Whisky Cabal 8: SMWS and a couple of hangers on including Glenglassaugh

We realised some time had passed since our last (group) whisky imbibing, mainly as we are really bad at getting organised. But we made it happen, we made it real.

Glenglassaugh Revival 46%

The first whisky released from the newly restored Glenglassaugh distillery. Alec and I have followed them at Whisky Shows, and become quite addicted. Ok, very addicted.
They did bottle their first cask, but that was going for around £100, so we said no to that. But picked up the Revival, a snip at £35.
Nose: sultanas, pears, sherry, strudel, hint of sulphur
Palate: honey, warm, caramel, nutmeg, wasabi (yes, thank you Dr Death)
Finish: caramel, long, very long, warm
7.5 /10
We liked this a lot, it's a very nicely balanced whisky, you'd guess speyside, but you wouldnt guess how young it was. Basically, it all bodes very very well for them.

GO BUY IT.

SMWS 66.32 "Roly Poly Pudding" 13yo dist 1998 1/752 bottles 58.6% refill ex-sherry gouda

And back to our usual SMWS bottles, this one from the Ardmore distillery.
Nose: sherry, citrus, cookie dough, spritzic, sweet
Palate: very smooth,honey,
addition of water
Nose: burnt carbon, increase sulphur
Palate: sweet, honey, tangy
Finish: long, and builds in heat
7/10

We liked this, but it didn't thrill us, and wasn't as good as the Revival.

SMWS 39.85 "A whisky to dream about" 29yo dist 1982 1/274 bottles 57.4% refill hogshead ex-boubon
This from Linkwood. Who I've got a softspot for.

Nose: citrus, tangy, lemonade, tiramisu
Palate: lemon, citrus, tiramisu, grapefruit, lime
Finish: medium-long, honey, dry

This one split the tasting panel, admittedly we're known for disagreement, and discussions on the finer points of grading do last for hours. But as this was only whisky number 3, we weren't too split.
7.5 - 8 /10

On no account should you add water. This brought a grading of :
4/10

SMWS 39.82 "Suede shoes walking through clover" 13yo dist 1997 1/603 bottles 60% ex sherry refill butt
Look at us, vertical tasting on Linkwoods!

Nose: spritzic, burnt, coffee, pepper
Palate: cloves, pepper, nutmeg, caramel, turkish delight
Finish: long, warm
8.5/10

Addition of water produced more salt on the palate and : 5-6 /10

This one was a lucky dip by the tin-arse cabal member, he who keeps getting brilliant whiskies by random selections.

Aberlour A'bunadh Batch: 37; 59.6%; Spanish oloroso sherry butts
I threw this in to scare the crap out of the cabal.

Nose: sherry, fudge, oloroso sherry, "manly dram"
Palate: sherry monster, raisins, prunes
Finish: long, sherry
11/10
"The Nigel Tufnel : for when you need a little bit more"
"Co-op: God with food"
"Arghhhhh...."
"I've had weaker sledgehammers to the face"

Basically, £37 of extreme sherry.

SMWS 64.36 "Marshmallows in a duffle bag" 7yo 1/257 bottles 60.3% 1st fill barrel ex-bourbon
This from Mannochmore, who we have had some love towards in the past...

Nose: sweet, sherbets, 'love hearts', marshmallow
Palate: vicious bananas, fizz bombs, , pineapple
Finish: massive
addition of water
Nose: wet sheep-lanolin
Palate: parma violets

8/10
This whisky was appreciated by the panel, and was best summed up as:
"Barely legal evil whore"

SMWS 125.59 "Spun sugar on polished wood" 10yo dist 2000, 1/620 bottles, 59.7%, 2nd fill ex-sherry butt
From that little known distillery, Glenmorangie.

Nose: wood polish, heavy, full bodied   [who wrote this crap?]
Palate: smooth, warm, happiness, manuka honey
Finish: short
7/10
But we agreed it's the best Glenmorangie we'd had. None of us are fans, it's too light, too emasculated. This at least demonstrated they can make interesting whisky, even if it's then suppressed and mixed to boringness for retail.

SMWS 71.34 "Rabbit, ginger, and treacle tart" 13yo 56.8% refill gourda ex-sherry
This from the Glenburgie/Glencraig (closed) distillery.

Nose: bread and butter pudding, caramel, toast (maybe, can't quite read it), wood polish, chocolate, apricots (again, maybe), ginger, manuka honey, malt loaf, sulphur
Palate: sweet, oaky  [so how did we get so much on the nose, and write nothing on the palate?]
Finish: warm and long
Again, split the panel:
neat: 5-7/10
water: 3-4/10

Not liked by the panel. Our notes describe it as stunning on the nose, and vicious on the palate. A marmite whisky.

