12th Annual Whiskies of the World® Expo
and Artisanal Spirits Fest
San Francisco, Saturday March 26th, 2011
and Artisanal Spirits Fest
San Francisco, Saturday March 26th, 2011
Mar
01
Nancy Fraley
First Time Contest Winner
They say a woman never forgets her first time. For some, it is as sweetly seductive as morning dew; for others, it is a dagger that penetrates her inexperienced palate with its volatile foreplay. Regardless, the memory stays with her even after many liquid lovers.
To say that I was young and tender to the bone my first time would be a gross understatement. At six years old, I was not happy at all that my father was marrying again. As he and his soon-to-be wife were exchanging eternal vows, I sadly gazed out at the hard drops pummeling the steamy glass windows. I felt deeply betrayed, and I knew that he no longer belonged to just my twin sister and me.
Induced into trance by the driving rain outside, I somehow managed to get through the painful part and get to the after party, where the promise of a cold Coca-Cola and multi-layered white wedding cake awaited. My father managed to find my sister and me amongst all the people and gave us a big hug. He wanted to introduce us to his friends and lawyer colleagues, so I had to leave my bubbly soda and cake on a table in the reception hall. I was shy and bored as he took us around to meet all of his friends.
After what seemed like an eternity, he left us in the charge of his sister and let us go back to our cake and Coke, as he went to spend time with his new bride. I picked up a glass where I had left my drink before and brought it to my lips. It smelled funny, not at all like a plain soda. No, it smelled just like…..Jack Daniels. Even as a child I knew this peculiar yet familiar smell, as we lived in the South and my father was a Tennessee whiskey drinker.
“Aunt Mildred,” I gasped, “This smells like Jack Daniels. It doesn’t smell like it is just Coke!”
“No honey,” she laughed, “This is exactly where you left your drink….right here on this table.”
Alright, I thought in my rebellious child mind, if you say it’s ok to drink it, then drink it I will! I brought the glass up to my lips and let the sweet, harsh liquid slide down my parched throat. A new world opened up for me at that moment. I could taste hints of hard butterscotch candy, vanilla fudge sickle, maybe even a little fireplace smoke combined with the sweet syrup of the Coke. I liked this drink a lot, and it helped melt the sadness away after having lost my father to another woman. No wonder the adults kept this magic elixir all to themselves!
It would be many years before I would try whiskey again. As I think back to that day, I see how far my palate has expanded beyond that Tennessee whiskey to the joys of single malts loaded with phenols and fig cake notes from sherry butts. Yet, that day opened the door to a lifetime of pleasurable palate adventures in the world of whiskey.
Posted in:
Mar
01
Tristan Keady (San Anselmo, CA)
First Time Contest Winner
Few people, events, and experiences have such a profound influence on a young man then his father. Many men have spent brisk evenings with their old men on porches and patios, over a nip of whatever the spoils of adolescence haven’t claimed. It comes from the fortified cabinet so forbidden from intrusion, so taboo, yet so enticing. Its a new feeling when instead of stern look, a warm gaze meets you as you pour, what you had always regarded as precious as one of grandmas dishes, into one of the tumblers you used to drink milk out of on sunday mornings watching cartoons. At this moment you have now become a man, the aromatic properties of an experience such as this is what I will always remember. The sense of smell can often whisk you back to a place you so often want to be no matter where you are.
Not to mention the conversation. Between the sips of moderately priced scotch, live the dialogue of life experience. My father haranguing me with the story of how he had turned twenty one in a bunker in Saigon, run into a friend from high school at Mac V headquarters, and the time after the war when he lived on the beach in Mexico. The dread he felt when he received his draft notice, and the pride he felt when he heard he was going to be a father. The bottle he bought when I was born, and the dram shared when I graduated from college. The stories of corporate America, its promises and failures, and the best little place to get buffalo wings in Dallas. The fears of dropping it all to start a business, and the follies that ensue. The triumphs and tribulations of the life of a salesman. The ups and downs of being a family man.
