Twenty years of (not) collecting whisky

While Spirit of Toronto was-and-continues-to-be a labour of love, as far as whisky collecting goes I’m actually quite lousy at it, almost as bad as whisky investing if I’m being honest.

Bottling codes, fine print, closures, seals, importers of record, copywriting, fonts, and tax strips are but some of the minutiae that serious collectors use to determine the origin and value of a whisky, and in truth I rarely have the patience to drill down to this level of serious dusty hunting. (Though I’ve gotten pretty good at detecting fakes – pro tip, experience really is the best teacher!)

But in my defense, any collection I’m accused of having is by accident, not by design. I plead guilty to a case of deferred consumption, though I’m painfully aware that time is running out to put the full complement of these bottles to their intended use. Here again I plead guilty, but to that nagging question that haunts many of you: what is the right occasion to open your precious thing?

Some would argue that opening a shiny bottle is in and of itself an occasion. The experienced collector knows better, having seen how an unopened bottle transforms itself into a talisman, transfixing its owner’s steady gaze, as ‘having’ a particular whisky steadily outweighs the original objective of ‘drinking’ it.

Again, guilty as charged! Thankfully, celebrating twenty years of Spirit of Toronto earlier in May gave us the opportunity to right some of these wrongs, as we tore the caps off an assortment of bottles from some of our favourite distilleries.

Likewise I look forward to doing the same next week for the tasting of our 20th Anniversary Edition, a collection of whisky that tells the story of Spirit of Toronto and our journey as whisky lovers and collectors (albeit begrudgingly.)

But despite poring over which bottles to open – from baller picks like Port Ellen and Ardbeg, and a 30-year-old Glenfarclas, to sleepers like Ledaig and the sadly defunct Bowmore Cask Strength – the feeling that the original lineup was incomplete kept gnawing at me. What about Highland Park 25 Year Old, my very first whisky purchase, or Oban, my introduction to single malt whisky? Or Macallan, because Macallan? The tyranny of choice, it’s a thing.

Too long, didn’t read – so I’ve made a last minute substitution, swapping out the Longrow 21 Year Old for one of the best and rarest bottlings of Talisker out there, the Talisker 20 Year Old “sherry cask whisky” at a natural cask strength of 62% abv, bottled during an age of innocence for ourselves as whisky lovers, as well as the whisky industry at large.

Like the most special bottles in any whisky lover’s collection, there’s a long and winding story associated with this Talisker, as much as the others that we’ll be tasting next week. But it’s also a holy grail for the true Talisker fan, and I look forward to sharing it with like-minded drammers on Saturday November 30.