It was at a tasting event, that I first understood.  As instructed, I put a drop of whisky in my hands, rubbed them together vigorously, and put them to my novice nose.  The aroma of smoky peat was there,  strong and clear as day.  At that moment, what had always been to me just one single malt flavor unraveled into a melodious harmony of tastes.   I could with practice even tune into the landscape where the whisky was distilled.

Here’s a quick overview of Scotland’s Whisky regions:

The Lowlands
Southern Scotland currently has three working distilleries.  The whiskies from the Lowlands are light and soft and offer hints of malt and grass among our more subtle flavors.

The Highlands
To the North, the highland’s is the geographically largest whisky region. Because of this range in geography, the whisky’s will range from dry to sweet and some even have a touch of smoke and peat.    Within the highlights on the West Coast of Scotland is an area of wild, indented shores, twinkling harbors, and misty islands that has recently been named the Whisky Coast.  Many of these whisky’s flavors will belie their peaty landscape, but again, they vary greatly. You’ll just have to taste them all (Note: Islay and Campbeltown, below, are also part of the Whisky coast trail).

Speyside
Speyside is  home to about half of Scotland’s malt whisky distilleries. This small area north west of Aberdeen produces mellow, sweet, and particularly fruity malt whiskies.  Many of these are popular here, including Glenfiddich, Glenlivet and Macallan. If you plan to do your first whisky tour of Scotland, this is the area to visit.  Late April is the time to go during the Spirit of Speyside festival.

Islay
Located on the west coast, below the Whisky coast isles is the small Island of Islay is often called ‘Whisky Island’ given its concentration of eight distilleries, which are known for their heavily peated and smoky flavor.   Bowmore is produced here.

Campbeltown
The town of Campbeltown was once home to more than 30 distilleries.  Today it is home to just three: Springbank, Glen Gyle and Glen Scotia. Whiskies from the town tend to have a little peat and salt to them, and are generally medium to full bodied.

Two other facts for Whisky newbs:

Single Malts vs. Blends:  Single malts are just that, one whisky. Blending was pioneered by  in Edinburgh in the 1860s.  It was only after this practice became common that a taste for Scotch whisky spread first to England and then throughout the world.  Usually 15 or more whisky’s are blended together. (You’ll loose the ability to do the nose test above with blends).

“The name ‘whisky’ originated with the Gaelic ‘Uisge Beatha’, or ‘water of life’.   It’s Whisky in Scotland (and Japan, India, and Canada). The Americans and the Irish add the “e.”

Don’t know where to start? Luckily, someone has put together a nice whisky itinerary.

This week on Unlabelled Britain, we’re pulling out some ideas on things you can only do in London.

Marketing in East London

London’s East End.  The former fringe district turned uber-cool hip destination.  Comparisons to Brooklyn’s Williamsburg might be inevitable, but not entirely apt.  For example, how many Sunday markets can you name in Brooklyn within walking distance of themselves?  Still thinking?  Well in East London, the Art meets West vibe is alive, innovative, and accessible.

London has a huge collection of markets, and it’s not just about food, but also art, fashion, and flowers.  And I’m just going to say it, Sunday is the day to hit East London.

Get off the tube at Liverpool Street and walk over to Old Spitalfields Market. It’s not your final destination but a chance to warm up  on the market atmosphere only found in London.  Independent designers are selling unique one-off pieces.  There’s some vintage mixed in for good measure as well.  Also, look for the stand selling Jersey Rock Oysters. When I was there in November, these were the meatier than my usual Blue Points and had a well balance briny flavor.

Next head off to nearby Brick Lane and the Old Truman Brewery for Sunday(Up) Market.  Imagine about 400 purveyors of vintage and designer clothing crammed into and old brewery factory building, then throw in some art exhibitions and a few stalls offering tastings of Brick Lane’s curry houses.   Taste here only, because lunch is right outside at the Rootmaster Bustaurant.

Out on the Brick Lane side, all you have to do is cross the street to end up in Backyard Market, which equals even more vintage clothes, but check out the vintage decor and furniture place on your left as you enter the alley that leads here.  Having trouble finding it?  Listen for the UK funk that led me there the last time.

Next, winding Brick Lane and take a detour right on Cheshire Street.  The boutiques here are where you’ll find some great unique designer items and memorable “un-souvenirs, ” including the vintage robot shop.  Also,  we’ll say it again, the Laden Showroom, or any of the tons of vintage shops along the way – are also worth a visit.

Now it’s time to pick up the pace, because the famed Columbia Road flower market is only open until 2pm. Map it on google or look for signs to the market at the intersection where Brick Lane meets Bethel Green Road.

