Octomore 11.3

BBQ ribs. Full bodied. Smoky. Sweet. Delicious. In no way drinks like a 60% whisky. My first octomore, and I’m blown away.

The legs on this gal are long, or as I used to say girl has some get-away-sticks. Ahem. Anyway, the smell is strong, think about that time you took a Snickers and drug it through a campfire that the sea spray extinguished on a cool fall day. The opening sip opens your eyes and lays down in your mouth, kicks off its shoes and whispers, “Imma be here a bit”. It is comforting yet bracing, that good friend that is drunk, across the room eyeing you, yet just won’t leave. It’s chocolate, it’s barbecue meat (lamb), it’s earthy, and salty. I hear my inner monologue telling me to “yaaar” like a Pirate. If you enjoy MC Esher, smoked meats, Pirate Metal, and friends that overstay their welcome in leather chairs with cigar smoke swirling about then this is your whisky.

Every time I have an expensive whisky, I can’t help but think what my grandmother would be saying. She was born and raised for her entire life in a small rural village in North India. No electricity, no running water, no natural gas to provide heat and cooking flame, just one room hut on a family farm. You eat what you grow, sell the excess, and pray the gods of agriculture look favorably on you towards harvest season. There was also a certain ranking of grains based on utility and market value. Wheat took the top spot. So, I can only imagine what she’d say when a family member buys a $250 bottle of whiskey ( although in this case, I admit, it’s a $10 sample vial I purchased). I can imagine something like “ you paid several months of income on a bottle of alcohol?!?! Did you lose your damn mind?! And furthermore, it’s not even made from wheat...but rather barley??! And fermented??! Once you let it ferment, I can’t even feed it to my cows or chicken...it’s then just compost!!! Fuckin’ idiot with shit for brains. “. And then I’d only imagine she’d take the rubber slippers off her feet and beat me till her hands hurt. Yeah, it would go something like that. But this is what I’d tell her: Grandma—-this particular pour is amazing. You get burnt charcoal on the nose, just embers of cooked meats. On the palette, it’s like drinking roast beef stew with a slice of lemon. The flavors just integrate so well, despite only 5 years of youth. This is what the best roasted or charbroiled cuts of meat would taste like, if liquified. She’d then hit me some more, this time replacing the rubber slippers with a wooden dough roller...saying “ shit for brains village idiot...we’re vegetarians, you don’t kill the animal that provides you milk and helps plow the fields...and you made that poor beast into soup!!?? “ Yeah. It would go exactly like that. And it would be so worth that public flogging for a pour of this.