09 August 2012

Of Scotch and Solitude

Left to right: my paternal grandfather's silver shaker, Glenmorangie single malt, Confucius,  Laphroaig single malt, Buddha.
(Buddha and Confucius came home with my grandfather from his tour in Korea. They live with the scotch because scotch makes everyone a philosopher.) They are flanked my my maternal grandmother's dishes, which I will someday write about.
The first scotch I ever drank was Laphroaig. It was a bottle of 10 year old single malt that my friend Smith gave me the day before I left for my sophomore year in college. We had had a bit of a fling that summer, and it was a romantic and funny and strangely appropriate end of the affair kind of thing. Honestly, it must be that I've already had a few sips of the Glenmorangie pictured above that I am even using a term like "end of the affair." Seriously, WTF is that? Whatever, I'm keeping it. At any rate, that bottle, which I know was not cheap, completely ruined me for any other whisky.

Now, I didn't become a raging alcoholic by any means. Though if you happen to grace Marist's campus at any time, you might beg to differ. The sports Marist students are best at happen around the beer pong table... but I digress. That bottle of Laphroaig was like nothing I had ever tasted. It was cool and hot at once, smokey, sweet, painful, and even a bit salty. I know nothing about scotch even to this day, really, but unlike wine, about which I often lie regarding tasting all sorts of fancy things, I can taste different bits of Scotch. (If I recommend a wine, it's because I find it tasty and its aftereffects manageable. No more, no less.) But you can feel scotch from the moment it hits your lips to the second it settles in your belly, and sometimes even after. I find the warm sensation that the cool drink - I take mine on the rocks - soothing and pleasing and unique.

Adam says it smells like magic markers. He might be right.

I nursed that bottle for a year or more. It was my go-to when I was looking to experience something earthy and real. It was brilliant for the throes of depression, and exciting when manic. The Laphroaig was a friend I'd visit every once in a while, and put back on the shelf to be forgotten for another month or so. You can't chug scotch. I'm not sure if they've done studies on this, but I'm pretty sure your body would close any and all sphincters if you tried to down more than a sip at a time. It forces you to taste it, to appreciate it. To drink it slowly and get warm and fuzzy but never fall-down drunk.

I started ordering scotch at bars. Big mistake. Usually, the college haunts we frequented at the time didn't really carry scotch. And if they did, it was Dewar's and I found that it was flat and flavorless and boring.

I have since tried their Quarter Cask, which is deep and lovely as well. And while I still profess to know nothing of scotch, I am aware that there is a very snobbish, very vocal, and very proud scotch community out there who have a vernacular particular to the types of malts and such. I am not prone to educating myself on this - I don't want to make a career or a hobby out of drinking scotch. I just like it, and it makes me happy.

Except, here I am, drinking a small glass of the Glenmorangie that my brother and sister-in-law gave me for my 27th birthday, entirely alone except for the pets and somewhat melancholy. I'm always melancholy when I have scotch. I once explained to Adam, after his protest that it smelled like magic markers, that you have to hate yourself a little to drink scotch. These days, I don't think that's quite so true for me anymore, but there is a sadness in each glass. An aloneness and a sweetness, it's drinkable melancholy on ice. And because no I else I know enjoys it, except for my sister-in-law's awesome peanut of a grandmother, I'm always alone when I drink it. It's not a party drink, it's a thoughtful drink.

And as I'm sure you can tell, it really does bring out the poet-philosopher... even if the hangover I get tomorrow is merely an existential one.

2 comments:

  1. Oh Courtney...have you already forgotten our scotch nights at the Hall house.....I will drink some with you anytime..I prefer mine with ice as well but out of these amazing crystal snifters.....one of the three good things to come out of my wedding...kebo and the movado being the other two..but that my friend is another story....glad to see you are writing again...

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  2. Rather than being melancholy on ice, perhaps it is the place where you will learn to face your fears, retrace the years and ride the whims of your mind. Pensive, sure; but instead of sad, ultimately, optimistic.

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