One of the things I enjoy very much is whisky, check the name of this blog after all! And as part of my doing things more deliberately, I set a timer at 8:55 am this morning and I didn’t waver from work until it went off 50 minutes later. At that point, I got up and walked around the floor of our building twice and came back to spend 5 minutes checking personal e-mails.
One of them was from Glenfarclas telling me that they had updated their website. I marked it as unread and labelled it “want to follow up” and returned to it at lunch. First note, I don’t really remember the old website, so it’s sort of as a new viewer that I’m reviewing this one.
from the Glenfarclas website
So, the new website – first of all, thank you for not making me have to enter in my whole birth date. A simple Yes or No to the question “are you of legal age wherever you are in the world right now” was nice.
The first image is of a couple of rows of barrels. And the byline “Made to age” is nice. The font choice is very deliberate I am sure, ‘Made’ is block letters that look a little worn around the edges, ‘age’ in a great flowery flowy script.
The stories told on the site are lovely and the pictures are very nice. I loved learning that when John Grant’s son George died, the licence for the distillery went to George’s widow Elise. And nice to find out that there’s yet another George Grant carrying on the Glenfarcas tradition.
Glenfarclas is a speyside whisky. Speyside is an area in Scotland around the River Spey. For a Canadian connection, wikipedia tells me that Robert Simpson, who founded Simpson’s, was born there. And “Speyside” is a protected locality for whisky in the UK, much like a DOP rating for Italian cheeses – in English it’s “protected designation of origin.” Basically, the UK law sets out that a whisky cannot be labelled, or advertised, in a way that includes a protected locality or region unless the whisky is Scotch Whisky that has been distilled in that locality or region. (source: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2009/2890/regulation/10/made)
The definition of “scotch whisky” in the regulation is a little over half a page!
By Drawn by User:Briangotts as Image:Scotch regions.png and converted to SVG by w:User:Interiot. – Erskine, Kevin. The Instant Expert’s Guide to Single Malt Scotch. Doceon Press, 2005.Jackson, Michael. Complete Guide to Single Malt Scotch. Running Press, 2004.Wilson, Neil. The Island Whiskey Trail. Glasgow: Angel’s Share, 2003., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2498675
Anyway, it’s a speyside I spent all of the afternoon thinking about: how I would pour a drink, post a picture and some tasting notes. Only I have none! None! I must have finished it a while ago. But I already had this much of the post so there you go. You get a bit about Glenfarclas, and I add it to my list of bottles to watch out for at the LCBO.
I have a love/hate this with holidays that move. In this case, Victoria day is the Monday before May 25. Regardless of the actual day – which can be anywhere from the 18th to the 24th – it’s sort of known as the “May 2-4” weekend. A 2-4 being slang for a case of beer as well. And it’s kinda funny as Queen Victoria’s actual birthday was May 24th. And it’s one of only three holidays in the Federal Holidays Act.