There we have it. We all survived.

B (on behalf of the cabal)
PS: we had the wrong SMWS code for Roly-Poly pudding, it should have been 66.32 - amended 17 Dec 2013

Another 10,000 rocking in the free world

And hello all !
Loving the English weather. Its summer, and today is alternating between sunny and heavy rain, with a delightful background of muggy and strong wind. Brilliant. Admittedly it is Wimbledon, so business as usual.
Eventful week of floods at work, the local town, and indeed much of the country. Summer Rocks !!!

Another 10,000 tracks on the last.fm account, the last one (80,000) was in Feb, oohhh look self-referencing, go me.
So what's been amusing my ears over the last six months?
Top Artists
In order 1-10: Marillion / Pet Shop Boys / Queen / tom Waits / Jethro Tull / Rush / Bob Dylan / Radiohead / Dream Theater / Elbow

Just realised my furniture restoration images havent been uploaded, so that could be this weekends work...

me x

Movies: Of black woman and ponds

The consistent rain implies that summer has arrived in the UK. therefore plans for a Saturday night consisted of movies.

First up was The Woman in Black, starring Harry Potter/Daniel Radliffe in a movie from the rebooted Hammer films crew. It's a ghost/thriller set in extremely Victoria gothic surrounds, piling atmosphere almost beyond cliche. Having said that, it works reasonably well. The plot is vague - it's never really explained why HP/DR needs to go to the small village, aside from to tidy up papers from a widower who had died sometime before.
There's a lot of 'look at this, it'll be important soon', and the music isn't subtle in signposting what will happen very soon now.
But, it's watchable, delivers some reasonable horror and HP/DR is a good actor. I'm not quite sure he had the gravitas to pull off the role, but given the entire movie is him - I think it must have worked as I wasn't bored.

Keeping with the horror vibe, we went for what turned out to be a very odd British horror-comedy, Black Pond. It's very character driven, and relies on dialogue rather than atmosphere.
A stranger enters the Thompson's house forcing the family to engage with each other for the first time in years. Their dog dies, and so the children come home, increasing familial interactions, and conflict.
The main story is told in flashback interviews which is how we discover the family were accused of murdering the stranger. Their responses to this rely on the middle class English stereotypes, of not really talking about it, or missing all subtextural clues in general speech.
The movie does wander off occasionally into a delicate psychedlic trance, which feels slightly forced, but does work well to emphasise differences between external and internal dialogue. I'm guessing it was this whimsical approach which prompted the Guardian review to say "If Syd Barrett had ever written and directed a movie, it might well have looked like this". I don't comppletely agree with this, as Syd's brand of psych was more abstract than what Black Pond achieves. Kermode also enjoyed Black Pond on it's DVD release.

Simon Amstell pops up as a psychiatrist, effectively playing the Amstell of Buzzcocks and Grandma's place. I think it works, although it does seem weirdly OTT comic for the rest of the more situational comedy.
Over all, for a debut, and cheap debut, it's great. And defintiely worth watching. Here's the trailer.


B

Movies!!!

I've taken the week of work, ostensibly to support the Olympics stuff and to bugger off to some opera mid-week, but really it's for sanity.

So today, Monday, I'm watching movies - bgrades, lots of glorious bgrades.

First up is This Night I Will Possess Your Corpse, the second movie in the Coffin Joe boxset I picked up. I'm loving his stuff, dark, twisted, funny, cheesy but still good - and Coffin Joe has the best lines 'Man's immortality is through the fetus'. Currently a large number of tarantula spiders are climbing over a bunch of hot babes who may, depending on their suitability, become the unworthy host for Coffin Joe's offspring. Oh and there's a hunchback, who appears to have a football on his back.
I do like bgrade babes, none of your scrawny models, all curves. Great start to the day! Sipping Peoples Coffee and pondering moving from the couch to get some salmon bagels. 
But for all the bgrade-ness, Coffin Joe's movies do have real atmosphere, and CJ himself is quite impressive onscreen.
Oh things don't look too good for the babe castoffs, a large number of snakes have been loosed in their prison, so CJ is making sweet lovin' to the chosen unworthy to the sweet sounds of screams and death.

Oh dear, CJ's true love didn't work out. She loved (feared? I got confused) him, a sign of weakness apparently. And has left the scene. But wait, what's this, a new chick - exciting. Shock, horror, CJ is having his way with her! After a poker game.
There's a comedy dwarf jailor !!!

It's a bit long, but worked.

