Taste at Home – Virtual Whisky Tasting with Great Drams #Blog
Victoria Hayes
2nd October 2020
Taste at Home Continues with our second adventure into finding the very best of Cheshire food and drink to enjoy in the comfort of our own homes.
Lockdown quite literally entirely shut down some businesses however we were impressed and excited by the amazing innovation of some super star local businesses. Finding new routes to traditional markets is difficult and the most successful ones are those who think outside the box.
Greg from Great Drams has always thought outside the box. He has crafted an impressive career from his genuinely beautiful and some what nerdy love of all things Whisky.
His business started as a humble blog with an slightly underwhelming readership of three…his father in law, his wife and himself! But with his tenacity, depth of knowledge and total commitment to a story telling experience with brand commentary his blog has exploded to a monthly readership of 35,000 fans. Awarded UK Food and Drink blog of the year in 2017, it’s not just Taste Cheshire who think he’s rather wonderful. His Whisky knowledge has also been shared in the format of a brilliant book, THE GREATDRAMS OF SCOTLAND by Greg Dillon.
(An excellent Christmas present for the Whisky lover in your family) 
Now, I can imagine some of you wondering how a whisky company can really be a Cheshire company, let me explain. Great Drams is no longer just a blog, They work with Whisky maturation warehouses and distilleries to both unearth rare casks of whisky that would not normally make it to market but also more recently they have been formulating their own blends to create limited edition special releases. These have been so successful that Greg’s lovely wife Kirsty is now also a director of the ever expanding business.
Every product is limited edition, a finite amount of it will ever be produced and bottled, its non chill filtered, of natural colour and it is all exclusively available from Great Drams based in their lovely Cheshire home.
It’s these limited edition special releases we are now comfortably sipping in the comfort of our own home. Sitting ready at the laptop to begin our Taste at Home experience, a Virtual Whisky Tasting.
Let me walk you through how it works, Upon booking the lovely folk at Great Drams send you out a pack of Whiskies to taste along with. The Regular pack contained 5 x25ml measures for £30 and you can upgrade the packs depending on whether you are tasting alone or with friends or family at home.
Close to the date of the tasting you then receive an email with the information on it regarding the Zoom meeting.
Through lockdown I’m sure many of you got familiar with Zoom, it’s a brilliant forum for these kind of events, you can mute your microphone and just sit back and listen, you can unmute and chirp in with questions, or the more shy among us, like Briony and I could chip in through the text chat.
Joining us on the tasting last night were twenty two lovely folk, some were novices like us, some experts, but all of us settled in to enjoy a little time with our engaging host.
Greg has a casual conversational style which draws you in, fun anecdotes and stories from his whisky life pepper the conversation so you never feel overwhelmed with facts. That said, we both came away having learned more than we realised about both these fabulous whiskies and the wonderful world of whisky in general.
During our virtual tasting we actually tried all four styles of Whisky and we learnt the difference between malt whisky which is made in batches and grain whisky made in 10 stories high continuous stills.
We also learned that you should try a whisky neat initially so that you can taste what they call the distiller’s intent, the flavour profile they were going for and then you can add water to taste afterwards. Greg is actually a professional judge of Whiskies for events such as the People’s Choice Spirit Awards. For those judging’s, they dilute with water by about 20%.
But the excellent advice we heard was start with a little water, you can always add more, but you can’t take it away, Don’t flood it!
Other top tips included, “any glass will do!”, “Whisky goes with everything”, don’t forget to warm up your palate and nose first with a deep sniff and a quick taste and of course most importantly, “As long as you smile when you drink it, it’s a good Whisky.”!
As part of the At Home Tasting we sampled these whiskies:
Port Dundas Limited Edition Single Grain Scotch Whisky – ONE LAST BOTTLE LEFT
Here you have a bottle of whisky from a now-silent distillery, which means there is not only no production there any more, but the whole site has now been torn down so no more Port Dundas whisky will ever be produced.
Blended Cask Series Batch 02 Limited Edition
This was Super Smooth, with apple orchard fruit, and hints of vanilla, aged 7 years.
Blended Cask Series Batch 03 12 Year Old Limited Edition – 27 bottles left
This fabulous Whisky has just won a DOUBLE gold star awards at the Great Taste Awards, aged in ex sherry casks, we called this the perfect Autumn Whisky.
Knockdhu Single Cask Single Malt Scotch Whisky
Aged in Ruby Port Barriques, this one has a slightly pinkish colour to it, which shows they leave the natural colour alone. Chocolate and berry notes, this is rich, earthy and handsome (much like the ideal man!)
Christmas 2020 Special Release Single Cask Single Malt Scotch Whisky – 30 bottles left
Finally the superstar of our tasting, Christmas in a glass, the second ever Christmas limited edition is set to sell out even faster than the first, don’t worry, I already ordered mine! It has almost a slight sherry taste to it, which conjures Christmas cakes in our minds. One to share with those you love this Christmas no matter how bizarre this year has been.
We learned so much last night that I have realised it’s probably not practical to try and share it all here, but over and above that we had so much fun!
A Virtual Tasting is a great way to try something new, ask the “silly” questions, and you can have it as a private event for one or share it with your partner or “bubble”.
We thoroughly enjoyed spending a little time in Greg Dillions whisk-ily wonderful world, and we absolutely recommend that you too give it a try.
The next virtual tasting where you can help choose their next Whisky release is on October 15th. The one after, is all Awarded and Archived whiskies, in which you will try the highest independently rated and awarded whiskies to date, including at least two you can no longer buy! That one is on October 30th, both start at 7pm and you can sign up on the Great Drams website today, but places are limited, so hurry.
Greg is also available for private tasting events and is always happy to talk whisky with anyone.
We thank him so much for this fabulous Taste at Home experience and offer him our personal Five Gold Stars for a wonderful evening.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Private: GreatDrams
With nearly a decade working with the whisky industry, GreatDrams is all about bringing great, limited edition whisky to the North West.
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