After all that, you’re hauling a lot of stuff, and possibly still hungry…that’s why you’re stopping off at Cargo on the way back to Liverpool Street station.  This is a good chance for a snack at the restaurant and an opportunity to check out the live music set for the night.

We won’t even get into nightlife in this post. Nor will we mention the hundreds of stalls at Petticoat Lane Market, or  Borough Market (it’s a little south). Both are also vital markets that are worth a stop – but you’re already carrying too much.

Looking for more ideas? Here’s a few, and a few more.

Tip Off  - Visit London is running an Only in London sweeps where you can enter to win 1 of 3 prizes.

London has an East Village too.  And it just turned two – so have second.  The stellar Shoreditch club is on 89 Great Eastern Street.  Not only known for its acclaimed mix of top-notch and newby DJ talent,  East Village also has an award winning menu.  For those who worship int he house of  music, East Village is famous for its annual Good Fridays.

Get a feel for the beat by downloading one of their live DJ sets.

More info on the East Village and other clubs, check out the list of top DJ bars in London.

No secret to London fashionistas,  the iconic Brick Lane store, The Laden Showroom is celebrating 10 years of supporting & retailing up and coming fashion design talent.  Over the past short decade, a whole host of celebrities have frequented the store in search of hidden gems from indie producers.  It was also a stop on our recent blogger trip exploring the lesser known side of fashionable London.

The store stocks over 75 designers which include Bonnie, Chandelier, Collect, Connected Generation, Duke & Duchess, Flamingo, Glow, Gonsalves & Hall, JARLO, Love Milly, Orion London and Miss Milne.   Labels you may not be familiar with but are certainly worth making the trip over for.  But then again – starting feb 22nd –  The Laden Showroom will be launching a new on-line site.    Here’s a sneak preview of what gives the shop its pizazz:

More info and how to get there : The Laden Showroom.

It’s often said that the British have a festival for everything and it really is quite true. From the biggest gather of literary stars to the best beers – there’s a festival for everyone in Britain.  He’s a list of the coolest that I could find.

Hay-on-Wye Literary Festival

Hay-on-Wye is an interesting place in itself – it’s literally a village completely made up of bookstores. Antique books, collectible books, detective books, sci-fi books – Hay-on-Wye has it all thanks to the eccentric bookstore owner in town, Richard Booth. Hay-on-Wye has other 30 bookshops – including fields of books under tarps.

Having become a center for Bibliophiles in Britain, the town has now become home to the annual Guardian Hay Festival of Literature & Arts – often called the Woodstock of the mind which brings in the biggest stars of the literary world.

This year’s Hay Festival will be held from May 27th to June 6th.   More Information on the Hay Festival Website.

Edinburgh Fringe

This festival is rather hard to describe. It’s the world’s largest arts festival but what exactly does that mean? It means that for 3 weeks in Scotland anything goes as far as art is concerned. During the festival you can experience a mixture of theatre, comedy, music, dance, exhibitions and much more.  What many don’t realize is that there are also two other huge concurrent festivals happening in Edinburgh at the same time, the Military Tattoo and the Edinburgh International Festival.

This year’s Edinburgh Fringe will be held from August 6th to August 30th. More Information on the Fringe Website.

Great British Beer Festival

In America our national pastime is baseball. In Britain it’s beer. Drinking and appreciating beer, usually down at the ‘local’ – that’s pub for those that don’t know. So, it only makes sense that the Brits have an entire festival dedicated to everything beer.

Join beer lovers from all over Britain and sample over 500 beers, ciders and perries and various other international beers (yes, even continental ones).

This year’s Great British Beer Festival will be held from August 3rd to August 7th. More information on the website.

Great British Cheese Rolling Festival

Once a year, the brave and the bold gather for what is possibly the strangest festival on the British Calendar. They gather to chase a roll of cheese down a hill. And it’s quite competitive and quite dangerous!

Check out this video for proof:

Looks a little too painful for this Anglophile! This year’s Cheese Rolling Festival will be held May 31st.

The Great Dorset Steam Fair

Long before the gas engine became part of our daily lives, the world ran on steam and not just in trains. Steam Engines were used throughout Britain and they changed agriculture, industry and daily life.

The Great Dorset Steam Fair is the largest gathering of genuine antique working steam engines. It’s a grand day out and a great way to appreciate amazing British engineering.

This year’s Great Dorset Steam Fair will be held from September 1st to September 5th.

