Anyone who knows anything about whisky has at least heard of, if not subscribed to Whisky Magazine. Over the last six years this publication has established itself as the bible for the lover and collector of Scotlands premier drink. This is a position they have forged through their dedication, knowledge and passion that extends not only to whisky, but all of lifes finer things and this, of course includes cigars which made their first appearance as early as issue 11 back in September 2000.

From here they have steadily built an appreciation and understanding passed on to readers through some fantastic journalism and a now annual whisky and cigar competition that is in its third year. Here the pick of the industry are invited to sample a selection of drams chosen by the magazines staff and a couple of the finest Cuban cigars chosen by Hunters and Frankau. This years competition took place in the decadent surroundings of Londons Floridita; based on El Floridita, a bar founded in Havana in the early 20th century. El Floridita was a place where history was made. Under the supervision of legendary bartender Constante Rivalaigua, El Floridita became renowned in the early 1900s as Havanas cathedral of cocktails. Here, Constante invented the Daiquiri, firming Floridita in history as The Cradle of the Daiquiri. Todays beverages where slightly more traditional, but none the less tasty.

The format of the competition was based around four rounds, or flights with whiskies of a similar nature to be scored firstly on their own merit and also on the flavour pairing with the cigars. Each flight comprised between two and five whiskies, which were all pre-poured and anonymous to the judges. This was the same for the cigars that had been given to us with only a competition reference number where you would normally find a factory band meaning no one except the best cigar experts would be able to know exactly what we were judging and no personal brand allegiances could be followed. Needless to say that the resident expert at our table, the renowned Mitchell Orchant had a fair idea, a Siglo 5 from Cohiba and a 8-9-8 from Partagas, which must have been either spot on or very near the mark given the complimentary noises made by the representative from H.Upmann. Of course he could not say definitely due to the nature of the competition but on comparison with stocks in our shops laterally, I would agree 100% with the Cohiba. The results will be published in Whisky Magazine after the final judging stage to be held in Cuba soon, smoking ban permitting!

Back to the whiskies. As I mentioned before, the whole competition is anonymous meaning that only the best should go forward from each flight without any personal favourites or products linked to your own company being chosen on any other basis than sheer merit (there was a number of judges from inside the industry undoubtedly willing their companys entrant to go through, though over lunch we had a chat with one of them who said he was looking forward to tasting his product later that day. Unfortunately for him we found out at the end that his was one of the very first to be tasted! He and his company shall remain nameless for the hope of good future working relations, but this does illustrate that this was not any easy task to judge).

At our table, the afore mentioned Mitchell, Fraser Gilchrist and myself had our clear favourites but of course at this stage we only had our educated guesses as to what they were. On every round both Fraser and myself scored our top two whiskies the same though sometimes my favourite was his second favourite and vice-versa and by the end of the competition we found out that from our top eight, six had gone through to the final judging.

With a little more poking and prodding we managed to get a list of all the whiskies we had tried and with a little intuition we know that these whiskies were the winners;

Aberlour Abunnadh batch 13,
Bowmore Darkest,
Old Pulteney 12 year old,
Auchentoshan Triple Wood,
Hankey Bannister,
Whyte & Mackay 21 year old,
Glenlivet 18 year old,
And Glenrothes 1973.

My personal favourites were the Glenrothes 1973, the Glenlivet 18 and, probably most surprisingly, the blended Hankey Bannister in that order. From the list we received we found out that some of the whiskies were as old as 30. It was very interesting to see that this proves that older does not always mean better. Another point of learning for me personally was that unlike food matching whisky, where the stronger the flavour of the food the stronger/sweeter/smokier/sherried the drink should be, that when it comes to cigars you are always looking for a contrast rather than an enhancement of aroma and flavour something very useful to remember at the end of a meal when the sommelier ask if you want something to drink, as you can test him on his cigar pairing knowledge!

This was not only a fantastic day out in some of the nicest surroundings available, with some of this earths finest wares but also a great educational experience and this is due to the staff of both Whisky Magazine and Floridita, the great people and colleagues at my own table and the other wonderfully enthusiastic judges who had travelled from far and wide to be part of this event. It seem to me that the people in this industry do what they do not only for events like this (though it is a substantial perk) but more from a shared love and dedication to doing what we do, and doing this as well as we can.

The overall results will be published very soon in Whisky Magazine and it will be great fun to see if our choices match those of the other high fliers of the industry my feelings are that they might just do

Best wishes