Today brought two lifetime achievements, three if you include a small amount of good-natured Schadenfreude.
My mother-in-law is stopping over for a couple of nights. That's not it, no.
My youngest daughter, 7-1/3 years old, just corrected her grandma's grammar.
Drunk neat at room temperature or with ice: oh, no.
Maker's Mark Bourbon Whiskey smells amazing whether it's newly-poured into my favourite glass, or it's the remains evaporated overnight and sniffed during the tidy-up the following morning. (No, I've absolutely no idea why I did it the first time!)
But, after the initial welcome the taste becomes unpleasant to me. No Baz's seal of approval here I'm afraid.
There's a tad more to whiskey than a pleasant aroma, even my limited experience tells me that. The 2 preceding brands were pleasant, unchallenging. This, if it's an American favourite, seems analogous to the way I feel about Hershey's chocolate: it's to-me-unfathomably popular, explainable away by a blind obedience to the cult of historic nationhood, but there's no getting away from its' smelling, as it does, of sick.
Concluded early.
Another sign personal responsibility is a thing of the past, this one related to the ubiquity of the mobile phone. It's an all-purpose privacy invader, child entertainer, burglar inviter, memory enhancer, space invader. In short, it's contributing to the decline of civilised society.
A post on my favourite medium-traffic low-visibility social network pnut.io reminded me of the number of times the mobile hasn't been my friend. The easiest way to do this is via the magic of a list.
A rant, actually.
Er…
I think it's time to have a go at composing part 6 of my Maker's Mark whiskey review series. (Surprisingly catharsis none while writing the preceding necessarily-incomplete diatribe.)
Drunk again with 1-1/2 ice cubes with me at room temperature, this time after recently eating strawberries & shaken (not whipped) cream: oh no, that unpleasant taste remains.
Still smells amazing, rich, sherry, butterscotch, etc; this really does bear repeating.
I'd better conclude this at some point…
Drunk again with a single ice cube with me at room temperature: oh no. There's a really unpleasant taste, unlike any of the preceding. Not sure what I'd eaten beforehand, but it's had quite the negative effect.
Smells more amazing than before, there is that.
To be continued…
oh my glob ive fallen and cant getup again waillll!!!2!¡
My youngest daughter and I went to the movies again today, to watch Beauty and the Beast, a film my oldest had seen mid-week. In my own inimitable fashion I enjoyed the tale yet again, and ignored the chance that I'd be offended by the peripheral fuss surrounding the movie.
I wouldn't have been, by the way; it'd pass unnoticed were it not for the fact I was expecting something. What sad lives people must have, picking apart harmless entertainment and ignoring history.
Anyway, afterwards we walked across to McDonald's and bought 2 chicken nugget Happy Meals, which we ate in the car. Mine came with an orange-roofed Smurf house.
The movie and the meal gain Baz's seal of approval.
I bowed to popular demand* and wrote what follows about the third Bourbon Whiskey I've ever tried. Well, the fourth bottle of the stuff. My first experience was 2 consecutive bottles of Buffalo Trace, then one of Wild Turkey 101 and, as the subject line indicates, I'm now trialling Maker's Mark.
Ahhh, what a day that was…
No, no! It takes over a week per bottle, honestly! Jeez!
First though, my earlier post:
"Drunk with a single ice cube with me at room temperature: oh.
Smells amazing.
To be continued…"
From the guy who recommended it, the comment that precipitated this, an unprecedented same-day update:
"Enough about the smell. Do you like the taste? That was my favourite favourite."
Well…
No. Not yet.
It's rather nice to start with but there's an aftertaste which comes on quickly that I'll admit I'm not liking. It spans my first neat test, and today's single ice cube (just-melted.) Buffalo Trace seems to have a cleaner finish; Wild Turkey 101, though a bit too strongly alcoholic at 50.5% for me, seems to lack this unpleasant fall-off too. All pull back my gums and attack my lips to a greater or lesser extent, which is rather nice, if I let them.
No, I haven't a bloody clue what I'm talking about, especially if I'm using anything like understandable terminology, but I know what I like. Bear in mind that I've been drinking Scotch whisky for over 20 years, off-and-on, culminating in the utterly awesome Laphroaig 15-year-old, a whisky now withdrawn from general sale and thus prohibitively expensive. Incidentally, the 10 year old is a good substitute but don't make the mistake I did of trying the 'Select', it's completely unrepresentative of the fine brand.
Ok, the hardest bit about this experience so far is not admitting that I'm not too keen on the whiskey someone I trust recommended, nor is it the effort in typing right now not long after reaching the bottom of the second glass. No, it's getting through the melted plastic covering the Maker's Mark bottle cap. The pull-tab is utterly unsuitable for its intended purpose, so much so that I almost had to get the Swiss Army Knife out! It looks nice but I get the impression it took quite some time to design it to make it look as though it's an organic continuation of a product of a bygone age. Heck, it might be but I'm not sufficiently invested in it to find out.
However…
To be continued…
*Yes, you.
Drunk with a single ice cube with me at room temperature: oh.
Smells amazing.
To be continued…
Drunk neat at room temperature: oh, no.
Smells amazing.
To be continued…