Posts Tagged ‘bushmills irish whiskey

07
Aug
12

SlickTiger Industries Presents: Project Whisk(e)y

whisky-glass I must’ve been about three the first time I tasted whisky. My mom’s tipple of choice every evening was a J&B and soda, which she would sip intermittently as she made supper.

One night she made the mistake of leaving her whisky and soda on her bedside table while she was reading, so naturally 3 year-old SlickTiger walked in and drank it.

I thought I’d been poisoned. The whisky burned like petrol going down and I turned to my mom with this look of abject horror on my face, as if to say, “You drink this?!” She explained that whisky was a grown-ups drink that my grandfather loved and that one day I might love too.

“Whatevs, yo,” I remember thinking as I staggered off to bed to pass out, “that stuff tastes like hell.”

 

 

For the next 15 odd years the smell of my mom’s nightly J&B and soda sent a shiver down my spine and though she’d often ask me to make her one, I was never tempted to sneak a sip.

It was only really in varsity that I started consuming whisky in vast quantities, but my god, the stuff we used to slam back in those days was more suited to cleaning engine parts than actually drinking.

First Watch was a favourite because it was cheap and got the job done. Bell’s was my go-to drink when I was out, always on the rocks because I thought it made me look like  a badass.

Two Keys and Three Ships were also regulars, as was Black Douglas and Teacher’s. My two buddies Graum and Van Barman were also partial to some wizzo from time to time, and so when it was one of our birthdays, the other two would chip in for a bottle of what we thought was the height of whisky sophistication and taste – Jack Daniels.

 

 

It’s laughable how naive we all were back then. In a way it was a great introduction to whisky for me because having tasted those whiskies, I had a great idea of what entry-level blended whisky tasted like.

I continued in a similar vein after varsity, drinking cheap whisky for kicks, completely ignorant of the world I was barely scratching the surface of.

My formal education in whisky started when I was 24. We’d won the Whisky Live Festival as a client and so I started working on the PR and communication for the festival.

To get us all up to speed when it came to whisky, my company at the time arranged a whisky tasting at our offices which I attended with eager anticipation as it was my first real introduction into the world of single malt whisky.

 

 

We tasted five different whiskies as part of the tasting, each one of which laid claim to a host of different flavours like “pear drops”, “cinnamom”, “honey”, “fresh-cut grass” and “peat” to name a few.

To say I was thoroughly disappointed would be a total understatement. To my untrained palette, the whiskies we sampled tasted like “whisky”, “whisky”, “whisky” and “whisky” respectively.

What a load, I remember thinking. Whoever markets this stuff is a genius to get everyone thinking that this stuff is so exceptional. Whisky is whisky. I like it, but I’m hardly about to drop more than R300 on a bottle of it if this is what the good stuff tastes like.

By my estimate, I’ve done another 6 whisky tastings since then, both when I used to work on the Whisky Live Festival and in subsequent years when I worked on Bell’s, Bushmills Irish Whisky, Johnnie Walker and, ironically, J&B.

I always quote Winston Churchill when trying to explain how my love of whisky evolved because when asked about his love of whisky, Churchill famously said, “The water was not fit to drink. To make it more palatable, we had to add whisky. By diligent effort, I learned to like it.”

 

 

A perfect explanation because by diligent effort, I learned to like whisky too.

It started with Bushmills Irish Whiskey. In that time-honoured Irish spirit I discovered a whiskey was was easy on the palette, friendly, approachable and easy to appreciate.

From there I started branching out to smokier, peatier whiskies. The Singleton of Dufftown became a firm favourite, as did Talisker 10 y/o, Johnnie Walker Black Label and Highland Park.

I’ve made mention of my love of whisky on this site before, but never felt comfortable diving into that deep, bottomless amber pool while I still worked on whisky brands because it would throw my integrity into question.

Sadly, my days of working in the whisky industry ended when I left my previous job, but the plus side is that I can now blog about whisky until the cows stagger home, drunk as sailors on shore leave.

 

 

And so, the major stake-holders and board members of SlickTiger Industries met last week and came to the conclusion that from now on, whisky reviews will become a feature on this site.

