Notes on a New Year

Sick. It’s a lousy way to start the year. 

Well, except for the part where The Empress of Whisky keeps bringing me whisky-laced coffee. 

Mmm. 

I should probably eat something, though.  

Plenty of choices. Two days ago I made a large batch of dressing (using my mom’s recipe). I intended to take half to a New Year’s Eve party, but, well, sickness. 

Instead we stayed home and The Empress beat me at board games. At midnight we toasted each other and our kitty. 

For New Year’s Day, I made black-eyed peas, not because I am superstitious, but because they are delicious. Also: turkey breast, the aforementioned dressing, potatoes, several vegetables for The Empress … quite a holiday feast, most of which happily doubles as good comfort leftovers for sick people. 

I’d like to tell you I’ve been sittting here, planning my year, looking ahead … but mostly I’m just fighting the kitty’s advice to nap again. 

Outside, rain falls. 

All together, it’s a good enough day. A quiet place to start what promises to be a noisy year. 

We’ll see to tomorrow, tomorrow.  

2016 Whisky Wind-down, 1: Strong Finish


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.

2016 Whisky Wind-down, 2: Revival


Today’s dram: Four Roses, Single Barrel

Today’s tasting notes: I really can’t taste today. I had a brief reprieve from my head cold yesterday, but that was just the tease before the end, apparently. Today I am stuffy and coughing and cranky. Boooo.

Anyway, let me tell you a story.

I first heard of Four Roses while reading an older book. Not old-old, just mid-’90s. But in this book, which was set in the ’70s, I think, there was an older gentleman (Korean War veteran) who, as a matter of routine, had a nightcap from a bottle of Four Roses.

That’s it. No detail given. As I was reading this prior to the blossoming of my own interest in whisky, and prior to the days of good old reliable Google-at-your-fingertips-to-answer-anything, I lived for a time in mystery as to exactly what Four Roses was.

(It’s bourbon.)

Once, it was a famous brand, and I now realize part of the author’s purpose in having that character drink that whisky nightly was to place him in time and attitude as a certain type of man, an older gentleman who knew the good stuff when it came to whisky.

Trouble is, by the time I learned this, Four Roses had fallen greatly in stature and had become seen as cheap rotgut whisky, not worth drinking neat or savoring.

For a time, it was no longer even sold in the States as straight bourbon whisky. Here, it became a cheap blended grain “brown spirit,” hardly worth the name whisky and legally not allowed to be sold as bourbon.

And yet, overseas, especially in Japan, Four Roses remained true to its heritage and sold straight bourbon. Its success there was such that a Japanese company bought the distilling operation and, gradually, restored the traditional methods while expanding capacity to return to one, global, superb product.

Today, if you visit Four Roses Distillery in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky — as The Empress of Whisky and I did, last October — the tour and tasting staff are upfront about all of this. I appreciate that. Rather than try to cover an inglorious past (as some marketing hacks might recommend) the company admits and embraces its history and uses it as a springboard to talk about the quality bourbon it turns out today.

And it is. Quality.

The standard Four Roses Yellow Label Bourbon is fine sipping whisky, and the small batch is quite a lovely step up from there.

The single barrel promises a unique experience — hand-selected by the master distiller and bottled at a higher proof (though not quite cask strength) for a rich, decadent sipping experience.

In my experience, single barrel whisky is good stuff. It is also, usually, available only sporadically, at a higher price, in good bottle shops. And while many (maybe half?) of the distilleries we visited offered some for sale at their in-house stores, only Four Roses made it available in tiny 50ml bottles.

Naturally, I bought one.

I’d planned to drink it today, but it would be a shame to waste that good spirit on my hampered senses just now.

So, it will wait.

Today’s thoughts: I was gone for a long time. I wasn’t writing much, here or elsewhere. That has changed, and I hope to keep going as a new year dawns. I have thoroughly enjoyed 2016 Whisky Wind-down, and not just for the daily drams. It has been a good excuse to get me to the keyboard daily, and it is my hope that when this ends, I shall keep that momentum, like a child who keeps pedaling after the training wheels come off.

I hope to keep giving you something to come back for, anyway.

Today’s sincere note: Thanks for reading along. One more to go, then we’ll see where life takes us.

Today’s toast: To many happy returns.