Okay, let’s do a week of official Taliskers (still pretty much the only kind there are). When I first got into single malt whisky, there wasn’t much Talisker about. Really just the 10 yo and the Distillers Edition. This was in the early 2000s. The 18 yo was introduced in 2004 and that’s also when the 25 yo became a regular annual release (the first one had been released in 2001). The 30 yo came along a few years after that. With both the 25 yo and the 30 yo in the special release category, it was really the 10 yo and the 18 yo that carried the distillery’s flag through the 2000s and into the early 2010s. Even without the excellent 25 and 30 year olds taken into account, the distillery’s batting average was pretty high. In the decade and a half since, the official releases have proliferated somewhat. You might say that’s a good thing: the more Talisker, the better. I would have said the same if this expanded range were more to my taste but I’m afraid I don’t have a very high opinion of the newer NAS releases. Well, the Talisker that leads off this week is not NAS—it’s a 9 yo (though no vintage is mentioned). And it’s not a wide release, being a cask that was available last year to be filled by hand at the distillery. The source of my bottle split filled it in late October (along with the Oban, Lochnagar and Dalwhinnie I reviewed in December). It’s from a “rejuvenated” red wine cask, which means that there are two things about it that scare me. Let’s see if it allays my fears. Continue reading
Author Archives: My Annoying Opinions
Kwality (Delhi, January 2023)
On Friday I posted a report on our most recent lunch at one of our new(er) Delhi favourites, Cafe Lota. New(er) in the sense that it opened only a decade ago. Today I have for you a report on a much older Delhi favourite, Kwality, located in the Regal Building in Connaught Place. Often said to be Delhi’s oldest restaurant—though this doubtless depends on how you define a restaurant—Kwality opened in 1940 as an ice-cream shop. The ice cream, of course, went far past the shop and the borders of Delhi. Indeed, Kwality ice cream—and the men selling it from hand-pushed carts—was a major part of my childhood and that of many other Indians in cities and towns far from Delhi. The iconic ice cream business was sold off in the early-mid 1990s but the original location remains, if not in its original form. Continue reading
Lunch at the Kalguksu Alley in Namdaemun Market (Seoul, March 2023)
I will be taking a bunch of students to Seoul for five weeks next February/March (we’ll get there after five weeks in Bombay). In preparation for this trip, I recently spent a week in Seoul, visiting sites, checking out possible accommodations and group activities; and, of course, also eating.
Though the missus was born in Seoul and lived there till the age of nine (at which point she moved to Los Angeles with her family), we have not been to Seoul as a family and nor had I ever been there before myself. I was a little intimidated by the thought of navigating the city by myself for a week but quite predictably ended up having a blast in the periods of time before, between and after my appointments. I walked an average of 7 miles a day—a lot of it to markets where I ate. One of these markets was Namdaemun Market—I ate lunch there on three consecutive days. Here is a look at my second lunch, eaten on a Friday in the market’s famous “Kalguksu Alley”. Continue reading
Cafe Lota VI (Delhi, January 2023)
As I noted in my review of Bhawan a couple of weeks ago, we’ve eaten at Cafe Lota in Delhi on every trip since right after it opened just about a decade ago. Indeed, it might be fair to say that in many ways it has been our favourite restaurant in Delhi over that span of time. This even though the original chef whose vision shaped the restaurant, Rahul Dua, left the restaurant a while ago (he’s now one of the people behind Bhawan, which is sort of in the Lota’esque mold). When our home base in Delhi was Noida, Cafe Lota was a fairly convenient place to meet friends. And part of our love for the restaurant does stem from the fact that we’ve eaten there with so many friends over the years. Now that our home base is quite a bit further away, in Gurgaon, you’d think we’d be less likely to choose it as a rendezvous point; but I ate there with friends on my solo trip to Delhi a year ago, and we ate there again with friends on our family trip this January. Herewith, the details of the most recent outing. Continue reading
Glentauchers 27, 1993 (Gordon & MacPhail)
Here is a Glentauchers to close out my week of heavily sherried 25+ year old whiskies bottled by Gordon & MacPhail. Glentauchers is a pretty anonymous Speyside distillery. I’ve reviewed five others previously—I believe those were all from ex-bourbon casks. Like Monday’s Aberfeldy, this one is from a first-fill sherry puncheon; Tuesday’s Mortlach was from a first-fill butt (a bit smaller than a puncheon). Well, I liked the Mortlach quite a bit more than the Aberfeldy and so hope that the cask type is not going to be the predictor of quality here. Let’s get right to it.
