Best thing in Zurich so far: Bowmore 18.

Unusual for an Islay: not much iodine, fruity, long finish.

Going to get a bottle when I get back in the states.

In other news: walked around for 20 minutes and saw 5 starbucks.  Weird.

For christmas: a glass as big as a bottle! And Macallan 18 is good.

I'm not going to spend $130 on a real bottle of it, but it had a nice, clean, dry taste.  More will be procured at some point.

Teacher's Highland Cream: Good blended whisky for less than $20

I used to hate scotch, whisky, whiskey, bourbon (well, still do) and anything else that tasted of alcohol from many years of being a bouncer and ejecting free booze on a weekly basis.

Then I had Lagavulin 16.  Just fantastic.  Of course, even on a crazy sale it's $50.   And more typically is $62 (plus tax).

So I've been on the lookout for good, cheap liquid that is vaguely like a great single malt.

Perhaps one of the smoothest, easiest to drink blended whisky is Teachers "Highland Cream."  It really is very easy to drink.  I bought this bottle earlier today and already got through about 1/5th of it while watching Top Gear w/o noticing.  (Notice the empty glass, which was a constant source of irritation.)

I'm going to put it down a floor so I don't interact with it further (the high cost to society of alcoholism, the unlikelihood of me hitting PRs as a boozehound, etc) but I really could easily drink the entire bottle.  And then probably do something stupid that costs much more than $20.

The good: it has a vanilla/honey/something scent and taste that I really like.  There seems to be a set of blended whiskys --- Johnnie Walker Gold, Chivas 18 and Teacher's --- that have this smell and taste and I'm really a sucker for them.  (To be honest, it might just be the nose of well-tempered grain alcohol.)    This is below Chivas 18 and both are below JW Gold (one of my favorites, neat and at room temperature) but it's very drinkable.

The bad: there is a slight odor of grain alcohol.  Perhaps a slight taste too, if I pay attention.  A bit of water (or ice) seems to kill that.  I'm going to pour 1/2 Highland 10 single malt from Trader Joe's (also $20) into the next glass to see if that mellows it better.

I only bought it b/c so many different whisky blogs recommended it as a good value / cheap / best buy bottle.  They were right.  I much prefer it over Famous Grouse, Finlaggan, and the usual budget booze recs.

Whiskey party.

One way to spend a few hours on a saturday: sampling from several thousands dollars worth of scotch (mostly not mine).

Various conclusions:

• Laphroaig 30 is great but not worth $300.
• Oban distiller's edition is one of my favorites.  About $70 from the cheapest online store.
• I like Caol Ila 12 and 18 alot, but don't care much for the other 4 samples I had
• The Macallan 12 from 10 years ago is crazy good compared to what they release now.
• Glenfarcias 10 is pretty smooth and not that expensive.
• Master of Malt has a really nice selection of samples (http://www.masterofmalt.com/drinks-by-the-dram/).   They charge in british pounds, however, so not the greatest exchange rate.
• Google's droid phone has a cool feature where you can take a picture of a bar code and it will look up that item on the net, finding the cheapest price (I paid $100 for the oban above, it found it for $67).

Here's my friend, looking a bit worse for wear, but well neigh invincible behind a fortress of scotch bottles.

$20 trader joes highland 10 single malt is actually...

Pretty damn good, at least for the price.  Smooth.  I've drank a quarter bottle in two days without meaning to.  Short finish, not super complex, but cheap.

Their $9.99 blended scotch on the other hand is undrinkable.  The main smell you get upon opening in rubbing alcohol.