#BlindTasting Series 6 Episode 1

Series 6 Episode 1

After what seems months and months, and actually was! the #BlindTasting team finally managed to organise a night when we were all free to kick off Series 6. The team have swapped more drams and tonight we need to try and work out what they are, but more importantly tell us what we think of them without knowing where they are from. #NoPreconceivedIdeas! If you haven't followed us before you can catch up with all the previous series here.

This time we revised the lineup to take into account late postal deliveries and some  peat notes.... the lineup was : B17 from @JWBassman_, C16 from @SpiritAndWood, E16 from @WhiskyWings, B16 from @JWBassman_,  and finally A16 from me. @GentlemanGrimm samples should arrive soon!

Photo: Brian

Photo: Alistair

Photo: Mike

Photo: John

First up was B17 from John.

Alistair's nose and palate were offering different suggestions...

No grain but maybe maritime?

But Mike was thinking grain too...

We'd just come back from Campbeltown but these samples were swapped a few months before that!

All of our ABV guesses were similar...

But all completely wrong!

On to the palate then....

The G word was mentioned again.....

Thanks Alistair, we're all looking forward to a future #BlindTasting sample being Bells......

So based on the whisky alone, no marketing, would be buy a bottle?

So John began to tell us what it was...

Had he found the elusive Mongolian Whisky we'd been searching for since Series 1?

Unfortunately not, it was one named after himself!

It took me a while to get the joke.....

Next up was C16 from Alistair.

John was in with an early guess...

Just look at the colour on that...

But where was it from?

Still trying to guess the source....

So we continued with a few more guesses...

Eventually Alistair told us what this beautiful dram was...

Third on the evening was E16 from Mike...

Some interesting tropical notes, but where was it from?

ABV guesses were all over the place!

Once tasted we swapped our ABV guesses around!

Mike put us straight!

We'd had Long John, but which whisky was called Mike?

John suggested a bottler...

But Mike put us out of our misery!

Mike decided he didn't want to be part of the gang anymore......!

Fourth dram of the evening was back to John for B16

Cryptic questions from John maybe?

Cask strength needed a little dilution...

This was a strange one, I wasn't keen....

But Alistair was really enjoying this one!

John revealed all...

Final dram of the evening was A16 from me!

There was a reason we'd left A16 to the end of the night!

Mike had sussed the region!

Alistair was telling us which part of the island it was from...

...but wasn't sure...

So I helped with a clue...

Which gave away part of the answer!

Mike's 'jumping around' comment was closer than he thought!

John offered 'finished'

So I revealed an infinity bottle!

Which contained whisky from all the distilleries on Islay!

A great start to Series 6!

But that wasn't quite the end of it....

The next day two reviews of Alistair's Macallan Genesis appeared on twitter....

It seems Alistair had send a few other samples out and they were drinking along with us, in full knowledge of what the dram was!