Whiskey tasting last week, in a nice shop in Antwerp that only sells whiskeys from all over the world.

I can’t pretend I’m a connoisseur. When living in Scotland I quickly discovered that the volumes of beer ingested by scottish friends were lethal to my digestive system. So whiskey was my poison: while my companions were gulping down pints as fast as they could, in time-honoured british tradition, i was slowly sipping away at tiny quantities of single malt scotch.

A group of us were presented with 7 small glasses of really nice whiskey to taste. Our guide, Peter, started with presenting us a mellow irish single malt, and then built up to a full-on peaty Islay (Laphroaig). He’d addes some snacks (dried fruit, nuts, fig bread, cheeses). Every whiskey was enjoyable in its own way.

Peter was really into his subject. His interest was very far-reaching: talking about british history and its influence on whiskeys (the irish migrating away to the States), casks, water, chemistry, the distillation, Indian and Belgian whiskeys, why Bourbons are so different from European-style whiskeys (different casks, they don’t use barley, and they’re mostly blends). Why it’s OK to add one or two drops of water to expand the flavour, but not recommended to add ice cubes (who does that anyway).

In short, it’s one of those cases where a passion leads to surprising territories, or how such a collectors’ mind is like a lens to watch the world with.

Photos from Steffest

The ones I liked best, personally:

• a Ben Nevis of 9 years (quite young) with a toffee-flavoured soft smell, and a surprisingly smokey flavour.
• my favourite: a Bruichladdich, a nice peaty whiskey that warmed its way through the esophagus without being too medicinal.

Lots of jokes about medicinal tastes, and how drinking this would stop us getting the mexican flu, which seemed very funny at one stage of the evening. Needless to say most of us took public transport or bike to go home.