to new hobbies (and an understanding wife)
December 29th, 2009
Over the last year or so I’ve discovered fine liquors. That’s not to say that I wasn’t aware there were whiskies out there besides Jack Daniels and Jim Beam, I just didn’t any reason to pony up the extra cash to get drunk on fancy spirits. Mostly because my drinking habits were single-minded: get drunk with friends.
In my old age I’ve found it to be more satisfying (and easier on my morning-afters) to enjoy a small drink of exceptional quality. Much like my college room mate who spent a small fortune on micro and foreign beers to line the kitchen walls, I’ve been bitten by the “malt bug.”
It started innocently enough. We were in the habit of buying gin and gradually found ourselves weary of the simple offerings of the corner liquor store. Luckily there’s a bigger liquor store that lies directly on my route home from work and soon enough we were drinking Hendrick’s gin and tonics. As the weather grew colder, I started buying little bottles of cheap whiskies when I went to the store as a treat. I became interested in what separated a bourbon from a Kentucky Bourbon from a scotch from an Irish whisky from a whiskEy so I turned to wikipedia. Wikipedia led me to searching for an entry-level, modestly priced scotch to try.
Soon there was a new bottle of Aberlour a’bunadh (batch 26) on our kitchen table as an early Christmas present to myself. It was shortly followed by an Ardmore traditional and a Glenfiddich 15 y/o Solera Reserve… My wife eyes me suspiciously when I walk in the door these days, looking for the tell-tale black bag that means I spent more money at the liquor store.
We had the opportunity to go out to dinner with Elena’ s grandparents last night, and her grandmother was entertaining us with tales of all the people she’d met over the course of the year, and suddenly she stopped and said “you know, I wish I had written down everything we’d done with them so I could remember all the details and plan for their next visit.” In that spirit (pun intended) I’m going to be adding a whisky category to autumnrayne.net to keep track of my tasting notes and experiences. I will also probably pull the whisky content out into a “new” blog so that people who are only interested in following that facet of my writing can do so without being bogged down by the video game stuff. (and vice versa.)