A day full of Inchgowers from 1980

I have organised big tastings more or less every year since 2008 and a pandemic can't stop me. We couldn't meet in person, of course but we could meet online. I did think about if it was going to be possible to do a more or less full day tasting online, but decided that it should work. My friend Anders Melin had contacted me and said he had 21 different bottles of Inchgower 1980 and wondered if I was interested in doing a tasting with all of them. It was a too good offer to turn down, so I started the planning. Saturday March 20 looked like a good date, so I sent out invitations to my whiskyclub and the tasting was sold out in a couple of seconds. 46 people including myself and Anders had signed up for the tasting so 966 samples were sent out to all the participants.

We all met up on Zoom at 14.00 for the tasting. We were going to taste the whiskies in 3 flights of 7 whiskies each. I started the tasting with a short introduction to why we had this tasting and Anders told us about why he had bought all these different Inchgower 1980. The answer was pretty simple. He tried one that he really liked and saw that there were other 198's out there so he started to buy them and just kept them for a later date. Now it was time to enjoy all these wonderful whiskies and there is no better way to enjoy a whisky than to share it with friends.

We divided the participants into smaller groups of 6-7 people in each group and made breakout rooms in Zoom where we sit for the next 50 minutes in these groups tasting the whiskies and discussing them among us. It was a little like sitting around the same table at a live tasting and discussing the whiskies around that table. it worked really well. When the 50 minutes were up all returned to the main meeting and we discussed the flight a little and voted for our favourite whiskies in that flight. After that we had a 45 minute break so people could grab a coffee and something to eat and then we were back for another session. After the second flight of whiskies we had another break for food before we started the third and final flight.

Everyone agreed that it was definitely possible to do a 5 hour tasting online and that the whiskies in this tasting was amazing. There was only one bad one, but even that one got some points as one of the two best in that flight, so not everyone thought it was bad. The quality was very high across the board and some of the whiskies were absolutely amazing.

Here are the whiskies we tasted this day.
Points in brackets are my personal points and the number after that is how many votes it got.
Everyone had two votes in each flight, so they voted for the two whiskies the liked the most.

Flight 1:

Inchgower 1980, 12 YO, 14.11.1980-09.1993, Cask 13426-27, 650 btls, Signatory Vintage - 43 % (86p) 4 votes
Inchgower 1980, 20 YO, 12.11.1980-25.10.2001, Cask 13273, 288 btls, Signatory Vintage - 43% (80p) 0 votes
Inchgower 1980, 22 YO, 12.11.1980-03.09.2003, Cask 13274, 292 btls, Signatory Vintage - 43% (82p) 3 votes
Inchgower 1980, 24 YO, 10.12.1980-2005, Cask 14147, First Cask - 46% (88p) 13 votes
Inchgower 1980, 24 YO, 10.12.1980-2005, Cask 14148, First Cask - 46% (87p) 15 votes
Inchgower 1980, 24 YO, 10.12.1980-2005, Cask 14149, First Cask - 46% (89p) 13 votes
Inchgower 1980, 24 YO, 1980-2005, The Coopers Choice - 46% (88p) 23 votes

Flight 2:

Inchgower 1980, 27 YO, 12.11.1980-14.02.2008, Cask 13276, Hogshead, 200 btls, Signatory CS Collection - 53,7% (87p) 13 votes
Inchgower 1980, 1980-2006, Cask 14157/14159, Berry's Own - 46% (86p) 5 votes
Inchgower 1980, 26 YO, 10.12.1980-22.03.2007, Cask 14144, Sherry Butt, 537 btls, Signatory CS Collection - 53,4% (86p) 12 votes
Inchgower 1980, 32 YO, 1980-2012, Refill Sherry Butt, 456 btls, The Whisky Agency - 52,0% (85p) 13 votes
Inchgower 1980, 33 YO, 12.1980-12.2013, Cask 13069, Sherry Hogshead, 189 btls, Malts of Scotland - 52,6% (85p) 19 votes
Inchgower 1980, 25 YO, 1980-01.2006, Sherry Cask, Big Market - 54,1% (88p) 17 votes
Inchgower 1980, 25 YO, 1980-c2006, Sherry Cask, 300 btls, Auld Distillers, Jack Wieber - 54,1% (88p) 17 votes

We agreed upon that the Big Market and the Auld Distillers were the same whisky so we merged them together when voting.

Flight 3:

Inchgower 1980, 35 YO, 1980-2015, Best Dram - 47,6% (89p) 11 votes
Inchgower 1980, 25 YO, 10.12.1980-15.05.2006, Cask 14161, 486 btls, Dewwar Rattray - 53,2% (88p) 7 votes
Inchgower 1980, 24 YO, 1980-2004, 270 btls, Krügers Scholss Whisky - 55,1% (90p) 5 votes
Inchgower 1980, 24 YO, 1980-2005, Cask 14152, Adelphi - 60,4% (90p) 9 votes
Inchgower 1980, 25 YO, 12.1980-01.2006, Cask M1503, Scotch Single Malt Circle - 53,9% (70p) 3 votes
Inchgower 1980, 26 YO, 1980-2007, Cask 14155, 223 btls, Adelphi - 59,8% (91p) 21 votes
Inchgower 1980, 25 YO, 1980-2005, Cask 14156, 324 btls, Whisky Tales - 55,8% (91p) 24 votes

Quite a few of the people who was at this tasting will join for the next big online tasting too. April 24th we will taste 24 whiskies in a Limburg-tasting.

Magnus Fagerström, 05 April 2021