Sunday, June 15, 2008

Online Presents/Presence


The internet is a crazy place; wonderful, but crazy.

This whisky blog started as a daily post of tasting notes for the benefit of friends who couldn't come over to our flat in London to drink from our 30 or so bottles. It should have lasted only as many days and been read by those few people. But the world wide wondernet brought me 10 times more liquid and a thousand times more readers. Thanks to all that brought Dr. Whisky into your homes and to all who brought your spirit into my belly. Cheers!

You may have noticed the irregularity of Dr. Whisky over the past month and I want to assure you that it was not due to waning interest in drinking whisky and sharing distillery info and tasting impressions. It was more due to a state of homelessness since April 1 2008, when K and I left our jobs and flat in London to, we thought, move to New York. A long and unexpected waiting period followed while we waited for my visa to be properly submitted and processed. During this time we stayed busy but also maxed out on favours from friends and family. THANK YOU and SORRY.

I fear the irregularity of Dr. Whisky's posts will continue for some time so in addition to the links I urge you to visit on the left (GET INFORMED BY OTHERS), there are a few recent discoveries and long time faves that I must share with you.

Caskstrength
The first is a new blog started by a guy with whom I crossed paths on a few occasions on our mutual journeys of malt discovery in London. Very nerdy and often funny, it is worth a read.

For Scotch Lovers.com
is a whisky community thing that was started recently in America and it seems to be working better than Buxton's Whisky Channel, especially if the goal is to create a community rather than a platform for the constant reiteration one man's views. It is called For Scotch Lovers and was started by two scotch lovers, and, while it is still in its infancy, I can see it being a great place for info, commentary, shopping, and whisky nerd fora. As with anything like this, its the people that can make it succeed or fail so hopefully people continue to get involved.

The next two are food blogs.

Sku's Recent Eats
The first is a regular read for me and although it more often than not leaves me with major food envy, it is a great read and an invaluable source when hunting for cheap eats in L.A. Sku also does something called Whisky Wednesdays which is always well researched, informative and often funny.

My Life in Food
The second is a straighforward and charming food blog a friend of mine recently started in order to, well, show off her new iPhone? My Life in Food is fun, straightforward, short-winded, and also manages to present the city of Toronto in all its multiculinarism. Or whatever. I am sure everyone has a friend doing this kind of thing, but this is MY friend, and it is uniquely HER kind of thing.

More whisky soon, I swear. And I imagine I will start sharing some of my bar and restaurant experiences in NYC pretty soon, too.

3 comments:

KSM said...

More whisky soon, I swear. And I imagine I will start sharing some of my bar and restaurant experiences in NYC pretty soon, too.

We look forward to it.

Since everyone follows blogs with RSS readers these days, and since your tasting notes are so entertaining ("The smell of cleaning agents, stomach acid. Iodine.... Finishes like sucking on a smoker's fingers." got me to run right out and try my now favorite value, Bowmore 12yo), you really won't lose too many readers due to an irregular posting schedule.

Joel Harrison & Neil Ridley said...

thanks for the big-up. I'm glad we can be nerdy AND funny! Have a great time in NYC and we'll pop in and see ya for a wee dram next time we are over. cheers. www.caskstrength.net

Anonymous said...

Good luck with the new directions.