The Whisky Guy Blog

I’m often asked what my favorite whisky is, and I always reply it’s the whisky you’re drinking at the time you’re enjoying the moment.  It’s true.  Take, for example, the whisky I had the other night.

Though I’m in India, I brought half a dozen minis with me to enjoy at various points along the way.  A mini is basically a dram, give or take a little.  A couple of nights ago, I was sitting around a campfire along the Ganges River, having just enjoyed a delicious Indian meal prepared especially for me.  I was the only visitor at the Himalayan River Runners private camp and enjoyed a great day of whitewater rafting the Ganges, along with my Nepalese guides and a lad from Manchester, England - Eamon.

Eamon, Vijay (the head of the camp) and I were around the fire chatting about drinks (ranging from whiskies to homemade Nepalese concoctions), when I decided it would be an ideal moment to break out one of my minis - the largest I had, which would give each of us a fair taste.

I chose a relatively unknown whisky from Wales - Penderyn - which the great whisky writer Jim Murray originally turned me onto a couple of years ago.  The sweet, nutty, slightly spicy malt complimented the curry meal we’d just finished.  Soon after starting our sipping, we were offering personal observations about life, family, relationships, and that big-ass rapid that nearly tipped our raft a few hours earlier. 

Do I rush out to buy Penderyn whenever I can?  Though I enjoy it, I can’t say I do.  But for one evening, sitting around a campfire, three men from quite different parts of the world found it to be an unbeatable malt.  And no whisky will ever be better in that moment than Penderyn.

On my flight to India last week, throughout my repeated viewings of “Mama Mia” (my new favorite film, seriously), I was taken with coughing fits that were the dry, hacking “He must have TB” type that has worried mothers covering their children.  Thankfully, I was able to ease some of that coughing with a mini-bottle of Jack Daniels.  Still didn’t help all of it, but it eased my itchy throat enough that I was able to enjoy Meryl sing “WInner Takes It All” to Pierce distraction-free.

In general, when it comes to not feeling well or having those kinds of coughs that just won’t stop, I prefer Irish whiskey over anything else - specifically Jameson.  It rolls nicely into a hot toddy, but it’s also of the right character to be imbibed when you are so sick that the taste of anything makes you sicker. It’s sweet, but not too sweet.  There’s a much nicer warmth than just taking cough syrup, and it doesn’t have the “whacked out feeling” the latter leaves you with. 

Whisky has long-been used for medicinal purposes.  Even during the U.S. Prohibition of the 1920s and 1930s, doctors delved out thousands of whisky prescriptions to cure everything from arthritis to, yes, coughs.  In fact, if memory serves me, Laphroaig was the only Scotch legally imported into the U.S. during that time because it was so medicinal smelling and tasting, authorities couldn’t see it being used as anything other than medicine.

So, the next time you reach for that Nyquil, try a dram of the amber cure-all.

I am pleased to welcome you my very own Web site devoted to my passion for whisky.  As many of you know, I shall be traveling abroad the next few months, and this site will allow you to follow my whisky-related experiences along the way.  While the blog won’t hit its stride until I move to the island of Islay off the coast of Scotland after the first of the year, I will still provide appropriate whisky updates during my time in India.  Yes, there is whisky in India, and I’m excited to tell you all about it.

My blogs will be far more than just musings about whisky.  As you may know from my columns, I tend to talk a little about whisky and a lot about…well, whatever else crosses my mind.  I have links to two of those columns on this site.  Unfortunately, I don’t have pdfs of the rest of my columns, which are boxed away in a storage unit in Los Angeles. 

Before I sign off (and rush to my flight to Delhi) I want to offer a sincere and boundless thanks to the boys at Dragonfly Design Group for this wonderful site.  I’ve worked with these guys on a number of projects through the years, and they are brilliant at taking broad ideas and making them into visual masterpieces.  My words and photos are their paint.  I love how they blend them into what you see before you.

Stay tuned to this site for what will hopefully be an entertaining and educational journey through all things whisky. Or is it whiskey? Dig around the site and find out!