Super Bowl Odds

So there's this thing on TV this Sunday, you may have heard of it.  It's a football game between a New Jersey team named after a pituitary problem versus a Massachusetts team full of loyalist nationalists.

My wife is rooting for the pituitary problems.  I don't know why.  I'm rooting for the partially-dressed fully-tanned people holding pom-poms and wearing white boots doing hip thrusts in the name of the team that pays them.

Second-string punters, every last one of them.

Oh wait, the pituitary problems don't have any leaders of gaiety.  So I cannot root for them.

The Vegas Odds for this battle opened as such:

NJ Pituitary Problems 55.5
MA Loyalist Nationalists -3.5

It has since dropped to:

NJ Pituitary Problems 54.5
MA Loyalist Nationalists -2.5

Surprisingly close.  Were I of the betting sort (and in LV right now), I'd put some serious money on the under.  The New Jerseys have a dynamite defense and the Massachusettses will probably be missing one of their top pass catchers.

Who am I to weigh in on odds?

Just some guy.

Just some guy who picked EVERY SINGLE AFC PLAYOFF GAME CORRECTLY.

Just some guy who picked every single AFC playoff game correctly and is now VERY CONCERNED ABOUT HAVING TEMPTED FATE.

Just some guy who picked every single AFC playoff game correctly and is now very concerned about having tempted fate, but shouldn't be worried because he didn't put any actual money on it and also that guy missed out on some serious whisky money from the winnings he could have had that in turn would have offset any concerns about fate.

What?

So instead, here are the odds I'm setting about the televised game:

Commercials - Over/under on nut shots - 4.5
Commercials - Over/under on someone getting hit in the face - 6.5
Commercials - Over/under on violence to animals, children, or woman played as comedy - 2.5
Play-by-Play - O/U on mentions of Broncos' quarterback who is not playing in the Super Bowl - 3.5
Play-by-Play - O/U on mentions of Colts' quarterback who is not playing in the Super Bowl - 7.5
Play-by-Play - O/U on mentions of the Pro Bowl - 0.5

I'll take the Over, Over, Over, Over, Over, Under.

If I make it all the way through the game, I'll report back on my winnings.  If not, then I'll force myself do an extra Single Malt Report as an apology.

I don't know what this is, but I approve.

Though Eli does not.

Single Malt Report: Strathisla 12 years old

My goodness, it's been a month since I did a report on a Speyside single malt.  So it would be my great pleasure to present the Speysider known as Strathisla 12 year old Single Malt.

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Here's a brief history of the oldest working distillery in the Highlands:

1786 - The distillery, then named Milltown, was founded by George Taylor and Alexander Milne.  The malt that Milltown produced was named Strathisla.  "Strath" is Gaelic for "shallow valley" and "Isla" is the name of the river running through that valley.
1825 - Distillery was renamed Milton, after the nearby Milton Castle, by new owners MacDonald Ingram & Co.
1830 - Another ownership change: William Longmore & Company Ltd.
1870 - Distillery renamed: Strathisla.
1876 - Fire!
1879 - Fire!
1890 - Distillery renamed: Milton (again)
1940 - Purchased by crooked financier George Pommeroy
1949 - Pommeroy convicted of tax evasion
1950 - Distillery purchased on the cheap by Chivas Brothers (then owned by Seagrams)
1951 - Distillery renamed: Strathisla (again)
1965 - Stills' capacity doubled
2001 - Via sale, Chivas (and thus Strathisla) is acquired by Pernod Ricard
2002 - Strathisla officially bottled single malts are reintroduced into the market

Since its purchase by Chivas, the vast majority of Strathisla's malt goes into the Chivas blends.  In fact, it may be the main malt for those blends since its vistor center is centered around "The Ultimate Chivas Experience".

To be honest, I've yet to be wowed by a single malt from Chivas-owned distilleries, though I have yet to try Abelour's cask strength bottlings.  But I always have an open mind for the amber restorative, so let's try the Strathlisa 12.

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Distillery: Strathisla
Age: minimum 12 years
Maturation: Bourbon and Sherry casks
Region: Speyside (Strathisla)
Alcohol by Volume: 43%

I had a chance to try this at the Belmont Brewing Company down the road from our condo.  As always, I got a decent pour for my money.  (Much obliged, BBC.)  This allowed me to try it both neat and then with 2 tsp of water.