Glentauchers 27, 1993 (54.3%; first-fill sherry puncheon 2635; Gordon & MacPhail; from a bottle split)
Nose: Ah yes, this is a richer, fruitier sherry cask. It leads with dried orange peel, fig jam and a touch of hoisin. Sweeter on the second sniff with brandied raisins. A bit of pencil lead too. With time some apricot jam joins the party. With a few drops of water there’s some camphor and it get spicier on the whole. Continue reading
Desi Brothers (Bloomington, MN)
Here is the latest in my series of looks at grocery stores in the Twin Cities metro that serve the area’s immigrant communities. In January I posted a look at one of the metro’s most established South Asian groceries, Pooja Grocers—way up in Hilltop. Here now is a look at a more recent arrival in the south metro. It is located in Bloomington, in the same general complex at the intersection of Penn Ave. and American Blvd. that is also home to Itton Ramen. And, indeed, we stopped in there after our lunch at Itton Ramen a couple of weeks ago. That lunch disappointed more than a little but I am glad to say that the market did not. Continue reading
Mortlach 25, 1994 (Gordon & MacPhail)
Yesterday, I posted only my third-ever review of a Aberfeldy. Today’s whisky is from a distillery whose whisky I have far more of a familiarity with: Mortlach. Like yesterday’s Aberfeldy, this is a 25 yo single cask, also a first-fill sherry cask, bottled by Gordon & MacPhail. Mortlach is very well-known in sherried incarnations—the interplay of sherry oak, especially when from an European oak cask, and Mortlach’s naturally meaty profile can yield truly pleasurable results. Though, while I liked the last sherried Mortlach I reviewed quite a bit, it wasn’t really one that displayed that character that one would think of as quintessentially Mortlach (let me once again encourage you to read my post from several years ago probing the question of “distillery character“). I have liked most sherried Mortlachs I’ve tried, however—with a couple of exceptions from K&L’s series of casks that are not really the bargains they seem. But I’m still chasing the memory of a Mortlach 13 bottled by G&M in their old Reserve series (anyone remember those bottles? cask strength, green labels?). It wasn’t a world-beater but it was a truly idiosyncratic meatily sulphurous beast. I finished that bottle a couple of years before I started the blog and, alas, do not seem to have saved a large reference sample from it as was my usual practice at the time. Anyway, let’s see if this 25 yo is in that vein or something more refined. Continue reading
Aberfeldy 25, 1993 (Gordon & MacPhail)
After a week of weirdo Kilchomans that included two red wine cask-bothered releases (here and here) and one mezcal finish (here), let’s get back to more conventional ground: sherry cask-matured whisky. All three of this week’s whiskies—like the Linkwood that led off the month—were bottled by Gordon & Macphail in their Connoisseurs Choice line, which is a lot fancier these days than it used to be. We’ll begin the week in the highlands with an Aberfeldy. This is only my third-ever Aberfeldy review and is by some distance the oldest of the three. The other two included a Cadenhead’s small batch release from bourbon hogsheads and another G&M Connoisseurs Choice release from a refill sherry cask. This one is from a first-fill sherry puncheon. The refill sherry cask was fine but didn’t excite me very much. Will this first-fill sherry cask, which is nine years older be better? Let’s see. Continue reading
Eating at H Mart (Garden Grove, CA, December 2023)
Here now is my last meal report from our trip to Southern California in December. It covers two meals eaten in the food court of the H Mart in Garden Grove: the first, family dinner on Christmas Sunday, and the second, a quick midweek lunch eaten by me and the boys. Fittingly, this report will post on the blog on the Sunday that will be my last full day in Seoul.
