Had the pleasure of attending a Johnnie Walker tasting session last night at the 1NiteStand. At least I can say that I’ve been in there even though there wasn’t any comedy to be had. What there was though was a lot of whisky. And some babes. And Bernard Lim, who is Johnnie Walker’s brand ambassador and emceed the event.

He gave us a brief training session in how to enjoy whisky. Looking at the colour is the first step. The darker the whisky, the older it is. Simple enough.

Following this, we were told to look at legs. As everyone no doubt expected, it wasn’t what it sounded like. We were instructed to tilt our glasses, bring them vertical again and watch the whisky on the sides flow back down. The longer it took, the longer the legs the whisky had and thus the more viscous it was. Again, piece of cake.

Nosing was a bit of a problem though. The first whisky was supposed to have hints of “creamy vanilla”. I smelt kerosene. In fact, I smelt kerosene in all five whiskies. The only variation being kerosene in addition to smoke for the 4th glass.

Tasting. Now, I know that whisky is sometimes called the water of life. It’s loved by millions all over the world for its depth of flavour and so and so forth. But I can’t, for the life of me, understand why. Each and every glass tasted absolutely vile. There isn’t such a thing as a smooth whisky in my book. There’re only choking ones and not so choking ones.

However, it wasn’t all painful. I did get a nice box of coasters.