All posts filed under “Whisky”

January 23, 2015

The best supermarket own-brand single malt whisky

Best supermarket single malt whisky

I love whisky – a little too much, as my wife would tell you – so writing a roundup of supermarket single malts for Lifehacker UK was a joy. No really; you might think own-brand whiskies would be vile – indeed, a couple of them were – but there were also some gems here.

Personally, if I find myself in Tesco or Sainsbury’s I’m going to pick up their Speyside, if I find myself in Waitrose I’ll reach for the Highland, and if I find myself in Asda I’m going to turn on my heel and walk out the door because damn those things were nasty…

(If you like whisky too, or even if you just think you should and want to find out more, you could try listening to my podcast, Scotch.)

January 18, 2015

Ice

I buy bags of ice – not being sufficiently well-off to afford a contraption that makes it, but being sufficiently fond of taking my whisky on the rocks that I can’t keep up by making it in trays – and a thought often tickles me when I reach into one.

Sometimes, you see, I drop a chunk of ice on the floor, and at that point, of course, it’s useless. I don’t want to pick it up and drop it in my glass, and it will melt into a puddle of water when I chuck it in the fridge. And the thought is: what I bought was a transient state of matter. Most times at the supermarket, you buy stuff – even if what you’re really buying is some chemical energy that you’ll process once you eat it rather than some immutable gobs of matter. But with ice, you specifically buy the state the matter is in.

This thought can appear to be lousy with resonances and heady with import when you are topping up your ice for a second glass of whisky, which coincidentally is when you’re most likely to drop some ice cubes on the floor.