Using Old Forester Birthday Bourbon to Celebrate a Serious Milestone

Old Forester Birthday Bourbon is one of those releases that my wife probably shouldn’t want as much as she does. The gimmick is that it is the product of one day’s production. The good thing is that it is also 12 years old. The bad thing is that it is now $79.99. 

As it is announced on September 2 each year and both of our birthdays and our wedding anniversary follow closely behind that, the coincidence of it is too much for her. She asks for it every year as a belated birthday present. And it is a present that is getting harder and harder to get my hands on. This year I actually had to pull a few strings with a local retailer (who asked not to be named) in order to make my lady happy. Next year? No idea what will happen. 

September is a pretty good month for us. Not only do we each get a birthday present and take a trip to Kentucky to celebrate our anniversary with friends, but it is also Bourbon Heritage Month. As we are big bourbon fans, that just adds to the nice set of coincidences. 

But September has another meaning for us as well. September is Ovarian Cancer Awareness month. It’s hard to notice the teal sometimes when the pink for breast cancer is so much more pervasive and spills over it’s month on both ends. Buying something pink feels good. Like you are making a difference. And to be honest who doesn’t love boobs? None of us would be alive if ovaries didn’t exist, but they are inside. In the parts that make boys squeamish. The parts that are near where a period happens. The parts that people don’t talk about in polite company. Right? 

Wrong. Grow up boys. 

Today my wife had her four and a half year check-up after surviving Ovarian Cancer. Once again, she is all clear. One more good check-up and the cancer doctor turns her over to a regular doctor to monitor her. This is great news. But it almost wasn’t. When she was diagnosed, it was a fluke accident. She knew something wasn’t right with her body and every doctor she talked to told her she was fine. 

A year later she ended up having a cyst on an ovary surgically removed and the doctor that was supposed to do the surgery had a family emergency and so his boss took over. His boss was one of the best gynecological oncologists in the state. Since it was her specialty, she nosed around a little while she was inside and found something. My wife had multiple tumors. Tests confirmed that they were cancerous. She was at Stage 3. She went into immediate chemotherapy and within a few months she was given the all clear. She was lucky on so many levels. She happened to have another issue in the same area, she ended up with a specialist doing the surgery instead of the scheduled doctor and she had a particularly slow growing form of the cancer. 

Today 1 in 75 women will develop Ovarian Cancer in their lifetime. And not just old women, but women as young as preteen have died of this horrible disease. 75% of those diagnosed are still alive after one year, but that number drops to only 44% at five years. Less than half of the women diagnosed will survive five years. Think about that. There are over 150 million women in the US. That means over two million of them will develop Ovarian Cancer in their lifetime and after diagnosis almost 1.5 million will be dead within 5 years.

But the good news is that in those women where it is diagnosed early, 94% survive to five years. And more and more women are being diagnosed early. Three years ago it was less than 15%. Today it is about 20%. Still not a lot, but trending the right direction. The problem is that many of the symptoms are also symptoms of other things. Bloating, pelvic pain, feeling full quickly and needing to pee are not exactly uncommon in women. And many doctors are willing to dismiss them. What we’ve learned through this is that if your doctor won’t listen to you when you know something isn’t right, find a new doctor. And keep doing it until you find one will at least check it out.

My wife was lucky, but if the first doctor had listened to her maybe should wouldn’t have needed to be. Tonight we are celebrating four and a half years clear with the Old Forester Birthday Bourbon I mentioned above. I’m thinking that we might even do two pours before the night is over.

If you want to know more about this disease, please go to http://www.ovariancancer.org. I know this is a whiskey blog. But what is whiskey without someone to share it with? My wife loves whiskey. She helps with the tasting notes and is the “silent” partner of this site. I want each and every one of you to have someone to share your whiskey with and I don’t want you to lose them or yourself because talking about “girl parts” is hard.

Old Forester Birthday Bourbon 2016

Purchase Info: $79.99 at a retailer who has requested to be left unnamed.

Details: 12 years old. 48.5% ABV.

Nose: Warm and rich with brown sugar, pipe tobacco, apricot and baking spices.

Mouth: Sweet and oaky with brown sugar, baking spices, dried apples, and that “Brown Forman Latex Paint” note typical of their bourbons.

