The 3DC on Twitter

Yes, the 3DC have finally embraced social media 2.0 and have created a twitter stream. Follow our real-time tasting notes as they happen at:

http://twitter.com/3drunkencelts

For those not familiar with the concept of Twitter: it is a website which allows users to update their current status with what they are doing right now, in 140 characters or less. The 3DC will be utilizing this social media outlet to post tasting notes on various drams, links to new blogs and news articles, and other random whiskies related content.

You can also join in the fun if you are on twitter by following us and entering your own content stream related to the 3DC by using the hashtag: #3DC


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Eoin’s Ode to Friar John Cor

With a nod to the Bard:

This day is called the Reverence of Friar John:
He that outlives this day, and comes drunk home,
Will stumble a-tiptoe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Friar John.
He that shall see this day and drink t’old age,
Will yearly on the vigil toast his neighbours,
And say “To-morrow is Friar John’s Reverence Revel”:
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars
And say “These wounds I had on Friar John’s day.”
Drunk men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What drinks he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Raz the Reaver, Seamus and Fergus,
Fair Siobhan and Sean, Odran and Gulliver,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered.
This story shall the good Celts teach their sons;
And Jon John shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered;
We few, we inebriated happy few, we band of drunken brothers;
For he today that sheds his whiskey with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in Ireland now abed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That drank with us upon Friar John’s Reverence Revel day.


Eoin



Friar John Cor and a wee bitch on the unworthier inhabitants of Great Briton

Happy Friar John Cor’s Day everyone!

For those who don’t read enough books;  the first written record of making whisky is attributed to Friar John Cor who was recorded on June 1, 1496 as procuring supplies for the making of copious amounts of whisky for his Majesty, Jimie the IV. Not particularly an event of note excepting that this is the first known record of whisky production and indicatory of a healthy and long established tradition of distilling whisky in Great Briton, else wise he’d not been making 1500 bottles of the stuff.

In honor of this, the 3DC has decided on mass to start honoring this man and this recorded event for the first 3 days of June. I myself will have at least one different dram a day for the 3 day festival and record the results in my tasting book. I think with some thought and planning we may have to set up some event going forward to do this properly, but this year at least we are flying by the collective seats of our collective pants.

Now for the bitching part of this: the British do not deserve to have anything to do with the history of their own country as they are evidently criminally negligent and painfully ignorant of anything that doesn’t wear either a toga or a horned helmet. It seems that the collective British citizens are so jaded by the history all around them that they disregard it like Las Vegas does 10 year old casinos or Hugh Grant does a lady of the night in the back seat of his car.

Back to Friar John. He did his distilling in Lindores Abbey (http://www.darkisle.com/l/lindores/labbey.html) along the Tay in Fife. An abbey that has through neglect(well and a crippling attach in 1559 by John Knox) been allowed to crumble and ruin. The significance of the Abbey was lost some time after that until the early 1990s. The owners (For the last 100 or so years) didn’t know or care about the history of the abbey and only discovered it by a chance web search. Now to their credit they have have gone out and tried to contact the governmental powers that be to ask for some assistance in restoring or at least preserving the site and received typical indifference. They even went so far as to go directly to the whiskey industry itself and also found no one cared.

Since the Mid 1990s the owners have in attempt to spread the word, and make a buck too I’m sure, started bottling blended whisky that is a rare dram out there on the market. Now this would be nothing like the whisky Friar John made but at least they are making an attempt at getting the tradition going again. Hey it’s a start, right?

Well, you’ve got a year to make your plans. Mark it down in your calendar; June 1st-3rd = Friar John Cor’s Day.


Whiskies of the World, 2009 planning info!

Greetings 3DC,

Well plans are getting finalized for the Whiskies of the World Expo 2009 (Date:3-28-09). Heck, I’ve already bought my plane ticket. As to event tickets, if you plan on attending, please contact Fergus directly. He is our ticket coordinator for this event and is intending on negotiating with the event staff directly on our behalf. If you are intent on getting your own ticket you can do so on the event’s site. The official 3DC hotel this year is the Hotel 480 as recommended by our Local 3DC rep theJamez. Thanks for the leg work James.

We’d love to have as many of you attend as can make it. This is after all the end all be all of whisky events. It makes our wee little shin digs look like nap time at the preschool. Even Mathias thought he’d seen it all until last year and he was blown away at what he saw and learned. Ask him yourself if you like.

Event information:

VIP Ticket Price: $120.00 ($115.00 General Admission so just pay the extra $5)

Event ticket site:  http://celticmalts.com/shop/category.asp?catid=43

Hotel: Hotel 480, stumbling distance from the Irish bank. The hotel itself is under renovation but this should be done before the event. We can get the cheaper, pre-renovation, prices by booking now.

