Leslieville Scotch Society

Society members had all but resigned themselves to missing this year’s Whisky Live, until some last-minute passes were acquired by Rod, and a contingent was dispatched.  It has to be said, a somewhat disappointing experience compared with 2007’s event.  Not very many interesting or unusual whiskies to be had; although to be fair, we didn’t participate in any of the master classes.

The biggest thumbs-down went to the Tullibardine booth, or more specifically, the guy who was pouring at the Tullibardine booth.  Now, Tullibardine is one of our favourite new discoveries, and we have purchased many of their offerings through the LCBO. We were excited to see a couple of new expressions at the booth, and were dismayed when presented with what could not have been more than a half-ounce pour for our two-ticket payment.  I understand that there is an official “pour size” for the event, and that Tullibardine may have been new on the scene.  However, given that ALL the other booths were eschewing the official regulator caps in favour of normal human-sized pours, and that the particular cap this gent used was clearly fault, it left a bad taste in our mouths that he refused to play along with the rest of the distilleries at the show.

The best booth?  Hands down, Glenfiddich.  First of all, those guys knew how to pour drinks.  But more than that, the 15 and especially the 18 year old were both very, very good whiskies!    Runner-up would have to be Glenmorangie, largely because they were pouring healthily from their store of Ardbeg 10, which we haven’t been able to get here for some time.  Good news is, it’s coming back to the LCBO this month.

Via Allegro had their usual food-pairing setup, although the scotches on offer were somewhat more pedestrian than last time (Cragganmore 12 and Lagavulin 16 instead of Rosebank 22 and Talisker 25).  A”name that scotch” blind tasting was fun too, although I’m still waiting for them to call me with my prize.

All in all, it was worth going, at least just for the last portion.  But the best part of the evening was returning to Leslieville, where we were free to pour whatever size drinks we wanted, from a bar that had better bottles on offer than most at the show.