Is single malt scotch whisky worse than it was when I first started drinking it, or have my tastes just changed? As I more often favour rum these days over whisky, it must to some extent be the latter – but I meanwhile believe that some of my former favourites really aren’t what they once were. I was interested to read this article which corroborated my suspicions about certain former favourites (such as Talisker, Highland Park and Lagavulin) having gone downhill.
Scotch was still emerging from a trough of (relative) unpopularity in 1989/90 when I started sampling it in earnest. I was still a student, and, after having been virtuously frugal during my first two years at university, I succumbed to an inadvisable profligacy in the third. A certain proportion of the debt I racked up was attributable to the couple of dozen single malts I sampled through that year. My provisional conclusion at the end of it: nearly all of them were delicious.
Frugality was thrust back upon me for some time afterwards while I paid off those debts. After belatedly clambering back into the black in the later ’90s I was fortunate to be able to afford some wonderful bottles of defunct malts, such as my very favourite, Port Ellen; before stocks dwindled further, while demand rose, ultimately pushing prices beyond my improved means.
After another lengthy spell when I consumed very little of the stuff, I have in recent years resumed my single malt habit of old in a small way. A counter-example to the whiskies that are worse then they used to be is good old dependable Glenmorangie 10 y.o. This was the first single malt I ever tried (my father had been given some, and let me have a tiny taste) and it’s still his favourite, and one I also enjoy to this day: I’m slowly working my way through a bottle and will be having a glass at the weekend.