Pricey Scotches....Eric Felton's WSJ Article

Eric Felton does a weekly article for the Wall Street Journal entitled "How's Your Drink". This week's column, entitled Expensive Tastes concerns 30 year old scotches. As a scotch drinker for quite a few years, I've had quite a few different scotch whiskies in my day. Probably the priciest ever was Johnnie Walker Blue Label, which is a blend as opposed to a single malt. Anyway, I found the column interesting, especially when I read the musical comparison made below. Trane is one of my favorites, and though I don't listen to Johnny Hartmann often, I do have a couple of Hartmann CD's, one of which is the Hartmann / Coltrane collaboration.

• "What happens when you take a phenolic, tarry and medicinal whisky and let it soak up 30 years of fruit from sherry casks? I wondered if the result might be incoherent or even a little pathetic, like a declawed mouser. But no, the 30-year-old Laphroaig is neither befuddled nor enfeebled. All the character and flavor of the original is there, joined flawlessly with a deep sherried sweetness. It's the whisky equivalent of the improbable pairing of the fiery and uncompromising saxophonist John Coltrane with the velvety baritone of balladeer Johnny Hartman. If I had to pick a few records to keep me company on a desert island, the Coltrane-Hartman disc would be among them; if I had to choose a desert-island whisky, the Laphroaig 30 would be it."

I think maybe Tuesday, I'll go by a local bar that stocks about 30 different single malts. If they have the Laphroaig 30, I'll try it.

PS If anyone has trouble with the WSJ link because of subscription requirements, let me know and I'll forward or post the whole article.