A taste of sunshine
This year the Scottish Field Whisky Challenge welcomes a new team of readers to the Scotch Malt Whisky Society in Leith
This year’s team arrived bright and early at the Scotch Malt Whisky Society in Leith to blind-taste fifty-one whiskies – all before lunch. The Scottish Field Whisky Challenge, now in its sixteenth year, invited ten readers from across Scotland to spend a morning whittling down fifty-one whiskies into a top ten to be ranked in the afternoon session. With bottles ranging from £17 to £2,750 in a variety of malts and blends, the only criteria is that each whisky has been produced in Scotland. Today’s top three will go into the Grand Final.
Carefully laid out in rows on tables like little golden soldiers, each numbered sample bottle is half full of ambery goodness, ranging in colour from pale yellow to earl grey tea.
Judge of fifteen years Darren Leitch, national regional manager of The Whisky Shop, gave a few tips before the tasting, telling each taster to simply answer ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘maybe.’
At 10am the sight is somewhat daunting, but it’s not long until our readers begin to chatter as they work their way through each whisky.
Angela Ball is a whisky enthusiast and Scotch Malt Whisky Society member. She has even brought her own apparatus, ‘I do a lot of tastings so I always have my own pipette,’ she says, pulling it from her handbag. Angela is seated opposite fellow enthusiast and whisky blogger
Andy Flatt – aka the Amateur Drammer.
This is Gillian Kirkland’s second ever whisky tasting. Before dabbling in the world of liquid sunshine, Gillian wouldn’t have gone near the stuff. One sip changed her mind and now she is on a quest to find her personal taste. ‘There is definitely a type I like and a type I don’t like – I just don’t know what they are’ she says.
Across the room Stephen Wilson is enjoying the peatier malts and Carol Ritchie has just pulled a face. ‘I don’t like that one’ she exclaims. Carol is known for an unusual party trick. By asking simple questions about a person, she can match them with their perfect whisky. When she visits her company’s offices in Europe she takes whisky samples in 100ml bottles on the plane. ‘Everyone calls me ‘the whisky woman’ at work,’ she laughs. For Carol whisky is an experience, her notes read ‘I’m on a beach’ and ‘I’m in the Cairn- gorms on a windy day.’ Our youngest taster is 19-year-old Katherine Keogh-Jack. Katherine’s parents run The Whisky Shop in Dufftown so she knows her stuff. Her family was once given a particularly revolting blend and each Christmas the current owner of the horrid spirit wraps it up and gives it to the next family member – hopefully it isn’t one of today’s whiskies. Ruth Fry’s husband once lived opposite the Scotch Malt Whisky Society and she tried her first dram here. ‘It’s lovely to be back for such a prestigious blind-tasting.’ David McCarthy and Michael Stevenson, both whisky veterans, look to be thoroughly enjoying themselves. Ian Hutchison recalls the time he sold his whisky collection to buy a house - not a bad investment.
‘Everyone at work calls me ‘the whisky woman’’