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tom watson
04/01/11
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03/20/11
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ginorod
04/01/11
May 02, 2012
“I knew I'd go every night until she showed up. I knew she knew it. I sat there and drank bourbon and I shut my eyes…”
You didn’t think Robert Mitchum would wait for Jane Greer in “Out of the Past" drinking something neutral like vodka would you?
Around this time of year, with the Kentucky Derby just around the corner, I become a super patriot about my home state and America's great whiskey.
Actually, about the only thing Un-American about bourbon is its name.
Turns out America so appreciated the efforts of France for helping us win our independence they dropped some French names into the bluegrass, like Louisville, Versailles and Bourbon County.
When Kentucky was carved into smaller units in 1780, Bourbon County became a great corn-producing region, which was turned into some amazing whiskey and the rest was good drinking history.
Unlike other whiskeys, you see, it has some stringent requirements.
According to federal law it must be made in the United States since you can't call yourself a bourbon if it's made elsewhere.
Then it has to be composed of at least 51 percent corn, distilled at less than 160 proof and aged at least two years, in only new charred white oak barrels.
Now this new barrel thing is essential, since only an unused barrel can absorb the color, vanilla, caramel and natural sugars in the oak, which give bourbon its complex flavor.
Guess where those barrels go after the golden liquid is removed?
They're exported overseas and reused to make Scotch and Irish whisky.
So if any of that other stuff tastes remotely good, remember it’s good old Kentucky Bourbon that supplies the character.
When Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary Grace Tully suggested the president try Scotch rather than bourbon he replied, “I never heard of such a thing. It’s absolutely sacrilegious."
The U.S. Congress, finally doing something sensible, made it officially sacrilegious to call anything else America's spirit; in 1964 they made Bourbon the “Native Spirit.”
I’ll drink to that.
Right across the river in Kentucky, prices for hard liquor are cheaper, due to lower tax rates ...
-Bert
May. 02, 2012 8:11 AM
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Paul Geller
03/21/11
Always wondered, why do we say "here's to you" and then drink it ourselves?
Lotlot~ "here's to you" refers to your turn to buy the next round, which would be harder if my glass were still full....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2KLIO7WRm0
oops~ my grammer ....
We have a son-in-law with a near Christmas birthday and he is always here at the time and receives a spendy bottle of Maker's Mark ( it comes in a wood box) which he is very gracious in sharing.
I was sputtering around here one day with an unsettled gut avoiding a bite of this or a taste of that when he offered an ounce or two in a stubby-stemmed outwardly fluted whiskey glass and the effect was immediate. The perfect cure.
I agree with RY's 12:31 Posting. Bottom's Up Y'all!!
Shall we take exception to the insinuation of all things Margarita, for one very special day this month? Salt on the rim of aBourbon glass would be verrrry bad
rings90 ~
That sounds better coming from you...
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show_tag?id=drinking, ; this was so much fun, I might just do it sober
Downhill from here. Today's topic persuaded me that a slug of whiskey in my breakfast coffee might be fun. I'm feeling very happy, and it certainly worked better than paracetomol on the aches and pains list.
Good morning all.................Maker's Mark is indeed delicious & a pour into almost finished gravy adds a rich bite.........................mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....................gravy.....................
Have a wonderful day all................
HAZEL.....................you wild, breakfast imbibing woman. I am so shocked! Enjoy!
Horse sense that the yield of the land becomes the prevailing liquor source be it corn or potatoes or rye. Smelling it cook as I passed by Bardstown in my old Range Rover on my way to Versailles made me want a taste that evening as I ordered it up before dinner at The Campbell House when I was a young salesman full of p&v; proud that I had evolved from shots in college to sipping and swirling as a wannabe gentleman. It is amazing how much more pleasure is derived when you hold it up as you're cogitating and let the light filter through the golden elixir as you capture the residual flavors that linger in your palate. I find that one has preferences but when in Rome...Bourbon and thoroughbreds and beautiful women made Jesse Winchester sing "a man down in Kentucky sure is lucky...
Right across the river in Kentucky, prices for hard liquor are cheaper, due to lower tax rates on "spirits." Should you order "garden variety"liquor, it is acceptable to use any tone of voice, or to sprinkle your delivery with spicy language. Ordering bourbon, however, is different. Reverence is required when conducting yourself, both in demeanor & in tone of voice. It's a little like the aura @ Keeneland Association's clubhouse, should somebody mention "War Admiral." I don't step on Superman's cape, nor do I spit into the wind. And I certainly don't even consider ripping the mask off the Lone Ranger. So in The Commonwealth of Kentucky, I play by the rules, and order carefully & tactically.....or suffer the consequences. "Revenuers" are afforded more dignity & respect than are displaced Yankees who flaunt the name of bourbon in vain.
more on the honor rollT-h-o-r-o-b-r-e-d
RY ~
Great research and thank you.
