While the quality of seminars on wine keeps slipping at the popular HK Wine and Spirits Exhibition, the opposite holds true for spirits. The whiskeys seminars are nothing short of captivating and informative. In sharp contrast to the average wine seminars, one can learn quite a few new things attending this whiskey tasting seminar. This particular one for example, answered a nagging question of why long-aged whiskeys cost that much more than those without an age statement. The answer lies not only in interest and storage costs incurred from delay in return of investment but more so in a thing called “Angel’s share” which refers to the percentage of whiskey lost to evaporation each year in the cask. I also realize why excellent producers in Japan and Taiwan for example rarely offers a long-aged Single or Blended Malt, opting instead to just release after the mandatory 3 years. In their climate, the Angel’s share can be as high as 16-18% compared to 6-8% in Scotland. This is just one of many things discussed in these whiskeys seminars that makes drinking the firewater that much more interesting. All in all, the lecturers in whiskeys seminars gave us the feeling that they really knew their stuff and they were not afraid to go technical about interesting subjects while trying hard to make it possible for laymen, like me, to understand it. That, in a nutshell, is the art of delivering a good tasting seminar.

FACEBOOK: The Facebook account of Yats Wine Cellars, called Yats.Wine is a media with which the professionals at Yats as well as fellow wine professionals in the trade throughout the world will share with our friends and wine hobbyists in the Philippines knowledge, findings, experiences, tasting notes, insights and opinions about wine, food-wine pairing and news about wine.