NEAT
The color is like a nice golden lager with a little bit of auburn in its heart.
The nose is Macallan-Sherry-Oak-lite along with lots of maple syrup, cinnamon, and apple juice.
The palate brought the big surprise:  Lucky Charms "marshmallows"!  Seriously.  Didn't trust the first taste, so I tried again.  Yep, Lucky Charms "marshmallows".  If you've had the Charms, you understand my quotation marks.  The "marshmallow" experience follows a nice bit of salt up front, then a hint of frosting at the end.
Apple cider and molasses make up the medium-length finish.

WITH WATER (approx 32% ABV)
The nose goes bland a bit.  Sort of like a generic Speyside sherry finish.  Think Chivas Regal.
Salt has now been washed away from the palate.  Mild as a blend again.  The texture and flavor is creamier.  A hint of toast, a smidgen of cherry.
The finish, all gone.  Nothing to be found.

On a side note, the bottle is very cool: dark and rectangular with a nice etching of their distillery.  Much cooler than Macallan 12's bottle.  But the whisky within can't top Mac 12, in my book.  BUT, it's still pretty good.  A reliable drink.  It won't shout nor give you bad-whisky-face.  Might even be cheaper than Mac at a bar.

So I'm not going to stomp all over this one.  I'm grading it on its neat performance because the good parts of the Strath 12 wash away with any water.

Pricing - Acceptable at $45

Rating - 82 (only when neat)

101 Whiskies to Try Before You Die (a book)

101 Whiskies to Try Before You Die by Ian Buxton (recently gifted to me by my brother-in-law, Andrew, and sister-in-law-to-be, Leslie) is a well designed, well written, easily consumable (at 225 pages) volume on world whisk(e)y.

On the design side of things, there's the awesome cover (see pic, left), a modernist silhouette version of my imaginary future whisky collection.  The photography within is stellar and even the paper stock is nice and thick.

Buxton has been a major distillery's marketing director, consultant to countless other whisky makers, writer for Whisky Magazine and The Malt Whisky Yearbook, occasional publisher, and runs www.forscotchlovers.com.

In creating the 101 list he polled all of the living whisky greats (writers, distillers, blenders, etc) for their desert island drams to make sure that he had solid outside opinions about the the whiskies in the book.  He notes up front that these are not the 101 best whiskies in the world, but rather well represent the entire whisky world.  He tries to make sure that most of them fall into a reasonable price range and aren't difficult to track down.  Thus, no 1964 Black Bowmores in here.

What makes up the bunch?  By my count:
Scottish Single Malts - 52
Scottish Single Grains - 1
Scottish Blended Malts - 4
Scottish Blended Grains - 1
Scottish Blended Whiskies - 14
Scottish New Make - 1
English Single Malts - 1
Irish Single Malts - 2
Irish Pot Still Whiskies - 2
Irish Blended Whiskies - 1
American Bourbons - 8
American Corn Whiskey - 1
American Wheat Whiskey - 1
American Rye Whiskey - 2
Canadian Single Malts - 1
Japanese Single Malts - 4
Japanese Blended Malts - 1
Japanese Blended Whiskies - 2
Indian Single Malts - 1
Swedish Single Malts - 1

It's a nice spectrum.  The ages range from 1 to 40 years.  The prices from 20GBP to 400GBP (but only a few expensive ones).

His one page write-ups on each whisk(e)y really shine.  He provides nice scoops on each distillery’s location and history, as well as the malt itself.  The succinct recaps also work in Buxton’s analysis of the world whisky market and some informed jabs at whisky fads.  He also freely admits when there's a conflict of interest (read: he worked for the distillery).

I was very impressed that the whisky selection was not determined entirely by his own taste.  He includes important drams that he doesn’t actually like.  It's comforting to see that sort of admission from a major whisky writer.  Sort of like a "Just because I'm not a fan, doesn't mean it's not a good whisky."  For instance, he’s the first whisky writer I’ve seen that’s lukewarm on Ardbeg and Talisker (two of the true Single Malt Grand Cru).  In fact he’s the first whisky lover I’ve ever seen who has that opinion.  Nonetheless he includes two Talis and two ‘Begs (all four of which are delicious, says I) amongst the 101.  But he loves Oban 14 (yay!), which I appreciate greatly since most whisky writers write it off and move on.

Buxton is one of the pros and a decent writer to boot.  His wide knowledge and stellar research fill every page of this compulsively readable book.  I recommend this to whisk(e)y students of all levels.

Single Malt Report: Kilchoman Summer 2010 Release (3yr)

Since I imparted so much blog love about The Daily Pint yesterday, I thought it appropriate to report on one of the whiskies that I'd tried there on Wednesday: the infant Kilchoman Summer 2010 Release.

