Hey, all.
Hope you’re keeping well, strong, safe, and healthy. These are interesting times, to say the least. After a couple weeks in quarantine (not just isolation), I was cleared to return to work. I spent about two weeks back at it before starting to deal with some more respiratory issues. So…back in lockdown, and awaiting the call to go for another test. Sigh. To be clear…the only real issue I am having is a pretty nasty shortness of breath that waxes and wanes a bit. Otherwise…I feel okay for now.
Staring down another couple weeks of this doc/boss-mandated isolation has obviously burdened me with a lot of free time. My sights turned to writing fiction or writing here for you. I can’t lie; I have the attention span of a gnat lately, so wee blog blurbs have a lot more appeal. However…
Readership is low these days. Not just here, where the updates are served up in fits and starts, but on other blogs as well. People nowadays, I think, are looking for soundbites and immediate gratification (social media); or they’re looking for video content which allows them to listen while doing other things. I fear for future generations and their ability to process the written word. 😉
So, the question is? Do we continue with whisky reviews and chat here? The comments have largely died; most of the usual suspects have moved on; and the per-day visits are like the foot traffic in most brick and mortar retailers these days. Is it worth continuing this little malt log?
Drop a line. Share an opinion.
Hope you’re all well.
All Things Whisky 
Hey Curt,
Sorry to hear you’re back in quarantine. Hope you get test results soon and on a path to recovery/normalcy. I can’t imagine how frustrating that must be after going through it once already.
I still check in once or twice a week on my cycle through whisky blogs. Attention is diverted all over the place these days, especially with a toddler at home everyday and attempting to get some work done. That said, I’ll read anything you post and always love to see your reviews. I’m curious about your thoughts on the latest Diageo special editions, any SMWS or Cadenheads you get in to, or the latest Whisky Agency stuff.
When you post on here, throw up a post/link on Twitter, since that is where I find myself wasting most time recently. I think lots of us with kids at home are heading there for tidbits when the chances present themselves!
-Cam
Hi Curt.
Yes you should continue with your reviews and thoughts. I appreciate them. I appreciate the written word. I appreciate thought provoking insights. I appreciate everything people do to open peoples minds. To create discussion and the inevitable counter argument or thought.
I too ponder the lack of ability for thinking about all sides of a conversation in the newest wave of generational beings. Everyone should have an opinion, no matter if they agree or disagree. This isn’t yet, the world of 1984, though its rearing up.
Sorry to hear you are stuck at home. But if its to get you healthier, then its for the best.
Keep your head up, stay strong, and strive on.
There are people still on here who do like what you have to say.
Thanks
Mike
Hi Curt
Sorry to hear about your illness and wishing you all the very best.
Just wanted to also add my appreciation of your site. One of the few I have saved as a favourite as I like the way you write.
Clearly you can’t continue for a few and life moves on, but I would like you to know your work has been part of my whisky life. Thank you.
i hope you continue.
Regards
Timp.
Sláinte!
Please keep up the written reviews! I’ve been following your blog since I start my whisky preoccupation since 2012. At that time, it was basically Ralfy and no one else as far as YouTube reviewers go. Nowadays, the landscape of course has changed. Vloggers can make profits and are much more visible to brand ambassadors trying to further promote their product. I watch most YouTube reviews with a health degree of cynicism as I know some of these reviewers are treading carefully on certain brands that look after them. Sadly, the written review is left to Serge and a few others. I respect the written review as many vloggers fall to banal statements like “this stuff is awesome” without really giving much justification or descriptors as to why they think that way. Much harder for the review writer to fill up their space with that junk.
I hope all is well with you and yours. Take care of yourself!
Hi tehre,
not the only one here….
https://drinksenthusiast.com/2020/04/03/2020-update/
Greetings
kallaskander
longer comments seem to be on strike… I was surprised the obove got through.
I’m a new reader and I appreciate what I have read so far. I do read on an RSS Reader tho. Does that impact your traffic numbers here?
I hope that you continue to write but you have to do what is beat for you. If you truly enjoy it then keep doing it.
All the best.
Hey Curt. I’ll try to keep this short and sweet. But, gravitating towards what Cam said regarding having a toddler I can appreciate as I’m at that stage of life myself. So, the written word for me is a concise and entertaining way of reading reviews. I only visit your’s and Serge’s. My opinion of vloggers and YouTube reviewers is much the same as Jason; cynical. There seems to be a lot of product placement and I don’t have a lot of time to look through YouTube video after YouTube video. Sadly, the reviews and videos I come across that cross political satire with whisky reviews while wearing a “Make Whisky Great Again” red cap seem to be the most genuine. Keep writing. I don’t care what you review as long as you’re still enjoying it and you think it’s a spirit worth reviewing. We all know how and what you review is done with the highest level of integrity.
Hi there,
hoping you are well again and that your health will turn back to normal I would say you should nothing take too personally when it comes to whisky these days.
We all knew it could not last forever and that some day the boom would end.
You might remember that I waxed and waned about diminishing interest in whisky and the factors – I called them soft skills of us the entusiasts – that lead to its demise as king of drinks. Prices premimisation and shrinking quality are only some of the parametres that function together here.
I was away from my job on enforced vacations myself for three weeks and had noticed that here was not much going after the imposed hiatus of last year before that.
So imo it is not only the written word that comes under the wheels but many other things we have counted as essential expressions of culture until recently.
I must confess that the lack of interest in many – not all – things whisky has gotten to me in the end as well and boredom is spreading.
