See, what happened was......
LOL!
@mj1angier went to Scotland. He brought me back the bottle pictured below.
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I'm not a scotch guy, I am a bourbon guy.
Over the years, I have had a couple of scotches I liked ok. Not because I thought they were that good, but because they didn't suck.
Don,
@fieldgrade , and
@BurnedOutGeek had all tried to explain peaty vs. not peaty. Or warn me anyway.
So, when mj1angier handed me the bottle above, I opened it and took a swig.
My first thought was literally "petroleum product".
My next two drinks were sips instead of swigs. I remember thinking "this sucks but it is an entirely different drinking experience than I've ever had before, and that's kinda cool".
Knowing Burnedoutgeek was a scotch guy, I waited for him to come over and try it. His first response was something to the effect of "that reminds me of siphoning gas".
But a couple of weeks later, a friend of my wife came over, and she and I proceeded to kill the whole bottle. I enjoyed the heck out of it. Now I want more.
Some of those "in the know" however, have put forth the theory that maybe the reason I had so much fun is that my wife's friend that I split the bottle with, drinking straight out the bottle, is super hot and super cool to boot. And that maybe I don't really like that scotch as much as I think I do.
Either way, I'm gonna chase that feeling!
So, I looked up the Ballechin, and, it's not sold in NC.
After reading reviews online, I think the Lagavulin 16 is gonna taste the closest to the Ballechin from what I can get locally.
And questioning my desire to drink dirt? LOL! Come on Don! I'm the guy that eats snapping turtles with raw oyster appetizers. As much as I love the Jeremiah Johnson character, in reality I am Del Gue. I wanna suck the marrow from the earth!
I love Knob Creek so much because it hits hard. I imagine that if I went back in time 200 years and went into a bar the bourbon I would get would taste closer to Knob Creek than any of the "smoother" choices we have today. And I'm starting to think the same of the "peaty" scotches.
You have to keep in mind, long before I presented the rugged (doughy?) exterior of the denim draped redneck who ate the Marlboro Man, I was first and foremost a dork. I'm the geeky kid whose parents weren't into sports, my dad didn't even hunt or fish. We were poor and lived in the woods. Library card was cheap. I would lock myself in my room every summer and read my way through the Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and whatever other Tolkien I could get my hands on. Drove my parents crazy because at 12 years old I would refuse to eat or drink anything that the characters couldn't get in their world. So I had a lot of bread and cheese and unprocessed meats. Honey, water, and for some reason they never would hook me up with ale or mead.
@BurnedOutGeek says that nostalgia is my hobby. He's probably right.
So the peaty scotch fits right in for me.
And after reading an article (probably written by a 14 year old blogger whose mom works for Phillip-Morris USA) about some "research" that suggests lower testosterone levels in my generation are a result of not smoking cigarettes like our forefathers, I think I'm gonna keep sucking the marrow from the earth, eating turtles and drinking dirt, partying with my wife's hot friends, and then chasing my wife around the bedroom with my nicotine and peaty scotch fueled boner. I'll die sooner for it, but my kids will understand. After all, the legend of thrillhill will endure and is even now more well respected than the reality.
So
@Don , I love and respect you as a friend and brother, and have sought out and benefited from your sage advice many times in the past, and will likely do so again. But this time I am taking a different path and apparently I must walk it alone.
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