Status of my Malt Mission On Januari 1, 1997 I officially started my mission
to find the best single malt in Scotland. I've learned a great deal during my quest for 'the holy quaich' and had a great time to boot. It's a classic quest; with every dram I sample the original goal seems to become more transparent and harder to reach. I may have to re-define my objectives so this is a good moment to review what has happened over the last few years.
It all started with my first dram of Lagavulin 16 in 1991; Phase 0 = 1991 - 1996
After my amazing discovery
of single malt whisky in the summer of 1991, I caught a mild form of malt madness. Nothing too serious; I didn't keep any notes on my experiences and was pretty much content with enjoying a few old favorites like Lagavulin 16 and Talisker 10 every now and then. Especially in the beginning I spent more time mixing cocktails than sampling single malts. Around 20 different favorite malts phased into and out of my collection which still consisted maily of liqueurs, tawny port, blends, vatted malts and Irish whiskies. Value was a big issue; most bottles I purchased did cost me less than 30 Euro's.
By the end of what I've later designated as 'Phase 0' some 40 different single malts had passed through my collection and I've tried about 60 others at parties and in bars.
The malt market in Holland wasn't very
developed yet so I got to sample a large number of the affordable single malts that made it to our shores. Around 1995 this started to change. The interest in (and availability of) single malts was slowly growing in
Holland - and so was the Internet. I decided to make a career change and put a few pages on the web to learn myself HTML. One of these pages was about single malts. Phase 1 = 1997 - 2001 After a couple of
years of dramming my condition worsened. I started to add some pages to my site and people started to send me enthousiastic recommendations for new amazing discoveries. These provocations of my curiosity forced me to
start looking beyond my old favorites and my old price limit of +/- 40 Euro's.
I started taking serious notes in my Liquid Log
and my Little Black Book. Halfway through this phase blends started to become scarce and eventually disappeared completely from my shelves. The site was growing into its current form and the foreign correspondents
started to fuel my malt madness with their tasting reports.During the first phase of my mission I've 'officially' sampled exactly 200 different single malts. This means I've sampled them by the bottle. I've
'unofficially' sampled over 100 other malts as well, but when I started out I figured that tastings by the dram didn't produce reliable results. As a result, only 200 of the more than 300 different single malts I've
tasted during phase 1 are featured in my black book and the
list of ratings.
Lately, I've come to doubt my convictions on this matter.
That's why I will change my approach during Phase 2 = 2002 - ???? Actually, I still have to collect my thoughts and notes on this issue.
The things I've learnt over the last five years have forced me to re-think some of my
assumptions and opinions on malt matters. What's more, the steadily growing input of the foreign correspondents has pushed Malt Madness way beyond the purely personal website it was when I started recording my
experiences and discoveries.That's why I've decided to embark on a brand new web project and drag the foreign correspondents with me. Malt Maniacs
will be be a seperate website from Malt Madness, offering a more 'global' perspective. I felt I needed to create a new concept to make sure the correspondents get the 'room' they deserve. Items like the E-Reports, the E-signments and the Matrix will be transferred in one way or another to the new site. Malt Madness will remain my personal platform and I plan to keep expanding it after Malt Maniacs is launched.
These fundamental changes basically mean I will have to start building two brand new websites from scratch. I don't want to end up with a mouse-arm again like a few years ago, so it will take quite some time before
the new sites will be published. Especially for the malt-crazed members of the mailinglist, rough-cuts of the first few issues of Malt Maniacs will be published on a secret location. Subscribe
if you want to remain informed. Would you like to become a Certified Malt Maniac yourself?
If a no-pay, high risk job at the front lines of the free
whisky world appeals to you, please send me some information about yourself, including:
- Your Location
- Your Top 10 with ratings
- The number of different single malts you've tasted
That's it for now - I've gotta go work on the new sites... Stay tuned! |
