From the Isle of Mull - Aged 10 Years - The Product of Scotland

I'll bet some of you knew right from the title that this post wasn't going to be about poker sites accepting US players. No sir. My guess is some of you had an immediate Pavlovian reaction and started to salivate. Those words appear on one type of product that I know of. And I know of very few other products from Scotland. I'm sure they probably do produce things other then Scotch whisky. It's possible and probably likely. Go read their damn Wikipedia page for yourself. Look under Economy and Infrastructure.

This month, our chief Bourbonator asked me to pick us up something nice. He was coming down for the game, but as you may have heard, a hurricane that had hit hard in the Yucatan peninsular meandered it's way here, to my town, to piss upwards of 11 inches of rain in 24 hours. I live in Minnesota. While sure, 11 inches of snow, is nothin. 11 gawd damn inches of rain is a friggin' mess. Our fearless leader lives in the Twin Cities and normally has an hourish drive. With almost every single road leading into Rochester closed due to [insert something washing out cuz of a boatload of rain] he wasn't exactly sure how quick he was gonna be.

On the left there, you'll see the shelf sign that caught my eye. It was conveniently located over the price. Those clever bastards. For this months whisky (if you are wondering where the 'e' went in 'whisky' please refer to this post about Bourbonators) I chose a 10 year old bottle of Ledaig (pronounced 'Led-chig') single malt from the Tobermory Distillery.

"The Master Distiller's Tasting Notes" located on both the box and the shelf signage made note of something I didn't normally associate with a fine Scotch whisky. Let's see if you notice:

Colour: Bright lemony gold

Nose: Immediately pungent with sweet tar and creosote aromas that release wood smoked fragrances with hints of liquorice. Further intrigue develops from soft antiseptic hints and charred leather. 

Ok, there's more, but the nose part. It had me wondering why, oh why, would someone write that on the box? Creosote doesn't immediately pop in my head when I think, hm, what kind of booze should I be drinking tonight? Maybe something that tastes like charred leather?

Under that shelf signage, was the price: $35.99. My budget was $40 and since math is hard, I just assumed that with tax, I was golden. I grabbed the box headed to the counter and the nice girl said, "That'll be $54..." - um, math is hard and all, but..."The sign said $35.99..." She was pleasant and checked the shelf...she found that I wasn't crazy, cheap maybe, but not crazy. Price adjustment and I was out of there. Whew!

We cracked this bottle open. It did have a very nice cork. I like corks. They don't make you feel cheap like a screw top or a box with a spout. On first sniff, you definitely get the whiff of airplane fuel. Can't say I found that really appealing since I normally try to avoid drinking petroleum distillates, but then again, I'm no whisky expert. Sipping was a completely different experience. It was indeed a peaty spirit, like one would expect. It was fairly smooth and smoky. The finish was a bit rough with a bit of a burn. All in all, it wasn't too bad. I'm not sure I'd go back to store and pick it up again, but I probably wouldn't pass it up when offered. The box claims there should be hints of spicy pepper, but I missed that. It also said it should be salty from the malt, maybe I caught that, but it claimed liquorice and cloves in the finish...you lost me there. I didn't find either. But like I said, I'm no whisky expert.

Probably the biggest reasons I haven't been posting all that much is the fact that I haven't been playing all that much poker (I missed completely the month of September - sorry). PokerFool seems to have started playing poker again (you really need to go check him out, maybe even leave a comment or three). But for me, live poker has been a distant memory. Playing poker this summer just wasn't in the cards and since OhPrincess1 somehow turned into a middle schooler over night, (geebus gawd, someone want to slow this ride down! I could swear last week she was a baby)....I miss playing poker.

Bourbonators has pretty much been the only live poker I've played this last 4 or 5 months. And this has how that has gone...fold, fold, fold, big bluff to set up something, fold, fold, fold AK vs A8 - flow KQ8 - turn diamond, river diamond, my AK falls victim to a 4 card flush. FAWK! Sigh. Go find the loser game...

Since British Tony was hosting this month, something new happened. The loser cash game really didn't materialize but if you'll notice the picture on the left, we did play some level 3 cribbage. I haven't played cribbage that I can remember since college. George H. W. Bush was president. Oh, what is Level 3 cribbage? That's where people are playing optimally like poker and placing people on a hand and playing the cards to optimize pointing themselves while avoiding their opponents goal of getting points. A beautiful thing.

I think it's looking quite possibly I might just hit the felt at the local watering hole this Tuesday night. I don't think I've played there since May. With the Winter Gathering quickly approaching, I need to shake the rust off the live game and get ready to join Team Skol! in our victory celebration. A boy can dream right?