Monthly Archives: May 2016

Glenfarclas 30

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Glenfarclas 30
I don’t want to jinx it but after almost two weeks my sense of smell and taste are back to normal. I took a couple of days to be sure, tasted some whiskies I’m very familiar with to calibrate my palate, and here I am now with a review of the Glenfarclas 30.

There have been a number of releases of the Glenfarclas 30. I purchased this in 2014 from the Whisky Exchange and based on squinting at the etched bottle code I’m pretty sure this is from the 2014 release. As with the 15 yo this is not available in the US (that I know of). Unlike the 15 yo, it is bottled at the 43% abv of most of the regular range. This is not my first time drinking it: I opened it for a gathering at my friend Rich’s place late last year (where it was overshadowed by some far more expressive malts). It sat with a big squirt of inert gas till a week ago, when I took it to my local group’s May tasting. Everyone there liked it, but with my nose out of action I wasn’t drinking. I did save a couple of two ounce samples for myself from when the bottle was at the 2/3 full mark and it’s from one of those that I am reviewing now. A really fascinating history, I know. Anyway, I’m intrigued to see if I’ll like it more now.   Continue reading →

Some Guidelines for Dog Walking (Draft)

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Dog Walking
Unlike the “Whisky Blogger Commandments“, this is just a draft (and there are only four guidelines so far); please feel feel free to make suggestions for additions.

1. Do not walk a dog you cannot goddamn control. This category includes dogs whose towing power is greater than your restraining power.

2. Do not especially walk a dog you cannot goddamn control on a goddamned extendable leash.  Continue reading →

Old Grand-Dad, 80 Proof

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Old Grand-Dad, 80 Proof
No, my nose and palate are not back in action (though I’m close): I just realized that I’d never actually published these notes on my bottle of Old Grand-Dad that were taken a long time ago (the picture is of the current state of the bottle, which is nearly empty). Here they are now with a newly-written “introduction”.

As you probably know, the Old Grand-Dad line is one of several put out by Beam. Other than their eponymous, and most famous, Jim Beam label, the distillery also puts out a number of premium “small batch” brands (Knob Creek, Basil Hayden, Baker’s and Booker’s); Old Grand-Dad is at the other end of the price spectrum (but is made from the same mash bill as Basil Hayden, which makes sense as the old grand-dad referred to in the name is the actual Basil Hayden). This 40% abv version can be purchased by the liter for less than $15, a Bottled in Bond version at 50% abv  goes for not too many dollars more and the 114 at 57% comes in shy of $30 in most markets. The cognoscenti will tell you that it’s the latter two that you should buy, and they’re not wrong, but as a man of the people here I am with a review of the lowliest in the line.  Continue reading →

Earl Lovelace: Two Novels

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The Dragon Can't Dance
Early in the year I’d threatened that in 2016 I would be further testing the patience of my core whisky readership—who are already suffering through a steady diet of recipes and restaurant reviews—with posts on literature. Here now is the first one, on the Trinidadian writer, Earl Lovelace, which will seek to convince you to purchase and read his novels, The Dragon Can’t Dance (1979) and Salt (1996).

Odds are that if you’re not from the Caribbean, or do not teach or study fiction by writers from the Caribbean, you will not be familiar with Earl Lovelace. And given the fame of writers such as V.S Naipaul (also originally from Trinidad—though it’s hard to say where he’s from now) or Jamaica Kincaid or Edwidge Danticat or, more recently, Marlon James, Lovelace’s lack of name recognition may seem to tell its own story. After all, in the era of globally available literature, and with the logic of the free market seemingly internalized everywhere, it is easy to believe that availability and name-recognition are linked to “quality”. Surely if a writer from the Caribbean and her books were worth reading they would be nominated for the Booker Prize or receive mass market publishing contracts and “rise” to the top of our consciousness.  Continue reading →

Out of Action (Temporarily, I Hope)

