Not your father's whisky: Calgary expert shares 3 gems for gift giving

A Calgary whisky expert says there are some fresh new options for those on your gift list who love spirits.

"This is the season where people are looking to give gifts," Andrew Ferguson of the Kensington Wine Market told The Homestretch on Wednesday.

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"I brought a couple of mid-range or mid-priced bottles that make great Christmas gifts. They are not as well known as some of the common whiskies like Glenfiddich or Glenlivet but they are very good value, you can find them in good liquor stores across the city. They are a reasonably good price point. They are all about $100 to $120 a bottle."

Ferguson said when looking at scotch or whisky, it's important to understand the difference.

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"One of the terms that is really confusing is the term scotch," he explains.

"Scotch is a whisky from Scotland. There are countries like Japan, including Canada now, that make whiskies in the Scottish style but it is not a Canadian scotch or a Japanese scotch. It is a Canadian blend or a Japanese single malt, depending on the specific style."

There are three whiskies that stand out to Ferguson this year.

Chocolate, dark fruit and leather notes

"The first one is from a distillery called Isle of Arran," he said.

"It is an island off the west coast of Scotland. Most people associate smoky, peaty notes with island whiskies but this is not the case with Arran. What I like about Arran is that it's very soft, it is very approachable. This 18-year-old is excellent value at $120. You are starting to get some deeper notes from it, it has spent most of its life in European oak Sherry casks, so you are going to get some chocolate, dark fruit and leather but it is still light, it is still fresh. There is some nice orange in there, gentle spice, very smooth. There are little tricks in distillation so that this 18-year-old has the finesse and the delicacy of a much older whisky."

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Some people add water to their whisky, he said.

"If you find it's too strong adding a drop of water or two to the whisky can make it a little more approachable, change the flavour profile. You may like it better with water, someone else may not. It's a very personal thing to do."

Sprinkbank 15 years

"The next one is my favourite distillery," Ferguson shared.

"I love them because they are small, stubborn, stubbornly traditional. They work twice as hard to do everything as everyone else, just because that is how they have been doing things for 200 years and they don't want to stop."

He says each batch may vary slightly from the last.

"The greatest characteristic about the distillery, because they are small, is there is variation between batches of a product. In the 15 years I have been tasting the Springbank 15 year old, this is the single best batch of this I have ever tasted. It was bottled last fall, in 2015. You start to get a little bit of smoke and a little bit of salt in this. They do lightly peat their whisky but what I really love about it is the cream and the tropical fruit notes that come out. It really leapt out at me when we did a tasting a month ago.

It is just a very, very long elegant finish, layers and layers of fruit developing."

A polarizing whisky

"This is going to be very different," Ferguson said of his third selection.

"This is a polarizing whisky. People either love it or they hate it. It is from a distillery called Ardbeg. This is their Uigeadail. It is named for the small loch in the moors where the water drifts down the distillery from. This is matured a little bit in Sherry but the big thing here is, it's a heavily-peated whisky. When you get your nose in there, you just get these muddy, earthy, smoky, tarry notes to it and that is the style."

As part of the CBC Calgary Food Bank Drive, Ferguson auctioned off a Master malts level private scotch tasting for 20 people, including a charcuterie and an advent calendar. The package is valued at about $2,900 and a caller named Dave had the winning bid of $5,000.

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With files from The Homestretch