Cycle 16 – Item 307
Post 5,786
8 (Sat) November 2025
Steamed Red Snow Crab (+ Whisky!)
4.0
at WK’s home
-Cheongdam, Gangnam, Seoul, Republic of Korea-
with W and IZ, WK and family
WK is W’s former boss, starting with Burberry (right before we got married) then All Saints (he’s moved on since).
Out of the blue – in 19 years, I’ve only run into him a handful of times, never in a social context – we were invited to his place for dinner.
He had steamed seafood delivered from a restaurant nearby (can’t recall the name of the place). The food was excellent.
But the real fun began when he busted out his whisky collection, including some very expensive/exclusive bottles. To make it interesting, he challenged me to assess each bottle in a blind tasting. I was relieved not to embarrass myself and fared quite well – for example, attributing the Glenfarclas as a Highland malt, and identifying the Yamazaki (though in fairness I’d seen it on the shelf and made the assumption, figuring it wasn’t Scotch). He even through me a curveball with a rum, which I detected as not whisky right away.
I was very impressed to learn that he has invested in an entire cask from Bladnoch, a distillery in the Scottish Lowlands. He can take it whenever he wants, currently aged 5 years, though he’s considering to wait until 18. In the meantime, the distillery sends him samples from various casks every few years, for which he provides feedback to the distillery so they can tailor the aging to his preference (or something like that).
During the blind tasting, I called the peated and sherry samples correctly, accurately describe the (unpeated) bourbon as the most basic/balanced, but the red wine threw me.
(See RESTAURANTS IN KOREA)
(See GLOBAL FOOD GLOSSARY)
(See HANSIK)
(See BOOZE)