It's been a while since we've had an exceptionally silly meeting. This solved that problem.

The "Highlander," based on the 1986 film/legend of the same name, had a simple premise: each of the top 6 website contributors had to secretly pick one whisky. At the meeting, the whiskies would fight till only one remained!

- Region had to be Highland, including Speyside.

- The whisky couldn't already be on the LAWS website.

- LAWS funded each up to $200, out-of-pocket overages ok.

 

Combatants had 7 weeks to choose their entry. Some members took the challenge pretty seriously, while at least one selected his fate while stopping at a liquor store on the way to the meeting. 

 

For the contest, each competitor blinded his whisky into 1 of 6 identical opaque bottles. Tasting order was randomly chosen, and half the group tasted in reverse order.

The champion and winner of The Prize (all whisky knowledge known to man) was... Fuji!! His 1981 Lochside narrowly beat out Adam's 1965 Glenfarclas. Coming in last was Dave, whose 1992 Ardmore gained slightly less traction than others.

The whiskies were blinded with the names of the 6 immortals in the original film. In tasting order, they were:

MacLeod: Ardmore 1992 19yo Single Malts of Scotland (Dave's bottle) 6th Place

 

Fasil: Glenallachie 1974 The Whisky Exchange (Andy's bottle) 5th Place

 

Kurgan: Glendronach 1975 33yo "Three Generations" Duncan Taylor (Chris's bottle) 4th Place

 

Vazilek: Lochside 1981 The Whisky Exchange (Fuji's bottle) 1st Place

 

Ramirez: Ben Nevis 1990 La Maison du Whisky "Artist" Range (Sku's bottle) 3rd Place

 

Kastigir: Glenfarclas "Probably Speyside's Finest" 1965 46yo DL Platinum (Adam's bottle) 2nd Place

 

The entire contest was extremely close, and only 1/3 letter grade separated first from last place. We had to use a numeric system to 2 decimal places to determine final results!