Whisky Loving in the Berkshires

Whisky lovers have gathered in Great Barrington for New Years. And G-Man has brought us a couple bottles for tasting. These are latest imports courtesy of his friends, the Careys, who continue to bring him exceptional malts from their visits to Scotland. The latest offerings are Ardbeg Alligator, and a 13-year-old Highland Park, bottled by Adephi.

Ardbeg Alligator is one of the most recent intense bottlings from the distillery responsible for the smokiest and peatiest whiskies known to man. According to the packaging, the alligator thing refers to the fact that Ardbeg chars the barrels until they have the appearance of an alligator’s hide. It could also be because the whisky has an aggressive reptilian character. It virtually attacks you right from the glass. Alligator is 51.2%, but like other Ardbegs, it really doesn’t want to be watered. So this is definitely not a whisky for the faint of heart. Along with the peat, one can detect vanilla and pepper. But there are lots of flavors here that one doesn’t ordinarily associate with food. Like leather. And the combination of all this leaves one with the sensation of moccasins smoked over a campfire, and then soaked in maple syrup. And that makes for a long sweet finish. All of the elements of tangy barbeque foods -- sweet, spicy, smoky, big flavor – are present in this whisky, which in the end, is sort of like alcoholic barbeque. And even though the intense peat is what we’ve come to associate with Ardbeg, in this whisky, the combination of peat and sweetness is most unusual and what makes this malt so interesting.

Highland Park 13, cask strength, 58.0%, Adelphi selection. We all love HP, so it’s no surprise that we love this bottling of the best all-around malt one can find. But we were knocked out to find such huge flavor in a thirteen-year old whisky. The nose is very sweet, vanilla or chocolate or maybe caramel. And tasting it at full strength, one hundred and sixteen proof, when one would expect the alcohol to overpower everything else, the malt has a distinctly sweet character. And buttery. It has a rich luxurious mouth feel that magnifies the sweetness of this malt. After the initial sweetness, there is a deep, rich malt flavor typical of much older whiskies, 18 and 21 year old scotch. Same for the finish. The finish goes on and on, and it’s hard to believe that this malt has spent only thirteen years in the barrel. We then drank it with a little water, which took the heat out of the glass, and thinned out the texture, although the rich flavor, and the long finish remained. It would be fun to figure out the perfect mixture of whisky and water, if for no reason other than the chance to sample glass after glass of this HP, until we had the ratios down. How much fun would that be? This is really a special whisky.

2011 is drawing to a close. So from Great Barrington, to all whisky lovers everywhere, all the best for a happy and healthy New Year.

The Bench

Last night, in their first real road game of the season, and their first game since rising to the top of the rankings, Cuse beat a decent NC State team decisively. The big difference was the bench, or more accurately, Syracuse’s depth. According to the box score, the bench scored 46 of their 88 points, more than fifty percent of the offensive output. That’s not really true, however, because Christmas is purportedly a starter, but rarely gets more than a few token minutes. I’m assuming the coaches promised him that he could have Jackson’s place in the starting lineup, as a way to recruit him. (He’s another kid from Philly.) But either CJ Fair or Southerland should be starting, so really, the starters contributed more than half the points.

Still, the exact count hardly matters. What matters is that Waiters, Southerland, and Fair, all of whom come off the bench, have been making major contributions all season long. Last night, Waiters led the team with 22 points. Five guys were in double figures, and three of them were not starters. So that means that, when one of the starters is off his game, as Triche was last night, there is someone to pick up the slack, as Dion did. That’s really big this year, because although the team has depth and balance, they don’t really have a go-to guy. Kris Joseph may be the most consistent offensive contributor, but he can’t really create offense on his own. So they need to have a number of potential contributors, increasing the statistical likelihood that someone will be hitting from the outside if all else fails.