I can say with absolute certainty that my dad has always been my hero, an unshakeable figure, in my otherwise tumultuous life. Now as a young man on the brink of a life of my own, what we have now come know as our “whiskey socials”, have had an indefinite and profound affect on my decisions in life. It is here that we have shared stories, experiences, expectations, and life lessons. Be it the big game I was a witness to in college, the unfortunate turn the economy has taken, possible jobs firefighting in the bay area I chase, and the hopes and expectations for the new year. We have spent more times then not postulating what the future would bring, and with no lack of faith, been disappointed by the outcome. It is a bumpy road fraught with hardships. If anything, these life lessons have taught me that the only thing in life that is certain, is that life is completely uncertain. My dad never wavered, always strong, always a source of stability. The most valuable trait a young man can learn is the ability to look adversity in the face, and take it on head first.
I wish I could say that a good dram could cure all. I remember the pride my father felt for a dear friend of mine, a fellow solder, who took it upon himself to join the U.S. Army, and the absolute loss we all felt when that faithful day came. The feeling of the cold metal bar I was holding as we walked his casket down the aisle of the small west Marin church, in the town we all grew up in. We had been friends for as long as I cared to remember, gone to battle on the football field, and had our own share of misadventures. His dad once shared a nip from bottle of Irish whiskey Jake had brought home for him while in Ireland the previous year on his way home to the states, the smell reminded me of my own father. I had never seen a man so proud. When our fathers met in an macabre embrace, the day we said goodbye to our good friend, I realized what true loss was. Now, I can only imagine the loss his father must feel. I now cherish a flask given to me by his parents, for they are as family as any blood relative. I keep it in a constant state of readiness for a good nip. It is in this way I can take Jake with me.
Be the experiences with a nip good or bad, they are always real, and are always influential. It is this influence from a father, a person in a state of constant turmoil, and being so steady, yet so vulnerable, that has led me to this writing. It is only looking back now that I see the value of an occasional nip between father and son. I have come to know myself in this respect. It is my wish that some day I can be such a person, strong, willing, devout, forgiving and unrelenting with my own family. The lessons that I have learned from a person who could have only been my father.
Posted in:
Jan
25
Anthony Corman
Back in the 1980s, before it was done over, Pier 23 in San Francisco was everything a waterfront bar should be. It was a boxy big room, bare wood floors and a vaguely marine mural on the wall. Nothing fancy, but it had a great view of the Bay. I played sax in a shuffle blues/Dixieland band there on weekends, Peter Montalbano’s Royal Street Band. It was a good band. Peter was (and still is) unafraid of playing fast as hell, and has the energy of a thoroughbred horse.
During the summer, the place was full of tourists, happy and loud, and during the winter the places was also full of tourists, but quieter, colder and wetter. You didn’t have to wait long to see a fur coat. We did three sets, each louder than the preceding, and we didn’t start quietly, so that last set had its demands. I’d stick to water for sets one and two, but I learned to fortify myself for set three. Usually I went with the Irish, standard stuff, perfectly potable, did the job, went down smooth (if you’re looking for an analogy here, credit me with having resisted that temptation. This is a family show).
One late autumn night, raw, rainy and cold in that penetrating San Francisco way, I made it to the bar after set number two, and settled onto a stool. I asked the bartender for something to cut the chill. He poured something amber into a thick-bottomed glass and pushed it to me, and I took a sip. Tastes: smoke; seaweed; and is that tobacco? Colors: siennas, umbers, scarlet, new England autumn foliage. Temperature: a balmy 80F. All so right. I was poleaxed. I’m a guy who likes a drink, I have from the start, but I had no idea that there were realms beyond my beloved Jameson’s, worlds of earthy complexity and delight.
My ace buddy Dave, another musician who grew up in Wales and considers such things a simple fact of life, has initiated me into the joys of Oban. I, in turn, secured him a bottle of the first whiskey to be made in Wales in modern times. Good company demands good whiskey, and vice versa.
Posted in:
Jan
25
Mike Beitiks
First Time Contest Winner
Backyard Bushmill’s
Mikelis Beitiks
My Dad and our neighbor Don Vogel
had a friendship based almost exclusively on shared interests in alcohol and
blues music.
Don, who lived behind us, was the
father of my childhood playmate and the possessor of what my Dad declared the
most extensive privately-held vinyl blues collection of anyone outside of the
music industry; a collection that filled a homemade fir board shelf system four
feet high and 10 feet long that sat right there in Don’s living room – much to
his wife’s chagrin.
