About a month ago, I led a Scotch tasting at Town Hall Brewery in Minneapolis. Over the next few days, I will be posting the notes I used, and ending with some of the questions people asked during the event.
The first Scotch of the tasting was a Lowland, the Auchentoshan 10. Ironically enough it was not on the menu at the time of the tasting. Instead, they had the Three Wood expression. That doesn't have an age statement, but is roughly aged for eight years in Bourbon casks, then for various periods of time in sherry and port casks.
The Auchentoshan 10 is a light, accessible whisky. If you're familiar with Irish whiskies, it will be fairly similar. Auchentoshan is rather unique in that it's one of the last Scotches that's triple distilled. Irish whiskey is also, generally, triple distilled. Most Scotch is double distilled. As a result, the Auchentoshan will be a bit lighter due to that third distillation.
The subject of pronunciation did come up during the tasting, and my advice was that if you make a half-hearted attempt to prononuce the name, then no one should fault you for trying. The Auchentoshan website used to have a recording of the distillery manager pronouncing the name, but it looks like that went away in one of their site redesigns. If you want a good transliteration, shoot for "Ockh-in-tosch-in" and you'll be mostly right. And if you have a menu, there's no shame at pointing at the name.
The second Scotch is the Cragganmore 12, from the Speyside region. It's a bit more floral, herbal, and honeyed when compared to the Auchentoshan. Cragganmore, as the label implies, is one of the most complex whiskies you can find. It's produced by Diageo, the makers of Johnny Walker, and is their Speyside representative in their line of Classic Malts. These are six to eight distilleries selected from their brands to represent specific Scotch regions. A second Classic Malt, the Talisker, is represented later in the evening.
Cragganmore is rather interesting because it is such a complex single malt, but isn't as well known as other Diageo brands like Lagavulin and Oban. This means that it's a relatively inexpensive Single Malt Scotch, but its price is well below its stature.