Good booze makes all the difference
Back in my younger drinking days, the goal and point of drinking was always to get as inebriated as possible as cheaply as possible. I can remember countless times being in an LCBO in my late teens/early twenties thinking:
“This plastic jug of local whisky is $8 cheaper than this small bottle of Scotch… why do these idiots throw their money away??!!”
Like all acquired tastes though, the more accustomed you become with something the more you notice the subtleties. After a while, quality (or lack thereof) sticks out like a sore thumb.
When Ellen and I were in Paris earlier this year, we spent an evening with our hosts eating and drinking an assortment of fine wine and liquor. I noticed something interesting: despite that I had mixed several different types of alcohol and drank quite a bit, I didn’t really get drunk, and the next morning I had absolutely no hangover.
After some more experimentation I’ve come to realize that – for me at least – hangover is severely tied to the quality of the alcohol. The cheaper the booze, the worse my headache will be in the morning. Maybe this is only news to me, but this has been a huge revelation! I was getting worried for a while; it seemed the older I was getting, the worse my hangovers were getting. It turns out I was just getting cheaper.
Anyway, after reading too much Murakami last year, my drink of choice has become Johnnie Walker on the rocks (Black Label is nice, looking forward to trying the Green or Blue). It’s smooth, has a nice taste, and makes me feel like James Bond in the evening and Marty McFly in the morning.
HOWEVER… this brings up a point that my friend mentioned that I cannot stop thinking about: apparently, over 130 million bottles of Johnnie Walker are sold annually. Black Label is aged 12 years, Green and Blue even more. How is it possible that any company could have that much foresight to prepare and reserve the amount of whisky required for this? I mean, how would they have even known that China would become such a huge market 12 years ago? Are they lying about the percentage of aged content in the bottle (e.g. only a small percent is actually 12 years old, the rest is ‘newer’)?
UPDATE: Maybe this explains it: Chinese are drinking the Scotch whisky stocks dry and distilleries are depriving the home/UK market to meet the demand.
Also:
A blended is as old as the youngest whisky in the mix, so 12 year old Black is made from whiskys that are all at least 12 years old. We’ve got a few explanations for this:
- Most of the 130 million bottles are Red or Gold, ie, younger and cheaper blends.
- Whisky is being sent to foreign markets at the expense of the domestic ones
- Whisky is aged in the barrel and not in the bottle, so stock of bottled aged whisky can be accumulated in years where sales aren’t so well.
- The single malts and grain whiskeys used in the blend aren’t necessarily made by Johnnie Walker, so they can be ordered in large quantities. (Example, Chivas Regal contains Glen Livet, produced by another distillery).
there better be some when i get back! remember my birthday wine from last year??
So how expensive is Johnnie Black in China? Or are you just buying some Johnnie Block knockoff endorsed by Obama?
Q_Q: I will save the rest for you.
Michael: Imported foreign booze is not cheap in China. A 750 ml bottle of JW Black at the chain grocery store near our place cost 246 RMB (~ $40 CAD), so about the same as you’d pay at the LCBO. I’m sure you can find it cheaper at smaller shops, but then you’ll probably end up with some Johnnie Blocker Grey Label.
Duty free is definitely the way to go though. It makes sense to stock up on booze when flying.
So i’m going to assume the precious bottle of black lab you are holding in the picture was bought at a market?
In addition, just as an FYI, the reason you get the whicked hangovers off of whiskey such as Canadian Club (CC) or Alberta Premium actually has alot to do with what is being destilled as well as the distilling process. Here in ottawa my favorite bartender (sharpie) has whiskey knowledge unparralelled with anyones i’ve ever met. We met up for a drink. i had the sniffles and like any health conscious person switched from jagerbombs to rhye and ginger for the night. about an hour later, my face was beet red, fingers were swollen and i had hives all over my chest. loosing my cool and my buzz sharpie devulged that many cheap whiskeys use crops that are equally as poor. Many other botanicals, some of which are actually poisonous can make there way into the distillery, thus causing the reaction. He went on to say that if you drink alot of cheap whiskey you are bound to have that reaction at least once.
The more you know! Because knowledge is power, and knowing is half the battle.
Really? I thought quality control was big in Canada to prevent things like that.
Anyway, I’m curious now to try a good single malt whisky and see how it differs from these blended ones.
Quality control is huge for single malts and the par is pretty intense even for crappy rhye whiskeys, but the fact of the matter is at no point does the farmer or the producer sift through a rhye field with a fine tooth comb picking out the impurities. Meanwhile in scotland…
Anyways, a great singlemalt scotch is the Highland Park 12 year. And a truly fantastic canadian ryhe whiskey (which up until recently was an oxymoron) is the 40 creek barrel select, which sells in canada for about 26 dollars a bottle