Finish: Warm and of decent length with oak, baking spices and fruity latex paint.

Thoughts: This used to be a fun release to pick up on a whim back when you could find it. It was $40 or less, it was tasty enough and the gimmick was fun. Today, you could be excused for wondering why someone would pay $80 for a 12 year old bourbon. But then I’d point you to sites online where people pay over $100 for Weller 12. That said, I feel like this has reached the point where if the price goes up any further, I’ll probably find another way to celebrate my wife’s birthday each year. I like this, but the quality to price ratio gives me pause.

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Too many feels and then, eventually, a review of Wathen's Single Barrel

I had a pretty shitty weekend. It was supposed to be good. It was a holiday. I was going to spend time with my family at the family cabin. There would be drinks, cards, a fire, kids, family and friends. Everything was set up to be great. And it started out that way. 

Friday morning, I stopped off for a couple growlers of beer to take with us. As I waited for them to be filled, I thought it might be nice to have a touch of bourbon to close each night. So I looked at the bourbon selection and settled on one I hadn’t had before but could blog about. Might as well take one for the team, right? 

We were supposed to build a new fire pit over the weekend, but I noticed shortly after pulling in that my mom and step-dad had already finished it. This is going to be a nice weekend, I thought to myself. And so it seemed. That afternoon, we sat around the new fire pit and variously, read a book, played a game, or talked. It was a very nice afternoon. We had nice supper and then ended up playing cards. I broke into the growlers. Everything was going well.

It was a nice slow morning the next day. Relaxing. We ran to town, got supplies and generally enjoyed each other’s company while waiting for the rest of the group to get there. One of the highlights of the weekend was going to be the time I got to spend with my niece and nephew who were coming with my brother and his wife that afternoon. 

And everything went well until I noticed how my brother was treating my nephew (well, step-nephew, but I don’t count such things). You see he is on medication for ADHD and is suspected of suffering from depression. He is a rascal, to put it mildly. I identify a lot with what he is going through. I’m also the product of divorced parents. I also had a step-dad who met me while he wasn’t sure how to handle being a parent. I had problems with my mom, my dad, my step-dad, my step-mothers, my grandparents and step-grandparents…I was just generally an angry kid who suffered with undiagnosed depression (it wouldn’t be diagnosed until I was much older and dealing with my own teenager). I saw that I didn’t fit in in most of the “families” I had. Either I was related, but only seen every few months or I wasn’t related and was just another kid hanging about. All except my one set of grandparents. My mother leaned on them so much that my grandfather became sort of a surrogate father to me. He was the one I rebelled against, not my biological father. But he was also the one I looked up to more than anyone else.

I grew up with this hanging over my head for a long time. I was so angry. I was a good kid for the most part, but inside I was searching for why I didn’t belong. I just wanted to feel loved. And if that couldn’t happen, noticed. And when it came time for me to adopt my own daughter, I promised myself that she wouldn’t feel that way. That she would be loved and accepted by the family that I felt, at the time, had never fully accepted me. 

Guess what? I failed. I didn’t know how to be a parent at 19. I didn’t know how to take care of a teenager at 29. I didn’t know how to be the parent of a kid going through normal teenage stuff while dealing with the fact that she knew her dad had adopted her. Knowing that in order for that to happen, another man needed to have decided he didn’t want to be her dad. That’s heavy stuff. I wasn’t ready for it. I lashed out like an angry baby and, much like my step-father and I while I was living at home, we never really saw eye to eye. And to top it off, I don't know that parts of my extended family ever fully accepted her as family either. I have a sister I haven't talked to for years over some of her comments. 

So now, I see this happening with my nephew who is going through the same things I went through and then also the same things my daughter went through. And enough was enough. My brother is a father of two biological kids and can’t see he isn’t treating them the same way. My mother doesn’t realize that the things she’s saying are being absorbed and internalized by my nephew. On three separate occasions, I stepped in where I probably shouldn’t have (though my sister-in-law thanked me). I became an advocate for my nephew because I hate that I can see the same things that happened to me, and then to my daughter, happen to him. I picked two fights with my brother and one with my mother over it. I spent a lot of time alone in the camper because I was so mad I thought I’d do or say something I’d regret. 

