Another bottle went on sale yesterday as well that might be worth mentioning. A Springbank 1919, bottled in 1970, Asking price was 55.000 euro and the current offer is 47.000

http://www.worldwhiskyindex.com/default.asp?id=2&page=&nieuwsid=18

I tried a 3yo Kilchoman recently which had been finished in a sherry cask for 2 and a half months and it was very nice. Almost too nice for a whisky that young.

for all the details of my high opinion
of the make go to the bottom of this
page, hit next page & scroll back a smidgen. if you want this particular (considerably less) valuable collectors’ item you’d better hurry cuz the price
has already gone up a pound (from cask
304 @24.30) & most everything bottled
from now on will have to be called whisky
because it’ll be 3 or more years old.
that by itself will probably jack up the
ante a coupleA. i won’t presume to speculate on how the contents of the
great one compare to what is in these
that came (as they are, after all, NOT
YET quite whisky) before & the next REAL stuff coming down the pike. BUT…if i were a betting man, i’d offer you the
appropriate odds you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the 3 in a
blind tasting. the important thing IS that THIS IS a better than average malt beverage on its own &, when you factor in the price it’s a real steal^

second, Red Arremer: i can’t quite match
Jim Murray’s numbers here but i made
every one of the 1 to several months old expressions (in 5cl miniatures) i tasted some close variant of 23-23-22-22 or
around 90. perhaps strange to you who
don’t seem to be that enthusiastic about
the possible merits of such younguns, i
also rated the several 1 & now 2 (almost
3) year olds very much the same= so far
it has NOT got noticeably better with a
wee more age. then again, far fewer
than 100 (less than 5%) of the coming up on 2000 different single malt expressions (95% opened, tasted & rated) in my collection rank as highly. if McEwan’s
Port Charlottes & young Bruichladdichs
are any guide we probably won’t have that
much a handle on it for some time. i
tasted cask samples of both of the new
Loch Indaal West Shore beauties not long
after they were old enough to be called
Whisky & they blew me away. my next
encounter was PC5 & i + well over 4 out
of 5 of the many people who’ve tasted it
against PC6 & now PC7 (in my presence)
have liked/rated 5 slightly above the
later two. but then, some time (i’m 71)
back, it suddenly came to me that, just
as is often the case with age, beauty (& the relation between the two) in life in general, whisky is poorly served by many of the cliches passed along to us (&
repeatedly reinforced] by those whose interest they serve<

IF 1. you use Jim Murray’s rating/scoring method as he outlines it in all of his
Whisky Bibles (how to read the bible) &
as i DO believe he (for the most part)
uses it &
IF 2. you taste ALL whiskies BLIND &
against at least 4 or 5 appropriate
other expressions &
IF 3. you try hard to leave behind any
of your prejudices/preconceptions: no matter how expert,
knowledgeable or lucid they are, there
is only so much you can learn from
other people…to get what’s really
there you have to taste/drink, listen or touch each & every relevant thing that
comes your way. & if you are serious,
pay attention & have a good system for
remembering what you experience, you
will most likely be able to make your
own rules. at very least, you’ll be
much better able to understand & use
those that others will try to pass on
to you, sometimes without understanding
them themselves. one of the wonderful things about this blog is it can help
point out many paths, none of which
mean much unless you take them

i hope to come back after the basketball
surgery & rant some more^
but don’t hold your *.