Now that! was a fun weekend. The misses and I spent most of the weekend in The City. We stayed at the Warwick Regis Hotel which was built in 1913 and only two blocks from Union Square. Nice little place with a staff that really took care of us, I would recommend this place to anyone.
The weather in San Francisco was beautiful Saturday and Sunday while we were there so we walked from our hotel to the Palace Hotel where the event was being held. I love the buzz of The City and people watching, nothing compared to San Jose. I was actually quite surprised at the number of art galleries and places selling cigars on Geary St., almost ended up bringing home another piece of art from the Vargas gallery. The Palace Hotel was gorgeous inside!
I knew we were in the right place when I saw all the guys walking around in kilts. We arrived a little early so we had a chance to tour the hotel and all of its historic artifacts. Since we are Dram Club members we were allowed to enter the tasting event 1/2 an hour before the general public, this gave us a chance to taste through the entire Macallan and Highland Park lineup. We ended up spending a good 30-45 minutes talking shop to the rep at the table.
We finished our tasting at about 9:00 p.m., started at 5:00, and we were feeling great with a nice little buzz on. Having tried some great Scotch and having a much clearer picture of what our current Scotch taste profile is we took a cab back to our Hotel. The next morning we met a few folks in our Hotel who were suffering from the tasting event, not us, we headed off to act like tourists for the remainder of the morning.
My top three of the night, ranked in order:
1. Highland Park 18 yo Isle of Orkney Single Malt
2. The Balvenie 21 Port Wood
3. Highland Park 25 yo Isle of Orkney Single Malt
Some of my other favorites in no particular order:
Highland Park 'Beltramo's Sherry Cask'
Highland Park 30 yo Isle of Orkney Single Malt
The Macallan Cask Strength Distillary bottling
The Macallan Fine Oak 18 yo
The Balvenie 12 yo Double Wood
Talisker 175 anniverary Isle of Skye
Talisker 1992 Distillers Edition
Glenfiddich 18 yo Ancient Reserve
Glenfiddich 21 yo Gran Reserva (aged in rum casks)
