What kind of whisky are you?

I am a lightly peated whisky, aged for over 20 years in a combination of bourbon, rum, sherry and port casks LMAO With these blogs, I like to start out, sometimes, by being ultra up front and direct and getting things out of the way, like having ice cream as a starter or something like that, the logic being that you never know what might happen at any moment and you should get to the good stuff first, who knows what might happen during the meal? I really want to be that kind of whisky, all kinds of complex and deep even though I might actually be three year old Tesco saver stuff.

Anyway, I was going through my collection and wanted to see what kind of whiskies I had, and realised that I had loads of different types, even though they were all 'scotch'. Well, I have one Japanese whisky, (leave it), some Irish whisky and a few bourbons, but it's really all from Scotland, and in theory I could just leave it there. I have loads of Scottish whiskies, Robert has a collection of Scotch. I should probably branch out more, and add even more different types of distilled stuff, like bourbon, indeed, or Irish whisky, or rye or other types of things like Cognac, Calvados, Mescal, Vodka or gin for example. Actually I do have bottles of all of those spirits, but like just a few or in some cases one, but they are somewhat in the shadow of Scotch, so to speak.

It's like, IMHO, how far you want to zoom in or out. If I decided to buy other spirits, they could still be classed as spirits. Robert collects spirits, look in Roberts 'spirit cabinet', what's in there? I could collect beer, wine, sake whatever, and class it as 'alcohol'. Robert collects booze, look at all the booze Robert has, Robert sure has a lot of booze. You could call me 'boozy Robert' and that would be accurate I guess. Old boozy bob and his collection of booze, that boy sure likes his booze, talks about booze, that fucking guy, that fucking guy and his fucking booze, fuck that guy, and that would be indeed 'not wrong'. An ethanol asshole, a whisky wank and so on.

But I am focused on that Scottish whisky, and in that category of booze there sure is a lot of variation. My collection, I noticed, has a lot of different types of Scotch in terms of casks, spirits and that combination. I've always thought of whisky as that combination, the spirit and the cask, so that's how I decided to categorise it, and low, I had like 50 plus categories, which can be a bit tricky to work with in terms of some kind of overall analysis, but it tells it's own story. I made a few graphs, worked on a hierarchy of categorisation and found the whole process quite fun in a way, posted about it on Twitter, enjoyed the conversation, but something was at the back of my mind the whole time, just there, and then I realised what it was, and of course it was, OMG what if whisky were people. What if 'booze' was just sentient life, or some kind of stupid shit like that. Spirits were people, booze was life, non alcoholic drinks were plants, water was the building blocks etc etc. Proper basic stupid shit, because that's how my mind works, at a very basic, stupid shit level

I then went through my collection and wondered which whisky would I be, and decided I wanted to be a Springbank 21, this one in particular

Springbank 21-year-old - Ratings and reviews - Whiskybase

But I could have chosen another one, and I think that would have been fine also, but I would definitely say, I would probably be a Springbank of some description. I mean, this Springbank isn't even single cask, or cask strength, and on another day, I might have decided for this whisky, one of my favourites, a peach of a dram

Miltonduff 2009 SMWS 72.66 - Ratings and reviews - Whiskybase

Then I noticed someone reviewed it negatively on Whiskybase, and I thought, well that person simply doesn't understand whisky at all, this is a fantastic dram, what on earth are they talking about, an 82, get out of town you, what a nonsense! And I was in a rage for a few minutes. But I guess there is a lesson there, as I am constantly surprised at peoples reactions to things I like, whisky yes, but other things too. Like films, books, TV series and even red shoes. Not everyone likes the same stuff, it would be so strange if we did I guess, though perhaps things would be a lot easier. Or maybe not, with resources being finite and all. Imagine if everyone liked whisky!

Then came the grand realisation, that whisky is whisky, people are people, and that whisky and people are two different things. I mean, of course they are, what on earth. But, then came another realisation, and that was, there is variation in everything, and if you want to, you could categorise anything at any level, a person by their nationality, by their religion, something called 'race', which football club they support, but in reality every single person is different, and so, I guess, every whisky is also, no matter how much it's blended or how much water is added.

Further realisations came when I realised you could not have whisky without people, and that whisky is merely a reflection of the people making it as much as anything else (human terrior), whisky does not occur naturally like water does, it's a specific thing that is very very human indeed. There is no whisky made by animals. Then I thought, what if whisky is AI in terms of my thinking, something that can be only created by humans, in order to shoehorn into my alcohol life categorisation.

But perhaps the grandest realisation came later still, and that was that all of these thoughts in my mind came from having a few drams, of bourbon actually and that whisky is very much about letting your mind wander, letting it fly to wherever it takes you, and that flight might end up at some far flung place you have never been to before, meeting new ideas, or people, and perhaps most importantly, most importantly of all, end up with a few laughs. And also that you don't need whisky to have a good time, but some folks do and that's OK.

This blog has come to you courtesy of Elijah Craig barrel proof whiskey, a lovely whisky, an American whiskey even though I am, as I mentioned right at the start, not American at all. Also this blog is 'cask strength' and 'unchill-filtered' as I have added no pictures to it (apart from a really strange image of a glass with guns in it, a proper 'shit' combination if ever there was one but put there to show not all combinations are good), or sub headers or any of that stuff. This is raw, this is straight from the bazza, this blog might have sediment in it, it's just a straight stream of consciousness.

If you have read this, well good for you I guess, I'm not sure what point I am making other than I fucking love diversity and whisky (alcohol I guess), which is always 'something to think about'

Also this blog is brought to you by the letters L, M, A and O