Quick Tip: Weinhandlung Schwarzer

There are certain weaknesses Janet and I share. One of the most expensive ones revolves around scotch. See, we love scotch – there is nothing like a good single malt in the evening to help you wind down from a long day, or to warm you up from a cold afternoon walk. It is, as alcoholic beverages go, perfect.

But our weakness is that as our tastes evolve, we always want better scotches – and a variety of them. I mean, an 18 year old Highland Park fits most occasions, but what about when you want something with a little more oak character… or something with a stronger kick, or a nice mellowness that only comes from age. Just like people keep a variety of wine at their house, we keep a variety of scotch at the house.

At our peak, we probably had 8 or 9 open bottles, more than most bars. Some were special occasion scotches (a 26 year old Glen Albyn, a Glenrothes from my birthday year) but the rest were all there so we had the right variety to compliment our mood. Finally, we decided that we needed to cut the stock down to the essentials and have been slowly working our way through the reserves over the past few months.

However, last night we were shocked to realize that we finally did it. Aside from the special occasion scotches, we had gone through our reserves and were finally ready to buy another bottle. I had read in the latest issue of Whisky magazine that the new Talisker 18 year old, which was just relased in November, was getting amazing reviews, and sits at the top of the Island malts. This sounded promising, but unlike most of our standard scotches, this one was in limited distribution and we would need to find a good whisky shop in order to find it.

So, one quick search on the internet and we found Weinhandlung Schwarzer near the main train station, and a phone call confirmed that they had the elusive Talisker 18. As the clock struck noon, we jumped on the subway and headed out to check the store out.

Even though it looks small, the shop opened up into a large room with a fantastic selection of scotch, wine, other whiskys, absinthe and brandys. The prices were very good on the normal scotches we drink, and the woman running the shop was friendly, knowledgable and even recognized me as the person who called earlier asking about the Talisker.

We will sample the scotch tonight, but regardless of how we like the Talisker, we will certianly make this our normal scotch store in Cologne.

Schwarzer. U-Bahn DOM/Hauptbahnhof. Full of scotchy goodness!