I’ve been making my way through Max Watman’s Chasing The White Dog, when on page 181 I realized that Watman had written perhaps the finest paragraph about Whiskey I had ever read. It sums up my feelings about whiskey so well I just had to share it:
To say a whiskey is the best I’ve ever had is impossible – an absurd exercise. I’ve had twenty-five-year Macallan, George T. Stagg, Ardbeg 10, twenty-year-old Pappy Van Winkle, Corner Creek, an Early Times mint julep as the gates clanged open at the Kentucky Derby, and Elijah Craig eighteen-year-old Reserve while skinning and butchering a deer with a Swiss Army knife in the headlights of a pickup on a dark, cold December night. I drank whiskey on my wedding day, and on the side of a Virginian mountain when the clocked ticked midnight in 1999.I’ve never sat in a lab to taste whiskey’ my whiskey history is all tied up with my life. The best whiskey I’ve ever had is like the best horse race ever run: the next one.
There are drams, however, that arrest you and grab your attention. Whiskeys that make you stop talking. When a serious whiskey passes my lips, I find myself chewing on it, moving my tongue around, slapping against my palet and exploring the flavors. When I find in my had a real, deep, layered whiskey, I am always tempted, for the moment that my head is lost in the drink, to close my eyes, let go, and declare that this is the best whiskey I’ve ever had.
– Max Watman, Chasing The White Dog
I will have a complete review of the book soon, but this excerpt was so good and so profound I felt it had to be shared! In the mean time I highly recommend picking up Chasing The White Dog it’s a simply amazing book.