According to the Scotch Whisky Association (a very real, very serious organization), a barley- or grain-derived Scottish spirit must age in oak casks for a minimum of three years before they will allow it to be labelled a "Whisky".  Some distilleries are selling younger products, but are calling them "new make" instead of whisky.  A lot of that new make is basically Scottish moonshine, unless it's been thrown in a barrel for a few months to a year.  Reviews are mixed about new make's quality and some distilleries do better than others, but new make definitely allows the drinker to have a chance to taste the spirit itself, free of oak influence.

But once the three years of maturation are up, distillers can bottle it, slap on a whisky label, and take it to market.  I've had quite a few great 10 year singles and a couple decent eight year singles.  I did have one failure of a seven year.  There have likely been some younger malts in the no-age-statement drams that I've sampled.  But that's as young as I've gone, especially since it's so damned difficult to find anything younger than 10yr in The States.

And now, here's Kilchoman.

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Built in 2005, Kilchoman was the first new Islay distillery in 124 years.  They began distilling in 2006, keeping the production small (about 5% the capacity of the average distillery, 1% of the size of Diageo's Roseisle distillery).

What's really admirable about these folks (led by Anthony Wills) is that everything is done on site.  The distillery is surrounded by a farm that grows 100 TONS of barley for their product.  They do their own floor maltings by hand on site.  Their barley malt distillate residue is fed to the cows on the land.  And when the whisky is ready (no carmel color, no chillfiltering), it's bottled by hand right there on the premises.  This is old-school, roots whisky production.

How can a whisky nerd resist?!

Distillery: Kilchoman

Bottling: Summer 2010 Release

Age: 3 years

Maturation: First-fill bourbon barrels

Region: Islay

Alcohol by Volume: 46%

Apparently The Daily Pint had "a glut" of these bottles so they were selling drams on special during Robert Burns Day.  The price was so low that they may have been selling it at loss.  I should have just offered to buy an entire bottle.

What they were selling, and what I so excitedly ordered, was the Summer 2010 Release.  As Kilchoman has been doing a release each season, this was only their 4th bottling.  It wasn't yet four years old when bottled, so this was by far the youngest whisky I've ever tried.

Okay, I'm going to spoil the ending up front.  This was fantastic!  I didn't want to disturb it with water.

The color is lighter than the lightest Italian Pinot Grigio you've ever seen.
The nose had a pleasant mellow peat.  Some plastic.  A little oak.  Some pork.  Dried grains.  But mostly something clean and fresh, maybe the spirit itself.
The palate was light but rich.  Some apple juice and toffee.  The mellow peat.  Very vegetal.  Then a little nutty.  And brown sugar.  Something lingered in the back of my mind, "This tastes familiar.  What is it?"  Then it suddenly hit me.  The mix of the vegetal, grains, nuts, and brown sugar......My mom's zucchini bread!
The finish stuck around for some time.  More of that vegetation, toffee, and zucchini bread.

This one was fun.  I've been checking around to see how the pros feel about it.  They've been reporting notes of wet leaves, forest, and flowers (the vegetal thing); cookies and fresh fruit pie (sensory sensations perhaps paralleling the zucchini bread?).

This is a very different whisky than any of the other Islays.  And the bottlings are still so young.  I can't imagine how incredible Kilchoman 12yrs will be, but we'll have to wait until 2019 for that.  Of course, in youth this whisky could be at its best.  If you can handle a little peat smoke, I'd say keep an eye out for any of their bottlings.

Pricing - Prices are all over the map, $60-$65 is probably the best range

Rating - 92

Whisky on The Westside

I hope that everyone had a good Robert Burns Day or Beer Day or Wednesday or Hump Day or Birthday or however you chose to label yesterday.  I had a really good whisky day on The Westside (and at home).

The geographical make-up of The Westside of Los Angeles differs depending on whom you talk to.  I define it as such:

South of The Valley
North of The South Bay
West of West Hollywood
East of The Ocean.

Though I now live in Long Beach, I had lived on The Westside for almost eight years.  Getting in and out of The Westside is never a great experience due to the ever-increasing side street traffic, so visiting my favorite spots out there is a pain in the arse even when I just lived 5 miles away.  Now I live thirty miles away.  The roundtrip drive takes two hours at minimum.

Sadly I didn't discover The Westside's whisky potential until after I'd moved eastward.  And now it's difficult to access it at all.  But I made the trip out there yesterday to hit two great whisky spots.

