Repeat after me, Lagavulin

For February, the Bourbonators were treated to a Single Islay Malt Whisky aged 16 years by the Lagavulin (pronounced Laga-voolin) Distillery of Scotland. For us yanks across the pond, this makes it a scotch. The name Lagavulin comes from the Gaelic Laggan Mhouillin, "the hollow where the mill is". Interesting things you find on these boxes.

It is said that this is the oldest legal distillery to still exist in Scotland. I took the liberty of looking it up on a map and briefly considering making travel plans to it's home. The box described it still having 4 onion shaped stills. The box goes on to describe even more picturesque details of it's origins, but really, I'd go back for the whisky. Let me explain.

The host of this months meeting was hoping I'd be able to stop by the liquor store on my way over. Not really a problem because I drive right by one...if I leave home on time...ya right.

I was in a bit of a rush to get there. Good thing I know exactly where the whiskeys are kept. This particular store doesn't have the greatest variety in the world, but it's got most of the majors covered and usually has room for a few rarities.

I've really been in the mood for DoubleCasked lately. Probably the Balvenie from a few months ago. The first employee to ask me if I need help was a nice young girl I was willing to bet had absolutely no idea what fine whiskey was. I told her I was looking for a new whiskey we'd not drank before that would be as good if not better than the Balvenie and also DoubleCasked. I've seen that blank expression in people before. She was, without a doubt, completely clueless. She just smiled and asked another employee walking by. A nice young man, she asked him, "Do you know anything about whiskey?" To which he replied, um, no.

"Don't worry guys, I'll be ok," I told them. It's really not a big deal to me. I don't expect that on the last minute  on a Friday night that there's a whiskey expert in a liquor store.

I went back to reading boxes. I probably should research this more than I do, but that just wouldn't be my style.

The manager comes over and asked if he could help. He said he was quite familiar with whiskey. I said sure and told him what I wanted. We had a budget of $80 and I was really thirsty for a DoubleCasked whiskey that was as good or better than the Balvenie.

He point to the bottle of Lagavulin and said, "I'll bet none of your guys have tried this and I think they will all be very happy with it."

I looked at the box, then the shelf. I replied to the manager, "I'm not a real math whiz, but I'm pretty sure that with tax, the $84.99 price tag is still over $80."

"Well, let's just see what I can do about that." We walked over to the checkout and he hit the computer. Typing and clicking and typing some more. He put down the mouse and looked up at me and asked, "Is $79.18 with tax gonna work?"

Again, I'm no math whiz, but I do believe that falls below the $80 mark.

"Sold!" I said.

Wow. Was I glad I got this. It was FANTASTIC!

The nose had that smell of creosote that Cam tells me is from the peat. The smell isn't all that great, but the taste was really quite exceptional. The tasting notes from the web site describe it as:

Palate: Dry peat smoke fills the palate with a gentle but strong sweetness, followed by sea and salt with touches of wood.

For me the balance of all that made it work. Nothing was really "too" much. It wasn't too smoky or sweet. It was smooth all the way. The light burn of the 43% alcohol was hidden by the linger of it's flavor. Nom nom.

There seemed to be a unanimous agreement that this bottle was worth it, even if I was late. I will send a big thanks out to the manager at Apollo Northwest Liquor. He made an excellent recommendation. We will be back!

If you are interested in more information on this, I found the wikipedia article very interesting as well.

As for the poker. I was the grand master of coolers...receiving them. Oh well, I was conforted by the warmth of this amber nectar.

Balvenie, Whiskey Club and the physics of time travel #WPBT

8 sleeps. I have to go to bed 8 more times before the Winter Gathering in Las Vegas. I think we all know that the last night before I fly out of this state, I probably won't sleep much. Like an 10 year old the night before Disney World..."I'M TOO EXCITED!" (Not to say I'm not already excited, I've started organizing my suitcase already...geez, I'm pathetic)

So, before I tell you about the bottle of Balvenie DoubleWood single malt scotch whisky we tried at the last whiskey club, there something I need to get out there before December 9th, when for all practical purposes, I'll be too giddy to think.

