The Whisk(e)y Adventure Continues

Laphroaig Distillery, Augusut 2018

Hi, my name is Mojo, though many people call me Brian.  This is my first entry into something I would hopefully like to make into a book one day.  It is a book about whisk(e)y tourism, about travel, but about just finding out what there is out there.  While this will mostly be about whiskey (I'm just gonna stick with the "e" because it's easier to do just one) I'm hoping that it's ultimately about much more.  Let's start with what I'm drinking as I write: Lagavulin Distillery Exclusive, Bottled in 2017, at Natural Cask Strength of 54.1% abv.  I bought it will visiting Islay in August 2018 and the dominating flavor is (as any Lagavulin should be) peat.  But that's not what I want to write about today.  I want to start from the beginning, from the first time I had a real drink.

When I was in high school, I didn't drink.  I'm not saying that I never had a drink (I had one Smirnoff apple twist, if that even counts as alcohol), but for all intents and purposes, I just didn't drink.  I was never interested, and a large part of me judged those who did, though for the life of me I couldn't tell you.  For most of the first year I was in college this continued, as did my judgement of those who drank.  Then finally, it all change.  At first I couldn't even drink Coors Light I was consigned to drinking Limona Corona's and rum and Coke's that were more Coke than rum, though overtime I became more interested in beer, but this isn't about that. 

As a sophomore in college, I finally came across whiskey, in the form of an airplane bottle of Jack Daniel's. I mixed it with Coke (or Diet Coke), but I don't especially remember liking it very much and it seemed like that was the end of my foray into whiskey.  About a year later, I started experimenting with Evan Williams (about all I could afford) and Coke and mixing them in varying quantities to see what I could handle.  By the end of the that year I was drinking what my friends called "Mojo Drinks", basically 95% whiskey, 5% coke.   During my last year of college, I moved on to drinking whiskey neat (that is to say unmixed, unchilled and no water).  Most of the time, if I could afford it, it was Jameson or Maker's Mark.  Every year on Cinco De Mayo, my fraternity (really me) would throw a small party where a few of us would drink and part at my place called Cinco De Cinco (one of our brothers was named Cinco).  I only remember two things from my last one, which was only four days before I graduated: 1) I drank 18 shots of whiskey (probably bourbon) and then another 5 shots of whisky (airplane bottles of something from Scotland) 2) It was the season 8 finale (true series finale) of Scrubs and I cried a lot because I was sad it was over, just like college. 

The one thing I really don't have a memory of, but I wish I did, was when I first bought my first bottle of Lagavulin 16, because that was when it all truly began.  For those who aren't familiar, Lagavulin is one of a handful of single malt whisky distiller's in Scotland who are known for how peaty there whisky is.  Peat is the predominant flavor in any Lagavulin, and to someone who doesn't know what peat tastes like, imagine a cross between the smell of a man's beard after a particularly good cigar and a little bit of antiseptic.  Obviously, this doesn't sound particularly appetizing to a lot of people, but to me and many of my friends, it is a mana of which virtually nothing else can provide.  I would not call it an acquired taste.  I've never known anyone who has acquired it.  It is either something you like, or something you don't, there is really no middle ground, or at least none that I have ever seen.  The polarizing flavor of peated whisky is perhaps the most dominant and defining flavor of any liquor I have ever found.

So that's where it all started.  During college I worked my way up to drinking whiskey neat, and then sometime during that, or maybe slightly after, I started drinking single malt from Islay in Scotland.  This is going to be about that, and about single malt, but about so much more.  Often when I travel, I go out of my way (and sometimes travel entirely because of) whiskey and whisky.  Whether it be in Utah (High West in Park City), Colorado (Stranahan's), Ireland (Old Jameson Distillery) or Kentucky (Maker's Mark) I usually find the time to try something I've never had before and explore as much as possible.  I even built an entire trip around going to Islay (but that story is for another time).  That's what this will be about, where I've been, where I'm going and what is out there in the world of whiskey.  I want to try all of it, but I guess I'll be satisfied If i just try a lot of it and learn as much as I can.