In case you missed it earlier this year, the History Channel will be rebroadcasting their “Modern Marvels” special on whisky on Saturday, November 8, 2008, @ 7:00 pm. The hour-long show covers the major distilling categories and travels to distilleries in Scotland, Ireland, Canada, Kentucky, Tennessee, and (yes) Colorado.
The show is both entertaining and informative. If you can handle seeing me being quoted occasionally throughout the show, then you might want to watch it (or DVR it so you can watch it later).
Hi John,
Just got finished watching the show, thanks for the heads up.
Slainte.
Louis
Louis,
Glad you were able to see it. I thought they did a decent job of it. (Although I thought they spent a lot of time on Jack Daniel’s in the beginning, but they sell a lot of whiskey so I can understand.)
John, I just saw the show for the second time last night on the History Channel, and saw it previous a few weeks before on a friend’s TIVO, skipping past the commercials. Very informative, and it reminded me of what a great whisky room the Brandy Library is. My only beef is that I would have liked to see one of the smaller Scottish distilleries featured like Bruichladdich. I thought the program ver-emphasized whisky production as a large scale industrial process rather than an artisan process (with the exception of the show’s inclusion of Stranahan’s, clearly a boutique distillery).
I’m inspired by the show to try the Colorado whisky – and technical question, how does the hybrid pot still/column work? In the end, it is still apparently a batch process, but does the column portion output rejoin a separate output condensed from the still or does all of the still output go thru the column. If the later, what is the point of the pot still?
Todd, yes the Brandy Library has a great display of whiskies for sure.
I offered my advice to to the producers (that they visit Bruichaddich talk to Bill Lumsden, John Glaser, Richard Paterson, go to Japan, etc.), but they had their own agenda.
I have not been to Stranahan’s, but the still looks like something from Armagnac and like something I saw John Hall doing at Forty Creek. (But I am only going on distant memory here.) Maybe Jess at Stranahan’s will be able to chime in on this thread. I’ll see what I can do.