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The Daily Pint - 2310 Pico Boulevard, Santa Monica

I've referenced The Pint several times in this blog, usually regarding free whisky tastings.  It has a sturdy divey bar look and a very laid back vibe (except on whisky tasting nights), so it always feels like it's far from the LA Scene.  A positive.  But it has one thing really going for it.

It carries almost 200 single malts.

There's a list here, but there are dozens of drams that aren't on it.  I know that for a fact because I had two yesterday that aren't part of the list and saw many many more.  Their collection of independents - Signatory, Cadenhead's, Scott's, Chieftain's, etc - is just outrageous.

I had my first cask strength whisky here (thank you James!) two years ago and I remember it promptly numbing my face.  (To all you whisky noobs out there, please hit your first and second cask strength drams with a little bit of water in order to work your nervous system up to the point where you can do it neat later on.  Educational!)

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The prices here are decent, definitely less than the outrageous rates charged by the famous downtown Seven Grand.  And I had a tremendous malt yesterday, on special, that I swear they were selling at a loss.  They've also started a Single Malt Club which will get members a 10% discount.  I just joined yesterday!

They also have about 30 beers on tap and I've heard nothing but raves about those.  Of course, my eyes rarely stray from the official malt bottlings in the upper tier and the indies in the back.

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For all of their Scotch holdings, they don't have particularly good whisky glasswear.  So if you go there to try a rare or independent or expensive or dreamy dram, I recommend asking them to pour it into their little curvy tequila glasses.  Those are shaped like mini brandy copitas and do a good job at focusing the flavor and nose.

If you're looking to test out a single malt before buying a whole bottle, I heartily recommend this place. Especially if you live on The Westside.

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Beverage Warehouse - 4935 Mcconnell Avenue, Culver City(-ish)

I'm almost thankful that I didn't find this place until we were about to move down South.  This place is like Candyland.

When I walked in the door, I almost had a nervous breakdown.  I almost went potty.  I am not exaggerating.

It is a warehouse full of beverages.

Here's a pic of the outside entrance:

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I will not show you a photo of the liquor shelves within because they're downright pornographic (and I also can't find a pic to steal from the Internet).  Hundreds of whiskies.  Hundreds of tequilas.  Hundreds of vodkas.  Hundreds of gins.  Hundreds of rums.  And the beer selection is crazy.

Their prices are great, possibly the best in Los Angeles County.

They do tastings (wine or whisky, usually).  Their staff is nice.  And I'm really digging their selection of minis.  If you go, pick up a mini of Highland Park 18 and Macallan 18; they're priced 30-40% lower than I've ever seen, so I picked up one of each yesterday.

Like I recommend with a Las Vegas trip, leave your high limit credit card behind when you go here.  But unlike Vegas, you really need to be sober when setting foot in Beverage Warehouse.  Keep your wits about you or else you will walk out with a full paycheck's worth of liquor in tow.

I'd say that's what qualifies as "good stress".  So, stop by the Beverage Warehouse and feel free to turn somersaults in the aisles.

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I had a great time hitting these two spots.  Didn't even mind the traffic for once.  Didn't spend much money either.  Now if someone could just bring these businesses out to Long Beach...

'Tis Robert Burns Day

Source: wikipedia!

Today is Robbie Burns Day, often celebrated with a supper of haggis, dancing, poetry reading, and whisky toasts.  I would have loved to have gone to the LA Scotch Club's celebration, but it's in Pasadena and I know for a fact that I would not make it home alive.  So I'm going to have a dram or two at The Daily Pint and read some Scottish poetry at home.  I'm haggis-free this year......so far.

Widely considered in Scotland as their best home-grown poet, Robert Burns was born on 25 January 1759 and passed on a short thirty-seven years later on 21 July 1796.  Often writing in the Scots tongue, he fashioned straightforward Romantic poetry influenced by both old Scotch folk songs and contemporary social concerns.  He's held in particular fancy by the Scottish people since he'd grown up hungry and poor amongst multiple failing farms before his strong passionate artistic voice led him out of the squalor.

His "Scots Wha Hae" was the unofficial Scottish anthem for a long time too.  Here in The States, we would know him from "Auld Lang Syne."

You know what?  You should really go to the official Scotland-run Robert Burns site where an actor gives a cracking turn as Robbie himself, detailing the history of the man.  It's great edutainment!

So in honor of Robbie, please enjoy your evening.  Safely.

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Also, it's National Peanut Butter Day

EAT:

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...if you don't have allergies and all.