And that’s not without a reason.

Busy

Over the last couple of months I’ve not been blogging as much as before, and the simple reason for that is that I’ve not had the time/priority. A lot of DIY construction has been going on at home, which means the weekends were full (and then some). This also resulted in an abundance of chores and things to do during week nights and that, in turn, resulted in not much time for blogging.

Over the last couple of months I’ve also ended my editor-in-chief role for our whisky club’s magazine, which is a huge relief. I didn’t particularly enjoy having that role anymore because I couldn’t give it the time, attention and priority the magazine and the club deserved.

Generally a day of ‘hard labor’ insulating, wallpapering, sanding, painting and floor-laying results in me having a few beers with whoever helped me out that day. The consequence of that was that I have not been drinking much whisky at all. And, on top of that, when I did drink a dram I simply drank a dram. Contrary to properly assessing it and writing tasting notes.

I prefer these to be fun…

Get in or get out

After coming to the conclusion of me wanting to enjoy whisky more instead of it being a chore or ‘work-like’, I had to make a decision. This happened when the latest ‘De Kiln’ from our whisky club came in. In it the new editor-in-chief wrote a headline which loosely translates to ‘Whisky: get in or get out‘. While I will spare you the explanation of what he meant, it did get me thinking (a rarity, nowadays).

By not continuously writing tasting notes, I’ve actually enjoyed the drams I’ve had more. With the vast amount of samples I’m trying to get through I have to write tasting notes because that’s the purpose of them. Also, after one glass of something, the sample is gone.

This is different for bottle-shares, but these 3cl to 5cl ‘commercial’ samples are legion in my cupboard, and I don’t really enjoy them as much as I should. Some 90-point exceptions are there of course, but as soon as it gets to an 87 point dram, or something equally arbitrary, it’s just another dram and it feels like a chore.

Am I getting out?

No. I like whisky too much and I like (parts of) the whisky ‘world’ too much. I sincerely love discovering new drams and new flavors.

Am I shutting down the blog?

No. Although I won’t be reviewing everything I try anymore. I am going to focus on the outstanding drams. I am not going to spend precious time reviewing a lot of so-so whisky, just to get a review online.

What am I going to do then?

Focus, and slow down. Focus on quality over quantity, both in what I drink and what I write about. Slowing down in frequency and in intake. Drink better but less. Buy less, but not necessarily better since I’m pretty satisfied with the quality of booze I buy.

I also have to steer away from staples like the Talisker 10 I bought recently. It’s an amazing dram for the money, but I’m not likely to ever drink it.

And, with a third kid on the way, I doubt there’s going to be much spare time for whisky tasting anyway…

Sorry. Not Sorry.

Sorry if you read all through this rambling. It’s more of a contemplative post and I’ve not done these in a while. I just needed to get it out there.