I’m beginning to better understand wine after my WSET course, but the finer points of whisky eludes me. I occasionally use it for my Hojicha Whisky Tiramisu recipe, and did enjoy drinking that bottle of Monkey Shoulder neat while we were in Batam, which I gotta say, was easy to drink and pretty incredible for the price point.
A whisky fair isn’t something that I would have normally signed up for, but I’m glad that I went. In fact, I had such a great time, I’m planning to visit every year from now on. I went with my friend EJ, who also holds a WSET (in whisky), and attending the whisky fair with him became a little like a crash course in the world of whisky.
There were dozens of booths set up, and our entrance tickets let us redeem a sample dram at every booth. It was too much for a person to have a drink at every booth, but boy did I try my best to. The booths range from small niche distilleries to giants in the industry, and almost every was foreign to me. Over the course of the afternoon, we had quite a lot of delicious whiskies.
The first thing I learnt about was the whisky wheel: a guide on the flavour profiles found in whisky, to identify the notes that you can taste. We lingered over Glenturret’s booth, where EJ was looking for their 15-year single malt, while I savoured the sweet notes of vanilla from their Triple Wood. I heard that Glenturret is not commonly available in Singapore, and it was a pleasant surprise to see them here. We’ve had drams from similarly prized distillers such Loch Lomond, Frank McHardy and Tomintoul, and found that Irish whiskies - such as from Tipperary - tend to be easier to drink.
I certainly felt pleasantly buzzed as we made a circuit around the different booths, though we only sampled probably about a third of the stalls. We had a heavily-peated, intensely smoky whisky from Port Charlotte, as well as drams from new-world distilleries like Milk and Honey from Tel Aviv. I couldn’t help but to get a bottle of Milk and Honey, so taken I was by the smokiness of the brew. But perhaps the most interesting find was Currach’s Kombu Single Malt. Their whisky was aged in casks lined with seaweed, creating a briny, unami whisky. As I made our purchase, Patrick, the distillery owner, came up to introduce himself to us. The infusion of kombu in whisky was a stroke of inspiration that came to him as he was eating kombu chips with whisky in Japan. The whisky lends itself to being paired with savoury mains instead of as an after-dinner drink, and Patrick particularly recommends having it with grilled meat (particularly octopus) or especially with Rendang.
Clutching my bottles of whiskies, we left the fair a tad tipsy. Because of other commitments, we could spend only a couple of hours inside, which isn’t nearly enough time to try the rest of the booths :'(. I’m content with adding these two bottles to my growing whisky collection, but sign me up for the one next year.
