WOW Report

This year's Whiskies of the World didn't seem as big or as good as last year's, with a smaller space and smaller selection (despite advertisements to the opposite), but I had fun anyway. I actually liked the set-up of one giant square ballroom with nothing much in the middle of the room, so you'd have to crowd in to get your samples of whisky, then you could step back into the middle of the room to enjoy it and talk with other people. (At most events it's either a long, snaking path of booths or else the middle of the room is cluttered with tables and chairs.) The minus of the set-up was that it was a pain to get to the whisky, so you could duck in and get one dram, but it was really hard to work your way through the selection of a distiller systematically. Thus I ended up having a lot less whisky than I'm used to at these events. There's no shame in that- I've sampled most everything in the room before and was only looking for the unique or new bottlings. I had the Balvenie 15-year single barrel, but they were out of the 21-year before I made it to their table. Damnit! I love me some Balvenie. My fun was hanging out with Marcia from Tablehopper (who is all about the bourbon), fellow booze writer Jordan Mackay, and bartenders Jimmy P., Jonny from Absinthe, Mr. Mojito David Nepove, Julio from Tommy's, Dominic of Bourbon & Branch and now Cantina, Duggan of Cantina, Erik from Slanted Door, and probably a few others that I forget. It will be interesting to see how this year's first Malt Advocate Whiskyfest in San Francisco stacks up to this event. Though I could easily attend several of these events each year, I'm not sure San Francisco is big enough for the both of them.