Point of interest: The Boeing 717 seats one hundred and seventeen passengers and did a take-off to touchdown flight from Milwaukee to La Guardia in 1:38.
I just thought that you might like to know that when you do the click and pick seat selection from the online seating chart, that is the actual size of your airplane.
Not for the chubby butted.
Hazel ~
We have a friend whose life changed for the better when she took advice to have one drink of an evening to wind down and skip the pills.
I don't partake much anymore. I'm not adverse to a swig every now and again, with a mixer, a sacrilege to more refined likker drinkin pallets than the one I possess I guess. My folks weren't drinkers when I was coming up and with the exception of my college years, neither am I. My mother grew up around hard drinking railroad men and my Dad around a kind and hardworking Christian woman whom he'd just soon die first before dishonoring. That combined influence came together as parents and suggested to my brother and sister to avoid it.
Before I left for college, my Mom suggested (long before it was proven that a genetic predisposition for anything was possible other than hair and eye color, height, etc) that I not drink in excess. First, for the obvious potential consequences (DWI) but secondly because, as she put it "The men from her side were drunks" and she feared the love, then dependency, might get passed on to her children. For that reason alone she never ever drank around us and I'm thankful for that looking back.
I did have a friend in college who knew he was going to get "Knee walking drunk" and would gauge his dietary intake against what hard liquor he might be drinking. When I asked him why, he said and I quote "If you drink too much and puke, you'd better like how your dinner and your liquor taste when mixed, 'cause that's what's going to be on your breath the next day.
I told him "Dude, you might want to rethink you drinking habits"
He responded (and I remember this so well) "Nah, not yet, if I give up drinking I'll have to take up religion"
Hats off to TTommy and Bert for fine salutes to a fine American product. This afternoon about 5:05 I will raise a glass of the elixer with a dram of H2O on ice to our American bourbon industry. Uncle Jack is the preference: "bourbon and branch" I think we call it.
When I toured the JDaniels distillery and museum, I was surprised that the area is dry. What an anomaly to have the great bourbon manufacturing operation in an area that does not allow the sale of hard liquor. Wonder if they will ever change that rule?
Leaving the JD site, I was attracted to a small mom n' pop diner that advertised on its sign, "Chicken livers and gizzards - Buffet" and of course, had to stop for lunch!
Again, Mr. P, you have chosen a topic near and dear. There you have bebe already recommending bourbon in her gravy!
Moose, I did visit with a friend and was surprised to see all the variety offered by Jack Daniels Distillery. One in particular, "Jack Daniels Tennessee Honey" was quite amazing. I have never been a straight liquor drinker, ever. This stuff, however, was as smooth as well-stirred gravy.
Not a Kentuckian, but rather from the other great southern comonwealth, VA.... My daddy ran 'shine. Even paid for college via the combination of GI Bill and 'shine money. And I do have some 'shine to hand, but sadly it is the *legal* kind. Kinda annoyed with Junior Johnson for putting his name and rep on the line for that, although he always made good 'shine.... I rarely drink the 'shine--I'm a bourbon girl. Straight up or over the rocks.Sometimes (very rarely) in a bourbon manhattan. And the bourbon always has a name on it--Booker, Baker, Basil Nayden, or as I think of the triumvirate, the Beam Boys. Also Elijah Craig. Also.... Only on my 2nd cup of coffee today, but I think i'm going to have Angel's Envy (current fave) over a single cube before dinner tonight. I'll save the Devil's Cut for later.
My mother's drink of choice was a Bourbon Manhattan, straight up wth a cherry. I always got to eat the cherry, so I developed a taste for bourbon at an early age.
With apologies, in my youth when we were trying to act worldly, cool, bad and a force to be dealt with and BTW had no idea what it meant the toast was "Here's to the kisses I've snatched...and vice versa." Sorry...just an humble report relating how it was...
Ink- you are versed on some of the more fancy libations.
I've seen some cheap liquor. More from the "swill" family of alcohol. I've seen a bottle in the possession of a good friend, and it so cheap it says "Aged on the way here" written clearly on the bottles label. He says you can mix it with five gallons of water and pour it in your gas tank.
