My own observations on whiskey snobbery follow. Some of you have not read these. They are especially unkind to Laphroaig.
Laphroaig is a whiskey that has a long and colorful history, and tastes so fucking awful that you could import it during Prohibition, because nobody believed somebody would drink something that bleeding FOUL for enjoyment: clearly it had to be a medicinal beverage. This stuff doesn't taste peaty: this stuff tastes like somebody's stuck a bog into your mouth, made you chew on it, then forced you to gargle with a cocktail of standing seawater and EverClear. It comes in a green glass bottle, and after having tasted it, I pour from this bottle and am confused, because the drink itself tastes like it should be green.
Laphroaig is a whiskey that has a long and colorful history, and tastes so fucking awful that you could import it during Prohibition, because nobody believed somebody would drink something that bleeding FOUL for enjoyment: clearly it had to be a medicinal beverage. This stuff doesn't taste peaty: this stuff tastes like somebody's stuck a bog into your mouth, made you chew on it, then forced you to gargle with a cocktail of standing seawater and EverClear. It comes in a green glass bottle, and after having tasted it, I pour from this bottle and am confused, because the drink itself tastes like it should be green.
sorry.
Re: sorry.
As long as there's anything else around I can stand drinking, you can have my share of the Laphroaig. :)
Re: sorry.
armagnac represent.
Re: sorry.
"Don't worry dear, I'll have your Laphroaig! I LOVE it!! I'll have the Laphroaig, Laphroaig, Lagavulin, Laphroaig, Spam, Laphroaig anmd Spam!"
-- Can you tell I love the stuff? ;)
And I hope you got a snicker out of the fictional snob-appeal whiskey schpiel I made up. ;)
Note for all involved: whiskey is Irish (or American). Whisky is Scottish, known to the rest of the world as scotch or scotch whisky.
There is a difference. A distinct difference. It's a little bit like champagne and sparkling wine, or cognac and brandy.
Just piping up because it's an error it looks like everybody in the thread's making.
Pev
sticklers for grammar, you say?
I'm uncertain about 'whisky' having a distinct definition cited on whisky.com's page, given that A) the Oxford English Dictionary thinks that whisky is merely an alternative spelling of whiskey, and B) it is in good company on this one, while C) the fellow who composed the page seems to feel that something which encapsulates the essence of something 'captivates' it, instead of 'captures' it. Myself, I'm not losing sleep about referring to Laphroaig as a whiskey when I'm composing in English, just as I'll issue forth contented snores after consuming a burgundy that I bought from a California winery, and won't sleepwalk after being confronted with a bottle of armagnac & a bottle of cognac.
The region-definition part of the term really seems to be handled more neatly by calling Laphroaig 'scotch': the rest is a matter of which side of the plate the second-seafood-course seafood fork should be on, to my eye (the English insist this one goes above, while the French insist on laying it beside the plate, if memory serves). 'Sides, 'whisky' could just be somebody with a lazy E key on their typewriter writing 'whiskey', and sounds exactly like 'whiskey' when spoken; 'scotch', however, is pretty apparently a separate term.
Re: sticklers for grammar, you say?
I don't really consider dictionary.reference.com to be any sort of authority on drinks, and I don't imagine you really do either. However, I do assure you that people who actually do know what they're talking about are aware of the distinction between whiskey and whisky.
Now, if you just want to go with 'I don't give a damn, and I'll call it whatever the hell I want in my own LJ,' hey, that's fine, thumbs up. One of my favorite cognacs comes from northern California, and despite what it says on the bottle, I'm happy to call it cognac, because dammit, that's what it is, even if it's half a world away from France. France can bite me; I'll call it whatever the hell I want.
But I'm aware that it's technically wrong. Anyway, that's all I've got to say on the matter.
Pev
I certainly can agree that you know what you're talkin' about. :)
Another cite crossed my mind here: Iain Banks- who apparently is a tippler of scotch extraordinaire, as well as a best-selling author in Great Britain- is a Scotsman, and uses whisky throughout a book he wrote in 2002, about driving around Scotland looking for "the best whisky in Scotland". If the term is as you say, why define a whisky as being 'the best in Scotland'? By your definition for the term, that'd be like saying 'the best Parisians who are living in Paris': redundancy.
More tellingly, he also uses 'whisky' as his spelling of the term for certain American abominations against drinkable spirits: he doesn't use 'whiskey' anywhere in the book. This was why I had concluded, in 2002, that whisky was how Scotsmen spell 'whiskey', just as us Americans spell colour 'color'.
I may well be wrong. If I'm wrong, I'm still gonna use 'scotch' where you're using 'whisky', because to my eye, it's more direct and clear. If I say 'I went and had a couple glasses of scotch with friends', you do know to ask 'have you tried that Islay I've been pushing at you yet, then?'.
Oh, and
Re: Oh, and
Re: I certainly can agree that you know what you're talkin' about. :)
Ah! Okay, I wasn't communicating clearly then. I wasn't trying to say that you shouldn't call it 'scotch.' Scotch is, you know, what it is. Yep, righto. Thumbs up, we're on the same page there. The only thing I was saying was that 'whisky' and 'scotch' are synonymous. 'Whiskey' is not. One of these things, as Sesame Street would say, is not like the other.
It just raises my hackles a bit when I see the 'e' tossed in there in reference to the wrong drink, is all. But no, not at all wrong to call it scotch.
I wouldn't know Iain Banks if he bit me on the ass. I mean, I'm aware that he writes books I don't read, and he wrote a book about driving aimlessly around Scotland and rambled a lot about scotch in it, and I know you've been nudging me to read it as has the Society, who recommend it. Blah blah blah. Neither explosions nor blow jobs? Pffft!
(Check out the above link, btw. Note to friends of colubra: this would be a fine Christmas present to pitch in together on! *cue innocent whistling*).
Eventually I'll make it back out your way. Allegedly. Someday.
Pev
bookses
Pick up his novel Consider Phlebas, and read that for your explosions and weird sex, then read Raw Spirit to assure yourself that the author is not, in fact, criminally insane.
Re: sticklers for grammar, you say?
I was not going to comment as Ihave never had Laphroaig and only recently discovered my love is whisk[e]y. But mmmmmm ....
In any event I think eographic distinctions in alcohol naming are silly in the modern day and age where they seldom (though not never) have any impact on the flavor/content whatever but are simply a way to protect import/export industries in countries in western europe.
Port anyone?
Re: sticklers for grammar, you say?
Who needs typing anyway?
counter-point:
Re: counter-point:
The whiskeys and the scotches and burbons and such actually reprenet a diffrent processes. So I have no trouble calling them diffrent names. BGut in general there is a naming fascism that realy on serves to protect the export industries of a few western european countries.
Re: sticklers for grammar, you say?
Knob Creek, Maker's Mark, Jim Beam, Baker's, and Booker's (my fave) are Kentucky bourbon whiskey, which is sweetened after distillation with a touch of sugar. Jack Daniels and its close cousin, JD Single Barrel (the only distilled spirit I will voluntarily buy for the purpose of drinking) are Tennessee whiskeys, which are not sweetened by adding sugar, but which are filtered through maple charcoal and do take up some of the maple's sweetness.
God only knows what they do in Scotland. Maybe if they spent a little more time in the distillery and a little less time out in the sheep pasture..
Re: sticklers for grammar, you say?
Scotch with a bit of water coming up... even though I feel a little guilty drinking alone.