My first thought for Old Year's Night is to head north to Edinburgh, rather than have an Irish whiskey, so to Johnnie Walker (website) it was, and their 40.0% Black Label. This is a blended whisky of single malt and grain whiskies that is aged in sherry casks for 12 years before bottling. Many years ago, during a visit to my brother when he lived full-time in Brussels, we tried to find seats at a favourite bar there La Terrasse (website), which I talked about last year (blog), however, it was packed! So we went to another nearby bar, many years ago that is, where, in addition to drinking whichever Belgian beer we were drinking (circa 25 years ago, sorry I don't remember which beer 😉), a young lad was trying to get people to sample 3 different types of Johnnie Walker whisky, I'm guessing Red, Black and Green Labels. Anyway, my brother doesn't drink whisky, so I had double helpings, and I think the lad was just happy someone was accepting drinks from him. 😁 I remember enjoying myself...
Now, despite reviewers these days suggesting that Diageo owning Johnnie Walker has led to it being less of a whisky, adding colour and blandness, I was still impressed at being able to buy a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label for just £22, so I went for it. And I'm not a tightwad, it's just difficult to buy a decent variety of whisky/whiskey where I live (most of my more interesting whiskey drinking is of whiskies bought online), there's my defence!
