Highlights of WhiskyFest San Francisco
October 24th, 2007Well, last night was Malt Advocate magazine’s inaugural WhiskyFest San Francisco. As it is with all WhiskyFests, it was a lot of fun, with many great whiskies to taste.
Some of the highlights that stood out for me included some very rare and old whiskies from the independent bottlers. I also was intrigued by some experimental whiskeys from Stranahan’s (they called ‘em “snowflakes”, because no two Colorado snowflakes are alike). For their seminar, Heaven Hill brought out some of their bourbons that they only sell to the export market, which was pretty cool. And John Hall from Forty Creek hosted a seminar that included tasting the individual components of his Barrel Select.
There were also plenty of new whiskies to taste. Here’s just a small sampling that was being poured:
Aberlour 12yr. “Double Matured”
Benromach Organic
Bowmore 18 yr.
Several new Bruichladdichs
The New Buffalo Trace 2007 Antique Collection
Compass Box Flaming Heart
New release of Evan Williams Single Barrel
New Glenmorangie expressions
Hazelburn
Lagavulin and Oban Distillers Edition
New 2007 release of Old Forester Birthday bourbon
And not to be outdone by all the whisky companies, Anchor Brewing Company was pouring this year’s “Our Special Ale” which will not be released to the public until November. It came off the bottling line the day before! How cool is that?
On top of all this, we had San Francisco’s best mixologists making signature whiskey cocktails. They rocked!
Many whisky legends were there, like Jimmy Russell of Wild Turkey, Jimmy Bedford of Jack Daniels, Parker Beam from Heaven Hill, Lincoln Henderson (Woodford Reserve and now Suntory), Richard Paterson of The Dalmore, and Willie Tait from Jura.
WhiskyFest New York is in six days. I have six days to recover and do it all over again. Cool…
