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.

SMIRNOFF Vodka

My recent adventure with my good friend Glen Bear and a mickey of POLAR ICE vodka was certainly a good time. Enormous Glen, who could probably take down a baby walrus, totally lost control in our house and caused a lot of damage. So I thought I’d include him in my next vodka tasting because it was so much fun.

Next on my list: SMIRNOFF vodka, a new-world product based on an old-world recipe. A readily available and affordable vodka.

But first I needed to Glen-proof the house. You see, my parents had told us they don’t want to go to JYSK to replace things that we wreak while inebriated. They just want our house to stay peaceful and keep standing. They really didn’t want Glen involved. To be honest, they didn’t want me sampling vodka either, but I told them I was going to get famous as a vodka reviewer and make them rich. I said I was going to be a Useful Animal and monetize my website by featuring thoughtful reviews that people would seek out.

They countered that I might do better to peddle my ass downtown.

I countered that I do not even have a working anus.

And so I was allowed to have a vodka tasting, as long as I kept it civilized and avoided breakage. They urged me not to include Glen Bear, but I really like him, so I promised we’d be careful. But you know how polar bears are.

Actually, polar bears are in deep trouble. Two-thirds of them are expected to disappear by 2050 due to habitat loss caused by global warming. They are officially a Threatened Species under the Endangered Species Act.

I wasn’t sure if this was a reason to give Glen vodka or not, but the SMIRNOFF bottle was sticking innocently out of its paper bag, calling to us. It was the one with the red label, the bottom-shelf variety that’s ubiquitous at bars and restaurants.

So how does it taste?

The first sip is inoffensive and almost flavorless but is followed by an acrid, saliva-evaporating throat-burn. It demands a mixer, so we get ourselves some Tang. I look at Glen and think about his habitat getting inexorably warmer. A bear like Glen just wouldn’t know what to do about the ice floes receding, and vodka can’t help.

We continue to drink and find ourselves accepting SMIRNOFF’S bitter notes, almost savoring them now that we’ve lowered our expectations. It does taste fine with Tang, and in a pinch you could use Mountain Dew or lemonade—anything with a sweet tartness to offset the bitterness. I wouldn’t do a greyhound, though.

SMIRNOFF has been pretty intuitive about the flavors it needs to mask, producing a full line of flavors that include citrus, blueberry, black cherry and who the hell knows how many others. The SMIRNOFF people know what they’re doing; they know their vodka isn’t top-tier, so they’ve made it pocketbook- and user-friendly. They’ve also tapped into the marketing genius of variety whereby competition can be harnessed within their own brand. When I think of this principle I think fondly of Malcolm Gladwell’s talk on marketing. I like his hair so much; it is at least as undisciplined as my fur.

So, what kind of shape is our house in?

Well, it looks like a freaking bomb hit it, but that’s because my mum is too busy doing my typing to clean properly. She has to; my paws are more like little nubs than hands, and I don’t have any patience. I just want to be famous, one drink at a time. Oh, yeah, and my mum is lazy.

And how is Glen doing?

Glen lumbered off after one or two cocktails. He wasn’t too excited about SMIRNOFF, but worse still, he’d had no idea about polar bears being threatened, and he was totally freaked out when I told him. I said the two of us should do something for polar bears, like send them money or tell people about global warming. A big guy like Glen Bear, who can pack an Arctic seal under one arm while yanking at a helicopter pontoon, shouldn’t be lying around cowering and retching up orange-tinted SMIRNOFF. We should be parlaying our web infamy into charitable activities.

So we’ll start by encouraging our readers to click on the World Wildlife Fund widget on the right. It’s one small action to show we care about the environment. Go ahead—do it! And then grab yourself some Tang and SMIRNOFF.

JAMESON IRISH WHISKEY

The last time we had this in the house it was earmarked for—get this—an Irish cream cheesecake, i.e., another profligate waste of decent booze. For all my mother’s claims to Irish heritage, she doesn’t have the first clue what Irish liquor is actually for, so instead of drinking it she chucks it into cakes that spend an hour burning off their alcohol content in the oven.

This is very frustrating.

Nevertheless I did get a chance to taste the dregs of the aforementioned airline-sized bottle before it was sacrificed to gluttony rather than drunkenness.

For $33, JAMESON IRISH WHISKEY, in sufficient quantities, would totally get the job done. It’s a little rough and unfocused—fruity, nutty, a touch metallic even—but there’s nothing disturbing or offensive about it. With a moderate burn and a short finish, it suggests itself for Irish coffee and hints at the flavors in Bailey’s, so at least my mum picked the right booze for her greedy project.

I’d be perfectly content to sip JAMESON straight up, and I advise the same for my mother, the expansion of whose ass is a threat to smallish animals like myself who tend to get left under couch cushions, etc. Then she could say: “I’ve gone on a whiskey diet. I’ve lost three days already!” instead of needing to visit Walmart for fat pants and ending up on the internet in one of those people-of-Walmart photos.

I highly RECOMMEND not monkeying around with this awesome triple-distilled blended whiskey, and drinking it.