The new “Whisky Dog” & John Allan’s Whiskey event
October 10, 2012 § 11 Comments
It’s so cool when your friends take that plunge, break from that steady paycheck, and jump off the cliff of stability into the unknown but exciting world of entrepreneurship. One such friend, the amazing & always inspiring Nicholas Pollacchi, has recently taken the dive.
You know Nicholas as the former Brand Ambassador for Balvenie (he’s the one who is always in a beautiful suit, speaks with a thick Scottish accent, wears a welcoming smile & always give a generous pour) and we watched as he rocked it out driving across the US multiple times for the Balvenie Rare Craft Road Shows.
He recently started his own company, The Whisky Dog, curating bespoke whisky experiences. Most of his impeccably tailored events are private but for a few lucky dogs, you too can have your chance to participate next week in NYC.
Here are the details:
The Whisky Woman 
Love it!
Chip
Thanks Chip! So nice (& surprising!) to see you trolling around the blogosphere! 😀 I’m hoping you have some kick-a** Balcones barrel pulls in front of you right now… 🙂
That sounds awesome! So many events, so little time and money.
And what’s with all the Italian sounding Scots out there? Perhaps that explains my love for their spirits. There must be a “spiritual” connection between Sicily and Scotland. 😉
HA! That’s hysterical – so many people pronounce Nic’s last name like it is Italian (Poll-ah-chi) and not Scottish (Poll-ah-key) – I was one of them and for the longest time, he never corrected me! It wasn’t till I got his voice-mail once that I finally corrected myself. Too funny.
I believe “key” IS the Italian pronunciation. Kinda like the “chi” in “Chinotto” (my favorite soft drink!). Here’s a link for you: http://www.forvo.com/search-it/chinotto/
Your pronunciation error was totally negligible AND understandable. You should hear how people massacre my name on a daily basis!
Yes, you are totally correct that the letters “chi” is pronounced “key” in Italian but the way I have always understood it (and confirmed by my sister who lived in Italy for many years, tho not an Italian linguist scholar, she does speak it fluently) the double ‘c’ before an ‘h’ in Italian is typically pronounced “chi” with a hard “ch” at the front and hard “e” following that (Nic’s last name is PollaCCHI”) so thus the Italian pronunciation of his last name, from what I understand, would have the hard “ch” instead of the “k” … but then this is just for us to geekily debate as he’s not Italian nor should his name be pronounced as such! lol.
For anyone else reading & caring about this – Pollacchi is pronounced by Nicholas as “Poll-ah-key”
🙂
LOL! You so technical. I’ll have to have my sister the Italian professor chime in. My Italian kinda sucks.
Sir Nicholas may not be Italian Italian, but I still maintain that there is a connection. Somewhere. Heh
ha! Me technical? … I know … to a fault some times :S But this is why Chip Tate and I get along so well! Constantly searching for answers & reasons… oye. (that’s not Italian) teehee.
Looking forward to hearing your sister’s opinion! 😉 lol. And to close the conversation loop, yes, I’d be curious if you could find what that Scottish / Italian connection is! I’m sure it’s there just waiting to be discovered by the BoozeDancing crew….
So I finally got around to reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.There was a section that referred to a “Culture of Honor”. The Irish, Scots, and Sicilians were mentioned. I need to explore this further. In the meantime, here’s a link to an excerpt: http://www.gladwell.com/outliers/outliers_excerpt2.html
Dang. Wish I lived remotely close to New York. Stupid Iowa. Sounds like fun and I hope Nicholas has a great turnout.
Same! I hope this is the first of many for him so perhaps one day if you’re ever passing through you may just be able to catch one of his events! Cheers, Kurt!