Today’s dram: Ardbeg, Corryvreckan
Today’s tasting notes: Before I can describe the experience of drinking this, I need to tell you how I found it.
I owe my love of Scotch whisky to reading and friendship.
Principally, it’s due to one of my oldest, dearest friends. We’ve known each other about three-quarters of our lives, and over the course of that time we’ve been influencing one another in various ways, the most consistent of which is reading recommendations.
Several years ago, he recommended to me Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon. Among other vices, the protagonist drinks Scotch whisky, with Laphroaig a favorite.
The writing made it sound good, so my friend picked up a bottle and has been collecting ever since. Whenever I visit his home, he brings out whichever bottle(s) he’s recently acquired and we enjoy a dram or two while catching up.
Lately, it’s been the same when he’s visited me. I was slow to pick up an enjoyment of Scotch whisky, but with time I’ve come to love it, and I take great joy in finding something before my friend does.
Thus, when he recently hit a milestone birthday, I turned to an author I was pretty sure he had not gotten around to yet, Joe Abercrombie. He writes grimdark fantasy, so Scotch whisky doesn’t appear in his fiction. But oh, does he go on about Scotch whisky on his blog.
I was pretty sure my friend would not be prepared for Abercrombie’s Whisky Deathmatch winner, Ardbeg Corryvreckan, and I was proven correct when I gave him the bottle.
Then he opened it, and we realized no one can be prepared for Ardbeg Corryvreckan.
This is cask-strength, big Islay whisky at its finest, with complexity galore added in.
At 57.1 ABV, it threatens to sear itself into your senses just on aroma. Fight through that. Inhale deeply. Find yourself in a peat bog on fire. Seek the ocean nearby. Promise of safety. Sip. Crashing. Waves overhead. Timbers around you. Someone screams. Darkness. Across from you, a hag in plaid smiles a broken-toothed smile and shakes her head at your foolishness. She gestures at the glasses laid out on her table. You toast. You drink. You wake. Gasping.
Today’s thoughts: A few months later, I thought, Shit, I need a bottle of that for myself.
It has been sitting, quietly, lurking at the back of the Scotch whisky shelf, waiting.
I’m still a bit under the weather, with diminished senses, but fuck it; I’m ending Whisky Wind-down the way I wanted.
The tasting passage above is half-memory, half bowled-over-just-now.
Wow.
Just, wow.
The Corryvreckan, if you are unfamiliar, refers to a sea passage off the northern coast of Scotland. It is famous for a persistent whirlpool, which is the subject of myths, legends, and lost souls.
There are but hours left in the year as I sit and sip and ponder, staring into that swirly abyss.
“The year went by fast.”
“The year can’t end soon enough.”
“2016, you monster!”
All true. All false.
All depends on your perspective.
I fancy no one ever said it better than Dickens, writing the intro to A Tale of Two Cities — “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times …” — but I imagine even that wily old wordsmith would look around at 2016, then quietly strike through half of that famous opening. The hopeful-sounding half, obviously.
And yet … can’t we, in every age, look at those words and think they apply? Are we not always lurching from the spring of hope to the winter of despair? Did not half (or, er, just shy of half) of American voters actually want an evil tangerine in the Oval Office?
I look around, and beyond the doom, I see a swirly mix of all that is wrong and right with the world. For every dark bastard, I see a hopeful naif. For every disillusioned Baby Boomer, a determined millennial.
I see the growing ranks of those who would, through active malice or indifferent selfishness, drag us to the dark depths.
Yet I see still more struggling against these currents to stay in the light.
Today’s solemn conclusion: What matters when a clock strikes midnight?
Today’s toast: To passing the time: May you do so with a suitable dram, in the company of friends.
lastgreypoet 