Osombie
How could a movie with it's premise of Osama Bin Laden coming back as a zombie fail? That's right, it can't.
Gung ho platoon (Nato) fighting zombies. Even better? cute blonde killing with a katana. FTW.
Theres emotional investment, one of the guys has been bitten. And one of his platoon has to kill him. Oh I almost cried.
And now a long exposition of how the zombies happened, and why the platoon is kinda lost.
"There's a fine line between dead, and not-so-dead"
The platoon finds an American chick, Dusty, who is hunting her brother (derek). Oohh another zombified platoon, so they shot him. Which caused emotional trauma to katana girl. She dealt with her issues by some slow-mo katana shapes. Brilliant.

It is also, apparently, essential as a Nato gunboy, to run around topless. And have unlimited ammo. It's like the Easy level on a FPS.

In all respects, this movie should be watched, it's fun, rocks along, and has zombies:


And now a break for some brunch.

B

Terence Rattigan

I'm reading, or about to, the play 'Deep Blue Sea', and there's a potted history of Rattigan to start the book.

It includes these brilliant lines:
"...his ill-judged musical adaptation of French without tears, Joie de Vivre (1960), was a complete disaster, not assisted by a liberal dose of laryngitis among the cast, and the unexpected insanity of the pianist."


Excellent (emphasis mine).  And a reference for those you playing at home:
The Deep Blue Sea 'Terence Rattigan' with introductions by Sean O'Connor and Dan Rebellato. NHB London.

Old beer - 1979 Thomas Hardy's Ale tasting

Most beer is bought to be drunk, quickly. There are very few beers which are brewed to be aged like red wine. Thomas Hardy's Ale is one of them. The stuff has had a convoluted history with production ceasing, starting up again, bottle sizes changes, closing again, starting, and currently ceased. I've got a number of bottles (15) from 2004-2008, but I managed to get two bottles from 1979 on ebay. Here's my tasting notes:

Thomas Hardy's Ale 

Bottle H 7561

1 Jan 1979

Brewed and bottled by: Eldridge Pope and Co. Ltd.

180ml (6.34 fl.ozs)

poured smooth and clear, no fizz, cloudy but no obvious sediment, quite thick

Nose:

marmite, vegemite, red wine, sweet - marshmallows

Palate:

very strong, tangy, bitter, complex, slightly musty, quite similar to an old complex red wine, 

hint of fizz, coffee - but percolated coffee, not espresso and not filter, lots of malt (like drinking maltexo?)

Finish:

warm, honey, long, more old red wine, not a fresh NZ red, more an old vine aftertaste, and later on, an odd musty note (which I've had with younger TH ales)

Overall, very similar to other Hardy's Ales I've had, but more so, less fight in it than the younger ones I've had. I don't know if it's improved over a 10 and 12 year old I've had, so it might be worth trying my 2004 brew shortly.

It seemed quite high in alcohol content too. 

Here's some pictures of the event, apparently that rarity - a sunny day.

me

In which manliness is attempted

This blog is not known for its how-to guides, nor its swashbuckling descriptions of Hemingway-esque manliness. The sole attempt consists of booze reviews, and even then, although in some quantity, there is a prerequisite of quality. My man card could be in danger. My plums replaced with raisins. Etc. etc.

So when the washing machine died, I stripped down to a loincloth, oiled myself up, and went into battle.
I say died, it was more gradual expiration, the spin sounded laboured, then slowly gave up going around in full circles, deciding a range of 270degrees was enough for it, a full 360 was just us being so goddamn unreasonable. Only then did it decide that 270 was too much, and no spinning would be even easier for it. Damn you sirius cybernetics corporation.

I found my tools, switched off the machine (I'm not that manly), upended it and promptly would have had entered a wet t-shirt competition - if I hadn't been thoroughly oiled, a displaced kiwi Adonis.
Hmm. I guess that'll count as hydrating the raisins.

I pulled the filter / drain apart, it was kinda clogged, so cleaned that. I say filter, it's more of a ball at the end of a tube. That's not a euphemism, get your mind out of the gutter, pervert.
That didn't fix things either. So I replaced the brushes, yes, that's how old school washing machines are, they use brushes. I figured a £15 outlay to see if it fixed things was reasonable. It turned out to be pretty easy to replace, and they were warn and looking quite soot covered. I was hopeful.
Sadly, no zombie washing machine action for me. That meant it had to be the motor itself, which would cost me around £100. A new machine was about £240.

Discretion being the better part of valour, we have a new washing machine being delivered next weekend to celebrate the Jubilee. I know, I bet Liz and Phil are doing the same.

Mostly-Manly, B

The aged live, and the young(ish) pretender

If you'd told me at the beginning of the year that two of the best concerts I'd go to would be from artists who started in the late 1960s, I'd have called you an idiot.

