Like I mentioned in this simultaneously posted blog, whisky (and whiskey) aficionados are on the increase in Calgary. With whiskies having similar characteristic features to wine, such as nose, palate, and finish, it is increasingly common to find gentle folks of supreme quality and taste becoming more of a connoisseur of these complex beverages. (I’m talking mostly about myself, you understand.)
Bob Edwards, Whisky imbiber
Since 1974, the Bob Edwards Award has been presented to a recipient recognized for excellence in journalism. This year’s recipient will be the provocative and entertaining Mary Walsh. The Bob Edwards Award Gala and the Bob’s Eye Opener Scotch Tasting will run concurrently on Thursday, November 8 in celebration of the occasion.
For those who don’t know, Bob Edwards was, most notably, a news man and humorist from Calgary’s early history. The Calgary Eye Opener was his weekly newspaper, published frequently (though with some intermittent breaks when his notorious imbibing carried him astray) in the first two decades of the 20th century. You can read more about Bob in this column by Jeremy Klaszus from FFWD in 2008, and this lengthy biography from Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online.
But on with the booze, shall we? Being a native Scot himself, it seems very appropriate for this namesake event to be a Scotch tasting. You will be treated to tastings of several expressions of Glenfarclas scotch whisky, crafted by the same family for almost 150 years. In addition to the more customary 12, 15, 17, 21 and 25 year guaranteed age Glenfarclas whisky, you’ll also have a chance to taste their whisky aged for 40 years. Malt Advocate magazine rates this whisky 95/100 and WhiskyNotes says of it, “one of the best opportunities to try such an old whisky.”
With tickets at $100 each, this is an excellent opportunity to savour whisky you might not otherwise. Mary Walsh herself will make a brief appearance on her way to the Gala. Taking place in the CP Pavilion at the Palliser Hotel, this will be a very special event, honouring Mary Walsh, Bob Edwards, some of the finest whisky you may try this year, and raising funds for The Calgary Library Foundation. You can buy tickets to the Gala or to Bob’s Eye Opener Scotch Tasting online right now.
The generosity of the Calgary Library Foundation has delivered unto me the distinct opportunity to give away one pair of tickets to Bob’s Eye Opener Scotch Tasting to a random MrYYC reader! Here’s how you can be entered into the draw:
Contest closed! Congratulations to Rosemary, who won by random draw from a blog comment entry. Thank you to everyone who entered. Tickets are still available for next week’s tasting.
- Leave a comment on this blog with something interesting about Glenfarclas whisky, or the distillery or region from which it originates (said factoid must NOT be a duplicate of any previously submitted factoid) (1 entry)
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Adding water to your Glenfarclas whiskey isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it can bring out the true flavor.
Here is an interesting page about the Glenfarclas profile and trivia. I especially love the fact that they hired grey parrots to shout out ‘Buy Pattisons’ and it worked!
http://www.maltmadness.com/whisky/glenfarclas.html
The Glanfarcias Distillary is a family run business and located in Banffshire, Scotland .
The production capacity of the Glenfarclas distillery is 3 MILLION litres of (pure) alcohol a year. That’s a lot of alcohol!!
Glenfarclas was one of the first distilleries to open a visitor center, which they opened in 1973.
The mash turn at Glenfarclas is 10 m wide with a 16.5 tonne capacity—probably the largest in the industry. Thanks for the opportunity to win!
Glenfarclas may be the ideal Scotch for Calgary cowboys because John Grant, whose descendants still run the distillery, was a prominent farmer who bred champion Aberdeen Angus cattle and operated several Speyside farms. He took over the Rechlerich Farm, on the Ballindalloch Estate, when it became vacant in 1865, as a staging post between his farm in Glenlivet and the market in Elgin. Rechlerich Farm was renowned in the area for the Glenfarclas Distillery, which had been established in 1836 by the previous tenant farmer, Robert Hay, and had gone dormant on his death. As part of the deal Grant purchased the distillery for £511.19sd. According to a 2003 post on whiskymag.com, Glenfarclas Highland Cattle (an 8-year-old single-malt) was available at that time in Germany in a 3-litre bottle for €77. The Germans refer to it as “Highland Cattle von Glenfarclas”.
Glenfarclas translates as meaning valley of the green grass.
I’ve been to Glenfiddich Distillery but missed out on this one!
Glenfarclas is a Speyside single malt, which means it is produced in the Strathspey region, the area around the River Spey in northeastern Scotland. “Strath” means “valley” in Scottish Gaelic, so Strathspey refers to the Spey river valley.
Glenfarclas produced the first commercially available cask strength whisky in the UK.
Speyside, which is where Glenfarclas is produced, has the greatest number of distilleries of any of the whisky-producing areas of Scotland.
For a while around 1850 Glenfarclas was also known under the name ‘Glenlivet’.
Oldest Glenfarclas to date comes from Cask #1674 November 20, 1953 — 58yo. Wow, pick me to taste that one please!
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