Welcome to Speyside, a beautiful region of Scottish countryside surrounding the River Spey, where the sheep and the shortbread outnumber the people. Beside those notable draws, what really attracts visitors is the high concentration of single malt whisky distilleries, such as The Glenlivet, Glenfiddich, Aberlour, The Macallan, and Balvenie. It's a good place for Scotch lovers. During the recent Spirit of Speyside Whisky Festival, I had the chance to see a few different distilleries in action. First up for whisky cross-examination: The Glenlivet. More

Until the 1800s, there was very little Scotch available for sale in cities such as Edinburgh or Glasgow, let alone London or New York. Scotch, at the time, was considered the equivalent of moonshine—a drink enjoyed by unrefined highlanders, aged in sheep bladders and filtered through tartan. No one of refinement drank the stuff; instead, urban elites enjoyed the finest European wines, along with sherry, port, and cognac. A number of factors converged in the latter half of the 19th century to change everything. More

Last week, we examined the distinction between single malt and blended Scotch whiskies. Today, we'll step back a bit and take a more detailed (much more detailed) look at the single malt. I'll describe what single malts are, explain how they're made and aged, discuss the concept of Scotch terroir, and explore some of the regional variations. Grab a tasting glass and let's get started! More

Next week in this space, I'll be looking in some depth at the world of Scotch whisky, but first, I want to clarify a point of some confusion: the distinction between single malt and blended whisky. Consumers and even some bartenders have a misconception that single-malt scotch is not a blended whisky, but this is a myth. Single-malt Scotch is a blend, but it's a very specific type of blend. More

Since it's finally whisk(e)y drinking weather (if you need weather to justify drinking whisk(e)y, which I don't), it seems appropriate to expand a bit on last week's post on the topic. At the hundreds of whiskey events we've hosted at the bar, the most common question I hear is, "What is the difference between bourbon and whiskey?" Or Scotch. The answer is both very simple and supremely complicated. More

Here in Los Angeles, hidden among the lesser versions are a few stand-out Scotch cocktails, blended with enough care and finesse to make them worth the occasional diversion from the single malt neat. These are bright, bold cocktails—some classic and some veering more toward the experimental. More

Does longer aging really make for better whisky, and how much of that effect is purely psychological? In order to gauge whether or not older whiskies are truly better, I assembled a group of a dozen world class whisky drinkers, and a second pool of casual non-experts. More

My attitude toward cocktails based on scotch whisky can be neatly summarized: I like scotch whisky, and I like cocktails, but I (almost) never like scotch whisky-cocktails. But I'm noticing a few new drinks based on scotch whisky on bar menus around the country, and some of them are worth trying. Have you come across a scotch based cocktail that you'd add to the "keeper" list? More

It seems like I never shut up about Old Crow and Eagle Rare, which is why it was disconcerting to discover that I like Scotch a lot more than I'd ever admitted to myself. It will take months of rigorous research in other people's liquor cabinets to know for sure, but if the $12.99 liter of Clan MacGregor I picked up last week is any indication, the Scots might win this war. More

Single-malt scotch whiskies may get the lion's share of attention from whisky aficionados, but blended whiskies are the biggest sellers. But "blend" can mean different things for different whiskies, with the resulting products ranging from excellent to execrable. More