What causes sulfur flavin a bottle of scotch?

Sometimes when you open a bottle you want to throw it down the sink rightaway. You feel its not what you hoped for and that your expectations were too high. But when you reach the end of the bottle it becomes your best friend who will be missed dearly when gone. Happened to me more than once so only time will tell. Have you considered writing them? Its a small company so you'll likely get an answer if you hold your emotions a bit ;) Keep calm and drink whisky:)

I find nothing more insulting than paying top dollar for a premium whisky to discover a distillery/distributor/company is happy to take my money for a inferior product. While many distilleries are staffed by enthusiasts the bean counters are only interested in the bottom line. They don't manufacture for benevolence, they manufacture for money. Hit them where it hurts - don't pay for inferior sulphur tainted goods.

p.s. I seriously wonder if half the master blenders care what you do with your whisky after you've paid for it. You can spill half the bottle on the bar and mix the other half with coke, and as long as word spreads and sales rise...

I am a keen hill walker and regularly go out hiking at the top of peat-laden hills and mountains. Occasionally, in particularly boggy sections of the peat there can be strong sulfurous odours.

Now I'm not suggesting this is the cause of sulfur notes in all whiskies - I think the points made about lazy distilleries could sadly be very valid. But it does indicate it could be a naturally occurring flavour profile. Particularly in the peaty whiskies.

I just stumbled (again) on this old thread while looking for something else, and—wha-wha-what?

Some of Rigmorole's comments were maybe overlong by Connosr standards, but I really can't understand the storm of down-votes he got, especially considering the conspicuous lack of "this is why you're wrong" responses that would have backed up the vote-slams.

Especially, check out his opening question! It's a reasonable post and nets a -2 for no apparent reason. Weird.

I agree with the philosophy common on other sites that down-votes ought to be accompanied by thoughtful rebuttals of whatever the offending opinion was. For example, say you're about to down-vote my post here. Go for it, but please reply too to make this discussion forum an actual forum for discussion. Thanks.

(Also, I know it's been two years now, but I still get a huge bang out of "Flavin" in this thread's title.)

@OlJas

You bring up a real Conundrum...

A quick research into the scientific literature does actually link sulfur to "flavin", but a cross search with respect to Scotch doesn't turn up much.

With respect to the use of down-rating, I think you bring up a good point. I just gave the original post the thumbs down, primarily to see if I had done so before, and since it changed, it looks as if I didn't rate this thread prior, so I feel comfortable speaking to it.

I do not condone or condemn the act, but I think a reason for it might have been a general sense of frustration with a specific member at the time the post was originally made.

An example of this is seen in politics, where a leader will summarily dismiss a proposal from another party BECAUSE it came from the other party, whereas if their own party had come up with the idea first it would have received a warm reception (and opposed by the other party).

It is easy to be dismissive when someone has consistently been adversarial or inappropriate. When they finally make a good point, no one wants to hear it from them.

@Nozinan , thanks for checking in here. I do indeed remember when Ol' Rigmorole was active on Connosr and I bet your explanation is correct. (Personally, I can recall him going off the deep end on some tangential rants quite a bit, but I always really liked the energy he brought here. His reviews were interesting too. And I do believe I follow your sly "conundrum" reference.)

It's sad when people substitute "team loyalty" (if I can call it that) for thought. Well, I suppose it's just a LITTLE bit sad when it happens on something as frivolous as an online discussion forum for chatting about luxury booze. But it's really sad when people do that in politics, and I believe in your analogy enough to say that MOST people (in the population, if not the politicians themselves) do that 98% percent of the time. Nobody's actually reading the proposed legislation, speech transcripts, judicial opinions, or whatever on their own. Instead, they're just adopting the opinions expressed by their "team's" cheerleaders. I'd love to see a poli-sci experiment in which a control group of partisans express their opinion of some political event following the usual media process of cable news, talk radio, blogs, and whatever—and then a second group is given just the raw data (say, draft legislation or speeches with the politicians' names redacted) and then asked to express their opinion based solely on their own judgment. I bet the two groups would have very different outcomes. Kinda like a blind scotch tasting, if I can stretch another analogy here to bring us back on topic. :)

Last point: I really would love to see more vigorous discourse here on Connosr. It's populated by folks who know plenty about the subject. I'm thinking of the recent thread about Japanese whisky where I said something about how most of it just seemed like overpriced scotch imitations to me; I rather expected to see some counterexamples of definitively Japanese whiskies that might show me the error of my ways. Instead, I just got a flurry of down-votes and the resumption of polite chit-chat.

@OlJas, I for one miss having rigomorole around! Quite the conundrum why he left...

@Alexsweden. He left because he couldn't handle any disagreement with his wacky paranoid conspiracy theories. He became very aggressive and insulting and has no place here. This is about normal people having normal discourse about a common interest. We can all disagree with each other at any time on any topic, but we need to keep it civil and respectful. I expect Rigorundrum is a Trump fan.

@Alexsweden @BlueNote

He didn't leave. He did have his Rigmorole account suspended (which is why I presume all his posts now say "FormerlyRigmorole"), but I believe his Conundrum account remains active. And I'm pretty sure he's lurking waiting for a chance to come back as another character.

Rig, if you're out there, you might as well identify yourself and come back and enjoy the discussion.

I have actually read through some of those threads and I have to say that far from all of the nasty, unfriendly comments came from rigmorole. Having said that I also realize that I haven't read everything so I might have missed some other history.

And having said that, let's get back on topic. I don't think I've ever noticed a strong Sulphur presence in any scotch. Am I hypo-sensitive or have I been lucky?

@Alexsweden, probably you are hypo-sensitive to sulphur. It is easy to see this as a blessing, because those of us who do notice the sulphur are finding an enormous percentage of the recent release Scottish malts to be completely ruined. Sometimes I sort of wish that I couldn't taste the sulphur, because it greatly reduces the number of Scottish whiskies that I can truly enjoy.

As time goes by my taste becomes more and more refined with respect to noticing sulphur, which means that it sticks out like a sore thumb to me now. When your taste develops that way there are an enormous number of Scottish malts that are just pretty bad that would have been delicious 70 years ago. For me a completely clean malt, like Amrut Intermediate Sherry, or a Macallan distilled in the 1960s, is night and day different in the quality of its sherry from 80+% of the sherried malts from Scotland now. Count your blessings, @Alexsweden, you can enjoy and have a high opinion of a lot of whiskies that taste like crap to me or to Jim Murray.