Reviews

TALISKER 18

My Fellow Inebriates,

With New Year behind us and 363 days until the next one, it feels like a good time for an anti-drinking/driving message. We all want to survive for the next party, right?

Dumbass falls asleep with foot on gas pedal—rescued just before conflagration.

I started thinking about it when I read an interview with MI police officer Eric Hornbacher, who pulled a drunk from a burning car December 30—so soused that he’d fallen asleep with his foot on the gas pedal. The car was enflamed minutes after his rescue. Thankfully the would-be driver’s neighbors phoned the cops to say he’d been revving his engine for an hour. Lucky for him he was so loud—had he not made such a racket, the neighbors’ complaint wouldn’t have concerned noise— but rather a weird KFC-like odor coming from the street.

Drinking is awesome, but burning to death obviously sucks. This drunken idiot (who spent the night in jail, which beats the burn ward) really needed to take a page out of my friend Christine’s book. You see, the other night Christine visited with a canvas bag full of single malt scotch. Together we started drinking pale ale, progressed through two bottles of red wine, and finished with samples of three gorgeous whiskies.

At which time Christine did not get into her car, slump across the wheel and rev the engine until the car exploded. Instead she retired to our messy guest room for the night.

This is why Christine is so smart, and partly why she is my newest best friend. Any woman who shows up with a bag full of whiskey is okay in my book, but the three she brought were exceptional. She even left them out after she went to bed, although my paws suffered the typical defeat at attempting to pry them open.

Christine is actually perfect. I think, if she had known me a little better, she might have even suggested a dram in the morning. But I guess it didn’t strike her as kid-friendly at the breakfast table. Perhaps she reckoned my parents to be too boring. Perhaps if we’d been alone…

But on to the TALISKER 18. Apparently this stuff is as scarce as hens’ teeth, but Christine is savvy about scotch; she espied the bottle at a specialty shop in Vancouver. Immediately she recognized the treasure it was (unlike the shopkeeper, who parted with it very reasonably).

TALISKER 18, 2007’s “Best Single Malt in the World 2007,” is one of the peatier non-Islay products. The sole distillery on the Isle of Skye, Talisker dates back to 1830. The malt comes from Muir of Ord, the water from Cnoc nan Speireag, which flows over peat.

If you search for TALISKER 18, you’ll often find this: … and you may need a friend like Christine to locate some for you.

TALISKER 18 is leggy in the glass, the color a deep, golden amber. The first scents are of caramel, vanilla, honey and maple, with a floral essence aloft on those warming notes, balanced against the slightly medicinal tones of brine and iodine.

On the palate the peat is striking but not predominant; toffee and roasted nut flavors weigh against it, along with dried fruits and smoke. The mouthfeel is extravagant, almost buttery on the tongue. It coats the throat with an engulfing warmth, its peppery nuance emerging to join with the soft peat. It has a moderate but generous burn. This whiskey is polished, with every note in perfect harmony. Drinking it conjures up a damp seaside, with distant soot and smoke drifting across the senses. If it weren’t so evenly crafted, TALISKER 18 would constitute sensory overload. But its triumph is to balance on the head of a pin, like so many dancing angels.

I’m grateful to Christine for this glimpse of supernatural perfection. I am at her service forevermore, and—needless to say—am available for cuddles.

BAILEY’S IRISH CREAM—emulsification, coagulation, inebriation

My Fellow Inebriates,

The recycling truck just passed by (we missed it and are stuck for another week with sky-high paper and corrugated cardboard). The house looks like a tornado hit it. What is all this holiday loot? Will it enhance our lives? Or is it tomorrow’s litter?

A few favorite things…

Last fall the four-year-old acquired Nacho the Chihuahua, complete with hook for attaching to keys or a child’s backpack. Miss V quickly elevated the animal to near-godhood, its presence necessary for sleep, bath, and all special occasions, including its own twice-weekly birthdays for which cakes are baked and decorated. For Christmas Santa brought the next-size-up Nacho, prompting an ecstatic family reunion for the two of them and, not least, Miss V.