So batten the hatches party people, by the time I’m done with you crazy kids, you’ll be hardened whisky experts who can not only hold your own whenever someone starts mouthing off about whisky, but will also (hopefully) share in my love for the greatest spirit ever distilled.

Project Whisk(e)y starts today.

Sláinte!

-ST

14
Mar
12

Bushmills Whiskey-barrel Sunglasses

bodega-shwood-the-bushmills-sunglasses-01I love Bushmills Irish Whiskey. I can openly say that now without any fear of backlash or recrimination in any way because I don’t work on the brand anymore.

But I used to. And during that time I fell in love with that whiskey. It’s just such a cool and totally underrated brand with one of the most badass stories to tell.

How many other whiskies out there can say they licensed their distillery over FOUR HUNDRED years ago? Bushmills is the staple when it comes to authentic, iconic Irish Whiskey. And now they’re taking their street cred to a whole other level, the badasses.

 

 

Wow. Wow, wow, wow. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted a pair of sunglasses so badly in my entire life. See the way he threw a dram of whisky in the wood polish? That’s 100% legit.

Even cooler is when you buy then they get delivered in that wooden case with a mini crowbar to open it up with.

I want those beautiful, whisky-soaked sunnies on my face. God life would be awesome if I could get my filthy mitts on those sunnies…

 

 

Mark my words, I will track those sunnies down. I’m dead serious. I want to drink Bushmills with those bad boys on my face and listen to The Pack A.D.

Wait, what’s that? You don’t know who The Pack A.D. are?

Siddown buddy. Take a load off and soak this shit up, courtesy of my good buddie Van Barman.

 

 

Are we on the same page here?

Atta boy Winking smile

-ST

23
May
10

The 200th Post Celebration

You know you’ve had a killer night out when you wake up the next morning sleeping on couch cushions on someone’s living room floor still in all your clothes from the night before, unable to to move, speak or even open your eyes because of how badly your head is throbbing.

 

 

I extended the invitation y’know? I sent it out there to anyone who was interested to come on down and have a few drinks and get a little fucked up together, I did. And man-o-man, did people RESPOND!

Knoxville was packed to the fucking rafters on Friday night with people there to celebrate the 200th post with us. It was so bad you could hardly breathe in that place! Wall-to-wall party people out in full force to show their support, christ, I wish you coulda been there.

Of course, thanks to the beauty of internet anonymity, none of those people knew who I actually was, but still, it was great to see so many of them out in full force, partying like their lives depended on it.

 

 

From Knoxville we descended into the chaos that is Long Street and met up with a great and wasted friend of mine, Luke-Ass, who’s in CT the next couple of days for some comic book workshops or other. He told me this and a great deal of other things which I promptly forgot and then we drank some tequila and then we drank some more tequila.

We ended up crashing at Barbarian’s place cause J-Rab eventually curled into a tight little ball in my lap and had a rad, rejuvenating 30-minute nap on the couches at Juleps, after which we hit the 7-11 (at 3am?) and demanded they let us buy a packet of Ghost Pops on my credit card, despite the ridiculous R12 minimum purchase-on-a-credit-card rule.

Next day we slunk outta ‘bed’ at about 10 to find that despite the fact that we felt like we might have woken up in hell, outside it was a beautiful day, even though the light hurt my eyes and I felt like something someone had mopped off a pavement.

J-Rab and I had a really decent breakfast at Caramellos and then decided to hit the beach at Clifton which was great for her (she’d been smart enough to pack her bikini and a towel) but not so great for me (I had neither and so ended up lying in the sand with all my clothes on, very classy).

I’d never been to Clifton outside of peak season and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was super chilled out and we ended up staying there for a good two hours if you count all the time we spent climbing over boulders and finding a nice spot to chill.

 

 

Saturday evening was even better. I’ve recently gotten my hands on a bottle of fine 16 year old Bushmills Irish Whiskey which I sipped while enjoying some sushi from a place I’d highly recommend off Main Road in Somerset West called Blue Waters.

Throw in gratuitous amounts of mind blowing sexy-time into the mix and you’ve got a weekend worthy of a 200th post celebration.

Now to figure out what the hell to do with my next 200 posts…

Have a great week party people 😉

-ST