Their depth also allows them to outlast other teams. In both halves last night, NC State started hot. They led for more than two-thirds of the first half; but with about eight minutes to go, Cuse went on a monster run (23-0 before it was over), and took a big lead into half-time. Same thing in the second half. NC State was on fire coming out of the half, and erased the Orange lead. But then they tired once again, and Cuse ran away with the last ten minutes of the game.

That’s especially important because defense is the key for this year’s team – and not just at the defensive end. It’s the D that leads to fast break opportunities, and their offense is most effective when they are running. So the strength of this year’s team will be to harass the hell out of everybody in the zone; to chase down rebounds and loose balls; to get in the other guys’ passing lanes; and then to run as soon as they turn the ball over. So everyone needs to be fresh for forty minutes, and that’s the real reason they need the depth, or as ESPN kept talking about, their bench. What they need is a lot of guys with fresh legs, especially when other teams get tired.

I wasn’t happy when they ended up with the number one ranking, but I was pissed off when I read an ESPN column about when they would lose their first game, and a couple guys picked last night. I certainly don’t expect them to go all through the conference without losing, but suggesting they would lose their very first game as number one was way disrespectful. I’m tired of all these ESPN assholes talking shit on the Cuse this year.

The hell with ESPN; and Go Orange.

Single Malts Direct

Exactly how did that Rosebank 21 find its way to my home in Rochester, New York? Think of all the trouble we’ve gone to over the past several years to find great whisky shops. We stop along the highway, driving north from Boston, on our way to see G-man in Portland, and pick up a few bargains at the New Hampshire state store. Or when we’re in Boston, we make a point of visiting Joe at Federal. That’s always a treat, because Joe ends up sharing some of his favorite malts, spreading the whisky gospel if you will. Couple years back we made a pilgrimage to some shop in NJ, where they sold Ballechin. It’s always fun to find someplace new, a shop with an interesting inventory, with some hard to find malts, with bargains on great whiskies. But then there’s always the difficulty of getting the whisky home. And in the end, there’s a limit on what we might find. After all, there just wasn’t any Rosebank to be found anywhere, in any of these shops on American soil.

So last weekend, while reading my current issue of Whisky magazine, I saw an add for singlemaltsdirect.com. And to my amazement, when I looked through their on-line catalogue, I found, not only the Classic Malts bottling of Rosebank, about which I have already posted, but two more Rosebanks. Are you kidding me? Three Rosebanks in one catalogue? I flipped out, and wanted to order. However, I was concerned. Single Malts Direct is located somewhere in Scotland (where else?), but was I going to be able to import whisky on my own? The website has a detailed chart for calculating shipping to almost anywhere on the globe, but then there is further information about customs, and duties, and importing, and some scary sounding disclaimers. So in my mind, I pictured myself ordering the Rosebank, but then the order would get stuck at the port of entry, and I’d have to drive four hundred miles to some bonded warehouse and pay a ton of duty, and then have to schlep the whisky home myself. Was it really worth it?

But before abandoning this idea, I sent an email off to singlemaltsdirect.com, and asked a bunch of questions about customs and duty and insurance and the like. And then, a day later, I got an email back from Sheila@singlemaltsdirect.com, who put to rest all my fears. The prices listed in the catalogue included duty; they took care of all the paperwork, including the customs declaration; my only responsibility was insurance against breakage, and although the website didn’t yet have a link for that, Sheila said they would take care of insuring my first order, free of charge. So I figured, what the hell? Let’s give it a try, and I ordered five bottles (yes, I know; that sounds excessive, but who knows whether they’ll have any of these Rosebanks a year from now, when I want to reorder. In fact, as it turned out, I got the very last bottle of one of the offerings.) On Tuesday, I received an email saying that my order had shipped, and then Friday afternoon, when I came home from work, there it was – a big box sitting on my kitchen counter with, you guessed it, five Rosebanks all wrapped up in bubble wrap, or Styrofoam boxes. So there’s two things to point out: 1) This was a turnkey order; I just placed the order, and the whisky came to my house; and 2) it took only three days for a box of whisky to get from the UK to my kitchen in holiday season, when all shipping seems to slow down. Three days --It takes the postal service longer than that to deliver a letter to Manhattan.