I don’t mind Chihuahuas, but they make me think of tequila and our lack of it. Despite Nacho’s status as favorite pre-K Christmas present, it makes me really thirsty.

The six-year-old’s fave gift? An Easy Bake Oven. I was relieved to see the small opening in this frightening appliance as well as the exhortation to parents to participate in its use. This means I probably won’t get cooked in it, although the smaller Nacho might.

For my dad? A T-shirt. I don’t know if this was his favorite gift, but anything that prevents my dad from walking around shirtless is okay in my book.

And my mum? She got the best gift of all: BAILEY’S IRISH CREAM. Yes, it’s ass-expanding and heart-squeezing, but ahhhhh, there is nothing like Bailey’s (although, come to think of it, Carolan’s and Feeney’s are pretty good substitutes). Decadent and silky, BAILEY’S on ice is the best end-of-day reward for putting up with kids parenting. It’s gentle enough for whiskey novices to appreciate, and for those who still find it strong, a little milk dilutes it nicely.

Supposedly the BAILEY’S recipe wasn’t perfected until 1973 because whiskey and cream don’t naturally mix together. Plenty of DIY Irish cream chefs have experienced having to shake up their separated home versions. Gilbey’s of Ireland homogenizes BAILEY’S with the aid of an emulsifier, which is why theirs stays together and yours doesn’t. (But I wonder which tastes better? I still haven’t tried the DIY version.)

Brain Hemorrhage

The best thing about BAILEY’S is its versatility. It can be drunk straight, over ice, as part of a cocktail, or poured into coffee. A number of shooters call for BAILEY’S specifically because it coagulates when combined with acidic mixers, creating foul-looking drinks intended to be shot for sport and gross-out factor. It’s important to down these shooters really fast or the texture will make you toss your cookies.

What did you get for the holidays? Will it get you drunk? Or will it enhance your life in some other way?

THIRSTY BEAVER AMBER ALE

My Fellow Inebriates,

After ripping into our gifts, packing our tummies and killing our brain cells (or “cell,” as my mum refers to my neurological supply), we’re left with a lull in which to contemplate other things besides seasonal shopping mayhem and gluttony.

It’s amazing how much crazy shit happens in a 365-day space. The magnitude-9 earthquake in Japan; Osama bin Laden, Muammar Gadafi, and Kim Jong-il all toast this year; floods and natural disasters; political movements both violent and nonviolent; economic bailouts; scandalous document dumps; surreptitious bomb-grade uranium shipments—how do we make sense of it all?

It’s true that current events generally just confuse me and my little brain cell. So I thought I’d google what the Internet considered most important in 2011.

And check it out—solidly in CBC’s top 10 stories: Angry beaver roams through N.W.T. town.

According to Jason Mercredi, who filmed the animal holding up a main street, “He’s pissed.” Witnesses said the beaver was the size of a dog, zigzagging through people’s lawns and confronting their dogs with a wild, hissing noise.

What the hell is a beaver anyway? These wet, nasty-looking things were the basis of the Canadian fur trade and still grace the back of the five-cent coin. Sexual parlance, explicably or not, happily incorporates the beaver, as do literary magazines, sporting organizations and youth groups.

Basically beavers are not bad things, unless they are romping through your town scaring the pets. Emblematic on a broad spectrum, the beaver represents the ideal dichotomy of wholesomeness/debauchery.

Which leads me to THIRSTY BEAVER AMBER ALE (Tree Brewing). Admittedly it’s been a long time since I had some of this lovely dark amber nectar, but that rampaging beaver reminded me of it.

THIRSTY BEAVER is crisply carbonated, with a nice layer of foam that doesn’t dissipate immediately. Caramel and nut aromas float gently to the nose. The taste is malty with neither excessive sweetness nor bitterness, an easy drinker that quenches thirst but makes you pause to explore its character. While it’s less hoppy than some amber ales, it still asserts itself as a serious beer contender and would be welcome in my fridge again.

And with a classy name like THIRSTY BEAVER, how could such a beer disappoint? No wonder it’s Tree Brewing’s top seller.

With enough THIRSTY BEAVER in me, current events become meaningless, as do New Year’s resolutions. Isn’t that a wonderful way to end the year?