Hello 2019! And farewell 2018… What a year it was!

For this Whisky Lady there was a fair amount of travel within India but surprisingly little international travel… until November 2018 which kicked off with Whisky Live Singapore, a work jaunt to Turkey, Germany and closed with New Years in Dubai!

What this also meant was that I was mostly home in Mumbai, so missed very few tasting session this year – yeah!!

Bombay Malt & Cigar Club

We tried a few different blends from Douglas Laing & Sansibar Blends  (combined with the Whisky Ladies), to a Compass Box Quartet to the Lost Distilleries archival reconstructions.

We also did some “virtual” travel to Canada, Europe and Japan for whisky, Columbian & Seychelles for rum. Plus some 21s, a Sherry Unusual eve… We even threw in a Bar Night for good measure!

• Highlight – Really tough to chose as the gents have “upped” their game… we’ve had some remarkable whiskies, great themes however Compass Box’s Phenomenology is truly remarkable for how individual
• Lowlight – This was easy… the Domaine Des Hautes Glace Organic Single Malt 42% from our European evening… whether it was “off” or just the opposite of what we seek in a whisky, absolutely NOT for us!

Whisky Ladies

We also had two rounds of our free wheeling contributor’s choice (Mar and Oct), “Bar Bottles”, Smokey Night and even had an evening dedicated to exploring Grains.

As for our “virtual” travels, we had rather a lot of fun with our Irish jig, Islay Adventures, Highland Hijinks and “Trans Tasman Tour.”

• Highlight – For it would be finally cracking open the Whisky Exchange’s Sukhinder Singh’s Cask Strength Trio, carefully selected for our ladies to be affordable yet fabulous!
• Runners up – The Islay Adventures were a terrific variation on Laguvlin whereas purely for the inventive theme, Northern Lights with whiskies from Canada, Iceland and Sweden.

Our Original Club

Not to be outdone, our original club found a way to explore Repeats in new ways, including our very own Keshav & Anjan Prakash’s Vault Collection, a classic Scottish Trio,  Pedigree Malts, some standards plus different Sherry Expressions.

We also narrowed our focus to explore a Kavalan Solist Cask Night and Bruichladdich’s Port Charlotte 10 year MP5.  And fun with the packaging…

• Best discovery – A new independent bottler North Star
• Most fun – Shaking it up with a Bourbon Cocktail Hour in Bombay!

And other adventures?

Ooooh there were a few rather amusing nights with interesting whisky folks like Ireland’s Quiet Man with Michael Morris, Malt Maniac’s Krishna Nakula with some exceptional drams, IBHL’s master distiller Stuart Harvey, and The Vault’s Keshav Prakash. We had two minis evenings April and Aug, a special evening of just gins with the ladies.

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