First off, the Pinball Hall of Fame. When do people want to go? I'm going to The Neon Museum at 2 PM on Friday, that's like an hour or two with travel. The museum tour is booked and can't be changed. The other thing we will need is transportation. Cabs and buses can get you there, but, well, they cost cash money. We can do it but if there are other options. @CaityCaity lives in Vegas, has a car and you said you want to go...interested in carpooling?

Bourbonators: Las Vegas edition. Wolfshead has bought a bottle of Elijah Craig 18 single barrel. I believe that is officially a bourbon. Astin has also offered to hit up the Duty Free on his way there. I've asked F-Train if he could pick us up something at local hooch store that's not on the strip. He's willing to help. I had originally that a nice bottle of Glenlevit Nàdurra might be fun. Several people are interested in joining us. My thoughts go like this. We will be drinking most heavily on Thursday night. It's the only night I have written in ink in my planner, "Drink heavily" as an action item. I have no idea where we can drink our bottle(s) of tasty goodness, but I think Thursday night, some stolen lowballs at the IP? Thoughts?

A this time next week, we will be at the Imperial Palace. Drinking, laughing, drinking, laughing, watching Dealertainers. I can't wait.

---

This past month, our host chose a bottle of 12 year old, single malt scotch whisky. The Balvenie, a double casked scotch, they call DoubleWood.

I think I'm really finding my stride with these double casked scotches. Double casked whisky are aged in two different barrels. The first, a traditional new oak cask. The tube this bottle comes in describes this cask the one the mellows the spirit, "imparting gentle warming layers of vanilla spiciness."

The second cask is a used European sherry cask. The provides the fruitiness you would expect from would that aged squished grapes. As you can see from the picture, It has a deep amber color with a nice shift to red.

The tasting notes (shamelessly copied from their website without permission):

NOSE
Sweet fruit and Oloroso sherry notes, layered with honey and vanilla.
TASTE
Smooth and mellow with beautifully combined flavours ~ nutty sweetness, cinnamon spiciness and a delicately proportioned layer of sherry.
FINISH
Long and warming.

I enjoyed the aroma of this one. It was smooth and sweet, I'm not good enough to pick out the vanilla or the honey. The rest of their description is spot on. It was perfectly sweet without overwhelming and made for an excellent sip.

Our host buys this one regularly. It runs about $45 in these parts and can be found at discount retailers like Sams Club. That normally isn't an inspiration for me to think outstanding whisky, but I won't hold it against it. Heck, probably my favorite whiskey for daily use is Jim Beam Rye. Ummmm....rye.

The pokering at Bourbonators continues to impress me with everyone improvements. I'm either just sucking from lack of practice or everyone else seems to be getting better. While I'll never doubt the first, I believe most of these guys are just getting better. We did have a new guy this month. He was an enigma to me. I'm not sure he's really played all that much before, he seemed really new and had the luck of a newbie. He took me out in about 3 hands. I had him dominated in 2 of the 3 and the other was me hold an over pair to his underpair. Oh well, that's poker.

Now, my last request. How do we make this next week just zoom by quickly and the slow to a crawl for 4 fun days in Las Vegas? Inquiring minds want to know!

8 sleeps.

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?

Whiskey infused with bacon - hm - Irish whiskey, poker and bunnies?

Last weekend, I volunteered to host Bourbonators again. This month saw 11 guys show up for whiskey, laughter and poker. Just enough to cram pack my poker table in the basement.

I've got the greatest wife in the world. Have I ever mentioned that before? She's a nurse at the local, mega, world famous hospital that shall remain nameless cuz...yeah. Google. Our basement is pretty much always set up for poker. That table I built, you got it, it's too damn big to put away, so when we find ourselves staring down the barrel of the last Friday of the month and no whiskey club, I pop the question to OhCountess to see our availability. No problem this week, she worked in the morning so as long as I didn't mind the random alarm clocks called OhPrincess1 and OhPrincess2 waking me up early, it was a go.

