Thank You!

Tomorrow I will publish my 500th officially graded whisky.  Yes, there have been an additional two dozen whiskies (or so) that I've given only letter grades to.  And yes, there have been fewer than five hundred single malt reports.  But still, 500.  That's a very round number.

This is still my best drawing ever.

These whisky reviews would not exist without you.  My content exists thanks to my friends with whom I do sample swaps.  My content exists thanks to those friends who randomly send me goodies from their collections.  My content exists thanks to local whisky groups and the good people I meet at events.  But most of all, my content exists because I have readers.  Stories do not exist without an audience, so the simple fact that you voluntarily come to my site to read about my ongoing whisky journey means that it exists on a more significant plane than just notes in my eleven whisky notebooks stacked in the corner of my desk.

While I would love to write more deeply considered meditations on the whisky industry (and/or anything other than whisky), being a stay-at-home father has made that more challenging than before.  I don't drink during the day, I don't blog during the day, and I rarely tweet or facebook during the day.  My recreation in the evening is to plop down in my whisky chair -- it's not made of whisky, yet -- with an ounce (or two?) of whisky, put on some jazz, avant-garde, or classical music that hopefully matches the drink and then attempt to document my discoveries on paper.  On the weekends I type up my scribbles, add in the terrible humor, a few photos, and use a random number generator for the final rating.

Next year will bring some changes, all good, some of which I hope to share here.  I have most of my reviews already scheduled for the next four months, though I'm still sorting out the extent to which I'll review non-whisky spirits.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, a full sequel to What Was the Scotch Boom is on the docket for the new year, unless the SWA chickens out and doesn't release their full report.

In the meantime, welcome to the new divingforpearlsblog.com!  Look for Whisky 500 to be published tomorrow, and Whisky 1000 by 2019...