Wednesday, January 08, 2003
One of my goals in England was to replace my dwindling collection of Scotch. Indeed, I finished my bottle of Macallan 12-year, which was sweet of sherry and tasted of sunshine and flowery fields. I'll need to get another bottle of that.
I did pick up one that I had been wanting to try for a while, but could never find: Ardbeg 10-year. It's from the island of Islay - their whiskies taste of smoke, peat and the smashing surf, followed by subtle hints of spice. Many people do not like the taste, it's not friendly at the beginning, but once you get to know them, they become your favorites. Maybe that's like the people there. The review is poetic and worth a read:
I can't wait to try it tonight after I've finished cleaning about the house and I'm curled up reading, just before bed.The spindrift-dewed, surf-lashed, wind-tousled Isle of Islay outfaces and outfronts the Hebridean gales, fortified, at least in part, by spirits as well as spirit. In a smallish area on the southeastern tip of the island are located the three great distilleries of Ardbeg, Lagavulin, and Laphroaig.
It is a maritime environment; and there is something maritime, salty, about the singlemalts of Islay. They have bottled sea-spume and storm and kelp and haddock, the cries of gulls and kittiwakes, the Homeric surge and thunder of the sea. And like Xenophon's hardbitten remnant, we too may call out in joy and thankfulness, Thalassa! Thalassa!: for to fight and win through to an Islay malt is like the Ten Thousand's survivors reaching the strand at Trebizond, and the ships home to Greece.[...]
Ardbeg's unique distinctions are not only the maritime tang, but – from the casking – a hint of bourbon, and by the grace of God, a whisper of marmalade with plenty of orange peel.
In the mouth, though – ah…. This is a far 'warmer' dram than its appearance would suggest: its dour integument, as is true of the Scots themselves, belies its warm and welcoming hospitality. Pure water, good honest grain malted and mashed and transcendentally transformed, and peat-smoke have combined to create ambrosial nectar: spicy, complex, durable, long in the mouth, chewy, with notes of oak, eau de vie, moss, and an indefinable, clean taste of the open sea freshly renewed and scoured by a tearing gale.
9:11:04 AM
Yet another blog-sabbatical. This time because I was in England for the wedding of a very dear friend of mine. Davey-Boy, with whom I shared most of my hijinks in my college years, some of them including nearly getting hit by a train walking through a tunnel at night, getting drunk off of margaritas and sleeping in a doghouse at Home Depot, and of course the infamous Leaning Tower of Pizza, constructed during an all-you-can-eat buffet at Pizza Hut.
So now my insane friend Davey-Boy is hitched, and fortunately she's delighful. I've been to enough weddings and receptions to know that the hallmark of a great one is to actually like both the bride and the groom, which sadly does not happen all the time.
The hospitality was incredible. It was nice to be in a smaller place than London and get to know the people better. The house where I stayed used to be a farm in the 1600s. It later became a brewery, a pub, abd then it was finally purchased by the present owners who made it livable. "I don't know where I'd start!" I remarked to Michael, the father of the family.
"We started with the roof, because it was leaking." Michael responded.
9:02:44 AM
Last Update: 2/2/2003; 8:41:47 PM
