Whisky Magazine May/Jun 2021

If not for a strange twist of fate, I could very well have been a rum drinker. I mean, that’s not to say I don’t drink rum now – it can be wonderful. I always have a bottle of Wray & Nephew in the cupboard for cocktails and rum was, in fact, the spirit that got me into drinking neat spirits as a teenager – thanks go out to ‘old recipe’ Sailor Jerry for that life-defining experience. However, what I mean to say is that I don’t identify myself as ‘a rum drinker’. I’m a whisky guy. As for how whisky became fused with my identity, the path was not quite as simple as ‘I drank a whisky and I liked it’. The spirit itself was just the spark that…

Whisky Live, the world’s premier whisky tasting experience, is celebrating the addition of a Nordic show to its annual events calendar. Set to take place in Copenhagen later this year, the event is being organised by Whisky Live’s newest franchise holder, Daniel Nunez Bascunan, who will be representing the countries of Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. A rum aficionado first and foremost, Daniel created his own innovative rum brand, opened one of Copenhagen’s first dedicated rum bars, and launched the Nordic Rum Festival back in 2019. He first became involved with Whisky Live after being invited to give a talk on the rum category at the World Spirits Conference in Adelaide, Australia. His first Whisky Live Nordics event was set to take place in autumn 2020, but was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.…

Whisky Live Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, Perth, Sydney and Icons of Whisky Australia Ken Bromfield………………………………… ken.b@bkd.com.au Doug Van Tienen…………………….. doug@whiskylive.com.au Whisky Live Athens, Thessaloniki Teresa Konsola………………….teresa@whiskylivecyprus.com Whisky Live Bangkok Louis Haseman……………………. louis@fahmaiholdings.com Whisky Live Beirut Joumana Salame……..joumana@hospitalityservices.com.lb Whisky Live Buenos Aires Daniel Rodin……………………………… puracania@gmail.com Whisky Live Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg, Pretoria Michelle Kirby………………………..michelle@whiskylive.co.za Whisky Live Changsha, Xiamen, Whisky Luxe Chengdu and Icons of Whisky China Jazz Jia……………………………… jazz.jia@thespiritsdrink.com Whisky Live Chicago, New York Jamie Brodie………………………….. jamieb@paragraph.co.uk Whiskey Live Dublin Ally Alpine…………………………..ally@celticwhiskeyshop.com Whisky Live Hong Kong Eddie Chui……………………………. eddie@whiskymaghk.com Whisky Live Jakarta Andrew Soetiono……………….. andrewsoetiono@gmail.com Whisky Live London James Houlder………………………..jamesh@paragraph.co.uk Whisky Live Manila Johnssen Li…………………………johnssen@grandcru.com.ph Whisky Live Moscow Daniil Vinner……………………………………daniil@mainfest.ru Whisky Live Nordics Daniel Bascunan…….daniel@nordiceventagency.com Whisky Live Paris Nicolas LeBrun…………………………. n.lebrun@whiskymag.fr Whisky Live Singapore Sébastien Cady………………………………..s.cady@lmdw.com Whisky Live and Whisky Luxe Taipei Eric Huang………………………………….eric.smws@gmail.com Whisky Live Tel Aviv Tomer Goren…………………………….tomer.goren@gmail.com Whisky Live The Hague Wouter Wapenaar……………………..wouter@whiskyfestival.nl Whisky Live Warsaw Jaroslaw Buss……………………………..jbuss@tudor-house.pl Icons of Whisky Japan, World Whiskies Awards and Gin Live Tokyo Kimitaka Toyama………………………….toyama@whisk-e.co.jp Icons of Whisky India Sandeep Arora………………….sandeep@spiritualwhisky.com Find out more at www.whiskylive.com…

Whiskey clubs and societies have been around for a long time, but it has only been in the last decade that we have seen a veritable explosion in the numbers, types, and popularity of such organizations. Ten years ago, when I was brand new to my own journey in Bourbon, there were a handful of whiskey clubs and societies in Kentucky. There were a few more based around Scotch whisky. The Keepers of the Quaich was founded in 1988, but it was for people working in the industry with a core goal of promoting Scotch. Consumer groups, on the other hand, were rare. In 2006, The Bourbon Society was founded in Louisville by Bourbon historian Michael Veach, Bourbons Bistro and Buzzard’s Roost founder Jason Brauner, and others. It was an early…

Throughout March, in the weeks before and after the one-year anniversary of New York City going into lockdown, I wandered different neighbourhoods in Manhattan – out of curiosity and concern. At this point, indoor seating was at 35 per cent. On a Thursday, I strolled the East Village. Once a paradise for punk rockers and poets, today it’s an enclave of 20-somethings anxious to party. Renowned cocktail bars, like PDT and Mace, are scatted among abundant dive bars. At sidewalk tables, conversation volumes rose and mask use diminished as hours passed. On a Saturday, on the tonier Upper West Side, couples and stylish gal-pals dined on steak tartare, Thai fare or vegan burgers in elaborate sidewalk setups: heat light-warmed wood cabanas or nouveau yurts. In Harlem, older men bundled in coats…

Descend into the subatomic world of quantum mechanics and we find a strange place populated by cocktails of elementary particles: charm quarks, buckyballs, muons and bosons. Whisky concoctions share equally colourful names such as Manhattans, Old Fashioneds and Juleps. Where whisky lives in a more secular sphere, quantum existence is a world of probability and duality. Everyday light is both a particle and quanta of energy, simultaneously a photon and wave. What you observe, where you observe it, and how it is measured renders it this, or that, or both at the same time. What’s seen upon descending into the whisky world, to the drinkers’ level, also varies depending on how, where, and when you observe a hundred million whisky drinkers – all with differing modes of consumption, as they too…