Gins and whiskies

Sometime in the mid-eighties, my chum Jason and I arranged a disco in a boatclub on the side Thames, upstream from Kingston. I can't remember much about why we did it, although I think it was for charity of some description. When we'd finished clearing up we went back to his house and found his dad had left us a note saying well done plus a bottle of Bells, two glassed and a bucket of ice. We stayed up nearly all night, drank the lot, and then I crashed out and Jason boldly went to work. Since then I've not found it easy to drink blended whisky although I have enjoyed the occasional malt.

As far as gins go, it was always Gordon's, wasn't it? Until the nineties, that is, when everyone got a bit excited about Bombay Sapphire. 

Now, though, that all seems to be changing. A couple of friends of mine - my IRL friend Ash and my Twitter friend Bert - have become seriously interested in whiskies, which paid dividends when I met up with Ash and John in London, recently. I'm a little converted myself.

And more generally, loads of people seem to be getting into their gins. Often I don't get much interested in these things; I don't have the palate for it for a start. My friend Mark can taste a red wine and tell you the grape and often where it's from and I really envy that. I order wines I know I like but if someone gave me a different one and it was nice, I almost certainly wouldn't notice.

I have noticed it a bit with the gins, though. Maybe there's something more in the aftertaste? I don't know. But I did enjoy this one, which we had today, having bought it at the vineyard in Biddenden.