It’s a good thing I bought that bourbon. It wasn’t the best bourbon I’d ever had, but it was enough to calm the nerves and let me breathe when I thought I would say something stupid. Nights around the fire may have included more than I should have had, but taking a sip instead of saying something stupid worked ok to keep me sorta talking to my brother. 

That bourbon? Wathen’s Single Barrel. Once I got home, I decided to review it and pour a couple samples for my sample library. That finished the bottle off. So, even though the bourbon was a welcome relief to a shitty weekend, how did it fair in the cold light of day? 

Wathen’s Single Barrel

Purchase Info: $29.99, 750 mL, Casanova Liquor, Hudson, WI.

Details: Barrel number: 4730. Bottled on July 22, 2014. 47% ABV

Nose: Vanilla, caramel, toasted almonds, faint melon and some oak. 

Mouth: Dry woodiness. Hot in the mouth. Caramel, toasted almonds and oak. 

Finish: Lingering heat and oak fading to a bitterness that if it were paired with more than just woody flavors would be pleasant. 

Thoughts: For me? Meh. I’m not a fan of overly dry, woody bourbons. And to my palate, that’s what this is. It’s more so than I would have expect from an NAS bourbon. 

Speaking of NAS, I do have a few beefs with this bourbon. The first being just that. This is an NAS bourbon. But right in the middle of the label is a large “eight” in a a script font. Under that in smaller type is the word “generations.” This subconsciously suggest and eight-year age statement. I know because I had to keep stopping myself from thinking of it as an 8-year old over and over. And I know better. Secondly, I really wish people would use a screw cap. That photo above? That’s the cork. It broke the second time we opened the bottle. Not only is a screw cap going to keep the bourbon inside tastier if it lasts more than a weekend, but it has a much smaller chance of failure. 

So your milage may vary, but for me? I won’t be buying this again. Not even to soothe a really shitty weekend that brought back way too many feels. 

BourbonGuy.com accepts no advertising. It is solely supported by the sale of the hand-made products I sell at the BourbonGuy Gifts Etsy store. If you'd like to support BourbonGuy.com, visit BourbonGuyGifts.com. Thanks!

Don’t look a gift whiskey in the mouth

My wife’s boss doesn’t drink whiskey. I hear he is a nice enough man and though I’ve never met him, I have a feeling we wouldn’t get along. I’ve heard that there are people out there worth talking to that do not drink whiskey, but I don’t know that I’ve found one. I have a hard enough time understanding folks who prefer scotch to bourbon. But no whiskey at all? That’s kind of a stretch.

Anyway, my wife’s boss received a bottle of whiskey from his daughter-in-law who got it at work. He didn’t want it so he gave it to my wife and I since he knew we liked whiskey. When we first found out he would be doing that, we were appreciative, but joked that it would probably be something like Rebel Yell. Rebel Yell being the only bourbon so bad that I couldn’t finish the bottle. (I’m even finishing the Old Crow!) 

So it was with a bit of amusement that my wife told me as she got home that, “guess what, it really was Rebel Yell.” It’s an interesting feeling being both amused and disappointed. I was as amused as she was. Because “of course it is.” But here’s the thing. As I pulled it out of the bag, I noticed something. I saw that the label had changed, reminding me of a PR email I received.

I get a lot of people asking if I want samples. I always say no even though sometimes it’s hard, knowing I might not get to taste it otherwise. Other times it is really easy. The Rebel Yell email was an easy one. The gist of my response was: “Sorry, already reviewed that one and I wasn’t nice.” I wish I had read the press release a little closer. It seems that Luxco has released a couple more whiskies under the Rebel Yell name. And the gift whiskey I got was one of those. It’s not Rebel Yell Bourbon. It is Rebel Yell American Whiskey: a blend of bourbon and rye whiskey. So I opened it up. And it wasn’t bad.

Which caused something to crystalize in my brain: 

If you’ve never had it, you never know what is going to be in a bottle until you open it. 

It’s simple and sounds obvious once you hear it, but it’s worth reminding ourselves sometimes. Too often we tend to judge a whiskey by what we “know” about it, it’s price or who did or didn’t produce it, instead of what it tastes like. In this case I almost let my preconceptions get in the way of something that seems fairly tasty. I have no idea how long that would have remained on the shelf in the closet if I hadn’t taken a closer look at the new label.