My mother went to college in KY back in 1939. She learned this elaborate toast while there:
Here's to the gals of the Bowling Green
But you can't bowl on my green because the green belongs to the king, and the king belongs to the queen,
And the queen belongs to the prince,
Any kind of prince, handprints, footprints, whistle whistle, Here Prince!
Now the moral of the story is not to confuse asthma with passion (deep breath)
How's your grandmother?
You can only imagine my shock when she recited this to me when I was college aged and had some friends visiting our house. Gee, my mom used to have fun?
Actually, I'm a Scotch drinker. Got that from my Dad. I used to drink it on the rocks until one day I served my Scottish friend Gerry a nice single malt on ice and he admonished me saying, You never put the Glenmorangie on ice! I replied that I was an American and we put ice in everything.
l marjorie - I, The Giraffe, am also a Scotch drinker but NEVER with ice I was told at an early age - "neat or don't waste my fine Scotch" my father said. So until I got smart, I drank Old Overshoes and thought it was wonderful until I chanced upon Johnny Walker Black and discovered what I was missing all those years.
When I was way too young to be drinking and wouldn't know a good bourbon if it bit me, I tended toward's Virginia Gentleman. As a grown-up (with somewhat more money) I remember buying my first bottle of Booker's. Then price (in NC) was somewhere around $50. I told the gentlman at the cash register that I truly hoped I hated it, because I couldn't afford such a habit. Then I got home, opened it, smelled it. Never went back to the cheap stuff.
Ah yes, Giraffe. I've amended my ways. I will drink a blended Scotch on ice, (JW Red is good on ice), but the good stuff, never. If you like Black, try Laphroaig. It's got that peaty flavor that JWB has. But on today's topic, I do drink bourbon on occasion, I think I have some Maker's Mark down in the bar. I'll have to have some tonight and will think of you all. And, of course, I will have it neat. Now, for the real bourbon drinkers out there, my question is about Jack Daniels. I know it is not bourbon because it comes from Tennessee. Sour Mash is what it is called? Tennessee siping whiskey? Does it taste like bourbon? Or is it just different like different single malt Scotches are different?
l Margorie- thanks for the tip - will try Laphroaig. In Ireland when we go to fish the May Fly, we drink Jameson and often too much of it!
As inkwench stated above, once you try the good stuff, Rot Gut just doesn't do it.
George Hall - your 10:18 - I am still laughing. Alas those days when we thought we were so cool are long gone. You have brought back some memories.
The last time I darkened the door of a Liquor Store, I noted that a bank could make a fortune doing loans on anything and everything, from the family truckster to the tractor, just to buy a decent jug of whiskey.
I'm happy I don't have daily, weekly or monthly desire to have a pull. The dang stuff has gotten expensive, sans second mortgages on mechanical devices.
I margorie-now that is some funny stuff there. It's kinda like when my kids saw pictures of their Mom and I when we were younger and considerably more attractive to someone besides each other. I told my youngest daughter it was back when we were considered "cool". She reminded me that she was certain neither of us were ever cool.
I told her that kids do that to a person.
No ice.
If you like some of the variants on good Scotch whiskey, try TULLAMORE
DEW,."The Legendary Irish Whiskey"
I'm predicting you'll be surprised and may even love it. I have for a long
time.
If you like some of the variants on good Scotch whiskey, try TULLAMORE
DEW,."The Legendary Irish Whiskey"
I'm predicting you'll be surprised and may even love it. I have for a long
time.
I was introduced to bourbon by a fine gentleman who said that you know it's a very good bourbon when you have taken the first sip and find the flavor so delightful you can not describe it by anything more than a smile and a sigh.
I smiled and sighed.
Been eating fish&chips on the beach with friends. Dancing dog chasing seagulls. I love those Scotch Whiskeys that taste like peat bog. It is possible to go on a three day coach tour of Scotland and the outlying islands just visiting distilleries. Each has iits own favour - so I'm told by a red-nosed gentlman who makes this tour his annual holiday. Bourbon - I'm not sure about. There's a caramel flavour that to my taste is rather odd. For not very special occasions, a nice glug of Irish 'Paddy's' hits the spot.
not favour, flavour!
I hope you will all join me on theSepia Train tonight and introduce to my first foray into the world of Bourbon.
Mitchum was a Bourbon drinker most of his life ... but there were about ten years that he was very fond of Tequila, long before Yuppies and The Beautiful People decided it was High Camp (and the Poseurs have STILL never discovered the Best Brand of Tequila to be found anywhere on the Planet ...) Mitchum flirted with it long enough, to learn that Tequila doesn't really make one Drunk ... it just makes him Crazy !!! Mitchum's Best Buddy, Jane Russel, whom he always called, "Ernie" when they were alone, was a two fisted Straight Bourbon drinker, and preferred it neat and three fingers deep in the glass ... Mitchum like to sip off the Rocks, and often told "Ernie", "You're a Better Man than I am if you get past the third drink ..."
