Scotch Night

Originally written 11/5/7

I am not a Scotch drinker. Longtime readers-the three of you-are no doubt familiar with my penchant for (coconut) rum and Coke (either Diet or Zero). And since I am an unemployed louse, I can no longer afford the name stuff. Now I have to buy cheap rum, and add coconut flavoring. OK, and by ‘cheap rum” I do mean floor varnish. It’s actually not that bad after the 8th drink, and now my teeth are quite shiny. So what was I talking about?

So one of the fantasy football leagues I am in had its annual get together in Philly this year. We were all going to tailgate for the Beagles-Dallas game. The guy who runs the league is a huge Scotch fan, so he came up with the idea of having a Scotch tasting the night before. As such, we were all assigned a bottle, then had to do research on it and do a small presentation. The Scotch I am assigned is not sold in this redneck state, so it took a call from the state store to the head of the league to come up with an appropriate substitute. I now had 2 days to whoop something together. I did research, got all kinds of notes, and arranged an outline.

So Sat night arrives, and there are eleven different Scotches to sample. In case you can’t do the math, that’s at least 11 shots of Scotch. I wanted to go first to get it out of the way, since there were some die hard Scotch enthusiasts here. That offer was declined, since the presentations were going to go according to a Scottish map. It was a tour of Scotland, by area, by type of Scotch. Yes, this is an example of a high functioning alcoholic. That put me towards the end. I saw guys had handouts, and display boards made up and all. This was not looking good for an old rummy.

So we start with the Scottish national anthem. It not a very impressive or inspiring tune, and they keep singing about this Edward guy. I think he’s the bad guy, so why you’d wanna namecheck him in your anthem is a bit puzzling to me. It turns out, there are rules to drinking Scotch. (In fact in my research, I came across most of these rules and thought I was hot shit. Instead, I was just ignorant, and saw another chunk of my presentation get chipped off.) I don’t like that there are rules? Whatever happened to the college days of ordering shots, then downing them right away? No, really, what happened to those days? I can’t seem to remember…..

First you pour the Scotch into the shotglass. Then hold it to your lower lip to smell it. Right away, I’m in a bit of a bind here, because I can’t smell for shit. The house can smell like damp garbage, and I wouldn’t know. The house can smell like wet dog, and I wouldn’t know. The house can smell like sugar cookie, and I couldn’t tell ya. Sadly, I can rarely smell my own farts. All the Scotches would eventually smell “the same” to me. A bit of a strong, varnish-y kind of scent. The group would be rating all the Scotches in 3 categories; smell, body and aftertaste. After smelling it, you would take a small sip. Then, you would put a small amount of water in it. Right, if you’re like me, you’re thinking “why the hell would I want to delude a shot? Because in the Scotch world, apparently the water makes a flowery taste come out more. So after adding the water, then drink the whole thing.

After every presentation, we would go through this process. A bunch of getting-drunk-drunks all yelling their rating. As you can imagine, this got to be a bit tedious as the night wore on, and kinda drug things out. Some guys did nothing but read info from the web, while others had handouts, and bar towels, etc. It didn’t take me long to realize that I am not a Scotch guy. I gave every one an honest shot, but didn’t come across one that blew me away. I was starting to dig my Scotch-a Speyside-from my research, but wasn’t impressed with it when it came time to drink. I scored all the Scotches with average ratings. There would always be one guy who raved, just raved about type X, how the nose was ‘exquisite”, the body was “delicious” and the aftertaste “brilliant. 5’s across the board’. I would be next and meekly say 2,3,2 and catch shit for it. Then again, maybe it was because there was so much time between actual tastings, that I was downing a Lite between samples.

It was all in good fun. My presentation went pretty good. I realized it was to my advantage to go towards the very end, because a lot of the guys were already half in the bag and would be an easier crowd. But I don’t think I’ll be drinking Scotch anytime soon. Although it did help Ron Burgundy get Veronica Corningstone, so maybe I oughta give it another shot. Or two.