Why did we eat Christmas dinner at the H Mart food court? Partly because “why not?” and partly because we didn’t want to deal with the waits at regular Garden Grove Korean restaurants—as we’d have had to do before eating at Mo Ran Gak on Christmas in 2021 if there hadn’t been an outdoor tented area. (Now, of course, the tented seating is seemingly gone from everywhere.) The fact that there was a second meal a few days later should tell you we quite liked the food. Continue reading
Jamun, Again (Delhi, January 2023)
We ate at Jamun in Lodhi Colony with good friends on our last family trip in January 2020. We enjoyed most of that meal fine but didn’t think it was anywhere we needed to get back to in a hurry. But we did go there again on this family trip as another set of good friends picked it as ideally situated between them and us, both of us being located at different ends of the vast Delhi NCR (National Capital Region). This time we were there for lunch, and on a Sunday. This meant that the traffic was not nightmarish getting there, and that the restaurant was not very full when we arrived (we were eating on American time). How was the meal? Read on. Continue reading
Izakaya Hachi (Costa Mesa, Ca, December 2022)
Here is my penultimate restaurant report from our trip to Southern California in December. It was not our penultimate meal—that, unfortunately, was our less-than-great sushi meal at Koi—but it was one of our better meals, even if it took us deeper into Orange County, to Costa Mesa. (I’m still in denial that on our trips to L.A we are now based in Orange County.) Izakaya Hachi does have a Torrance location as well but the Costa Mesa branch is an easier drive from Seal Beach on a week night. It was a rainy week night, as it happens and so we were in the mood for some good izakaya food when we arrived. Luckily, Hachi did not disappoint. Continue reading
Kilchoman 7, 2013 (ImpEx Cask Evolution, Mezcal Finish)
Okay, after two red wine-bothered Kilchomans (here and here), it’s time for something completely different. This Kilchoman received an 8 month mezcal finish after 7 years of maturation in a Buffalo Trace Barrel. No word on what the mezcal was. I assume that’s the next step in cask hyper-detail: what brand of mezcal, what type of agave and so on. Or maybe not. At any rate, I am pretty sure this is the first mezcal-bothered whisky I’ve yet had. Now, I have had and reviewed a mezcal that received a bourbon cask finish, but this, I’m pretty sure is a first for me. As to how many other mezcal-finished whiskies there are floating about in the world, I have no idea. If you know or have had others, please write in below. Of course, I do often find mezcal’ish notes in young whiskies—and, indeed, have found them in young peated Islay whiskies in particular. These notes are associated in my palate with youth. Does that mean this mezcal finished whisky will register as younger than 7 years (itself not a very ripe old age) on my palate? Let’s see. Continue reading
Kilchoman 9, 2011, STR Finish, for Drammers
STR = Shaved, Toasted, Re-charred, if you’re wondering (as I was before I looked it up). I’m sure there’s a good reason why a cask would be toasted and re-charred but I don’t know what that is. In this case, it’s a shaved, toasted and re-charred ex-red wine cask and the whisky was finished in it for 19 months after 7+ years of maturation in a bourbon barrel. It was then bottled for the New York whisky club, Drammers. All of this information is from the excellent Kilchomania, by the way. I liked Monday’s red wine-bothered Kilchoman a lot more than I was expecting to. Of course, that was a full-term red wine maturation and this one is just a finish, but I am hopeful nonetheless. I assume the shaving, toasting and re-charring removes a lot of the red wine influence? If so, hopefully there won’t be much, if any wine separation—just as there wasn’t in the full-term matured whisky. And perhaps the longer maturation time—this is almost twice the age of Monday’s whisky—will give it more depth and development as well. Well, let’s see. Continue reading
Itton Ramen (Bloomington, MN)
I recently got a tip from a reader about a new’ish ramen place in Bloomington. Ramen is big in our family and so we were glad of the news. While there is good ramen to be had in Minneapolis and St. Paul, it’s would be very nice to have some a bit closer to us. And so on Saturday we showed up at Itton Ramen with a couple of the friends we often eat out with. As I also like to support small restaurants, I would love to tell you that we found it to be an unsung gem. But, alas, that was not our experience. While the meal, on the whole, was not bad per se, it was more than a little underwhelming on most counts. Herewith, the details. Continue reading