So it seems my wife’s boss and I are cool now (even though we’ve still never met). It seems that having someone in your life who doesn’t drink whiskey is an ok thing. I mean how else would I have gotten free whiskey?

(A more formal review will come once I’ve been able to spend some time with the bottle, but I was reminded of this lesson and felt like sharing.)

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Finding an I.W. Harper dusty while antiquing

It was a Sunday afternoon in early April. My wife had recently purchased an old Beam decanter for me. Something about it had made me excited to see what else was out there and it was easy for her to talk me into going with her when she decided to visit a few antique stores. I like the consignment style stores. The ones where a person rents a space and fills it full of their old crap. I don’t find many bargains that way, but I do see more things that I remember from my own childhood. And that’s fun.

As I wandered around this particular store, I saw some cool things. I saw a couple Ezra Brooks decanters from the 60s. A bear and a Native American. I didn’t pull the trigger on either since the labels were peeling off and in that condition I didn’t feel like paying that much for what was just a curiosity to me. I saw a NDP decanter of an old Minnesota Gopher mascot in a football helmet. It was probably from about the same time. And since I’m a huge Gopher football fan, I was tempted…until I saw it was over $100. That made me much less excited even though it looked as if it may have still been sealed.

Sealed and full of bourbon most likely contaminated by high levels of lead. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t buy it, I would probably have given myself lead poisoning since I doubt I’d have had the willpower to leave it sealed. I’m more curious than that fabled cat. 

But one thing did catch my eye. It was just about halfway down the center aisle, all the way down on the bottom shelf. It was a tax stamp on a mini bottle. Even though my knees hate it when I do this, I got down and took a look. It was a bottle of Canadian Club and it said 1962 on the tax stamp. Even better it was full and the seal hadn’t been broken. There were other bottles down there too. The other sealed one was a miniature of IW Harper. It was missing the tax stamp, but the seal was unbroken and the bottle was full. And best of all, both were under five dollars each. So I grabbed them. I wandered around for a little bit but didn’t see anything else I felt like buying, paid my bill and wandered out.

I wondered a bit at the legality of selling them. I doubted the antique store had a liquor license. Plus it was a Sunday and there are no spirits sales on a Sunday. But since I got something cool and I didn’t see a boatload of cops standing there, I decided to tamp down the curiosity and think about things that were a little more important. Like how long it would take to get home and crack it open.

But I waited a bit. The next week was the season premiere of Mad Men and since Don’s favorite drink is Canadian Club and since it was from just about the right time period, I decided to drink that during the premiere. It was good, though it was so floral that I found it a bit like drinking perfume. The IW Harper though, sat on my shelf for a while. I wanted to look into it a little bit and see if I could find out anymore about it. Specifically: “What is this?” and “how old is this thing?”

The first thing I learned is that currently IW Harper is owned by Diageo and isn’t sold in the US anymore. And hasn’t been for a while. Ok so, at least the 80s. Cool. No bar code and no metric units so that pushed the youngest it could be back into the mid to late 70s. I did a bunch of searching of old ads and the earliest I could find that label used was in a 1970 ad. The next oldest ad I could find was from 1965 and had a slightly different label featured. So roughly early to mid-1970s. At that time it was owned by Schenley. That was close enough for my curiosity now I just needed to open it. 

But I waited. And waited. It got shoved behind some other samples I had and so I forgot about it. Until I found it this weekend, decided that enough was enough, and cracked it open.

IW Harper Gold Medal Bourbon (roughly mid 1970s)

Purchase info: an antique store $3.99 for a 1/10th pint

Details: 6 years old and 86 proof (no ABV listed so I deviate from my standard even though I know it would be 43%)

Nose: Started out very floral. Dark brown sugar, baking apples, allspice, cardamom and a sharp wood note. After sitting a bit it settled into a general fruity candy.

Mouth: Nice thick mouthfeel. Floral again with more dark brown sugar. Spicy with allspice and cinnamon. Oak and caramel as it moves back in the mouth. 

Finish: Long and warm with lingering floral hints.

