@bayareaspirits #handcrafted #imbibe

Yesterday was my birthday, and I celebrated with a small group of friends by gorging ourselves on succulent prime rib steaks and nice wine at Broadway Prime in Burlingame.  As I get progressively further from my 30th birthday, I find myself becoming less and less motivated to celebrate my birthday every year — it’s a hassle to plan and I don’t like the attention — but this year it became clear to me that as you get older, it becomes less about what you do to celebrate, and more about just surrounding yourself with great friends.

This year, my friends gave me an amazingly-thoughtful gift that blew me away.  One part of the gift was a bottle of Kilchoman Summer 2010 Release, a Scotch whisky from the Islay region.  This is the 3rd release from Islay’s newest distillery (opened in 2005) and is aged for 3 years in in ex-bourbon barrels and then finished in oloroso sherry butts for 3.5 months.  The color is really interesting - a light champagne color - and I’m interested to see how the peat aromas compete with other aromas in this very young Scotch.

I also got a set of Teraforma Whisky Stones — they’re non-porous rocks (won’t soak in unwanted flavors) that you can store in your freezer and pop them into your spirits when you want to chill them.  You should never use ice cubes to chill your whisky because you can’t control how much water melts into your drink.  For most whiskies, you want to dilute it to 35% alcohol, which is the ideal strength for bringing out all the aromas in your whisky.

I also got 4 Glencairn whisky nosing glasses, which I definitely need.  I was just telling myself last week that I should get a couple of these!  The Glencairn glass is widely accepted by whisky connoisseurs as being the ideal whisky glass — the key product attribute is the tapering of the glass, which concentrates the bouquet right at the edge of the glass so that you can pick up all the nice aromas of your whisky.  If you enjoy a glass of whisky at home, definitely consider at least buying yourself a couple of these (around $12-14 each), if not a set of 4 (approx. $30) or 6 (approx. $35-40).  Now I can finally retire some of my other ‘inferior’ glasses, or at least repurpose them for other forms of spirits.