Hotel site: http://www.hotel480.com/

As an alternate places of lodging I’d suggest either that the Hotel Des Artes (http://www.sfhoteldesarts.com/index.php) or Hotel Triton (http://www.hoteltriton.com/). We have 3DC members who have stayed at both of these hotel on prior trips and they are also very close to the Irish Bank, our “bar away from our home bars” and each has something good to be said about it.

Raz-


Whiskies of the World, March 28th-29th, 2008

Yes, it is indeed that time of year again. It is the time of year when YOU need to be getting your affairs in order and making hotel, plane, and WOW ticket reservations, NOW! (click the image for more info)

WOW 2008

Don’t wait! Order your tickets now so you don’t miss out on the fun AGAIN this year! Come join the 3DC at the best West Coast tasting event of the year… you won’t regret it.

The 3DC will be staying at the Hotel Des Arts again this year. Book your room before the fill up! An added benefit to staying at the Hotel Des Arts is the easy access to the Irish Bank bar, the 3DC’s home away from home… Really, do want to be the only one left without a WoW expo story?


Announcing the NEW and IMPROVED 3DrunkenCelts.com website!

After a series of unfortunate events resulting in loss of some configurations and some regressions in features, we have redesigned the www.3DrunkenCelts.com website to provide an easier, more user-friendly approach to the 3DC.

We are very excited about this new iteration of the 3DC website and hope this redesign will inspire increased usage and contribution of content. We are hoping for big things this coming year and already have doubled our group size for the Whiskies of the World 2008 expo! (Which means YOU ALL should come too!) But I am getting ahead of myself here…

 

Some of the key new items at www.3DrunkenCelts.com are:

Easier Navigation- All posts are categorized based on parent categories of Regions, Events, News, or Miscellany with sub-categories to contain the actual information. This will allow you to quickly find all posts which contain information on what you’re looking for.

RSS Feeds– We have set up RSS feeds for both Posts and comments, you can subscribe and read our content with your favourite RSS reader. SIMPLE!

Post Comments- Unlike the previous site, as a registered user on the new site, you have unfettered access to comment on any article posted to the site. This should help encourage discussion over the information posted and get better information out there and searchable to help us all learn about whiskies!

Post Articles– Yes, if you register on the new site and request to be made an author, you can post articles too! In fact we WANT you to post articles; the only reason you need to be approved as an author is to combat potential spammers. Once set as an author, you can post short articles, long articles, reviews, news, or other bits of information as they relate to the 3DC. Raz and I can not and should not be the only ones driving the content of the site. We KNOW you all have opinions and ideas, so here’s your sounding board to get those out there! To be set as an author use the contact form on the site, or send an email to admin@3drunkencelts.com and include your username so we can easily identify it.

Rate Posts– Find a post you LOVE? Rate it at 5 stars… find one you hate, rate it at 1 star. Help us learn what you like to read about. Think the author is full of himself and just likes to read his own words? Rate it and then comment too!

PDA Access– The site has now been configured to support PDA or Mobile access. Just point your mobile browser to www.3DrunkenCelts.com and away you go! I am working on mobile posting access as well for those who wish to be authors, but this feature will be in a future iteration.

And of course, no more splash page!!! This really excites me more than you know, and more than it should.


The YahooGroup here will still be available, however we’d prefer to take some of the more pertinent and content rich discussions off of this list and make them even more publicly visible on the 3DrunkenCelts.com site. This means instead of emails, we will see a single post with multiple comments by registered users. We hope this will help build a larger community on the website and hopefully encourage more content to be posted by users other than just Raz and Seamus.


So there you have it. Come one, come all. We hope to see the site grow into a fabulous resource of opinions and discussion on whiskies of all kinds!

 

To take a line from Raz…
Yours in Scotch,
Seamus O’Domhnaill of Devil’s Beef Tub
Mka Jason O’Donnell


The state of the event… GWW

Dead, mostly…

Here’s the skinny. Due to Great Western War 2006 being canceled and 2007 being moved to Bakersfield (something we are none to pleased with ) we are not offering an official tasting at GWW, preferring moving the event to Estrella this year to serve the greater population. We don’t expect a large turn out at the upcoming GWW for the above reasons and preliminary 3DC head counts are quite low as well. Fergus and I expect to be making a Fri-Sun run at it to give the site a chance, likely staying with our 3DC friends of the White Star Crew. A small tasting of some sort will likely happen at GWW but nothing as grand as usual.

Fergus has big plans for Estrella. Something about a paired whiskies/cheese event. He’ll have to fill you in on that though.

-Raz