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Thoughts: I just wish there were more. Sweet, spicy, rich and floral sum this up nicely. The color is even beautiful. It is a joy to look at, smell and taste. Just yum.

My personal search for the next great Four Roses Small Batch recipe

I did something rather drastic last night. I started the night with ten different single barrel bottles of Four Roses Bourbon on the shelf and I ended the night with four different small batch editions of Four Roses bourbon. 

As I reached the halfway point of the bottles I reviewed last spring and started to get a hankering for something a little different, I realized that I was going to these bottles less and less. It’s not that there was anything wrong with them, but 7.5 liters of anything is going to get just a little old after a while. 

But then, I got a great idea. Inspired by a guy I know from twitter, I decided to start mixing them together to see if I could find the world’s next great small batch recipe. I was lucky on this one, every bottle was great on it’s own so I wasn’t trying to hide anything. Instead I was trying to tease out something that was more than the sum of its parts.

Not knowing where to start, I started with like yeast codes in equal amounts. I tried OESF and OBSF first and that was pretty good. Then I tried OESQ and OBSQ…that was terrible. I added an equal amount of OESF though and it was amazing. Something about that OESF caused all sorts of magic to happen.

Blend One: OESQ + OBSQ + OESF

Details: 57.5% ABV

Nose: Starts with pear and citrus. Moves to strong oak. then settles into a buttery caramel.

Mouth: Buttery caramel and vanilla anlong with an herbal spiciness. Almost basil.

Finish: Herbal with a hint of sweetness and a lot of spice. Nice and long.

Thoughts: Considering this was a desperate attempt to salvage a bad tasting mixture, it rocks my world that it ended up so good. I love that it takes three that many people react poorly to and turned them into something wonderful.

After that second experiment I decided that I needed to approach this from a different angle. I tried pairing like with like. Four Roses says that Q yeast is floral and so I tried pairing those with a fruity OBSV. It was ok, not great. I tried pairing OBSF and OBSQ. All my notes say for this one is: No. I tried opposites. OBSV and OBSK, fruity with spicy. That was pretty good, not awesome. 

I tried a few more ways without hitting anything great. As I was getting close to giving up, I remembered that I have a bunch of empty Limited Edition Small Batch bottles right there. And they have the recipe on them. First I tried recreating the 2009 that I loved so much. Two-thirds OBSK with one-third OESO. My notes for that say “Super Yum.” I tried the 2013 recipe, equal parts OBSV, OESK and OBSK. Same thing. 

Blend Two: OBSV + OESK + OBSK (Replica 2013 LE SB)

Details: 58.0% ABV

Nose: Very clean smelling, like a after a fresh rain. Ripe cherries, cinnamon candies and oak.

Mouth: Chewy caramel, citrus and a big load of spices: ginger, cinnamon, clove, etc.

Finish: oak, lingering bitterness and a long warmth

Thoughts: While I can’t say for certain that this is as good as the 2013 LE SB (literally, I refuse to crack my reference samples right now) it is amazingly good in it’s own right.

Inspired, I jumped back into it. OBSO + OESK + OESQ. Spicy, creamy, super yum! OBSO + OESF + OESK + OBSF? Amazing! Finally I decided to try the big one. All ten. It’d take a lot of measuing small amounts. Especially if I wasn’t going to end up with a pitcher full. Well, guess what? Now I want a cask strength Yellow Label released. It’s simply amazing what all those flavors do with one another. 

Blend Three: All Ten (Cask Strength Yellow Label?)

Details: 56.2% ABV

Nose: Ripe cherries, pear, allspice and black pepper.

Mouth: very supple mouthfeel. Sweet. Juicyfruit gum, oak and a tasty floral note.

Finish: Lingering floral flavors and a nice long heat.

Thoughts: I liked this one so much I took a little of each bottle and made my own 750 mL bottle of it.

And that’s what gave me the idea to start consolidating into various blends. I looked up the label for the 2014 Limited Small Batch and made one of those, came to about half a bottle. I made about 3/4 of a bottle of the Spicy, creamy, super yum I mentioned above. And then I was left with four heels. Having decided I wanted the shelf space I just mixed them together. While they didn’t turn out to be a super yum, the combination of one part OBSF, one part OESV, three parts OBSQ and two parts OESO was tasty enough. Especially since the recipe was a completely random event. 