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delhi-congestion
I made fun of Sku last week for wondering if he should stop blogging about whiskey, but you may have noticed that I have also not blogged about whisky/whiskey since last Monday. In my case, no principles are involved (you can put that sentence in my epitaph); it is just that for the better part of a week my senses of smell and taste have been knocked out by some combination of bronchitis, sinusitis and spring allergies. I’ve not been able to taste or smell very much since last Tuesday and as I had no posts lined up past the review of Heirloom this means there will be no reviews of whiskies or restaurants and no recipes till my nose and palate are back in action. And I have no idea when that will be—I do hope it will be soon as I would really like to be able to taste my food again properly; on the plus side, my liver is getting an extended break. I should have some other stuff on the blog in the meantime, however, that doesn’t involve the nose or palate, so do check back—or spend your time reading the many, many older posts you’ve so callously ignored in the past.

Heirloom (St. Paul)

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Heirloom: Meat Pie
Heirloom opened in St. Paul late last year and while it wouldn’t be accurate to say that it has set the cities on fire it has already acquired a strong reputation. The chef, Wyatt Evans is another W.A. Frost graduate (like Russell Klein of Meritage). His new restaurant offers what it calls “modern farmhouse cuisine”. I’m not entirely sure about the farmhouse part but the restaurant’s general approach—lots of pickled veg, foams, crumbles and powders on top of things, an emphasis on seasonal ingredients, bread you pay for, a beer list etc.—certainly is in line with contemporary trends, as is its aesthetic and general air of informality. It’s a large, bright restaurant, with lots of wood and glass, an active bar area with its own menu, and lots of room between tables: a very nice space and not too loud—at least not in the back where we were seated. It’s true that it’s located right off a street with the name Cretin Avenue, but you can’t have everything. Continue reading →

What Should Sku Blog About Next?

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Sku, yesterday

Beam is bringing out a 13 yo rye that is to cost $300 and naturally Sku is planning to quit blogging about whiskey as a result. It’s the right thing to do. After all these years of blogging about easily accessible bourbons that anyone can buy and drink and reasonably priced 10 yo single malts, you can see why the prospect of an expensive 13 yo rye just doesn’t sit with him. Naturally, his announcement has set off a great deal of ferment in the whiskey world, nowhere more so than at the TTB, who are now facing the prospect of actually having to pay someone to remind the world of their existence on a regular basis. And K&L are doubtless wondering if doubling down on armagnac right now was a good idea—what if Sku’s malaise spreads and he stops blogging about brandies as well??! And, of course, the rest of us are wondering where we will now get the kind of loquacious, ebullient flights of fancy Sku was known for. Well, I can’t solve all the dilemmas posed by Sku’s threatened retirement but with your help I can at least try to ensure that he doesn’t stop blogging altogether. Please respond to this poll that asks: “What Should Sku Blog About Next?” Continue reading →

Evan Williams, Black Label

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Evan Williams
This may be one of the most pointless reviews I’ve yet posted (and that’s saying a lot). Everyone who drinks American whiskey knows that the regular Evan Williams, the one with the black label (it’s not actually called Evan Williams Black Label) is one of the great values in bourbon. Indeed, I am tempted to say (and probably have said in the past) that it may be the single best value in the entire whisky/whiskey world. It is a bourbon that contains all the quintessential characteristics of the category; it’s not going to provide the best example of any of those individual characteristics but it takes nothing off the table. You can reach for it any night that you want to drink some bourbon and not be disappointed. And you can get a liter bottle in most stores for just about what you’ll pay for a 1.5 oz pour of many equally ordinary but far less balanced single malts at bars. This is an everyday drinker that you can stock for less discriminating guests without any sense of shame and that you can drink happily alongside them.  Continue reading →

Kavalan Solist, Sherry Cask S090610018B

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Kavalan Solist Sherry
I am about to tell you a fascinating story about baggage. Try to contain your excitement. It has a pedagogic purpose though: so that you may be protected against the error I almost made.

