This is a Jaguar site....Tangueray & Tonic

 

So you decided you were not an Islay man AFTER you bought the bottle with the lease option in it AND excercised your option?

You pushe mah legg, Mon.

 

One T&T man, the rest whisky --well, two whiskey drinkers.

That lends strong credence to the maxim that F-Type owners have taste.

Now regarding Whiskys:

Ballz improve whisky --and whisky drinkers.



By Forrest K. Harstad



No other whiskies hold a candle to scotch for their complexity of flavor.



Admit it: good scotch is better if it’s smoky. But good smoky scotch costs more, so people buy “smooth.”



When in the mood for smoky, peaty, rich scotch after dinner, Lagavulin 16-year wins. (Actually, Ardbeg Corryvreken is a little better if and only if you carefully add the perfect splash of good water. And only the Corryvreken. Straight out of the bottle, Lagavulin wins, but only the 16-year.) These are the best-tasting liquids of all. Ever.



For a super-smooth scotch beforedinner, you still want complex, deep flavor with some notes of fruit. Then The Macallanwins. The 18-year-old is better than any other smooth scotch, including longer-aged scotches, even those made by Macallan.



The Macallan 18 wins for smooth scotch because it has so much flavor for its softer alcohol esters. It alcohol-burns the nose less then the sharper whiskeys. The even softer 25-year-old has fewer flavor nuances.



I love to taste/smell/feel the flavors of the nectar open up in the back of my sinuses, from behind my palate, after the mouth warms it from its cooler temperature in the glass, rather than too much in the front of my nose before I taste the whisky; but I don’t want to sacrifice too much of the complexity to avoid those esters in the nose.



I decided years ago that I prefer just a little ice in my top-shelf whisky. But recently, due to some recent ribbing I received from a couple fellow scotch aficionadoswho argue that ice dilutes its flavor, I did a little taste test anew. (I do also understand that I have not the same taste I had when I taste-tested years ago.)



Because of my esters-in-the-nose consideration above, and because the smooth makes the differences clearer, it made more sense to first do an ice, water, or neither, taste test with The Macallan. (I later proved to myself the same is still true for the smoky scotches.)



I tasted my 18-year-old neat vs. with a very small amount of room-temperature water vs. with cooling stones vs. my years-old preference of one normal-sized ice cube vs. Ballz.



Many, if not most whiskey aficionados recommend just a few drops of water to "open" the compounds---literally unwinding the chains of amino acids and esters chemically. If you want connoisseur write-ups, go to malts.com.



More on my test follows, but I proved to myself anew:

scotch is better with just a little ice —just a little.



(By the way, not only doing this taste-test, but even the slightly iced scotch itself, warmed my soul.)



By the way, notice my wonderful scotch glass:



[img]blob:https://www.jaguarforums.com/6f4484a9-3a1a-497f-9903-00ec90df8ebb[/img]

(I dropped both ballz in just for photo machismo.

Just one is better for the taste of the 18-year-old.)



While the glass is balloon-shaped and tapered—so it has a large area at the surface of the drink, to maximize evaporation of the strongest, alcohol vapors, and then gathers the remaining aromas with its tapered top—it nonetheless has a longer lip in front so that one's nose need not be in the glass when sipping.



This saves one from that alcohol punch in the nostrils because the more volatile, faster diffusing, harsher and stronger alcohol esters can escape past one's nose while sipping. So the flavor nuances get to the mouth and palate without the alcohol esters assaulting the nose, thus enhancing that back-of-the-palate tasting/nosing/feeling that I, myself, prefer.









Here’s what I learned from my latest taste test:



I found from comparing Ballz to normal-shaped ice that I find no difference in flavor or nose—until the last slug. Then Ballz wins. The last mouthful is not as diluted as with the normal ice cube. Ballz work.



(In addition to that, they're just plain ballzy. They're cool -- Fonzarelli cool.)



So I posted this:



Penetrating whisky drinkers have Ballz.



(Followed by my writing above that.)



