October was a very busy month on the blog. By which I mean not that I did very much posting than I usually do but that traffic was up considerably. More people stopped by than in any month since January. The most popular post by page views (it may not be by gnashing of teeth) was my list of my favourite Twin Cities restaurant dishes. Food dominated the rest of the top 10 read posts as well, with five restaurants (Pho Tempo, Bukhara, 112 Eatery, Trattoria Monti, Bar La Grassa), a grocery store (Ha Tien), a recipe (for beans) and my original ranking of Indian restaurants in the Twin Cities metro in the list. The lone non-food entry was not a whisky review but a post about a poem (I guess this poem is on an exam list again somewhere in India). Just outside the top 10 was my post about Loch Lomond’s loose grasp of history—and just beyond that was the first booze review to make a showing: the Darroze 50. I won’t be surprised if the review of the 2023 Laphroaig Cairdeas, published at the end of October, makes it onto the November list.

Nor should you be surprised if November turns out to be just like every other month on the blog: three booze reviews per week, one Twin Cities restaurant write-up, and—until I’m done with them—one or two restaurant reports from my travels later in the week.

I started this week of whisky reviews with the latest Laphroaig Cairdeas. The first review for November, which will be posted on Friday, will be of another peated whisky from Islay. Here are the possibilities for the rest of the month, presented again as themed weeks. If any of these particularly grab your fancy, let me know in the comments and I’ll promote it/them to the short-list.

• Another week of mezcal reviews.
• Another week of reviews of old single-grains (this time from sherry casks).
• A week of wine-bothered casks from Edradour.
• A week of Highland Park.
• A week or two of Compass Box releases.
• Another week of peated whiskies.
• A week of rums from Foursquare.
• A week or two of whiskies from Diageo’s 2023 Special Release.

Not all of these are in hand yet but should be by the middle of the month, so everything is on the table.

On the restaurant report front, I still have three reports to come from Italy (those should be done this month), four more from Dublin (should also be done in November), and a handful of quick reports from Belfast (will probably show up in December). And from non-summer travel, there are still three reports to come from our New York City jaunt in October. There will be more Twin Cities reports this month. We are due to eat at Oro this weekend and at Herbst later this month; and there’ll be non-fine dining outings on the other weekends as well. What there will not be on the blog again this month is recipes: those continue to be posted as Reels on Instagram.