The illustrious George Washington, of whom y'all might have heard ... was one of the Jailbirds that King George pooped out of his prisons and sent over here "To the Colonies" ... Washington was a Distiller and Producer of Rye Whiskey, and was imprisoned for not paying King George his cut, with the Whiskey Tax ....... All that crap about Washington's being a Surveyor, is just that; CRAP !!! When he was looking around for a likely place to start cookin' again, he found Rye in short supply, but Corn plentiful, as the Indians hads more than they could eat ....... So George started making whiskey out of Corn, and he called it, "American Whiskey" ... and Buffalo Trace was born in Bourbon County, which is how it got its name ... having nothing to do with Louie, except the County was named for him ....... Buffalo Trace still uses George's Recipe to this very day, and produces the same Bourbon Whiskey ... a little harsher than, Kreme of Kentucky but pallatable ...
The BEST Tequila ... by the way ... is HERRADURA .......
Ivan, I'm with you on the crazy part with tequila. When I was in college, my best girlfriend and I would go to BYOB parties with a big bottle of inexpensive tequila (we were poor college kids), one of those god awful squeeze lemons or limes, and a shaker of salt. We learned not to mix our tequila with any of the other beverages (like beer) and would have ourselves a grand old time doing the salt, tequila, lemon thing and dancing our little hearts out to whatever music was blaring on the stereo. I don't think we were "drunk" but we sure felt good.
Ivan, dear friend, I have to call you on the Washington not being a surveyor. Property down the road from me named Fairfield has the survey signed by old George. When the house is sold the survey goes with the house. Yes, I've seen it, and it has been authenticated. That paper also goes with the house when sold.
They are now brewing Georges wiskey on Mount Vernon and oh, my, is the price dear.
Oops George's wiskey
On the Sepia Train, I'll be the one asleep in the corner seat. Off under the duvet now, Nos Da, dear people and drink in moderation. I need some of you up early to entertain me.
I still do like my Grey Goose Vodka (on the rocks with olives, please), but will, in a pinch, drink bourbon. No one in my family really drinks, so may I join you all in the club car? Again, I must say, they have no idea how good look when they drink.
When I was a lot younger a good friend who had been a "stewardess" (aka flight attendant) told me that she only drank Scotch because you never felt or acted drunk. Well, that was good enought for me and Scotch became my drink of choice in a social situation. One summer evening after a day of swimming his pool a neighbor friend took my daughter and me to a very fancy restaurant for dinner. He ordered his usual Jack and I, of course went for Scotch. He asked how I could drink that and I explained as I sipped the first few sips about the "not drunk" thing......upon which I promptly dropped all my silverware to the floor as I unfolded my napkin. I really don't know what shade of red my face was..........but, it didn't stop me from imbibing the stuff. Since I, too, prefer the single malts it's my budget that stops me from enjoying it much these days.
Rusty, ole George is holding out on his middle son. I'll be paying him a visit and request the hidden stuff. He's always given me the best and I will assume, for now, he's letting the proverbial cat out of the bag.
Ivan, for me, the best Tequila is in someone else's glass. Just can't stomach the stuff.
Regarding the topic of a couple of days ago. The Scream sold for $120m -- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17926519#
BLESS YOU RUSTY !!!
If I were a Convict and had aspirations of a New Life in the Colonies, and was pitched to be, "The Father of The Country ..." I'd call myself a Surveyor or an Encyclopedia Salesman, if it gave me a better image ... I'd sign Surveys too, or Post Cards, or a picture of Elvis in a Liesure Suit if I thought it would help create the image I wanted ... Sorta like the Mountebank Moslem at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, former, "Harvard Law Professor" who nobody at Harvard happens to remember ...... George Washington signed all kinds of stuff, to become what he ended up being, in this world ... but he was STILL a Whiskey Maker, who certainly made his Mark ....... and evidently slept in a different bed every nite ...
And, I Thank You for the Call .......
Pouring a couple of cool ones after happy gas from my dentist this pm took me to a quiet place on this tiny planet with the only known advanced lifeforms sharing a fragile ecosystem in a solar system in the ol' Milky Way & wondering why we just all can't play nice together. Glad I caught the last train with a Club Car Upgrade.