Kilchoman 5, 2012, Red Wine Casks
Let’s do a week of weirdo Kilchomans. By “weirdo” I mean any kind of maturation other than ex-bourbon or ex-sherry. I know, it’s very old-fashioned of me. First up, is a a five year old matured in red wine casks, specifically red wine casks from the Douro Valley in Portugal. (Note: this is not a single cask release and nor is it a cask strength release: it was a worldwide release put together from 20 red wine casks at 50% abv.) Now, I don’t have a good history with red wine cask whisky. But I’m not actually sure I’ve ever had anything other than a red wine finish. This one was actually full-term matured in red wine casks (or at least so I think). I am hopeful that this will at least prevent one of the things I have not enjoyed about red wine cask whisky: the red wine notes separating from and floating above the whisky. I can only hope it will also guard against the other major thing I have not enjoyed about red wine cask whisky: eau de cologne on the nose. Another potential good sign is that this is, of course, heavily peated whisky (I believe at 50 ppm). I’m not a huge fan of port cask whisky either but have generally found it to work best with peated whiskies. With all my hopes and reservations on the table, let’s get to it. Continue reading
Koi (Seal Beach, CA, December 2022)
Only a few more reports to go from our Southern California trip in December. We ate sushi at Nozomi in Torrance the day after we arrived and we ate sushi at Koi in Seal Beach two days before we left. One meal was a little more expensive than the other and one meal was not as good as the other, by some distance. Alas, the more expensive meal was the less good meal and that meal was this dinner at Koi. It was not bad per se—and, again, it was far better than anything available in Minnesota—but we were left wishing we’d just gone back to Nozomi for one more meal. Continue reading
Bhawan (Delhi, January 2023)
We’ve been following Chef Rahul Dua around for a while. We first encountered his food as relatively early adopters of Cafe Lota at the Crafts Museum. This was back in early 2014. We loved the approach there of bringing dishes from different regions of India together, sometimes in traditional, sometimes in less traditional guises and preparations. We’ve stuck with Cafe Lota ever since. I think it may be the only restaurant we’ve eaten at in Delhi on every single visit since. Chef Dua, however, had left Cafe Lota by the time of our next visit to Delhi in 2016. Along with his partner, Kainaz Contractor, he was now operating Rustom’s Parsi Bhonu in Qutab Enclave. From there we lost sight of him for a bit as Rustom’s moved to the Parsi dharamshala near Daryaganj. We were hoping to finally eat there on this trip but it shut down last summer. But during the pandemic they opened Bhawan, a delivery operation centered on sweets and snacks. And then in the summer of 2022 it opened as a sit-down restaurant in Gurgaon, just about a 15 minute drive from my parents’ place. It was a cinch that we were going to visit. And so it came to pass. Herewith, the details. Continue reading
Linkwood 23, 1998 (Gordon & MacPhail)
One of the possible themed weeks I might do this month is “Unfancied Speysiders”. Though this review is obviously not part of that week, Linkwood too is an unfancied Speysider. It is one of many Diageo distilleries that, outside of the Flora & Fauna line, don’t get any but the rare official release. And when Diageo does put any older Linkwood out, it’s at a nosebleed price. As such, as with so many such distilleries, if we want to taste more of their output, and if we want to taste reasonably affordable iterations of their older malt, it is to the indie bottlers we must go.
In this case, to the giants of Elgin, Gordon & MacPhail. (Linkwood too is located in Elgin, by the by.) This 23 yo Linkwood was released in Gordon & MacPhail’s refurbished Connoisseurs Choice line. Older whisky drinkers will remember that a decade-plus ago this was G&M’s entry-level label, usually bottled at 40% or 43%, and no one got very excited about it. Of course, even before that many well-regarded older whiskies from the 1960s and 1970s had also been released under this label—usually also at 40%; the obsession with cask strength whisky is a relatively new thing, after all. Anyway, the Connoisseurs Choice label is fancy again, and now at cask strength—which is another way of saying “expensive”. Will this Linkwood, bottled from a refill sherry hogshead, prove to be a good value anyway? Let’s see. Continue reading
My Annoying Opinions 