Why Whisky Had To Change Over The Past Decades

Oliver Klimek takes a closer look at the question why today’s whisky is often so different from yesterday’s.

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It was 1997 when Johannes van den Heuvel, Craig Daniels and Louis Perlman created The Malt Maniacs, one of the first online communities of whisky anoraks which, over the last 15 years and under Johannes’ leadership, has grown beyond anyone’s initial belief. After all these years at the helm, Johannes has decided to call it a day and retire from his Maniacal status, although we dearly hope that his retirement may only be temporary.

It goes without saying that we wish Johannes well in his future, hopefully quieter endeavours.

So, just how do we think about replacing our leader and founder? After much soul searching, discussion and navel examining (well, not really) we have decided upon what most may consider the obvious choice; a Committee with nine willing volunteers, some ‘old’, some ‘new’ and some who were already there in 1997.

So we are pleased to announce our new MM Committee, the nine members in alphabetical order and their roles:

MM Social Media Maniac Benjamin Chen (Singapore)
MM Elder Statesman & Voice of Reason Craig Daniels (Australia)
MM Awards Co-ordinator Davin de Kergommeaux (Canada)
MM Events & Chief Diary Keeper Konstantin Grigoriadis (Greece)
MM Whisky Monitor Wizard Rich Howard (USA)
MM Website Editor Oliver Klimek (Germany)
MM E-Pistle Apostle Nabil Mailloux (Canada)
MM Master Maniac Serge Valentin (France)
MM Postmaster General Keith Wood (Germany)

Also in the MM news, our Charlie MacLean is starring in Ken Loach’s new movie The Angel’s Share that will be in competition in Cannes and Paul Dejong is back after a very short retirement from the Maniacs. Hurray!

Last but not least we are delighted to announce that June 2012 will see the largest ever real-life ‘in the flesh’ gathering of Malt Maniacs as no fewer than 26 (twenty six) MMs from all continents celebrate our “First 15 years” and look forward to the next 15. Where else could we possibly choose to do this but, you guessed it; Scotland!

Watch this space and in the meantime, Slàinte Mhath, Cheers, Santé, Skol, Prost!!!

- The MM Committee

On 12th April 2012 Johannes van den Heuvel, founder of the Malt Maniacs, published his decision to leave the group. His statement can be found at the bottom of the Malt Madness homepage.

For the remaining maniacs I can say that we all are sad to see Johannes go, especially as he is the person who started it all. We wish him all the very best for his personal future and we will stay on friendly terms with him.

Cheers,

Oliver Klimek

All E-Pistles from 2007 and later (MM Issues #100++) have now been transferred from the old site. They can be found in inverse chronological order on the E-pistles Page.

I will soon start conversion work for the E-pistles from 2006 and earlier that were stored in the Decade Of Heavy Dramming section of the old site.

Happy reading,
Oliver

Pit Krause reports on an experiment finishing Scotch single malts in Bavarian beer casks.

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Lex Kraaijeveld did some statistical analysis of Alfred Barnard’s distillery descriptions to see, if there are any patterns that could hint on variations in whisky taste.

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The E-pistles Page now has links to all E-pistles in PDF format published since 2010. The PDF files are stored on this site.

Foreign Correspondent Mathew Fergusson-Stewart from Singapore sent us this highly interesting and potentially controversial report about an experiment he made.

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