Welcome to WhiskyDad

Welcome to my first blog and thank you for finding it and staying for long enough to read what I have to say. My name is Shane Kinloch and I am a dad who loves his whisky. I am not a whisky expert, journalist, professional sommelier or distiller; but I am more than just a whisky drinker.

I love whisky

I love the way it tastes. I love learning why it tastes the way it does. I love learning about the history of distilleries and the influence of politics and geography on the distilling process. I love examining the impressions that a whisky can leave me with and link them to one or more things that happened in the years it took to reach my glass. I love that making whisky takes a great deal of time, skill and passion and I appreciate that effort when I drink it.

So why write a blog?

Other than sharing my love of whisky, there is a very real reason for me to do this. Writing a blog about something I am passionate about, is a positive step for me to fight my own depression. Like millions of people the world over, I suffer from depression. One of the hardest things for me to do is find the motivation to do things other than sleep or just exist passively. I love writing, but just enjoying it isn't enough to motivate me to do it regularly. I hope that by combining my loves of whisky and writing in a blog, I can build and connect myself to a like-minded community that will encourage me to keep writing on my way to becoming well again and beyond.

Additionally, I hope this blog will legitimise my whisky habit and perhaps lead to cheaper whisky in the future. I can only dream.I am not a professional whisky critic or employed in any related field, so what qualifications do I have to write anything about whisky with any kind of authority? Well other than a passion for whisky and an ability to string more than two words together, nothing. Every expert in anything, knew nothing about their chosen field at some stage. I don't know if I will ever be considered a "whisky expert" but I am going to have fun learning about it.

Is it any different to other whisky blogs?

Well, it's the only whisky blog that I have written and I want WhiskyDad to be a little different to most of the whisky blogs and websites out there. For starters, I won't be reviewing whiskies in the traditional sense. I've had some experience writing reviews for more than a decade and one thing I noticed was the unfair emphasis given to a score by readers. Regardless of the scoring scale, most readers dismissed anything that scored below 70% as rubbish and were most interested in anything that scored in the 90s. Whisky is not immune to this bias and many people hold numerical scores from well-known critics such as Jim Murray and Dave Broom as gospel. I'm not saying you should ignore their reviews, not at all, all I am saying is you will miss out on tasting some truly unique and interesting whisky if you never try anything that scores less than 90 points. For this reason, I will not include numerical scores at all.

No bullshit

I am also a (relatively) normal person, not a Master Sommelier, so I will be reviewing whisky like a normal person. If I don't smell or taste something, I won't pretend that I do to match the tasting notes of someone else or what is written on the back of the bottle. As I smell and taste more whisky, I hope to improve my own personal sensory library and my tasting notes should reflect this over time. I want to show that noticing the nuances in whisky is not a black art, but something that can be learnt with practice and thus unnecessary to fake.

Real whisky

As a self-proclaimed 'normal person' I will attempt to review mostly whisky that is readily available to normal people. There will be a few bottles that are no longer produced or harder to find but most should be available from good bottleshops or online specialist retailers. Why? Well firstly, I don't have an unlimited budget and my wife would kill me if I spent a thousand dollars or more on a single bottle of whisky and secondly, what's the point of reviewing a whisky that your readers are unlikely to ever taste? It's a bit academic in my books and I would rather review something that you could try yourself and then share your own opinion with me. I also drink my collection; I don't buy whisky just to look at or to resell later at a profit. For me, whisky is a delicious drink, not an asset.

The bottom line about WhiskyDad

Ultimately, WhiskyDad is an inclusive blog that does not discriminate or judge how you enjoy your whisky. It is 'your whisky' and how you choose to drink or not drink it, is completely up to you. WhiskyDad discourages whisky snobbery and encourages whisky discovery. It is written for all whisky lovers, the whisky curious and the whisky oblivious.

But remember, this is my first blog and I have no idea what I am doing, so I expect the blog and community to evolve over time. Thanks once again for dropping by.


Shane Kinloch
WhiskyDad
2016