We’ve been doing a “Scotch Club” with people from work for a while now. We hold it roughly every other Friday night, and your membership dues are a bottle of Scotch (of your choice) when it’s your turn. It’s a great way to experience a lot of different whiskies for a low investment.
Well, this week was the Vancouver Hopscotch Festival, which is an annual celebration of Scotch (and now other spirits and beer). They have a few events like whisky seminars, hosted dinners, and finally the two big tasting nights. A group of Scotch Club regulars headed down there last night, and it was a TOTAL blast.
Things started off with the most insane cab driver I’ve ever met, this guy deserves a whole post to himself but highlights included his idea of duct-taping tinfoil to his girlfriend so she’d be struck by lightning, having some kind of ray to zap passing cars with that would disintegrate them and allowing him to step in as the savior for now-carless people who’d need a cab, and random insults towards us, his customers (to my bald friend Neil: “hey that guy looks like a penis!”). Mixed in with this hilarity was evidence of a darker side, with random threats to other drivers and his extremely dubious rape jokes. We should have realized that he was insane and/or high when he stopped the cab in the middle of a very busy Seymour Street when we hailed him, almost causing a pileup!
Anyway, we made it there in one piece. General impressions of the festival were very good. It was well-organized, with tons of staff and inconspicuous security (who we saw in action, more on that later).

My current favourite single malt - Lagavulin 16
- Some of the more rare/expensive whiskies run out fairly quickly so get there as early as you can and start with the good stuff! The Ardbeg Uigedail and Johnnie Walker Blue Label both ran out in the first hour or so, luckily I was able to try both. The food was almost all gone a couple of hours in as well.
- The music sucked. It was just a standard lounge band and was way too loud in the main hall (the stage was off in the food tent and they piped the music into the main area). I’d have preferred something more in keeping with the theme of the show, which is of course mostly Scotch whiskies, and Dr Hook covers don’t really seem to fit. The pipe band they had walk around at one point was fantastic though.
- I love beer too. I felt that merging beer and whisky tastings into one night isn’t a good idea. I would have loved to walk around tasting all the different beers but only have enough money and alcohol tolerance to stick with one thing. It would be amazing if they did whiskies and spirits one week, and beer the next.
- Security, like I said before, was discreet and when we saw them intervene they handled the (minor) situation very well. Some guy was drunk off his face and started trying to conduct the aforementioned pipe band, and a security guy appeared from nowhere and very gently got him to back off. It ended up with an awesome drunken high-five (which Ryan got on video!) so even he seemed to appreciate it!
- That dude’s the exception to the rule, you don’t get that drunk at these things. Don’t plan on driving or anything, but the amounts they give you are pretty small and by the end of the night I think I’d had the equivalent of 4 or 5 full-size shots of whisky, spread over 4+ hours.
- Take a camera! I can’t believe I forgot one.
Tastings
Ah yes, the whisky Here are my impressions. Keep in mind I know nothing. If this list looks a bit pedestrian, it’s because there are still some famous and basic whiskies that I wanted to try before I jump into the lesser-known and foreign drinks.
Highland Park 18 years old – The first one I tried was one of my favourites of the night. Very smooth, with a delicious almost creamy scent. Extremely classy. Later on in the evening I tried the Highland Park 15 years old as well, and it was nearly as good. I’d never tried Highland Park before but they’re one of my favourites now.
Macallan 18 years old – My first ever bottle of Scotch whisky was a Macallan 10 and I found (and still find) it to be extremely bland and flavourless, basically it’s just a bottle of alcohol to me. Macallan has such a huge reputation though that sometimes I find myself really WANTING to like it (ah, the power of marketing!), so I made sure to try the 18 year which has probably the best reviews of their lineup. And again I was disappointed… it’s SO light, more flavour than the 10 year for sure but just too insubstantial for me.
Johnnie Walker Gold Label and Blue Label – I only tried my first JW (green label) recently and really liked it, so was looking forward to trying the more expensive varieties. They’re both wonderful, with their own characters. I think if I’m honest I might have enjoyed the gold label a bit more than the blue.
Ardbeg Uigedail – Strong medicinal scent to this one, didn’t really come through in the taste though happily. Has a big impact when swallowed! Very good.
Glenmorangie Quinta Ruban -Quite sweet and fruity, a little too sweet for me I think.
Bruichladdich Waves – A surprise, one of my favourites of the night! Peaty with a strong flavour and very spicy. I liked this one a lot.
Bruichladdich PC7 -A lot like Waves, just turned up a notch. Very good, but difficult to find and expensive; Waves gives you most of what the PC7 does for half the price, and there’s no old guy in a baseball cap on the packaging as an extra benefit!
Connemara – The only Irish whisky I tried. I didn’t like it; it had an underlying hard-to-identify unpleasant taste that I found got in the way of the other flavours.
Ileach Cask Strength – This was good stuff! I added a few drops of water (the only time I added water to anything for the whole evening) on the advice of the kilted chap behind the desk who poured it for me, and it was very good; hot and spicy with a strong kick to it as you’d expect.
Amrut Indian Peated Single Malt – I’ll be honest and say I don’t recall much about the Amrut; I remember thinking it was flavourful without standing out so much from the crowd.
Glenkinchie 12 years old – This was a freebie in the entertaining seminar given by Michael Nicolson at the end of the night, and this was a nice surprise too! I guess it shouldn’t have been, this is one of the “classic six” after all and after tasting, it’s reputation is well-deserved. Light in flavour but with a hot finish, I liked this one a lot.
Whiskies I wanted to try but ran out of time/money/capacity: BenRiach Curiositas, BenRiach Tawny Port Finish, Bowmore 18Yr Islay malt, Miyagikyo 12YO, Oban 14YO, The Tyrconnell, any of the Isle of Arran scotches.