24. The XL blench batch 1 £549. Another example of how it's good to taste the whisky before figuring out the 3cl bottle would cost upwards of £20 to buy :) Notwithstanding the tasting notes, I thought there was a distinct Port note on the nose. This is a complex and well-balanced whisky (perhaps heather, smoke, and some woodyness) with a long finish which I enjoyed, but. I'm not sure it's my favourite of the 24, and I don't think I'd find myself shelling out for a bottle any time soon!

So that's it for the advent calendar. Thanks again to the friend who very kindly bought it for me (you know who you are :-) ) - I tried a number of whiskies I would probably have never thought to try otherwise, and some of them were real winners :)

After a lot of singing today, whisky is medicinal, right? :)

19. Jim Beam Rye £25. Nice enough, but there's not a lot going on here.


20. Peat's Beast £42. No, not a joke about management style at work, this one does what it says on the tin. Very smokey, phenolic whisky.
    

I thought it might be worth returning to the whisky advent calendar, what with it being Advent again :-)

Number 16 is Rock Oyster £37. It's a blend of island malts, and felt a little over-peated to my taste.

...is Cardhu Gold Reserve £39. It's a slightly sweet, warming comfortable dram. It's not the most complex whisky, but I enjoyed it :)

...is Kirkwall Bay £36, from a distillery on Orkney. It's quite gentle for a single malt from one of the islands.

This one is Benriach 12 yo sherry wood £43. It's nice enough, but I don't think the sherry casks have done much for it, to be honest!

So, the answers to the booze poll, according to this website. A pint of beer contains 182 calories, 250ml of red wine contains 167 calories, and 70ml of Tia Maria contains 210 calories, making the right order Tia Maria > Beer > Wine.

I looked the numbers up after a discussion with atreic, and we were a bit surprised by this, hence the poll.

This rather-confused BBC report on drinking is irritating me.
Firstly, it's reporting three findings in a confusing manner. There's one report which states the proportion of people reported they had drunk over the "recommended daily limit" at least once in the previous week (41% of men, 34% of women, 37% of respondents), and that this figure varied a little by type of household (43% of managerial and professional households cf 31% of routine and manual households)[1]. Separately, another report suggests that ~20% drank over twice the "limit" on their heaviest drinking day (though this isn't clear as to over what period).

Secondly, it ignores (as the government does) the unfortunate fact that these "daily limits" (replacing the previous weekly limits, since there was concern that people were saving up their entire "allowance" for one night of boozing) are based on pretty tenuous science - we don't have a good handle on what a safe level of alcohol consumption is, but what research there is suggests it's somewhat higher than the UK guidelines. Sure, excessive drinking is harmful, but saying that someone whose biggest drinking session of the previous week was more than four units (which you could achieve by 2 pints of a typical real ale) is a heavy drinker is misleading. Binge drinking should, I think, be related more to the effect it has on you rather than a finger-in-the-air number of units. Things like how long you consume the alcohol over is important too: if I drink four pints over a long session in the pub, I won't be noticably drunk, but if I neck the same number of units as spirits quickly, then the effect is much more bingey.

I can sort of see the argument that "people will ignore the limits, so we should set them very low as that will at least somewhat reduce excess drinking", but I don't really buy it. If you treat people like idiots, they're going to be cynical about your guidance.

[1] The article is worded so it looks like each m+p household drinks more (i.e. exceeds the limit by a greater amount), where actually a higher proportion of them drink over the limit.