped in Elgin to visit Johnston’s cashmere center, a huge wool and cashmere factory where they sew scarves for Burberry,…

  • Scotland Day Five: Glenmorangie and the fancy hotel

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    Camper English
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    Pipercount: 3! On the fifth day of our trip, we headed to the Glenmorangie distillery. They use the tallest stills in Scotland, as the original one was a former gin still. The taller the stills, the lighter the particles have to be to reach the top during distillation, and the resulting scotch has a lighter,…

  • Scotland Day Four: Pipercount- Two!

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    Camper English
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    I started the morning at 5AM catching up on live blogging Scotland. Then I had a walk past Huntly castle and the adorable town of Huntly. It reminded me of towns in Napa and Sonoma in a way, in that it’s all cute all-too clean small-town goodness, except in this case it’s 400 or so…

  • Scotland photos

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    By the way, the photos from my trip can be seen on my Flickr page here, organized by day and distillery. I’ll be adding more pictures as I go along. Labels: scotch, travel

  • Scotland Day Three: Death defying

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    This morning I feel much better after having suffered from near-fatal jetlag the whole trip. I was averaging four hours of sleep or less since the day before the trip began, but last night I finally caught up and had nearly ten hours’ worth. It was easier here, as we’re staying in the hotel adjacent…

  • Scotland Day Two: Pipe-free

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    Yesterday we visited the Royal Lochnagar distillery, a very small, pristine place located next to the summer residence of the Queen of England. (The distillery was there first.) On the drive here the landscape turned from lush and green to tall rocky hills covered in heather- which looks like an ugly brown bush when it’s…