Saturday Booze Recommendation – the What Day is It edition
Ulysses: Are you putting in a load of laundry?
Penelope: No, you said you needed to wash your dress shirts for work.
Ulysses: I wasn’t sure if I said that out loud or just thought it.
It’s been that kind of weekend. Penelope and I found ourselves rarely free of children. The girls were at my parents’ house, generally getting spoiled and living under the no rules auspices which grandparents provide. Penelope had a big day of work on Friday. Before she got home, I was relaxing in a very adult and responsible manner. Then she got home. We did not party, but we did continue the adult relaxation. Maybe we just behaved in an adult manner. With gusto. It all started with rye whiskey. Once, when I poured a rye for my father-in-law, he sang a little song which may exist in reality or may just exist in his imagination. “Rye whiskey, rye whiskey, it’ll make you feel frisky.”
Saturday I awoke parched, not remorseful. I did the only thing I could. I trudged out into the high 90 degree temps and mowed the yard. Drought is no match for Bermuda grass. I sweated and breathed in the dust storm the mower kicked up as I struggled to whack my yard back to a less than out of control level. I drank buckets of water. The toxins remained. I scrubbed my car and worked on the black plastic the automaker inexplicably used with Mothers’ Back-to-Black. The black returned to the plastic. The toxins finally dissipated. I showered, for the second time that day, and got ready for a birthday party. Penelope was running late, as she is female, so I pre-gamed with a glass of rye whiskey. Went to the party with every intention of being responsible. Paced myself, drank loads of water, and relaxed in a very responsible and adult manner.
Then Penelope and I headed home and behaved in an adult manner. With gusto. I pounded my chest with a few beers.
Normally the kids wake me on the weekends. A side benefit of this is that I always get up before the dogs’ floating eyeballs overflow. My brain knew that I would have no such courtesy calls on Sunday morning and I awoke at 5. Too early to put them out and feed them breakfast. I awoke at 5:30. Too early. 6 – still too early. 6:30 – Have I even fallen back asleep? 7 – I don’t care if they’re outside and barking. Trudged down the stairs. Back to sleep for a few.
Up at 8:30, feeling sleep deprived and parched. Showered and put on a sport coat. Though the sanctuary, with its tall ceilings, overpowers the air conditioner when the temps are in the high 90s, I was going to be well-dressed if I was going to not only brave those temps, but also usher and read the first lesson: First Kings – Solomon’s prayer that he receive not riches or power, but wisdom. Contemplated that I perhaps should have prayed for the wisdom to not wake up so parched. Wondered if the beads of sweat on my brow were visible to those in the pews.
Penelope and I are normally just parents. Sometimes, we have to let our hair down and drink some rye whiskey. And what, do you ask, was this special-occasion childless weekend rye? It was the newly released Bulleit Rye. Bulleit Bourbon, of which I am a big fan, is a very rye-heavy bourbon. The full-fledged rye is still obviously Bulleit, but it is more. The first time I tasted it I thought, “This is what Bulleit has always been striving for.” It’s delicious. It’s smooth. It’s different. It makes you frisky. You may even find yourself, as you sweat and daydream during the announcements portion of church, just before you get up to pass the plate, reminiscing and blushing. And for that, I give it one thumb up. I’d give it two, but my other thumb is presently disposed, teaming up with my fingers in a joint water glass clutching exercise.
Ooh, another American rye for me to try, sometime. I like American ryes even more than bourbon, though I like bourbon (okay, I like all different kinds of whisky, including Canadian whisky and even some Canadian rye whiskies, but I like American ryes better than Canadian ones, precisely because the distillers make them the same way they do bourbon, more or less, in terms of aging in charred new oak barrels, in particular).
Alas, it’s hard to get American ryes up here. They are very much a small niche market in America, and even more so here, so small here in fact that it isn’t deemed worth it to export them, normally, save the odd one here and there, now and then. Right now, I can get Rittenhouse rye at a local liquor store. But that’s it; not Bulleit or Sazerac or Old Overhold or Wild Turkey or Jim Beam rye, none of those. Guess I’ll have to pop across the border, sometime soon.
(I should have explained, that of the couple of Canadian rye whiskies that actually are made with more than 50% rye grain (there are many which aren’t, but can get away with it under Canadian law), Alberta Premium and Alberta Springs, they aren’t aged in charred new white oak, the way American ones are, and are a bit harsher. Though once, Alberta Premium put away some of their whisky for 25 years of aging, and it softened them quite nicely and they picked up some very interesting notes; that was the only time I’ve had a Canadian rye that was as good as an American one – if ever you see a bottle of 25-yr-old Alberta Premium, it’s worth trying, though it is quite different from any American ones, with some cocoa notes, strangely enough.
BTW, many Canadians sloppily use the term ‘rye’ for Canadian whisky, even though the two are different things – though, admittedly, similar enough in the Canadian context – Canadian whisky is made from a blend of grains – corn, rye, barley malt, and wheat – whereas Canadian rye whisky can be a blend of rye and another or other grains, but with more rye than anything else, in theory, at least – yet that doesn’t mean necessarily more than 50%.)