More malty goodness in San Francisco and shameless people to drink it

Yesterday I met with John Hansell (publisher/editor) and Amy Westlake (event director) of Malt Advocate Magazine and Whiskyfest. This year they're expanding Whiskyfest to San Francisco and are in town for a week of drinking and eating with local boozers in an effort to spread the word. (The event is October 23rd.)

It occurred to me after our conversation that whiskey drinkers, for all the fluff and pomp and price points of whiskey culture, have very little shame. It's a lot of begging to get your hands on the good stuff, and then bragging about how low you sunk afterwards. Whiskey drinkers will smuggle contraband booze across borders and into parties, lie through their teeth to get a distillery sample not on the market, and brownnose brand reps to get at the bottle they just know is hidden under the table at the tasting event. If the whiskey world weren't mostly 50-year-old men we'd all be hookers.

John brought a special treat- a 50-year old whisky sample. In his position, he gets access to the really, really good stuff. So he went to a tasting of a few 50+ year-old casks that were blended into a final product. At the end of the tasting, he collected all the leftover dregs of whisky and put them in a bottle. He kept this tiny bottle and probably smuggled it out of Scotland and put it in his secret hiding place for years. And just a taste from this bottle was his special treat for us.

Shameless. And so very, very tasty.

And all you wine drinkers out there- you know you'd do it too if you didn't have to worry about oxidation.

Labels: events, SanFrancisco, whisky