Just for the hell of it, take a look at their online catalogue. You’ll find an unbelievable inventory of hard to find malts, independent bottlings, and old age statements. Plus, the prices aren’t bad. I checked out the numbers on a couple whiskies that have gone up in price over the past few years – for example HP 18, or Bunnahabhain 18 – and found their prices to be very competitive. I’m a fan of local shopping; I like to know my purveyor; I like the experience of handling the product; I like the personal attention; and I like to support our local merchants. But for hard-to-find stuff, for malts that just cannot be located in the U.S., I recommend singlemaltsdirect.com. They were as attentive and responsive as any on-line merchant with whom I’ve ever dealt.

Rosebank 21

We fell in love with Rosebank about six years ago. On a cruise with the boys there was a great whisky bar, called Maltings, and every night we ordered a round of some genre of whisky -- some nights exploring new malts; other nights we tried bourbons or ryes. There was a Rare Malts bottling of 18 year old Rosebank, about which we really knew nothing at all. Not yet educated by Jackson, knowing only those whiskies to which we had been introduced at tastings around town, we had never heard of this lowland malt, which was even then out of production for well over a decade.

But after the first taste, we were hooked. John loved it so much that regardless of what we had drunk earlier in the evening, before retiring each night, he would stop back at Maltings, and order a glass of Rosebank for a nightcap. To our dismay, however, once the cruise ended, and we were back on dry land, there was precious little Rosebank to be found. Keens had a couple offerings, but it wasn’t long before Rosebank disappeared from their list. The boys managed to find a bottle at Federal, and Ben tracked one down here in town, but aside from the sherry aged Gordon & MacPhail, which we have learned to appreciate, but which really tastes more like a highland malt than a typical lowland, there was none to be had. G-Man was given a bottle last summer by a friend returning from Scotland, but I came to doubt that any more Rosebank could be located, except perhaps at auction, here in the States.

Until last week that is, when I discovered that singlemaltsdirect.com will ship whisky into the U.S. I’ll talk more about that in my next posting, but suffice it to say that last night I opened a bottle of 21 year old Rosebank, cask strength, 53.8%, classic malts bottling. And to paraphrase Rudy, I’ve been ready for this whisky all my life.

Rosebank always has a beautiful floral bouquet, but whether from the age, or the fact that it’s cask strength, the nose here is more aromatic than any other whisky I can recall. I can never pick out all those fragrances – you know, lavender and citrus and cherry and all that stuff. All I know is that it smells delicious. And the taste – even more so. At full strength, the whisky is sweet; entirely lacking in smoke, almost no malt, just sweet, like honey. But because it’s Rosebank, there is a peppery bite underneath that sweetness, kind of like a drop of cayenne in the bottom of the glass. I preferred this Rosebank at close to full strength, maybe with a few drops of water, but not really diluted. That way, all the intensity of the flavor seemed to explode in my mouth, almost overpowering my taste buds.

Another nice characteristic of this whisky is the buttery mouth feel. Soft, luxurious, and a great compliment to the explosion of sweetness on the palate. Again, that texture was most noticeable at full strength, another reason why not to water this scotch too much. Lastly, there is a long gracious finish, always a sign of a great whisky. I mean, it just goes on and on. It doesn’t want to quit.

Rosebank is gone; a ‘grievous loss’ according to Jackson. And unlike some other mothballed malts, it’s not coming back. Some real estate developers have turned the distillery grounds into offices or residence, or maybe even a shopping mall. I don’t want to know. The upshot is that there has been no new Rosebank distilled for two decades, and whatever continues to exist in warehouses, or barrels, is slowly but surely disappearing from this world. But at least for the time being, I know that I’ll have the chance to enjoy this heavenly whisky for a little while longer here on earth.

