Dinner club. Cost me the entire weekend, all day Saturday, cleaning up and cooking. Dinner was good, if don’t say so myself. Curried squash soup, coq au’vin.. for the last time for while, this time left out potato and added leeks. Red chard sautéed in butter, with garlic and pine nuts, wild rice and brown rice with crasins and pecans, grilled asparagus and finally some cheesecake I bought. I don’t really do dessert so well. We hosted a murder mystery that my sister in law had given us for a present back in.. I’m guessing the late 80’s? I meant I hadn’t opened it since then and the damn thing had a cassette tape to play. Had to scramble a bit to find the cassette tape player..
The murder thing wasn’t as fun as the last time we tried it. I think they’re better now, this one dragged on and on.. and on.. and we drank a shitload of wine.. include a really nice 2000 burgundy. The risk of serving a 9 year old bottle of wine that you’ve been hanging on to for 7 years and that is worth about $100.00 is hearing your guest tell you.. “hmmm, it’ ok but this Chilean Malbec is much better (at $7.00).. uh. We also had, and I’d been dying to try this for a long time..
Hold on to your selves you purists.. we had a delicious whisky, single malt from Japan. Yamazaki, from Suntory. I have to tell you, this could be one of the best single malts I’ve ever had. Serious. We drained the bottle. And.. Sunday was it was about 1:00 before I was feeling good enough to be horizontal.
I have wax on a bit about this whisky. I’m a whisky drinker, my personal favorites are Auchentoshan, a great mild lowland, Balviene Double Wood and Laphroaig from the Scotch category, Bushmills 16 from the Irish world and a few bourbons like Basil Hayden. I read about Suntory and the Japanese attempt to make great whisky, (can’t call it scotch) over the last 80 years or so. A few years ago they did the unspeakable and beat the Scotch distilliries in a taste test, in Scotland.. a blind taste test mind you. This was the first bottle I’ve ever purchased of Yamazaki, I mean with so many great scotchs from Scotland I get distracted, and really? How good could it be. Japanese beer has never done it for me, sake I get.. and like.. but really? Whisky?
Yamaszki was one of, if not the smoothest whisky I’v eever tasted. No bite what so ever. However this lack of the traditional scotch “bite” should not be misinterpreted as a lack of compexity. I was led to believe, by what turned out to be a very misinformed “expert” at Blue Max Liquors in Burnsville that this was going to be a smokey, kelp flavor, like the Isle Scotch’s I love. This was none of that. Yamazaki is a very mellow, almost a fruity armoa that compares more to a 15 year old Balvine. There is no peat here. No Smoke.. but at the same time, it’s very rich and is now one of my favorites, and something that I’m going to enjoy surprising people with as I pop out a bottle of “Japanese” instead of Scotch.
Then I watched the Vikings, while not as bad as I thought it was going to be.. ironically, they played what could have been their best game of the year and had it not been for a couple lucky plays.. would have dominated the Steelers. Well, they got lucky last week, turn about it fair play.
Skyped with college kid Sunday night. That’s getting to be weird now that we’re settling in to our 1/3rd empty nest I just didn’t have a ton of interesting news to share with him these days.
