Andrew Dubber     

We had people over for dinner tonight — none of whom had ever met each other. Jo’s a kiwi who works at a Go-Kart track here in Birmingham, Jonathan’s a young English lad who’s been living in Poland, and was crashing on our couch until he found somewhere more pleasant to stay — and Clutch is a Scottish theatre set builder who sings and plays in the band (X) is greater than (Y).

Clutch is a fellow whisky enthusiast, and brought around a few bottles to sample before and after dinner, and over the course of six hours, a large vege roast dinner with some very good vegetarian haggis, and a few episodes of The Flight of the Conchords, we managed to work our way through (er…) seven measured single shots of whisky. All of them different.

We decided to work our way up the the Lagavulin, which is, for both of us, the favourite. But neither of us are confident tasters, merely enthusiastic amateurs.

We began with something moderate, just to get the palate working. The first was the Glenlivet, which is very nice, without being particularly challenging.

Second was one of Clutch’s: the Old Pulteney. A little more character and a little more crisp.

Then we had dinner, during which we just ate and talked.

We followed the main course with a Scapa, which I’ve spoken about here recently. A bit sweet, leading up to a dessert of apple and berry crumble with cream. Worked very nicely together.

After dessert, the Ardbeg (pronounced, I learned this evening, Ard-veg, because of the Celtic ‘b’), which Michael Jackson wrote smelled of tar-covered rope (really?!), but which I thought was just a bit more complex and interesting.

We then sat down to watch an episode of Flight of the Conchords, which Clutch and Jo both seemed to enjoy (and which I really love). For the first episode, we had a very special selection: The Glenmorangie Quinta Ruban, matured in port barrels, which gives it a really lovely, rich flavour. It’s dark and has so much body.

I wanted to say ‘oranges’ when I first smelled it, but immediately thought that was a bit daft… but I should trust my nose a little more: that’s exactly what the whisky guild thinks too. It kind of stole the show.

There was a little of the MacAllan 15 year old left, so Clutch and I polished that off — just shy of a full single measure each left. Very nice indeed, and even though I only had a very small (200ml) bottle of that, it did take me till the very end to appreciate it properly. A real grower.

And finally, on our third episode of Conchords for the evening, we treated ourselves to the Lagavulin 16 year old, which is just superb.

The Ledaig, Cragganmore, Jura, Talisker and Oban were left on the shelf, and Clutch has a few particular favourites that wouldn’t fit in his backpack on the way over. So there’s more work to be done.

And even though we drank throughout the evening, and 7 whiskies sounds like rather a lot, this was actually around the same alcohol consumption as two and a half 200ml glasses of wine each, which I don’t think is particularly unreasonable for a six hour evening with a large meal.

And the flavours were just sensational, for the most part. That Quinta Ruban was lovely and the range of developing tastes over the course of the evening really enriched the whole experience.

That, along with yummy food, good company and good music (Humphreys and Keen’s The Overflow and a range of kiwi music classics), made for a great evening in.

We might have to make another night of it.