alcohol

GLENFARCLAS 17—Come back, Christine!!!!

My Fellow Inebriates,

OMG! Help! Holy shit, humans!

I’ve been hiding out today because the six-year-old barfed in school and came home early. Needless to say, I do not wish to be the preferred stuffie right now. The washing machine scares the freaking crap out of me, and a projectile offering from Miss P would guarantee me a ride in it.

This means I have limited time to tell you about the last item from our weekend scotch-tasting threesome before the invalid gets off the couch and comes looking for cuddles.

Big thanks once again to my friend Christine for visiting with a canvas bag containing this and two other fine whiskies. When you taste two stellar whiskies—the first mind-blowing and the second only fractionally less astonishing—you almost stop breathing wondering what the third will be like.

TALISKER 18 and CAOL ILA 12 are renowned for their peatiness, making GLENFARCLAS 17 the potential oddball of the tasting triad. A Speyside single malt, GLENFARCLAS (“valley of the green grass”) is distilled using spring water from snow melt alongside the River Spey in Ballindalloch, Scotland, rather than the heavily peated water that contributes the characteristic peat-smoke flavoring to the other two I sampled.

Islay whiskey fans sometimes disparage Speyside whiskey (and vice versa) precisely because of the relative lack (or presence) of peat. Even whiskey drinkers who enjoy both regions still tend to favor one of the two styles.

Predictably I like both and suffer equal spasms over the absence from our liquor cabinet of either product. But regardless of that even-mindedness, I’d just enjoyed two peaty drams before the GLENFARCLAS 17 was poured. How would this third whiskey compare?

In the glass, GLENFARCLAS 17 shines a rich coppery amber, with detectable oiliness around the edges. On the nose: a surge of sherry, abundant but contained, and apple-butter with vanilla-butterscotch behind—a perfectly modulated chorus with an oak backbone and distant peat.

The sip is weighty and full, developing with a sensuous pace, the sherry-malt tones mellowing across the tongue into bakery-spice notes and lingering smoke. This whiskey dries noticeably on the tongue, masterfully balanced and complex, with an almost endless finish.

Not with scotch, people.

Some whiskey aficionados, especially Islay fans, might accuse Speyside whiskies of being comparatively simple—but only after burning off their tastebuds with Wonka SweeTarts in the company of an ailing six-year-old.

Adding water might enable the drinker to pick out its individual flavors with heightened precision, but dilution seems an unimaginable crime, and I couldn’t bring myself to try it. Of the three whiskies savored that night, GLENFARCLAS 17 was my favorite, and when Christine left the house with it, I pressed my nose against the window, vibrating with horror and sorrow.

Come back, Christine. Please come back.

Why fun is better than hot

My parents have refused to purchase critical items including but not limited to Johnnie Walker Black Label and Goldschlager. They tell me groceries take priority and that’s just how it is.

I get the solid-foods thing; I understand that people and especially kids need to eat meals, and that it’s important not to squander our resources. I do actually like the kids, even though they get a little nutty sometimes when it comes to yours truly.

Can you tell which handwriting is thumbless?

So yes, we should feed them, which means allocating funds for Rice Krispies and apple sauce instead of my booze wish list.

But sometimes my parents waste money.

For instance, they paid the school $10 for something called Hot Lunch and then forgot about it.

According to the school, Hot Lunch means a pizza day for the kids, so they don’t have to bring a sandwich. The school collects the money about two weeks before the lunch, at which time parents check off their preferences as to pizza topping and milk versus juice to accompany it.

Urban slang defines Hot Lunch a little differently—something the grade one teacher may be aware of, given that she rephrased it in the classroom calendar as “Fun Lunch.”

Either way, it slipped my mum’s mind and she packed a sandwich anyway—a waste of resources and (I humbly point out) a small but direct hit on the Goldschlager fund.

I expect my parents to forget stuff. But I wondered how they could forget the school’s exuberant urging to enjoy Hot Lunch.

I asked my mum if she was concerned about the school providing Hot Lunch for minors and making parents pay for the experience.

She smacked her own forehead, realizing she’d forgotten all about it and exerted herself unnecessarily to construct a ketchup-and-cheese sub. This mattered to my mum, who tends to economize with her parenting efforts.

“Is it the Hot Lunch aspect of it?” I asked.

“Fun Lunch,” she said.

“Because I think I’d decline an offer of Hot Lunch myself.”

“Oh, would you?”

“I would.” I was being very sincere.

“Miscreant.”

So I guess it looks like another dry day here at LBHQ.

Monetize this!

My Fellow Inebriates,

One of the best things about being a bear is that I don’t have to get a job. There’s probably nothing more stressful in the modern world than figuring out how to fit into the workforce. If you don’t find a niche, you flagellate yourself for being broke and unproductive, even if your kick-ass Bejeweled scores buoy your self-esteem somewhat. If somebody does hire you, you go into ass-kissing mode, trying to keep that precious money drip going, even as you turn into a robot.

So I really enjoy being an unemployable bear.

But it’s not perfect. My parents don’t purchase nearly enough alcohol, which suggests the need for an income uptick.

Monetize that!

I mentioned this to my mum, who shooed me away because the gems were mega-exploding and she needed to concentrate. Telling her we have a vodka emergency is like pissing in the wind. And my dad doesn’t even believe such a crisis is real.

When I pestered my mum (her word), she suggested I stop using my site to pine for alcohol and make some effort to monetize it. Seriously!

This sounded a bit too close to “work” for my tastes, but she pointed to the string of emails about “growing your blog” (which, hypocritically, she had subscribed to despite huge reservations about the misuse of the intransitive word “grow”). She said perhaps I should check out my stats a bit and take some interest in that stuff.

"There are lies, damned lies and statistics." - Mark Twain

I said I do look at my stats—that’s how I know someone googled “shit bear gay” and found me this morning. I said I planned to address that very subject, but I needed to clear my head with some shooters first. Then I needed to look at the People of Walmart. Then it would be naptime.

I need cachaca.

But she barred me from the computer. She was busy reading Tentblogger, Copyblogger and Problogger, not to mention some Canada Customs information that might explain why my Cachaca hasn’t arrived via UPS yet.

Sigh. Do you guys pay attention to this monetizing stuff?