The end of the affair?

[featherynscale]

Last night, kittenpants and I went out with starrthinks for dinner at McCoy's, which is our favorite place to take out-of-town guests. The food is phenomenally tasty and reasonably priced, and they brew their own beers, several of which I believe to be the best beers in the history of beer (which is a claim I could be persuaded to fight about very easily).

Sadly, the dietary plan we're on does not allow beer. This is generally not an onerous restriction, but at McCoy's, it's a little painful. Fortunately, McCoy's also has a reasonably good selection of Scotch. So I figure I'll have some whisky instead. And lo, on the whisky list, they now display a Lagavulin, which has been my favorite of all whiskies. Life is good, right?

So I get a thimblefull of the Laguvulin, and I'm anticipating the whole complicated experience of this particular whisky -- I mean, when I say it's my favorite, what I really mean is that while a taste is not better than *all* sex, it's certainly better than *some* sex. All of the happy places in my brain go haywire even at the smell. I take a sniff. Something is off. I take a sip. Instead of the fabulous smoky, peaty, leathery, peppery, mildly honeyed goodness I have come to expect, this taste is mostly sweet. I can discern the other flavors under the sweet, but they're wildly overpowered by the sweet. Is this the same whisky? On the whisky list, the restaurant doesn't list the age of the bottle -- I'm used to a 16-year, and I wonder if this is some different expression.

So this morning, I took a moment to research that possibility. It seems unlikely -- the primary stuff the distillery puts out is the 16-year. It's run a few limited-edition malts that were 12-years, or 14-years, but primarily the 16 is all you're getting, and although McCoy's is an excellent establishment, I have a hard time imagining that they are the sort of place where you get limited-run single malts. So the answer must be something different. Maybe they brought me the wrong whisky, something similar but not the same? Maybe a Talisker? No, it didn't taste like a Talisker either.

Then, an ugly theory begins to gather in my brain. I have been avoiding anything with added sugar. Perhaps the Lagavulin tastes sweeter because I'm just much more sensitive to sweet tastes than I used to be. You know how in films, when the villains are thwarted, they raise their arms to the heavens, shake their fists, and cry "Noooooooooooooooooooo!!". That's how I feel about that. If it comes down to a choice between being healthier and more attractive, and being able to appreciate whisky, I'm not sure which option I'd take.

Not that the experience was bad, of course. It was still a good whisky. But, when you come right down to it, I can get a good whisky from the Isle of Jura line for half the price. Sometimes I don't want a good whisky, I want an amazing whisky, and I may have lost the option for that.

I'm willing to try it again before completely embracing this conclusion, though. Maybe my brain was off. Maybe they did bring me the wrong drink. Or maybe, Lagavulin just isn't going to push my buttons anymore, and I'll have to find something else that does. There's other fish in the sea, right? So, Lagavulin, I'm giving you one more try, but if you don't satisfy me, I'm gone. Don't look for me. Especially not down the street with the Ardbeg boys.

Comments

almost related

[capriciouslass.livejournal.com]

I thought about you Sunday night when the restaurant we were at actually served Irish Coffee...

Re: almost related

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

Irish Coffee, it is My Favorite. :)

[project-becky.livejournal.com]

There was a time when I didn't do any sweets, no sugar. I don't like sugar subsitutes, so basically nada... fruit started tasting sweet, and I totally lost my taste for things like sweet and sour chicken or anything like that. Even fruit juice tasted to sweet. When I started eating sweets again, they were almost disgusting. Sadly, I perservered and now I'm a sugarholic all over again (we won't even talk about how I almost killed myself trying to decaf) but I bet that's why you're picking up such a sweet taste in your whiskey.

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

I've had this experience before, too. When I was in college, I lived for a time exclusively on macadamia nuts, Diet Coke, and cheap whiskey sours. Coming out of that to a world in which there was other food was totally bizarre. Cookies, for example, I thought might actually kill me.

And I've been noticing this effect in other food -- water chestnuts, for example, taste very sweet to me now, when they never did before. So I don't know why it shocked me.

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

Give it another try. More importantly, let me try the same whisky and see if I agree with you. Life's too short to live without the water of life, na'mean?

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

Srsly.

You were just saying the other day that we needed to start making notes. I am able to reframe this as an opportunity to try everything over again. :)

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

That's the collegiate spirit! Err.... something.

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

Ah, but my collegiate spirit was tequila.

[chayam.livejournal.com]

Did I miss the dietary restriction entry? Is it a wheat avoidance?

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

South Beach Diet. We've been on it for 5 or 6 weeks now. I'm not sure I posted about it. I try to only talk about what I'm eating when it's either really tasty or really alarming. :)

So we're avoiding any sort of fast-acting sugar or starch, and beer is full of malt sugars, which are apparently the quickest to hit your bloodstream. I have no idea why whisky is okay, because it's all malt too, but I guess most of the sugars are consumed in the longer fermentation process.

[zylch.livejournal.com]

Apparently so: http://www.thewhiskystore.de/experts/starch.htm (down near the bottom). "This process persists for a long time, either until all the sugar is used up (typical for whisky) or until the alcohol concentration has increased so much that the yeast fungus is killed by its own products (typical for wine)."

[rougewench.livejournal.com]

Generally straight alcohols have next to no carbohydrates. In fact, when the Atkins diet first cropped up in the 70's it was called the Drinker's Diet, because you could drink straight liquor on it (just not beer, wine or the mixers).


d.

[greektoomey.livejournal.com]

I do enjoy Lagavulin greatly (they have it at my preferred watering hold / sandwich shoppe), so you have my sympathy if you've lost the taste for it.

I am currently (no, not at this moment) enjoying a bottle of Macallan Cask Strength whisky. At 115 proof, it's quite yummy. Even yummier with a tiny bit of water.