Did I find the next great Small Batch recipe? Maybe I did. Maybe I've just had a lot of fun. Since I started playing with blending the Four Roses, I’ve tried blending other things. I’ve been desperately trying to mix something with the Rebel Yell that will make it something I can swallow without dumping the rest of the glass out. No go. I’ve mixed bourbon with Brenne. That was pretty damn tasty. I’ve done a few other things too that I now can’t remember. It opened my eyes up to another fun part of having so many open whiskies. If I look at them as the components of recipes, I have an almost infinte number of combinations to explore.

A One-Month Manhattan

My father tried to get me something I really like for Christmas this year. He went out and bought me a big bottle of his favorite brandy. He was off a bit, but as we are both from Wisconsin, a bottle of Korbel brandy is not a bad guess if you can’t remember exactly which brown spirit is in someone’s glass and I appreciated the gesture. But no matter how much I appreciated the gesture, the sad fact of the matter was that I had 1.75 liters of a spirit that I didn’t really care for on hand and no idea what to do with it.

Fast forward to about a month or so ago. I had an idea: I wanted a Manhattan. This is not an unusual idea for me. If I’m not drinking my whiskey neat, this is the other way I drink it most often. The unusual part was that I wanted to try it with home made ingredients. I wanted to try making my own vermouth and my own bitters to see if it was worth the effort. I’ve been itching to try making my own bitters for a few years now and the vermouth? Well, the recipes I saw online called for brandy. So if this worked out, I’d have a use for that big bottle as well.

I found a recipe for a DIY vermouth on Serious Eats. It sounded easy enough to do, and it was. The only change I made was to add a bit of lemon zest to the mix because I thought it would pair nicely with the wine I was using and it did. The one thing that wine didn’t do though? Pair nicely with bourbon. Even with a high heat, low sweet bourbon, it made a Manhattan that was flabby and not tasty enough to be worth the effort. Unlike almost every other fortified wine I’ve tried though, I’d drink this one on it’s own. So there’s that. But as a use to get rid of that giant bottle? I’d be better off waiting for dad to visit.

I had a thought as I was making the vermouth. Sherry (one of the ingredients of the vermouth recipe I tried) is also a fortified wine. What if I put all the herbs, fruit peels and bittering agents into some sherry and let it sit in the fridge for a month or so? The answer, you get a very bitter, spicy sherry with hints of orange. But what if you then used a warm infusing technique to infuse more orange peel into more sherry and add that to the mix along with a little brandy? Well you get something very close to store bought. If you have a bunch of sherry on hand and don’t know what else to do with it, try this. The issue: it is so much like the store bought, that it seems a waste of sherry. You could make some fantastic sherry potatoes or even a sherry cake with that stuff. I mean Noilly Prat vermouth is only like six bucks here in Minnesota.

A little over a year ago, I bought a book on bitters by Brad Thomas Parsons, titled appropriately enough: Bitters. It’s a fantastic book, but I held off on making any of them because I wasn’t sure what I’d use them for. I have a bunch of bitters in my cabinet and I basically use the Angostura and the Angostura Orange. But this was a great excuse...err…opportunity to finally try one. Because I enjoy my manhattans with orange bitters, I chose to make the orange. The only change I made was in my choice of base spirit. The recipe called for high proof vodka. I knew this was going in manhattans, so I went with Old Granddad 114. Good call, it makes a fantastic bitters. The manhattan made with the Brad Thomas Parsons recipe was consistently chosen over the manhattan made using the Angostura Orange in a head to head match-up we had here at the house. And it didn’t matter what vermouth we used. It’s a little spicier and added a bit more definition to the drink. This recipe is a win. 

So two of these worked out, one didn’t. One was worth the time and effort, two were not. What’s the take away? Have fun trying things. If I’d have tweaked an ingredient here or there in the vermouths, they may have been fantastic. If I’d have used a different sherry or a wine that paired with bourbon better, it could have made all the difference. We don’t experiment because what’s out there is bad, we experiment because it is fun and the fun is it’s own reward. And heck, sometimes, like in the case of the orange bitters, you get the fun of making and something that is better than what you already had. There’s the dream. 