Only About Basketball

I went to the Dome Tuesday night to see the Orange dominate Eastern Michigan, and for two hours, it was only about basketball. There were no questions about what happened on Coach Boeheim’s watch; there were no new accusations about Bernie Fine; and there were no comments of any kind by Laurie Fine. There was a standing O for the Coach when he followed the players out of the tunnel, and again after the player introductions. The crowd made it very clear that, notwithstanding the prior week’s revelations, they still stood behind him.

Under the direction of new head coach, and former SU assistant, Rob Murphy, Eastern Michigan played the 2-3 zone most of the night, and for the first 15 minutes, that zone defense presented problems for the Orange. It slowed the game way down, allowing the smaller Eagles to stay even with the bigger, more athletic, and more talented Orange. It frustrated Cuse’s ability to run. And it exposed some weakness in the Orange offense. But eventually, SU solved the zone (one would think that Syracuse, of all teams, ought to know how to exploit the 2-3), and once Eastern Michigan began to tire, and stopped hitting their threes, the Orange pulled away and ended up dominating the second half.

There was certainly good news to report from Tuesday night: first of all is the depth of this team. Including the two freshmen, the team is ten deep. At one point in the second half, there were five bench players on the court, and the Orange were pulling away from Eastern Michigan. And it’s not just that the bench contributes; it’s also that the guys coming off the bench challenge the starters to play better. For example, Jardine played a lackluster first half, while Waiters looked great coming off the bench. So when the second half began, Jardine and Triche practically crawled up in the Eagles’ shorts, really amping up the intensity of the man defense, generating turnovers, and in general, playing with much more intensity. I think it happened because the bench had made the starters look bad in the first half.

Other good news is that this team has a number of scoring options from outside the three-point line. Joseph is probably the most consistent scorer, but when he’s on, I think Southerland is the best pure shooter on the team. However, Triche, Waiters and Jardine all have the ability to hit from the outside. In fact, it was Triche who supplied the offense in the first half, when everyone else was cold.

It was also encouraging to see very few turnovers -- only 6 for the game. In part, that was because Eastern Michigan played a pretty passive zone, and didn’t get up on our guards, didn’t challenge them the way Louisville or Nova would. Still, keeping the turnovers down is a recipe for success in any game. The big surprise for me was not that Cuse faced a zone, but that they played a man D for more than half the night. I’m not sure how good the man defense would be against a quicker, more athletic team, but one thing for sure: if Cuse can play the man effectively, even for short stretches, teams won’t be able to prepare for SU quite as easily. It won’t just be about the zone.

At the same time, there was some bad news to report. They still have no real center. Fab Melo may be better this year than last (not saying much) but he is still a work in progress. Keita’s the same. And this year they don’t have option of putting Rick Jackson in the middle to anchor the zone. This weakness was obvious in the first half, when Eastern Michigan kept sneaking inside for easy lay-ups. The Orange towered over the smaller Eagles, but neither Melo nor Keita could clog the lane effectively.

Worse, the Orange have no inside game. There is no one who can play with his back to the basket, no one to dump the ball into down low. Think of all the times over the past couple years, when the offense got cold, but the team could go down low to AO or Jackson. If teams didn’t double on those guys, they could easily score. And if teams did double, then someone was left open for easy jumpers. This year, the scoring will have to come from the outside, or on the break. On a few occasions, one of the guards would get into the lane, and then could dish to one of the big guys under the hoop. But I don’t see much of that happening in Big East play.

As good as they looked at times, I don’t think this is a top five team. I wouldn’t mind seeing them lose to Florida (as irritating as that would be) because they need to lose once or twice before the conference games begin. I always like when the team starts out unranked and disrespected, and comes into the season with a chip on its shoulder. I never like these unrealistic early season rankings.

But the best part of Tuesday night was that, for two hours at least, it was only basketball in the Dome. I’m not suggesting that people should ignore what may have happened, or that this thing should get swept under the rug. But I was glad, for one night, to think about hoops again. Go Orange.