Then I had a couple aficionados “breaking my *****” because I had the audacity to alter the distiller artisan’s intended flavor by introducing the flavors and chemicals of my ice. ! What the ! So here’s my reply:



Aren't you scotch snobs something.



For the record, I avoid fluoride in my drinking water.



I carefully avoid both fluoride and chloride in my scotch, thank you.



I have tried many, many different waters for my drinking water.



My drinking water preference used to be Fiji --until the military coup there.



Chippewa water, from Wisconsin, is as pleasing to my palate, albeit with a slightly different flavor palate than that of Fiji—due to its different mineral make-up, of course. Fiji has a silica content I like for its mouth feel. After Chippewa, then next in line, for my taste, is Smartwater. But the difference between any of them is splitting hairs.



My own home well water, filtered, tastes so very nearly as good -- both for drinking, and for cocktail ice -- and of course costs a tiny fraction of what bottled water costs. Not to mention convenience.



I have also tried distilled water for a few drops in my scotchcompared to a few drops of my well water. I have not made ice from distilled water to try in my scotch because I had already learned that when adding a few drops of water, I prefer mineral water to distilled water. Hands down. No comparison.



So I prefer my ice made not from distilled water, but from mineral water.

And that mineral water comes from my own well, in my own yard, thank you.



(I live in The Minneapple, within

the Land of 10,000 Lakes, Minnesota

-- where the water is revered,

especially by master brewers.)



The above are of course my own personal taste testies.



When I am King, it will be illegal to add fluoride in any amount to whisky

—or to the supply of public water, for that matter.



You drink yours your way, I'll drink mine mine.



My 18-year-old gets my minerally Ballz.



My Ballz rule.

 

 

Forrest, I think you are taking this whisky thing way to seriously!

I can't agree with you on the smoke but you'r right with the spot of ice.

Here's my favourite:

 

"Garden mulch." Hahahahaaah!

"refined taste" being the operative term....

 

Farr from serious, Norri. (But for my response to the guys who WERE too serious about ice being an adulterant....)

 

Drinking something that tasted like garden mulch would be barbaric. Burned garden mulch is sophisticated.

I'm surprised I have to explain this.

 

 

A co-worker brought some back from his native Indonesia but not enough that I got to try some. And yet ...

None of this discussion even come close to the "delight" to be had from Kweichow Moutai. The bottle I was given in the 80s is still more than half full. If I take the top off the bottle it makes the whole house smell like old socks. A shot tonight and you'll wake up in the morning still tasting it. Even more interesting is Wuliangye Yibin. I tried it once and tasted it for the next full day. It's "interesting" in the same sense that being kicked in the groin is interesting.

 

I didn't want to rub that in. Thanks for pointing out the nuance of the refinement of taste, lizzardo.

 

Hahahahahaaaah! Now I'm curious!

 

Have you tried Kopi Lawuk? It does taste smoother, but the differentiation is so slight, the hype becomes b.s. --ok c. s.
Better? Yes; however, easy to see that it does not pass the "value connoisseur" test.

Islay Scotch is a completely different story; no other encroaches the value connoisseur test that Islay wins by a mile.

 

Now I'm tempted to drive out for the NorCal event just to try some of your Kweichow Moutai.

 

I, too, shall now seek it out to try it!

 

Wait; no, I shan't:

"Its taste is tough to describe. Imagine rotten cabbage, ethyl alcohol, and paint thinner, blended and strained. It smells like ammonia; the Wikipedia page for Maotai notes its 'solvent and barnyard aromas.' The taste lingers long after swallowing, shadowing the rest of the meal like a culinary revenant."

~ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/a...e-world/13060/

 

 

I've had the same bottle for about 30 years because it is really only useful for that very purpose.

 

 

Funny thing about whiskey is that you are looking for taste from anything but the ingredients, the oak barrel, the char, the peat.
So anything goes. And you may have stumbled a new one, naturally malty, cat's **** flavor. .
Tequila on the other hand, the flavor is entirely from the blue agave and no 'other' flavorings will do.