It may have taken almost a month to make these manhattans, but I now have a pint of orange bitters to use in manhattans for the next year, a spiced and fortified wine to drink over the next month or so and a way to use up excess sherry. That’s not so bad.

Finding and bringing home Whiskey

This is not a post about bourbon. It is a post about Whiskey, but not necessarily how you think.

In February, my last remaining dog, Akira (a purebred Siberian Husky) succumbed to a rapidly advancing cancer. This was particularly hard on our family since cancer is a tough subject for us after my wife was diagnosed last year. My wife is fine, she is cancer free, but she holds a grudge against cancer. It took a lot from her. And seeing it take the pup we had raised and then lived with for almost 15 years was hard. So hard that we couldn't bring ourselves to get another right away. 

Last week we both agreed that the time had come, the house was too empty. Monday night, we looked on PetFinder.com for a dog. We didn't want a puppy. We aren't able to come home to let it out during the day so we needed one that was able to hold urine all day. And besides, if I could rescue one that was unwanted, I knew that I'd be helping that dog a lot more that I would if I had gone to one of those puppy-mill stores. Win-win right?

So I found a local rescue that had a bunch of dogs. I filled out the application. Sent it in. Got an email back. Things were looking up. I'd made an appointment to see a Newfoundland mix for Friday. Thursday night, for many reasons I won't get into here, I was starting to get some strange vibes from the rescue. We decided to do a little google searching and found horrible reviews. Not just one, but repeated over and over. It was tough to overlook. Accusations of misrepresenting the health, training and age of the dogs in question. We emailed the lady who ran it and got no real good response. It was heart-breaking for us. We'd already gotten attached to the one we had made the appointment for. Based soley on the photo and the email conversation from the foster. But now, how could we even believe that the dog we wanted even existed? 

I knew that I would be unable to say no, even if it was on it's last leg. But I also knew I was still talking to Akira's ashes every day. I couldn't say good bye to another dog this quickly. I reluctantly backed out of the appointment. I felt terrible. That foster could have been totally truthful. The dog might have been young, healthy and perfectly trained just like they said. Or it could be a giant, old dog with mental and health issues that I would be unprepared for. I just couldn't take the risk. 

So after backing out, I was still extremely interested in getting a dog. Like, right now please. I still wanted a rescue for all the reasons I originally stated. Maybe a couple years old. Young enough to be with us a while, but old enough that it might have a shot at being at least partially trained. So I decided that while maybe a foster/rescue situation wasn't going to work for us, we had rescued our other dog Ollie from our local Humane Society (adopted in 1999, he was officially a Husky/Malamute mix though the vet and HS workers suspected there was a little wolf tossed into the mix as well). I googled Humane Societies in Minnesota and found one right near where I work. Lots of dogs. Available for adoption. Right away. 

I had originally planned to avoid more Huskies. I enjoyed the breed and knew their quirks, but was afraid that I would automatically expect them to act like Ollie and Akira did. That wouldn't be fair to the new dog. By using the filters on the site to find ones that had lived with kids and other dogs, I realized that there was an all-white husky there. After looking further, I realized there were three huskies or husky-mixes. One looked a lot like my Akira, nope. But the pure white could be an option, she didn't look that much like them and there was also one that was mixed with border collie. She had the sweetest liquid eyes in the photo. One of these two would be my dog. I was pretty sure. 

My wife: not so much. It wasn't that she was anti-those dogs, but she is more pragmatic and less impulsive. She had her doubts about those two and wanted to make sure that I looked at all the dogs. There were 48 or so to look at over the age of one. 

So we went. I looked at the liquid eyes one first as she was near the door. Amaretto was what they were calling her. She seemed ok, but kind of hung back in the kennel. I moved on as I really wanted to also see Freya, the all white one. Freya was a bit stand-offish. Sure, she smelled my hand. But then she circled a few times and laid down with her back to me. Clearly she had lost interest.