However if you had said that, I'd now owe you an apology.

A month ago I saw Jethro Tull/Ian Anderson touring Thick as a Brick 2, which is all sorts of excellent. In fact it's got that highly annoying problem of good Tull albums that it seeps under the skin and you find yourself reaching for it time and time again.

Last night I went to see Focus at the Musician in Leicester. I went in only knowing that one track, and was blown away by a masterclass in jazz-rock-metal. Yes I suppose you could call it prog, but I'm not sure that really explains them, there's far more jazz in there than most prog, although the hardrock/metal bits fit well within the prog-metal genre.
Led by the hammond organ / flutist Thijs van Leer the band is very tight, and rocks hard. It's quite hard to describe their style, since it's all over the place - without being annoyingly so. Everything seems very organic, the sign of a good band, and the musicianship is great. The guitarist, Menno, in particular, was cranking of disgustingly good solos - and without the histronics of some guitarists - win! I liked the lack of vocals (in a classical sense), made for an interesting change.
Really pleased I went, and I they've got a new album out soon - I picked up a live in europe CD, which I was going to link to from their website, but its pretty crap selection. And I can't find it on amazon.

Focus are doing a reasonably extensive UK tour at the moment - definitely worth going.

Last week I went down to London for the Steven Wilson gig. I'll admit, I love the new album (grace for drowning) but this gig. Bloody hell. Definitely something else. And likely to hit best gig of the year. I also have utmost respect for SW for dumping Porcupine Tree after their most successful album and releasing something completely different and utterly engaging. Even non-prog people are liking this - i've inflicted it on a number of people now and the odd combination of very tune based, jazz, pop, rock seems a winner.

B

aMSN, MacOS 10.7 (Lion), iTunes - music artwork display

Ok, probably of limited interest to 90-95% of readers, but:

Problem:
My iTunes artwork isn't displaying when I use aMSN. This obviously upsets me, hugely.

Lion is a 64bit OS, aMSN (both SVN and standard release) appears to be 32bit. And that's why the two don't play nicely.

But there's a quick fix.

Solution
Close iTunes. Go to the Applications folder, do a Get Info, and select Open in 32-bit mode.

This seems to work. Although I've noticed that you need to start aMSN before iTunes - especially if you use a remote storage location (NAS) for your iTunes library.

Why, of course my life is exciting.

metal gigs !!!!

Well ok, two of the three are metal, and the third won a metal award.

Meshuggah
Are as brutal live as they are on record. I've only got one album, Obzen, but I like it. Very dry, exact, and immensely heavy. Brilliant stuff.
However, as a live act, it became monotonous. Sure the crowd were really into it, but I felt songs weren't distinct, and a large element of blandness pervaded the second half in particular. Stage presence was low too, I guess there's only so much you can do with chugging guitars...
I'm pleased I went, but I doubt I'll go again.
What really stood out for me were the support band, Animals as Leaders. Think of a heavy version of King Crimson, so heavy take on jazz - 'Red' era KC perhaps? Anyway, I really liked them. No vocals either which made a nice change.

Here's the title track from Obzen


and some Animals as Leaders


Ian Anderson / Jethro Tull
 It's been ages since I saw Tull, admittedly Tull without most of the band. But really, Tull is Anderson. I went in with quite low expectations, after all he's been performing for years. Although the quality of the new album, Thick as a Brick 2, was a good sign.
The gig was a double header of TaaB and TaaB2. Which was brilliant. There's always a good dose of humour at Tull gigs, and although the audience was getting on a bit, they seemed right in to it. I was quite surprised that he'd sold out the Derby Assembly Rooms, but it's a good venue (unless you are buying beer) with excellent sound.

Really enjoyed this, likely to be one of my top gigs of the year - and I'd recommend picking up TaaB2 - Tull at their very best.

Paradise Lost
I'm not a huge fan, but they were playing in N'ham, so nice and close. And I do really like a couple of the albums, One Second and Host.
This was in the Rescue Rooms, which is a smallish venue, with expensive beer, although they have Harvest Pale on, so it's good beer.
I had been warned that live, the band wasn't great. Or rather the lead singer didn't always seem to be into it. This appeared to be the case here. I thought he was mixed a bit far down too, and that didn't change wherever I stood, which didn't help. Good band, and I enjoyed the new stuff, whcih seems to have gone back to their earlier metal roots (compared to one second and host). Probably enough that I'll pick up the new album, at some stage.
It's all very doom and goth, but it's good stuff. Some excellent work by the guitarists, but the gig did seem rather short, I counted it as less than 90 mins which for a band with an extensive back catalogue seems a little cheap.

Here's some PL