Very tasty. Light and citrussy, with a hint of bitter hoppy notes which I like very much. Happily no banana notes at all. Had to have a 2nd pint (which we shared because while the first pint is always gone too soon, I cannot manage a second on my own)
The next time we visited the Session IPA had replaced the pale ale. it was good but not as good.
Today we are in a whisky bar in Killarney
I had the barkeeper recommend whisky and I enjoyed the Teeling Small Batch quite a bit
We found a restaurant in Killarney that hung your meat from the ceiling.
Twenty-odd years ago my brother bought me a bottle of Balvenie 12 year single malt whiskey, and it was one of the most delicious alcohols I had ever had.
Keep in mind I have the taste buds of a 5-year-old, so to me delicious is smooth, sweet, and no aftertaste. And the Balvenie did all that! Absolutely worth the $50 price.
Last week I bought a bottle of Balvenie 12 year single malt whiskey. $150CAD. Okay, it’s been 20 years, what can ya do.
It tastes awful. Bitter, harsh, long aftertaste, and it is really alcohol-forward. Like expensive nailpolish.
Have my tastes shifted over 20 years? Did something happen to Balvenie in the interrim? I don’t know but that was unquestionably one of the most disappointing purchases I have made in YEARS.
And I only bought it as a gift for a buddy who’s father passed last month. I would never spend that much on myself…
Tastes can certainly change that much. I would be surprised if the same bottling had changed hugely, because a lot of people want the same thing they already liked and fair enough. But these days who knows?
Ouch 
Several years ago I bought two bottles of the most expensive wine I’ve ever purchased because I’d tried it at a wine tasting and it was genuinely the most extraordinary wine I’d ever tasted. Even the smell was amazing, and the taste was even more astonishing. I couldn’t even fathom what was going on with it, but I needed to be able to experience it again, so I bought some and stashed it away for the next special occasion. Naturally, those bottles (but especially the first) were then the most disappointing wines I’ve ever had – not because they were actually awful, but just because there was nothing special about them whatsoever. I’ve had nicer wines for a fraction of the price on any number of occasions. I was friendly with the seller and don’t believe they would have intentionally swindled me, so my best guess has always been that there was something affecting my senses of taste and smell on the day I first tried it. I’ll never know.
My commiserations to you. At least mine was both drinkable and not a gift…
I can’t even think what you could do other than find someone local who knows that whiskey who can try your bottle in person and tell you if it tastes normal. If it doesn’t, the distillery would probably be keen to know about it.
There is a saying: the bottle of calvados you buy at the farm gate will somehow have turned from nectar to vinegar by the time you get it home.
And any beer that you drink in the sun on holiday will taste like filth if you drink it on a November evening.
But yeah @Marx taste does change unfortunately
Balvenie has changed their standard bottling sometime in the last 20 years. What you may have tasted is what was then called the Founders Reserve or so. We bought one of those from a guy who had hoarded some around 2016. What you want to try now is the Balvenie 21. I had a bottle of that once after tasting it at a whisky bar in Craigellachie. That was the most expensive bottle I ever bought (my partner has probably spent more on others).
Another example of a bottling changing is the Highland Park 18 which we had on our drinks menu for our wedding (at our request becuse it was a favorite). Not only is that particular bottling now much much more expensive it also doesn’t taste the same anymore.
It happens.
Wine is even more difficult, today there are apps telling you how long a bottle will keep … wines change so much with age and vintage unless you buy a particular „brand“ that mixes and matches to taste, it is rather unlikely you will taste the same wine years apart. Wines that keep well are usually high quality red wines (Bordeaux which is a blend or Pinot Noir, Sangiovese and Nebbiolo grapes come to mind), sweet wines ( because of the sugar) or some special white wines especially Riesling, some Chardonnays… and everything that is labeled „Reserve“ (meaning it spent some time in wood barrels). Most cheaper wines should be drunk within 2 years of buying anyway. They aren’t meant to keep. Exceptions apply.
Whisky doesn’t age in the bottle anymore. But once you open a bottle the more air gets in the faster the whisky loses aroma. This is the reason that despite having quite a number of bottles at home we only ever have a maximum of 3 open bottles at the same time.
Only just found this thread and realised that I hadn’t posted about my favourite cocktail: Ernest Hemmingway’s Death in the Afternoon.
It’s absinthe and champagne. That’s it. It’ll knock you on the floor.
The reason it’s my favourite (apart from that it tastes like champagne / prosecco / whatever I can afford, but hits like a pan-galactic gargle blaster) is that it was first recorded in a 1935 book of cocktails called “So Red The Nose” where the publishers went and asked FAMOUS AUTHORS for their favourite cocktail recipes. And illustrated it with “impudent caricatures”.
But seriously, you used to be able to ask Hemmingway for booze tips and that sold cocktail books. And it turns out his recipe was invented while drinking with three naval officers and Hemmingway tells you to drink it slowly. That’s Hemmingway telling you to take it slow, so you’d better listen.
Here’s a link to a scan of the book online, because physical copies go for hundreds. There’s an Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan cocktail too, but it’s a tame bicardi, cointreau, lime and sugar.
I have a miniature bourbon bottle that my father saved from my grandparents’ liquor cabinet when my grandmother passed in 2020.
It appears to be marked 1997. I don’t know that I’ll ever drink it but my dad reckons it’ll be incredibly strong after all the years.
We had a day-drinking day not too long ago, with all sorts of cocktails and cookery. For the afternoon, we drank Death in the Afternoon.
Pshaw. Champagne is so low in alcohol that it basically rounds down to zero and any hallucinogenic traits ascribed to absinthe are essentially urban legends dignified by having been urban legends for a long time. We ran out of champagne and absinthe long before we ran out of sobriety to cure. Fortunately, there was plenty of bourbon and Diplomático rum.
If it has an age statement like 10 year old… and if the bottle is still well closed, if you open it 20 or 30 years later it’s still a 10 year old whisky albeit a rare one and depending on what it is… it may well be worth something to someone besides the emotional value it holds for you.
F.e. the Balvenie Founders Reserve we have is as far as i remember a 10 or 12 year old that was bottled in the 00s. Whenever we open it, it should taste exactly as it did back when the first bottles were sold 30+ years ago. It’s worth more now because fewer of those specific bottles are left and Balvenie changed their standard bottling and this particular taste is gone except in the leftover bottles.
Historically, scotch whisky distillers worked very hard to have consistent flavor (etc) year after year. One of the ways they did that was by blending in older whisky with newer stuff, so when it didn’t age quite as fast as expected, they could get some of the lost complexity back. Many bottlings were also really blends of different ages (the age statement is a minimum age, so a blend gets labeled as its youngest component). over the last 20 or so years, whisky (not just scotch, but all of them) have greatly increased in popularity, much faster than the supply has (which for aged whisky has a very long lead time…), so prices have gone up, and there’s a lot of incentive to ship as much as possible. Lots of stuff is not the same as it was, for better or worse. Things are getting better, apparently, as production in most places went up, and that is now resulting in aged barrels.
My favourite cocktail is the French 75, named for the light field gun. 2 parts gin, 1 part syrup, 1 part lemon juice, 4 parts champagne. It’s quite like a Tom Collins with champagne replacing the soda water.
