Wine have noses, flavors, vintages, you name it and are raved about in countless periodicals. Scotch is limited in its review yet in my opionion has as great a range of flavor as wine . That said . How many people think that the "classic malts " truly represent the diversity of flavors available in single malt scotch.
The Classic Malts are, IMHO, just a marketing ploy (with great success as such). They picket the distilleries not from the taste they represented, but from other factors (visitor facilities and such).
A whisky like Glenkinchie is in my opinion not a true representative of the Lowlands, Bladnoch or Rosebank would have been a better pick (but Rosebank was mothballed in 93, and Bladnoch sold i 95).
I agree that whisky has just a wide variety of flavour, smells and such as wine, but winecritics have been around longer - and have gotten a chance to establish their 'lingo' in the media and through countless books. But with whisky, as with all spirits, you haven't got the big variations form vintage to vintage (batch to batch), since so little of the flavour actually comes from the raw material (malted barley).
They are a marketing ploy, based on the fact that all six are owned by the same company -- United Distillers. They are not anyone's choice of the best representative of each style or region.
bill
Let's see...Talisker, Lagavulin, Oban ... pretty good representative choices, to be sure. Are you saying that you don't like any of these, or that you don't like UD, or ... well, what are you saying?
pavane
Maybe I phrased that badly.
Some of them are among my absolute favorites, especially the Talisker and Lagavulin. They could legitimately top any number of "best of" lists, depending on the criteria.
All I'm trying to say is that UD didn't survey all the single malts in Scotland to come up with the six best. It surveyed all the mass-market single malts among its own brands to come up with an effective marketing tool.
bill
may be in the minority, but I enjoy the dalwhinnie 15 . . .
Bill, rereading Barron's initial thrust in this string, he asked if they were true representation, not if they were the best representations. For one, I'd guess they are representative, albeit not all are the best.
I'd also agree that it is pure marketing play for UD. There is little question about that, IMHO. All distillers are in the business of making a dollar or two and I don't blame them for that. Now, I also have to say that Talisker is my personal favorite and I always have a bottle of Lagavulin in my cabinet as well, along with Oban (all part of the "classics").
The fact is for me I started drinking and collecting single malts years ago when someone gave me a sample set of the Classics as a gift. It was all down hill for me from that moment on. Now I also have a constant flow of about 15 others on my shelf that I sip from time to time, especially the Ardbeg 10 (and looking forward to tasting the Uigeadial version of Ardbeg, soon to be on the shelves in this country). So what all this trivia means, maybe, is I have a soft spot in my heart for the "Classics".
My $.02 worth.
Dave
"Rick in FL" skrev i melding news:4d%Jc.405$tR1.4@lakeread07...
And so did I the Glenkinchie... Anders
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