In the mean time, my wife was having a very different experience. She and another couple had stopped in front off Amaretto's kennel. When my wife was there, Amaretto had come running up to the door. When she stepped back to also let the other couple see, Amarretto ran back and looked past them to where my wife was standing. They got the hint and moved on and my wife came back up to her. Amaretto reached through the door with her paw and grabbed my wife's arm. Clearly this dog was not letting her go. By this point I had come back up and we decided to go with Amaretto into an isolation room where we could get to know one another. Once there she clumsily dove headfirst into my wife's coat. Then after she extricated herself from that she proceeded to kiss her on every exposed piece of skin she could find. Then noticed there was another person there (me) and proceeded to do the same. Sadly Amaretto, while about a year old, was clearly still a puppy. But after a very brief discussion (with all those lunging kisses it would have been hard to have a long one) we decided we needed to take her home anyway. 

We filled out the paperwork, they did a real quick background check (I assume so, at least since she asked for my ID), we paid her adoption fee and walked to the van with her. We tried using the name they had given her, but she didn't answer to it. She didn't want it. As my wife was driving home, she tried different names, none seemed to fit until she said: "if you're going to be named after a liquor, it really should be Whiskey." At that the dog, formerly known an Amaretto, got up and licked her face. She approved, it seemed. 

So now we have a dog again. She is the sweetest thing, those liquid eyes are still there. She isn't house trained, but after living with us all weekend she hasn't had a single accident. She can hold it forever it seems, but hasn't realized that if she wants to go out before forever, she should tell us. Luckily, she spends most of her time practically attached to us so we can sort of tell if she has to go. And more good news, I looked at the Humane society website this morning. Half of the dogs that I looked at on Thursday night are gone. It seems that this was meant to be.

I have spent a lot of time over the last few years trying to find various whiskies. This time, Whiskey chose us and I couldn't be happier.​

​Eric and Whiskey conversing over Saturday morning coffee.

Whiskey is for Drinking

Lately, I've been trying to make room on the whiskey shelves. My stash has gotten too big. 

Check that.

It has gotten too big to hold more. Big difference. You see, I'll be in Bardstown, KY for the Kentucky Bourbon Festival in September. And I plan to bring home some things which aren't available here in Minnesota. Some will be special things. Some not so much. In any case, there will be a lot of them and I need the room. In an effort to develop a system for which would be on the ol' chopping block first, I came up with the system hinted at in previous posts. Namely FIFD. That's right: First In, First Drunk (or is it drank? eh...whatever).

Now as I was doing this inventory, I noticed something: the ones that had been on the shelf the longest were, for the most part, also the ones that cost the most or were the hardest to find. And that thought tickled something in the back of my brain. It took a little while for the tickle to congeal into something more concrete, but here it is:

I'm missing the point of whiskey. 

I didn't want to drink the whiskey on the shelf precisely because it was too expensive or too rare to "waste" on an ordinary occasion. In other words, I was paying (what for me is) a lot of money in order to open a bottle to the air and then not drink it. For some, this won't seem very strange so, please let me illustrate with a story. 

I used to watch grown men pay good money for toys and then not open them and not play with them (I may or may not have been among them). A friend of mine in college, who interned for Hasbro, used to complain about how much that pissed him off. He said good artists spent a lot of time designing and creating those toys precisely so children could play with them. A lot of pride was taken in the fact that their creations bring joy to the children of the world. Because, ultimately, that's what toys are for. The joy of playing. In his view, these guys were missing the point of toys. And even worse, they were keeping them out of the hands of those that did know the point of them. I immediately went home, opened all the "collectable" toys that I had and gave them to my daughter to play with. She was happy. She'd been eyeing them, so eventually it would have happened anyway. And you know what? It felt good.

I have an almost instinctive aversion to collecting these days. I'm afraid to let things become so precious to me that I lose perspective as to what is really important. In the case of whiskey, it offends me doubly. Much like a toy, whiskey is created to be enjoyed. Even if marketing later steps in to sell it for thousands of dollars, I doubt that was the intent of the spirit as it came off the still six, twelve, or even forty years ago.

As with many things, greed has corrupted something extremely simple. Whiskey is sensuous beauty in a glass. If you buy it only to look at it or to sell it later at a premium, you are not only missing the point, you are keeping it from those who would enjoy it as it was intended. In a glass, with friends or family. 

Art is for viewing. 

Whiskey is for drinking. 

Drink yours. Invite a few good friends to share it with you. And hey, if it's a precious one, remember that memories last even longer than whiskey.