Scotch and Chocolate Tasting – West Coast Chocolate Festival

Scotch and chocolate?  Um, yes please.  Yes. YES. YES!  How was the evening?  It was… ahem…really really good.   Delicious to say the least and very informative.  

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 Here are a few notes:   First off, Jim Murray’s Whiskey Bible is well… it’s the bible.  This guy is apparently a living legend in whiskey knowldege.  The Bible is an ongoing project, with the first of the series having been published in 2003. It is a compact guide containing every whisky that Murray and a team of researchers are able to source from the worldwide market. Each whisky is tasted by Murray alone and graded out of an overall score of 100.  He tastes ALOT of whiskey.  Check out the book for info on each of these scotches – ranging from $70.00 a bottle – $325.00 a bottle

• Laphroaig 10yr (46% vol)

• Finlaggan Old Reserve

• Tantallan 10yr  old

• Finlaggan Cask

• Caol Ila 29 year old scotch – $325 a bottle!

And of course which one was my favourite?  Yeah, it was the $325 one.  Honestly, I don’t consider myself to have “expensive” taste but there is a definite reason why a bottle costs that much.  It was soooo smooth and the flavours… oh man, I’m smacking my lips and inhaling as if I could smell and taste it again right now.  I wish.

Caol Ila Single Malt Scotch- 29 yr old (46% vol)

Nose – Light Light and grassy, then some Abroath smoke and citrus.  Lightly perfumed (sage) with a vanilla lift, very subtle sweet smoke.  Good balance and intensity.

Taste – The sweetness continues.  Light fruits, some creaminess and buttery character, but fairly woody with a balance of sweet, spice and smoke.

Finish – dry, extremely long lasting smooth finish; filled with all the subtle characteristics first detected in the nose

 

It was paired with:

 

Amano Madagascar Chocolate – 70% Single Origin

Gold award winning chocolate bar by Amano

Created from Criollo coacoa beans from the Sambirano Valley, Madagascar.  A light chocolate flavour with intense flavour notes of citrus and raspberry

* Thank you to whoever took most of the people shots in this album (identified without black border).  I slotted them in so that you could get an overall feel for the event as most of my pics were close-ups.  

** I’m in the midst of trying to figure out lighting and it would seem that lighting is everything.  Or it definitely makes a huge difference.  It’s a work in progress but I’m having fun with it.

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