We flew through Hong Kong on our most recent trip to India and I was intrigued on the way in to see what the duty free selection at the airport there might be like. It is pretty dire pretty much everywhere else in the world at this point: mostly overpriced, marginal whiskies in fancy packaging for travelers whose inhibitions and judgment have been dulled by the exhaustion of international travel. I was hoping there might be some interesting Japanese whisky available. As it happens, the Japanese whisky selection was slim and there was nothing of interest available on the Scotch front. But they did have pretty good prices on Kavalan Solists. The bourbon Solists were probably about $80 US and this sherry Solist was about $105. As the US prices make these seem reasonable I decided to get a couple of bottles. And to make my life easy I decided to get them before boarding our flight back to LAX on the way out. Which would have been a terrible mistake! Why? Read on! Continue reading →

Keema Posole

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Here is the third recipe from my first outing with a bag of Rancho Gordo hominy. I actually made this alongside the palak posole and before the pozole rojo—I note this for the benefit of my future biographers. Unlike the palak posole, where the hominy was replacing paneer (two things that are nothing alike), this recipe is not a stretch. I am not alone in putting sweet corn kernels in my keema as a matter of course. Of course, hominy does not taste like sweet corn and you might say that in this recipe it actually replaces diced potato: working both as an extender and as a textural contrast to the ground meat (keema). If you don’t have hominy on hand just dice two large potatoes. But if you do have hominy on hand or are looking for more uses for it, give this a go. Whichever way you make it, it’s very simple. Continue reading →

Benriach 34, 1977, Cask 1034

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Benriach 34, 1977

Benriachs from the 1970s have a very strong reputation among many whisky geeks. 1976 is the “vintage” that is claimed to be the magical one (see again my annoying opinions on this subject here and here) but by and large all 1970s Benriachs are expected to be good. The distillery under the ownership of the Walkers (who recently sold it and Glendronach and Glenglassaugh to Brown-Forman) built its latter-day reputation on a program of annual single cask releases (as they did with Glendronach). Oddly, while they seem to have fudged the re-racking and de facto finishing that probably went on with a number of the Glendronach releases, in the case of Benriach they noted clearly when casks had been finished in sherry or port or whatever. This particular cask was finished in PX sherry, which is the sort of thing that makes you wonder: why does an older bourbon cask whisky need to go into a PX cask?

Well, let’s see how it all worked out anyway. I did like the last Benriach single cask I tried a lot and that was an even unlikelier combination of peated malt and a tawny port finish! Continue reading →

Meritage (St. Paul)

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Meritage, Saddle of Lamb
I always tend to think of Meritage as a Twin Cities institution from way back but in fact it only opened around the same time we got here: in 2007. The head chef, Russell Klein, has been around on the scene longer. Though he is not originally from Minnesota (from New York, I believe), he was the executive chef at W.A. Frost, a St. Paul institution that has incubated a lot of Twin Cities kitchen talent. His wife Desta Maree Klein is the other force behind the restaurant—she runs the operations. They’ve won a number of local awards and Chef Klein has been long-listed a couple of times for the Midwest James Beard. It’s a place we’ve always meant to go to but somehow never have. Well, the omission has been fixed now.  Continue reading →

Balmenach 26, 1988 (Signatory for Binny’s)

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Balmenach 26, 1988, Signatory for Binny's
Here is the last of the recent’ish Binny’s exclusives that I split with a bunch of other whisky geeks. I’ve previously reviewed a Glenlivet 19, a Laphroaig 17, a Linkwood 16, and a Clynelish 7 (all from Signatory); an Ardmore 16 and a Ledaig 13 (both from G&M); and a OB Glen Garioch 16. This Signatory Balmenach is the oldest of the lot (I mention this in case you are really bad at counting); it is, however, a year younger than mentioned on Binny’s website—there it is listed as a 27 yo but, in fact, it is a 26 yo (the correct age is on the label along with the distilling and bottling dates). I”d been planning to review this one a while ago, and I’m not really sure why I never got around to it. As a result, however, I am reviewing this after the bottle has been near the halfway mark for a bit over two months (nearly half the bottle went into the splits as soon as I received it). And so this review is not going to be representative of a freshly opened bottle.  Continue reading →