Once a month or so, usually on
Friday evenings, I would be roaming around the neighborhood before the sun set
and would hear the sounds of guitars and harmonicas warbling from the Vogel
house a half a block away. (Don had an excellent stereo system he had preserved
from his college days, three-foot speakers and all.) Getting closer to the
house, I would find the front door open, and poke my 11-year-old head in to see
Don and my Dad drinking long-neck Budweisers in the living room, staring at the
floor, nodding their heads, and making the occasional whoop or request that the
music be turned up.
Don was originally from Lincoln,
Nebraska. Living in San Francisco, he kept up his front and back yards in a way
that made it clear that he appreciated the landscaping opportunities provided
by a temperate climate in a way that no native San Franciscan ever could.
Outdoor cooking was another gift he appreciated in a way that most native San
Franciscans couldn’t. He could be found outside nearly every night it wasn’t
raining, barbecuing dinner for his family. He figured that 40 degrees and thick
fog, when compared to Nebraskan sub-zero temperatures and blizzards, was damn
good barbecuing weather.
If my Dad got home from work while
Don was still barbecuing and my family wasn’t yet eating, he would grab a
bottle of Bushmill’s and two shot glasses from the cabinet, and walk out to the
backyard. The fence between our two houses was about five feet tall, and my Dad
would pop his head and hands over the top of the fence, holding the bottle and
glasses like some sort of peer-pressure Kilroy. "Vogel!" He would
call, tapping the bottle against the side of the fence. Even at age 11, I
understood that my Dad offered the Bushmill’s as a means of thanking Don for
access to his blues collection.
Don would look up the stairs to the
back door of his house to make sure that his wife wasn’t poking her head out.
He would then walk over to my Dad, laughing the whole way and accusing him of
trying to cause trouble in the Vogel household. The two would share a shot or
two, and then return to their houses for dinner with their families.
One day, I was out back with the two
men as they made jokes and took drinks. Feeling as though I was missing out on
something, I asked my Dad if I could taste the Bushmill’s. My family had a
general policy of granting requests from the children for tastes of alcohol if
they were made in good faith. My parents, I would learn later, thought of this
as a way of removing the aura of mystery from alcohol in hopes that their kids
wouldn’t go crazy with the booze in high school and college. However, at this
point in my life, I had only been granted samples of wines and beers, never any
hard stuff. (The closest I had come to hard alcohol was when I snuck a sip of
Campari from my parents’ liquor cabinet. I had been seduced by its color, only
to nearly throw up when the color proved to be no indication of the taste. That
Campari misstep, along with the rubbing-alcohol smell of the vodka bottle, kept
me out of the liquor cabinet for some time.)
"This stuff’ll put hair on your
chest, little man," Don called from over the fence with a laugh. My Dad
looked over to our back windows to make sure my mother’s head wasn’t poking
out.
"It’s strong, Mike," he said.
"Not like the beer. Are you sure?"
I nodded and smiled.
My father upturned the gold cap of
the Bushmill’s bottle, filled it halfway, and handed it over to me.
"Aw, you can give him more than
that!"
Don head was poking over the top of
the fence now, like another sort of peer-pressure Kilroy, dangling a still-wet
shot glass from his left hand. My father filled the cap the rest of the way. He
poured himself and Don another shot as well, insisting that no man should drink
his first whisky alone. Following their lead, I shot the capful down. It burnt
like crazy. I grimaced and coughed. The men laughed. I coughed more. The men
laughed more.
"So, Mike, what do you
think?"
"It’s strong," I wheezed.
By the time my throat returned to a
semi-normal state, I began to really feel and taste vaguely smoky alcoholic
vapors swirling in my sinuses, and a soothing, honey-like sweetness settling
onto my just-scorched tongue. These were surprisingly pleasant sensations, much
more pleasant in aftertaste than the initial burn. (And, if nothing else, a
billion times better than Campari.) My Dad and I left Don to his barbecue and
went back into the house.
I didn’t really touch whisky too
seriously for a good ten years after that, until I could buy it myself. But
ever since I’ve been buying, Irish whiskies have always been the constant in my
liquor cabinets amidst phases of scotches, ryes and bourbons around them.
To this day, I rarely experience
those sweet and vaguely smoky Irish sensations without at least momentarily
thinking back to that first Bushmill’s "dram" in my backyard, with
two fathers who loved booze and blues and wouldn’t let a "man" drink
alone.
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