My fellow inebriates,

If you think you’re seeing a lot of “aspirational” reviews from yours truly these days, you’re not wrong. My parents aren’t visiting our local booze shop as often as I’d like, so instead of drinking, I spend my time drooling over hooch on the Internet.

Except today.

You see, I came across HOUSE OF TAMWORTH EAU DE MUSC whiskey from Tamworth Distilling.

Yeah, yeah, it looks lovely. But guess where the key tasting note comes from?

Guess…

Okay, I’ll tell you. It comes from a beaver’s ass crack.

It seems beavers secrete a substance called castoreum from a sac near the base of the tail. The flavourant supposedly tastes a bit like vanilla and berries, and its use dates back to old times. (How anybody got the idea in the first place … you really gotta wonder.)

As you might guess, this isn’t a voluntary donation on the part of the beavers. Somebody traps ’em, eats ’em, and sends the anal secretions to Tamworth Distilling to put in EAU DE MUSC.

Beavers remind me a bit of gerbils (which terrify me, but are part of our family). So I can’t get behind EAU DE MUSC even if butt-cavity-flavoured whiskey tastes like ambrosia from the gods. And luckily for all of us at LBHQ, it’s not on the table anyway. You have to go to New Hampshire (live free or die) to get this stuff.

Still, I’m curious. So if you’ve tried this whiskey, or even if you’ve just sniffed a beaver’s bunghole, drop me a line in the comments and I’ll add it to my compendium of hypothetical (if not aspirational) tasting notes.