Kiwi whisky has trumped some of Britain’s best, writes Don Kavanagh.
I HATE to raise the subject of rugby now that the season has mercifully finished, but there is some consolation out there for fans who were gutted by England’s demolition of the All Blacks.
While the team was in the Northern Hemisphere chasing a pigskin around a park, there was also another kind of home nations grand slam going on and this one was emphatically, if surprisingly, won by the Kiwis.
The New Zealand Whisky Company, which sells a range of Kiwi whiskies from the old Willowbank Distillery in Dunedin, decided it would be a good time to try its brands against the whiskies of Britain while the All Blacks were supposedly marching towards a lay-down misere on the rugby field.
The whiskies, South Island Single Malt, the Dunedin Double Wood and the 1993 Cask Strength, are the remains of the old Wilson’s malt stocks and are available here through good whisky stockists. They’re well worth the effort to track down, especially the single malt, although the vatted malt Diggers and Ditch is a fantastic drop as well.
But back to the story. When pitted against giants like Glenfiddich and Johnnie Walker at a tasting before the Scotland game, the Kiwi whiskies won. The tasters gave them a result even more unlikely than the Scottish rugby team finally beating the ABs.
This excellent result was followed by two more tastings, against the excellent whiskies from the Welsh Penderyn Distillery and England’s St George Distillery and once again the New Zealand whiskies came out on top.
If only we had a rugby team that good, eh?
The next step, of course, is to take on the other giant of the industry, Ireland. And to that end, New Zealand Whisky Company owner Greg Ramsay is looking to organise a tasting here around St Patrick’s Day that would pit the best that Dunedin can offer against the heavyweights of Bushmills, Redbreast, Connemara and Jameson.
It should be quite an event and I’ll keep you updated as to how the preparations are going for it and where and when it will happen, but it’s definitely one for whisk(e)y lovers to keep an eye out for.
And despite the affection I feel for the New Zealand whiskies, I’m sure there will be only one outcome. Or maybe I’m just so desperate to see Ireland beat New Zealand at something that I’m being overconfident.
Time will tell.