Well, I was able to attend this year’s Local Victoria Whiskyfest held at the Grand Pacific, Thanks to my Wife’s Birthday present to me, as usual it was a brilliant event with such a vast selection of whiskies from around the world, first up for me was Amrut Distilleries from India who had a great selection on hand including “Two Continents”, Fusion, and their fantastic “Intermediate Sherry Cask”… pure silk… The other big ‘Uns were of course in attendance and all had a fantastic selection of wares, no Alligator from Laphroaig though which kind of surprised me as it appears via email and the web to be the one they are pushing. I do however think this will be my last Local one, as it has just gotten too big/popular for it’s own good. I could not say anything bad about the event, it is world-class and well organized but has become hard to relax with whisky and interact with the Reps, just too much going on and too much noise. No regrets though, as this was my fourth and I will carry forward all the fantastic memories from them… looking for a smaller whisky event, other than the one we put on ourselves.
Speaking of, I have a couple of Haggis (Haggis’ ?) from the local Scottish Butcher, Robert Orr and Sons, just waiting to coordinate everyone’s schedule for our annual (loosely) Scotch & Haggis night. Really looking forward to this one, have a bottle of pretty nice/rare stuff as well as it will be our first try of the Haggis from the Local Butcher, but I have heard many praises about their product. Updates on this soon.
More on Whisky… Ardbeg has decalared June 2, 2012 as Ardbeg Day and are encouraging everyone to start training now for the Islay-Limpics…details here.
Lastly our little city of Victoria (rough pop. estimate of around 90K) just opened another Brewery, Hoyne Brewery, for a total of 8 Mid-sized Micro Breweries, brewing quality product.. pretty damn good for this small town…and for this beer drinker. I picked up a bottle of their Devil’s Dream IPA (Funny enough I thought it was called Devil’s Scream… must remember to put my glasses on prior to reading… damn ageing eyes), a very hoppy experience, beautiful actually, golden colour, well balanced Hops, nice slight bitter aftertaste… will have to try a couple of their other offerings (ok and a couple more of the IPA’s).
Slainte.
LC