The Brown Paper Bag

The brown paper bag is generally accepted as the mark of the fully desperate, fully degenerate drinker. You know who I mean. No, not you, but that old guy on the bench by the bridge wearing a parka in July and muttering about highly sensitive listening devices planted in the trees by Them. He takes swigs from a bottle concealed in a brown paper bag. We judge him. We judge the brown paper bag.

With this post allow me to reclaim a little dignity and respect for that much maligned little sack. Last night the Cabinet met to consider three Highland single malts hidden in... yes, brown paper bags. Truthfully, the effect was ruined somewhat by the bright blue painter's tape I used to make sure that the bags stayed on properly and did not permit peeking. But that is beside the point. The point is that the bottles were hidden. Even the stoppers were removed in case those gave clues. The bags were simply marked A, B and C. The members were then given sheets of paper with the official tasting notes provided by the distillers, printed out in random order. The object was to match up the mystery whiskies with their descriptions. I deliberately chose ones that did not contain bizarre and excessively fanciful adjectives and I deliberately chose three of the same style, so as to make this more of a challenge.

In the end, it was too much of a challenge. Only our guest, a self-described "total rookie", correctly matched all the malts with their notes. From this we concluded that taste is indeed very individual and very subjective. But you knew that already, right? And we also concluded that many tasting notes contain random bullshit. And you knew that already too. Sorry, no epiphanies today.

But what were the three whiskies you ask? They were:
AnCnoc Peter Arkle Limited Edition
Glen Garioch Founder's Reserve
Aberlour 16 year old (this is sometimes listed as a Speyside, but the bottle says Highland, so there)

All three were enjoyed and opinion was quite evenly divided over which was preferred. Subjective. Individual. Again. None were formally scored, but all can be recommended. As an interesting aside I had long held the prejudice that most Highland whiskies were so similar as to be essentially interchangeable. This exercise skewered that prejudice - each one was in fact distinctive. Just not reliably in the way the official tasting notes described.

It is a Cabinet tradition that the guest be permitted to select anything from our stocks. The guest chose wisely and we all very much enjoyed a dram of Talisker Storm. Feeling really quite jolly by that point we decided to indulge in a very rare fifth pour. A member had donated a bottle of Kirkland Highland 16 year old he had been given. Avid readers of the blog will recall that the Kirkland Speyside exceeded our expectations. Now that the expectations for Kirkland (the Costco house brand, in case you are unaware) were elevated the Highland unfortunately fell well beneath them. Funky on the nose - old gym shorts was one comment - and flat and dull on the palate. Sad.

But it was a splendid evening nonetheless. Thank you to Cory for the cheese, Trevor for the bottle donation, Ivan for the photos and Al for joining us!

Slainte!