whiskey tasting

GREEN SPOT SINGLE POT STILL IRISH WHISKEY—Not for binge drinking

Today’s Reason to Drink: that particular feeling you get when you’ve just binge-viewed a TV series in its entirety. It’s over, and you’re abject. That feeling of Now what will I love???

No, the series in question is not Arrested Development. Truth be told, we’ve been limping through AD2013 without much investment. The series I’ll miss is the 2006-08 UK series Life on Mars.

life on marsWe were late to the party with Life on Mars, but that’s what happens when you kibosh your satellite subscription and go with Netflix Canada. We weren’t even going to watch Life on Mars, but then my friend Scarybear wanted to because he thought it would be about the actual planet Mars; he hoped to see some cool aliens or spaceships. Scary was a little put out to find that Life on Mars was a cop show set in the Earth city of Manchester, but he quickly got sucked into it along with the rest of us bears.

In Life on Mars police detective Sam Tyler gets hit by a car and wakes up in 1973. “Am I mad, in a coma, or back in time?” he asks. “Whatever’s happened, it’s like I’ve landed on a different planet. Maybe if I can work out the reason, I can get home…” Even Scarybear grudgingly admits that 1973 does seem Mars-like compared to 2006. You’ve got the fashion, the non-stop drinking and smoking, the sex, the violence. We loved Life on Mars, but it was only two seasons long, and we’re sad enough it’s over that we have to get drunk.

Luckily we have new booze at LBHQ. On their way home from Ireland my Nana and Papa went through the duty-free and got me some GREEN SPOT SINGLE POT STILL IRISH WHISKEY. Being sad because I’d run out of Life on Mars episodes, I really needed this sort of confirmation that Nana and Papa love me. Of all the crazy-generous gifts—three outfits apiece for the girls plus chocolate, a T-shirt and hat for Dad, and this

More on this later.

More on this later

for Mum—GREEN SPOT was the very best gift of all.

Green Spot IW

Blatant favoritism, right? I mean, I knew they loved me, but wow. They obviously love me best. I’ll have to be careful not to let the kids know.

GREEN SPOT has been described by whiskey writer James Murray as “unquestionably one of the world’s great whiskeys.”  A blend of eight- and nine-year-old single pot still whiskeys, a quarter matured in sherry, then bourbon, then Malaga wine casks, GREEN SPOT is a venerable whiskey that came into existence around 1920. Golden-amber and highly aromatic, GREEN SPOT wafts stone fruit, citrus peel and vanilla; it really doesn’t set you up to expect its substantial, creamy character or its abundance of toffee and caramel on the palate. GREEN SPOT is big and full-bodied, generously layered and nuanced, and caressingly smooth. The finish is warm and memorable.

We mostly enjoy Islay whiskies at LBHQ, so GREEN SPOT was an inordinate treat. While I love a good peaty Scotch whisky, the peat is often so dominant that the more playful subtleties get beat up like a suspect on Life on Mars. GREEN SPOT offers a lighter flavor profile without sacrificing any weight, so you get a luxurious sipper that fully satisfies the palate.

Should we binge-drink GREEN SPOT the way we binge-watched Life on Mars? I’m always in favor of binge-drinking any product that enters LBHQ, my fellow inebriates, but GREEN SPOT is so sublime that I have to say no: Do not binge-drink GREEN SPOT. You wouldn’t want to be half in the bag and miss out on its delectable attributes. And let’s face it, even a booze as wonderful as GREEN SPOT won’t taste as good coming up as it did going down.

As for this guy….

031

I thought he was just jet-lagged but he continues to look this way. Long after Scary and I were asleep he continued like this; he practically had electric sparks shooting out of him. We figure he’s a speed freak.

CANADIAN CLUB—an appropriate response to a day at the PNE

We bears had the house to ourselves all day yesterday. Meanwhile my parents were observing carny people—not just the blue-shirted PNE ride operators, but other, more interesting people, squeezed into all sorts of unfortunate outfits, bouncing along feeding themselves corndogs. My mum saw a woman with four nipples, arbitrarily arranged beneath a stretched-to-the-limit-of-physics tanktop. And when she took the girls to the bathroom she met a new mother dressed as a stripper.

Needless to say, they had an awesome day, although they spent a great deal of our alcohol funds on PNE-priced items such as, well water, at $3.50 for a half-litre bottle.

Now who needs water?

The only time we really need water is when we buy CANADIAN CLUB instead of CROWN ROYAL. Which we did out of curiosity today. We had just chastised my dad for buying—at the PNE—a pan-flutist’s CD for $20, which was ultimately my mother’s fault because she spent 15 minutes coursing through the PNE prize home while my dad waited on a bench being wooed by the pan flute. My mother heard it too; he was playing “Unchained Melody,” and the teenagers behind her were grasping for the artist. “The Righteous Brothers,” my mother said, which they either ignored or didn’t recognize, then the girl told her boyfriend she was sure she’d heard her mom playing that song, which netted her some noises of disgust. And she added, she would never have a white kitchen, although the wine rack beneath the deer’s head was pretty dope.

My mother didn’t mean to buy CANADIAN CLUB today, but the liquor store is right beside the bank, where she had to go to spread a small cheque between two separate accounts to cover such liquor-unfriendly things as her gym membership and the car insurance. She was trying to be nice by buying a cheap mickey of rye so she could sip something guilt-free instead of getting into the more expensive CAOL ILA 12 my dad brought back from Vegas. She was trying to do a good thing, but you have to admit she just ended up looking like an alcoholic, especially when the mickey fell out of her gym bag at Steve Nash Fitness World.

I’ve come to the defense of CANADIAN CLUB many times, especially since it’s typically pitted against fit-for-royalty CROWN ROYAL, which is a nice, smooth rye. If you order a rye ‘n’ seven at the bar, the bartender will usually try to pass off CANADIAN CLUB on you for economy’s sake. And with 7-Up or gingerale, this is perfectly reasonable. CANADIAN CLUB is plenty rough compared to CROWN ROYAL, but who cares when you’re mixing it with pop? Neat, or even over ice, it’s a different story.

When I drink CANADIAN CLUB, I feel like a ruminant. I can taste grass and hay, along with some jagged alcohol, which I like. What it lacks in nuance it makes up for in straightforwardness. With a sweet, fizzy mixer, I actually prefer the rougher-edged CANADIAN CLUB; it asserts itself better, and the pop hides its earthier tones.

If I were a cow, like the one the kids observed giving birth at the PNE, I’d wonder what the hell humans were doing with grains, making things like CANADIAN CLUB. I’d also wonder why there was a set of crowded bleachers right beside me while a farmer stuck his whole arm inside me, tied a rope around my calf’s leg and yanked it out. (Miss P and Miss V did enjoy the whole business, but they thought it took too long.)

There are a lot of weird things at the PNE. It makes Walmart seem downright sedate, and apparently it takes a lot of energy to spend 10 hours there with a four-year-old and a six-year-old. I’m delighted it drove my mother to drink, even if it was just CANADIAN CLUB.