English Heritage Festival of History

If knights in armor, GI’s in uniform or people dressed as Victorians interest you – then this is the place to be. The English Heritage Festival of History is the largest gathering of historical re-enactors in Britain and brings together more than 1,000 costumes enthusiasts for a great day out.

This year’s Heritage Festival will be held on July 17th and 18th.

More Festivals, including music and culture, and the top 10 for 2010 are coming up on Transatlanticism.org.

Contributor – Jonathan Thomas, Anglotopia

It is often said that Britian is a land of eccentrics – and that truth can be proven in the unusual museums that dot the island of Great Britain. From a museum in a red phone box to a museum of pickled animals – Britain is full of strange and interesting museums that will surprise you, entertain you and most imporantly – educate you.

Here a rundown of the strangest British museums that I could find.

Phone Booth Museum

Britain is dotted with the iconic red phone box. It’s one of those elements of design that’s instantly recognizable as British. In the age of the cell phone, though, they are a dying breed with many being abandoned or offered to towns to maintain as heritage icons on their own. One local authority in Wales decided to turn it’s red phone box into a museum celebrating the photography of Tom Mathias. They adopted the phone box, gave it a new lease on life, restoring and creating this unique museum dedicated to a unique photographer.

Located in Cilgerran, Pembrokeshire in Wales

Cartoon Museum

Opened a couple years ago in London, The Cartoon Museum seeks to preserve the best in British cartoons, caricatures, comics and animation. The museum features a gallery, archive and library dedicated to all things cartoons.

Located in London:

The Cartoon Museum
35 Little Russell Street
London WC1A 2HH.
Telephone 0207 580 8155.
www.cartoonmuseum.org

Photo from Loz Flowers

Museum of Tea and Coffee

If I had to pick one thing that defined Britain – that would be tea. So, of course there is an entire museum dedicated to it! Not only does the museum tell you everything you need to know about the 400 year history of tea in Europe – they also have a tea room!

Located in London: (rumor has it that this museum may now be closed)

Bramah Museum of Tea and Coffee
40 Southwark Street
London SE1 1UN
www.teaandcoffeemuseum.co.uk/

Hunterian Museum

This museum is not for the faint of heart! The Hunterian Museum in London is a collection of thousands of animal specimens, pickled in jars in an incredible steel and glass gallery. They have everything from the smallest creatures to actual human beings. Would not recommend a visit after you’ve eaten!

Located in London:

35-43 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London
www.rcseng.ac.uk/museums

Photo from phatcontroller

The Fan Museum

An entire museum dedicated to fans. Not electric fans, mind you (which would be cool as well!) – we’re talking the old school fans that women used to keep cool back in the day. Many of them are works of art in their own right. Boasting a collection of over 3,500 fans, they have the world’s largest collection of the interesting piece of art. They even have fans from the 1100’s!

Located in London:

12 Croom’s Hill
London
www.fan-museum.org

British Lawnmower Museum

The British love their gardens, so it only makes sense that they’d have a museum dedicated to everything to do with lawnmowers. From the very first lawnmower to modern day robotic lawnmowers, this museum has it all.

Located in Merseyside:

106-114 Shakespeare Street
Southport, Merseyside
www.lawnmowerworld.co.uk

Cumberland Pencil Museum

Here you can journey to the place where the pencil was invented which I’m sure would be a worthwhile pilgrimage for all the office supply geeks out there! Here you can learn the entire history of pencils and learn how they are made to this very day.

Located in Cumbria:
Southey Works,
Keswick,
Cumbria
www.pencilmuseum.co.uk

Photo from Dominic Torrisi

Do you have a suggestion for a strange British museum? Share it in the comments!

Contributing Editor – Jonathan Thomas

Long gone are the days of tourism when rolling a cheap suitcase into a yellowing room with flowered wallpaper and a smoking desk clerk who grunts out a room number and hands over a key a la Lampoon’s European Vacation. Both hotels owners and their guests have come of age, and this sophistication has hit its highest level at just 30 minutes outside of London in Buckinghamshire: Stoke Place, a boutique style country house retreat for city dwellers and city breakers.

The English countryhouse hotel offers top-quality stylish suites, garden events, and even a Stoke House personal trainer to whip the more active types into shape. In association with The White Blackbird, Stoke Place has started to ‘revive the Country House Party’ and throws creative events such as their first Pyjama Party last May.

This Friday night, January 22, 2010  Stoke Place will convert their glamorous hotel into a night of mystery, mysticism, and some ghoulish magic, with a Murder Mystery Treasure Hunt, a Vintage Secret’s Dress Up and Photo Studio (and styling), Whisky Tasting and Piano Singing, Literary Readings, and a Spooky Haunting re-enactment during their first ever ‘Tweed’ night.

