Blackadder Friendship Day

Blackadder is an independent whisky bottler that is famous for its "Raw Cask" range. On November 29th 2012, Liquors Hasegawa held a Blackadder Friendship Day from 4pm to 9pm. Usually Liquors Hasegawa stops paid tasting service at 8pm but on this day they extended the time to 9pm. Blackadder Friendship day was a good time to meet one of the founders of Blackadder, Robin Tucek, to discuss all things whisky and also to promote his new bottling called Black Snake VAT No. 1 First Venom.



My fellow beer and whisky friends Tom, Bob and Chuck joined me in the early afternoon to meet with Robin and to have a few whisky tastings. After trying a few sherried and peated single malts we met up with Robin.  He is very enthusiastic about whisky and was happy to talk about the industry and whisky.

He gave us samples of First Venom which is bottled at a whopping 59.1%. It is a solera style whisky which means that whisky is slowly taken out of the cask and then replaced with new whisky. This process is used extensively in such drinks as sherry, port and balsamic vinegar. I don't think it is widely used with whisky but there are some examples of it around such as Glenfiddich Solera Reserve 15 Years Old. First Venom was fresh, a little new but very drinkable. Robin explained to us that using the solrea method means that subsequent batches of Venom will be different from the last one.

Robin Tucek of Blackadder