The Auld Alliance

Popped into The Auld Alliance with the girlfriend after a long day at work. Its dark wood interiors instantly makes guests feel cosy and more or less at ease. This is a full whisky bar. The menu selection is plentiful with independent bottlers too. Silver Seal expressions are currently exclusive to The Auld Alliance. There're a few independent bottlers who do good interpretations of some of my favorite single malts. Cadenhead does some pretty impressive ones.

The girlfriend and I needed alcohol first, not food. It's always fabulous to have her company and very intelligent opinions. I'm not a dessert person, so it feels very very odd to sit down and chat over cake and tea instead of drinks. I'm not into pretty interiors and tea trays and all those delicate afternoon porcelain and china. It's unsurprising that my closest girlfriends are all alcoholics appreciate a good dram every now and then. Sanity checks, we call these. 

Clearly it's not my first visit. I'm just writing because I haven't blogged about whisky for a while. Lest you think I've gone off it, wayyyyy no. It's just I can't be talking about whisky daily. Not that alcoholic. Drinking two drams every other day isn't that bad huh.

The extensive menu is too much to plough through at times. Often I randomly flip to a page and place a finger on a random line and see if the price of a glass shocks me. If it doesn't, I'll pick it. Each time I come by The Auld Alliance, I end up choosing glasses and not getting bottles. It isn't my home-ground lah. 

That evening, the girlfriend and I simply wanted to have a few drinks. Nothing crazy. Didn't have a specific want or a desired expression. So we decided to stick to tasting sets. The menu's got plenty of those. We chose what the menu termed as 'Old Malts 1' and 'Old Malts 2'.  

Spot the cute photo-bombs.

I skipped the usual Islay malts and took a Silver Seal set of Tomintoul 1968 45 y.o, Glenturret 1977 36 y.o, Highland Park 1984 30y.o and Caol Ila 1983 31 y.o. Only the Glenturret 1977 is new to me. Okay, its Famous Grouse doesn't count. The Silver Seal's expression was easy, as all Highland malts are. Am now curious to go grab a bottle of Glenturret in either a single cask 18y.o or a 1986 26y.o to taste it properly. 

Also sipped the girlfriend's tasting set of 1989s from Miltonduff, Mortlach, Glenburgie, and Bowmore. Quite a brave choice of distilleries for the 1989s. They're nicely put-together; the flavors flow into each other. The girlfriend didn't mind her set at all.

I dithered over tasting the 1989 SS Bowmore. It wouldn't taste like my usual Bowmore 25 y.o. I'm very fond of that. The Silver Seal Bowmore 1989 was a tad disappointing. The peat and rich oomph weren't present. It was fine, but not what I hoped for. Well, of course expressions can taste different depending on year of bottling and all that. Still. I did a double-take when the bottles were brought out for our viewing and photo-taking. Good lawwd. This 1989 Bowmore bottle belonged to Silver Seal's 'Whisky is Art' Collection (2014), and came with the most horrifying image on its label. *screams*

See said horrifying image above.