Balblair 1997-2009, 1st US Release, Take 2

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Balblair 1997-2009
Michael K. recently offered me a sample of this and I took him up on it saying I’d finished my own bottle well before the blog. That statement is true but, as with the Redbreast 12 CS, it turns out I had already reviewed it in the summer of 2013, when the blog was relatively new, and had just completely forgotten. Now I’ve got no shortage of never-reviewed whiskies (samples and bottles) on my shelves but it was sort of interesting to re-review that Redbreast and also this Ben Nevis recently, and so I decided I’d give this another go as well. I have not looked at my previous notes or exact score again before this second go-around. Let’s see if I come up with much variance.

(You can read Michael’s own review here, which as it happens was also posted in late-2013—I’ve avoided looking at his notes as well.)  Continue reading →

Pozole Rojo

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Pozole Rojo, Rancho Gordo
So I said last week in my Palak Posole post that I’d not already purchased hominy/posole from Rancho Gordo on account of the fact that I associated posole entirely with the Mexican soup/stew of near-identical name, and that as our local house of Mexican goodness, El Triunfo, offers a very good version on weekends I didn’t need to make it at home. Here I am, therefore, with a recipe for a rough and ready pozole rojo. You see, I soaked and cooked a pound of posole last week and even after using a lot of it in the Palak Posole and some more in a keema dish (recipe coming soon) I had a few cups left over. And as I also had a large package of pork neck bones in the freezer, it was hard to not end up making pozole. I’ve eaten a lot of pozole but have never made it before. Scanning the intertubes it didn’t seem like the hardest thing to do. What follows is an approximation/intersection of a number of recipes I looked at. If you want a more precise recipe (and with chicken rather than pork) you could do far worse than to look at the posole rojo recipe in the Rancho Gordo e-booklet on posole. Whatever recipe you use, the results are likely to be good. Continue reading →

Paul John Peated, Cask 739

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Paul John Peated, Single Cask 739, Bresser & Timmer
Here in quick succession is a second Paul John. Unlike yesterday’s Select Cask Classic this one is a single cask and it is also peated. The cask was bottled for the Dutch outfit Bresser & Timmer. That is where my information ends. As to where the malt was peated, I’m not sure. I know Amrut imports peated malt from Scotland for at least some, if not all of their peated releases—it’s almost midnight as I’m typing this and I’m too lazy to check if it’s all for all of them: is there such a thing as Indian peat? Anyway, maybe somebody with better information will chime in.

I opened this as well at the same tasting that featured yesterday’s bottle and it fared a lot better than that one—a couple of people even had it as their top whisky of the night. Let’s see if this has also improved as the bottle has stayed open for a week.  Continue reading →

Paul John Select Cask Classic

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Paul John Classic Select
Most people associate Goa with Russian drug dealers but there’s also a distillery there. It’s apparently been around since 1992, which makes it far younger than Amrut. They’re also more recent to the single malt game but this doesn’t stop them from labeling their product “The Great Indian Single Malt”. Oh, in case you’re wondering about the name, the company is named for its chairman, Paul John, a man who the company’s website informs us is “[G]uided by his singular passion, tomes of wisdom and the extraordinary skill of his Master Distiller”. This Master Distiller is one Michael John—presumably a relation. It’s not clear from the website, however, where he acquired his experience—homegrown? abroad? Their barley is homegrown—give or take a couple of thousand kilometres (it’s Himalayan)—but the casks they mature their spirit in are made of American white oak, and I *think* these are all ex-bourbon. The equipment was set up by “experts from the UK” who must also have conveyed the importance of empty marketing blather: nosing and tasting their malts will apparently “bring alive the many facets of Goa”, “will truly transport you to Goa”, enable you to “[S]avour Goa by taking the tiniest of sips” and so forth. They may be new but in some ways they already seem very familiar.  Continue reading →