Shuttle buses to and from London on the night make this swinging country house party accessible for even the staunchest of city dwellers and is completely open to the public: Just don your best Tweed and bring your most creative of colleagues for a night unlike anything else in London.

contributing editor – Jessica Ainlay

Question 1: Why does John Malkovich own a budget design hotel in Eastbourne?

A) Because he is neighbors with a guy who claims his family invented the chocolate bar
B) So he could get in bed with 300 Welsh Secretaries
C) Because furniture design is his hobby
D) To make some dough
E) All of the above

Please fill in your answer with a number 2 pencil on the Scantron form provided.  Be sure to fill in the circle completely, or your answer will be marked incorrect.

Question 2 (essay format): Why do we care?

And the Story goes:

Just recently, the budget yet chic Big Sleep Hotel in Eastbourne has been rated by Trip Advisor as one of the world’s top ten celebrity owned hotels.  For design and pet-friendliness evidently.

I love this part.  Malkovich  got started in the hotel business because he is friends with a Mr. Cosmo Fry, his neighbor in Provence,  France.  Mr. Fry is a chocolate heir – his family’s chocolate business was founded in 1728, and run for over century before being bought by Cadbury’s in 1936.  He also claims that his ancestor created the first chocolate bar.  Now, Mr. Fry is a hotelier and Malkovich a part owner in this enterprise.

Malkovich got involved, because he is an avid furniture designer (he designed the furniture in his home in France). The concept of the design hotel was right up his alley – so far in fact, that in 2000 Malkovich got in bed with 300 Welsh secretaries as a promotional stunt for the Cardiff branch of the hotel.

What does this mean for you? If you are in the UK and looking for what has been described as an IKEA-quirky budget hotel stay – it’s the place for you.  Depending on the location, rates are as little as 45 pounds a night.

Check it out:

The Big Sleep Hotel
www.thebigsleephotel.com

Usually, in winter I get a hankering for a dark rich porter.  But this winter, I find myself craving cocktails.  Maybe it’s the hidden bars, or rash of artisan infused liquors springing up, but I’m longing for that nostalgic bootlegger era when virtually all of the classic cocktails that we now drink are named. “I’ll take a Tennessee Williams and Gibson for the Misses, barman, and make it snappy” 

With my at home martini experiments, well… failing (pepper spiced pickle brine does not a good “artisan” martini make), I’m think it’s time to travel for my next drink.  If cocktail tourism is the next big trend – one item on my travel list would definitely be Rick’s Bar in central Edinburgh, Scotland.

This cocktail bar with rooms was voted by Conde Nast Traveler as one of the coolest hotels in the world.  I’d think their 20 page drink menu would have something to do with that.  It is inspired by some solid research and classic cocktail havens like prohibition-era Havana, Manhattan, New Orleans, and interestingly, the outposts of the British Empire (The Pegu Club cocktail was invented in the 1920s in Burma).  There’s even a fascinating section on Punch Bowls-evidently the earliest form of cocktail.

My favorite from the list has to be the Alamagoozlum Punch (try saying that three times fast after a few cocktails) or as it’s known by it’s full name, J.Pierpoint Morgan’s Alamagoozlum; the Personal Mix Credited to that Financier, Philanthropist & Banker of a Bygone Era” (or that!).

Stories about vampires, werewolves and alike have been around for hundreds of years. But,  there is only one mystical series of movies and books you care about- the Twilight Saga.

The hysteria around the movies has been helped by the fact that two of its very attractive leads (British actor Robert Pattinson and American actress Kristen Stewart) are rumoured to be dating. Although they have never confirmed their relationship, tabloids on both sides of the Atlantic went crazy this week with the news that both actors were photographed outside a supermarket by at 13 year old fan on the Isle of Wight, on New Years Day.

Robert and Kirsten are clearly in the know when it comes to picking hip destinations to celebrate a new decade. The Isle of Wight is a small island off the south of England, and home to two of the hippest summer music festivals in the UK- the Isle of Wight Festival  and Bestival. The Isle of Wight Festival started in the 1960’s and The Who, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie and Coldplay are just a few of the many acts to have played there. The 2010 festival is happening in early June and will feature Jay Z and P!ink, amongst others.

Bestival meanwhile happens in late summer and is more alternative and diverse, and has featured acts including Amy Winehouse and the Beastie Boys in past years.

contributing editor – Phillip Underwood