Month: October 2018

If you’re able to visit the Irish Whiskey Museum in Dublin, please treat yourself.  If you’re not able to, let me get the most interesting trivia out of the way for you, quick and dirty style.

First, the name comes from the old Gaelic “Uisce Beatha” which is pronounced something like “Ish-ke Ba-ha” or near that.  If you’re not Irish and a Gaelic speaker, best to just leave it to them.  The translation is basically “Water of life” and the simplification over time of “Uisce” became the “Wiskey” (if Scottish) or “Whiskey” (if Irish and spelled correctly) that we know today.  It has been around for a long, long, long time. Apparently arising from monks who learned how to distill from Mediterranean travels around 1,000 A.D.

Second, the earliest record of it being distilled in Ireland dates to 1405, and the earliest record in Scotland is from 1494, so apologies to the Scots, but the Irish appear to have invented it.  Or at least written it down first by almost 100 years.

Third, the amount of accidental discovery in the history of how Whiskey was born is astonishing.  For example, the methanol which makes moonshine so dangerous that it can blind or kill those who drink it, was originally removed by the Irish because they thought that the Faeries required a sacrifice of 1/4 of their barrel.  They noticed people dropping dead or comatose when they drank it, so they drained out 1/4 of the barrel as a gift to the Faeries in hopes their curse would be lifted.  As it happens, that removed the sunken methanol and made the remaining alcohol safer to drink.  They also tended to hide their freshly brewed barrels in the woods so that the tax man wouldn’t tax them for their product, and then forget where they were hidden.  This resulted in barrels of the stuff sitting in the woods for months before being found again.  They noticed that as it aged it tasted better, and so aging whiskey was discovered by accident.

Some of you are reading this and thinking, “I already knew all this” and good for you.  I didn’t.  These things are just some notable examples of the things you can learn while touring the museum.  And best of all, the museum tour finishes with expertly guided tastings of Ireland’s best whiskeys.  By the time you walk (or perhaps swerve) your way out of the museum an onto the cobblestone streets of Dublin you will be a more informed sipper of the stuff, guaranteed.

Upon arriving at the bar where I was playing on the night I landed in Paris I asked what was the preferred local drink.  The very popular Demory Brewing of Paris makes an appropriately named “Paris Ale” that is a bit of a hit with the otherwise hard to please Parisians. After the mandatory eye rolls at my unacceptable French, the bartender set me up.  That’s when the beer tried its first flirtatious come on lines with me.

It was saucy and beautiful, and I think it knew that I had been on a plane or bus or train for the last 27 hours and used that to its advantage.  I’m pretty sure it had just put on some kind of lotion or perfume because there was definitely some clean citrus notes wafting from it.  I thoroughly enjoyed our evening together, and it made an excellent companion through all the music we shared.  

At one point the sound engineer walked onto the stage to fix a microphone stand and accidentally kicked my Paris Ale, spilling it across the stage and onto the dance floor.  A gasp went through the room, and in movements so fast they seemed supernatural he raced to the tap, filled the pint again, and replaced it on the stage, good as new.  That was when I knew that the good times we were sharing, that Paris Ale and I, were not meant to last.  It was fun for a night, and I loved that Paris Ale, but I had other places to be and I knew that even if we were never together again, we would always have Paris.

There is a prevailing assumption all across Italy that at the end of your meal you will want a small glass of Amaro.  It’s almost always offered, and many times I have had a bottle of it simply plopped onto the table along with one tiny (shot) glass for each person.  When dining with a family it’s often treated just like dessert.  You don’t “drink” it, as you might wine, you sip a small glass (about a shot) that is room temperature, and it is supposed to calm your stomach.  It is an acquired taste.

There are a variety of types, but what they all have in common is that they are a bitter liqueur meant to aid digestion.  Amaro means “bitter” in Italian, and they’re not joking.  The Amaro I had most was by Tosolini, who described it as, “Fine herbal liqueur produced from 15 different types of alpine, maritime herbs and spices macerated in ash barrels for over 4 months. A complex, full-bodied liquor with a sweet , yet bitter orange taste.”

I have to be honest, I did not ever acquire the taste for it.  I did, however, really enjoy the way it was always offered.  There is a quality to Italian hospitality and friendliness that is infectious and makes me fall madly in love with the country.  So I found myself regularly sipping it down with a smile and enjoying the experience for what it was.  A bitter drink, served with heartwarming sweetness.