I am not the intended customer for all these overaged prestige bottlings in crystal decanters floating and bloating around and in the sector where I move financially there is nothing really exciting happening.
Should I say we saw it coming? Some of us did.
I would vote that you go on as I and others commenting here seem to like an open word even if the occasions for a good argument or discussion are getting scarcer.
Keep up and cheer up.
Greetings
kallaskander
Sorry did not work asone Text.
Hi Curt – If time and health permits please continue on. I certainly enjoy reading this blog. Stay safe and best wishes.
Kirby
Curt,
Trying to post something but it’s crashing. I’l try again next time. I vote you keep site going. It’s valuable.
Trying again…
Curt,
Your site is a treasure of information to any new whisky enthusiast. It is probably the most informative site coming out of North America.
As a mostly independent site and not commercialized, it is very rare to find so much in one place.
I know that I benefited greatly from your site when I was starting out. I think I slowly gravitated more to Connosr.com because there has been less new content here, and I’m more interested in producing content myself (ie: reviews). FWIW, I’d sooner read one of your reviews than sit through a Ralfy vlog nowadays…
And with 2 growing kids, at home, longer hours because of COVID, I’ve made fewer visits here. I still read everything over when I do visit.
This site has helped me go from newbie to veteran. I have over 150 reviews posted now. And I’ve amassed a collection that reflects my personal tastes, something that I could never have done 9 years ago on my own.
I think anyone getting into whisky now could follow a similar path, and it could take them years to catch up.
I hope you keep posting. I will keep checking in.
Still hoping for the day I visit Cowtown (which I do every year) and I finally get to meet you and we can have a dram…
Hi there,
the same thoughts everywhere.
http://cocktailchem.blogspot.com/2020/05/10th-anniversary-youve-come-long-way.html
I still think that the whisky rapture has run its course and that “the industry” has done their worst to kill it off. But counting from the early 2000s almost 20 years now is a long time to be in a rapture so the boom and the enthusiasm had to come to an end had to waer of eventually.
We can be happy that we have been in the middle of it and be content that our shelves ( in some cases cellars I hear) are fille with the good stuff of bygone times.
That is not to say that we are done and everything can be packed and we move on.
Greetings
kallaskander
I don’t know if whisky enthusiasm has run its course – at least not to same degree that whisky bargains/finds have – but, yeah, we (the consumers) made a bad market for ourselves, and knew it in the process OF making it… and, now, it is what it is. Thanks to all those who helped out with overpaying for young product with little to no production information while saying that it didn’t really matter – you were right; there’s been little to no effect on the market at large… even as they now turn to their bunkered bottles for solace.
As far as the site goes, it’s always been great… but it’s ultimately about dialogue. If people are too busy to talk to those talking to them… maybe they’re just too busy.
Sláinte!
Hi there,
hi Jeff long time no see here but I found your epistles on other sites.
The market sometimes does function and does regulate itself.
Prices went up overall quality went down – and still does – cunsumers lose their interest and keep their money. A nearly pefect world.
Feeding the customers fancy stories worked for a while but now most are fed up with storytelling and no new fancy marketing gimmick in sight.
I am around on many blogs and news sites in whisky and the decline in interest is very obvious there. But I will not repeat myself.
It is only to be hoped that some sites with more drought – or draft for those in more western parts of the world – will stay and keep on. Hopefully this one as well.
By the way do you have a blog of your own, Jeff? There is one where someone named Jeff is the boss.
Greetings
kallaskander
Good to hear from you too – I’ve been having a little trouble pasting and posting, so I’ll type it here and see what happens.
No, I don’t have a blog – I can’t currently think of a whisky message positive enough to support one anyway. The market correction that we’re looking for might be in its early stages as whisky loses its shine and even the boosters can’t find much to cheer about. Some of the people who really knew whisky and could have helped curtail the nonsense made their choice and just made things worse – and, for better or worse, many sites were long enough on personal opinion yet couldn’t tell enough whisky truth in the process to stay credible. They became businesses that made business decisions… and so it went.
Sláinte!
Hi there,
only too true…
Here is what I posted in a German whisky blog when the blooger announced it was time for a break.
understandable. From my point of view stagnant dying or already dead whisky blogs – or rather whisky content pages – are a dime a dozen and the frustration with whisky is spreading.
The Whisky Magazine has canceled its forum and others are barely alive and still others are nothing more than sample swatch exchanges.
It is true that a steady stream of whisky bottlings is turned out by distilleries and independent bottlers.
But the overall quality and despite all claims of “innovation” the novelty of many of those bottlings are mediocre at best.
Internationally I think whisky has run its course and is dead – the only one not knowing is whisky.
The flurry of activities from marketing departements and agencies all over the world can not gloss over the fact that the more they cry innovation the more all is the same old tired story over and over again.
Whisky has turned into a totally arbitrary business where it is of no great matter what is in the bottle as long as the brand turns out cash.
So it is to be expected that more and more people will walk away and leave whisky behind for good.
The only pitty is that good old discussion or argument about whisky and the virutal meeting of friends and acquaintances will suffer as well.
Greetings
kallaskander
Hi there,
as an afterthought…. this may have something to do with the state of whisky as well.
Especially when you are not a memeber ofthe target group.
https://www.trbusiness.com/regional-news/international/appetite-for-status-scotch-casks-can-drive-sales-in-other-segments-says-iwsr/186594
Greetings
kallaskander
Testing, testing.
It’s easy to time out while trying to post here lately. That being said, this, of course, will be the post that makes it.
MOAR REVIEWS!
…
…..
Please?