This month we had two different whiskeys to sample. The primary spirit was The Irishman Single Malt Wiskey. According to the box, it has been "...matured for over a decade and personally selected by Bernard Walsh." I couldn't help but think what a fantastic name that was. But I digress. It also states the spirit was "...matured in Bourbon and Sherry casks. Bourbon to mellow and sherry to add a hint of sweetness."

The box also contained tasting notes:
Colour - Golden honey
Aroma - Great nose, floral background notes
Taste - Oily, with a strong malt character
Finish - Lingering for what seems an eternity

I think we all pretty much agreed that it was a pretty meh whiskey. It wasn't terrible, it wasn't great. It served it's purpose well, but in the end was a bit forgettable. It tasted good, but had a bit more burn in the swallow then we liked. It's worth a try, but don't pass on the 25 year old Glenlivet getting there. A boy can dream, right? The box the bottle came in had gold foil behind the bottle. Those kinds of marketing things kinda bug me. If you want to call the color of your booze "golden" it shouldn't need gold foil, right?

---

Our other drink is the one you see pictured above. Hopefully you got this far before heading to the store to pick up a bottle of Jeremiah Weed - With Bacon!

Darrin contributed it to this months tasty treats.

Never seen it before? Well, he made. He described the infusion process like this, fry up a few pieced of bacon. Make as much as you want because bacon rocks. We don't actually need the bacon, just the bacon juices. Nom nom! Take the grease and add it to the bottle and mix it up. Close the lid and set aside for awhile. He may have had more detail in these instructions, but I was drinking the Irishman and think about bacon. Anywho. After the proper amount of time has passed, refrigerate or maybe even put the bottle in the freezer until the grease congeals to the top. Come to think about it, it might not have been in the bottle but probably a mason jar. You would need to remove the now chunky white bacony goodness.

I was a bit surprised but damn, it really did taste like bacon. The whiskey/bacon flavor was really quite delicious but, again with total agreement, Jeremiah Weed was probably not the best choice for the base of this. It's way to sweet for this.

I found it difficult to get my finger down. It wasn't the taste but the over power sweet. Lesson learned.

---

Well, we played poker too. Like normal, we played 2 sit-n-gos. I couldn't possibly have been more card dead. The speed of our structure makes it really important to hit a hand or two early to get a decent stack moving to the bubble. The biggest ace I saw was ATo and the best pocket pair...ducks. Yikes. Having never really hit a hand...off to the cash game I went.

The first session cash game, was dealers choice. Since I was the host, I only played a few hands. I made a buck. I didn't call home. I didn't go on a shopping spree. The second session was a little smaller. We played 3 handed pot limit/cap limit omaha. Fun times :) While I still wasn't a card rack, I did run a bit better over here. One of the players was fairly inexperienced and the other was DeeBakes. Dee's got skills, the other guy was fairly new. I exploited the new guys fear and pushed him hard when I thought he was drawing and played small ball when I wasn't strong but drawing well. Dee, I tried very hard to show weak play when I was strong and strong play when I was weak. I suppose he's gonna read this and no better next time. Probably our biggest pot came when I out flopped him, he sucked out on the turn and I redrew to a bigger full house on the river. Pocket aces in omaha can win :)

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Before I go -

It's rebuy time again! The lovely Katitude brings in Easter with the $1 + $1 donkament on Full Tilt. You can see the details in badge above! Go check it out. It's a great time. I may not be playing. The kids are at Grandma's...date night! As Kat did on her post, I gotta share the greatest bunny scene in cinema history :)


Maybe I'll see you Friday night, you'd better play!

What's this? Live Poker? Whiskey?

Thanks to PokerFool calling me a slacker, it's that kind of a kick in the ass we need sometimes to realize we need to get up and do something. Who's had time to write anything? I've been actually busy playing live poker...damn it :) Oh, and watching the all-powerful Buehrle make history completing 45 consecutive outs only to cough up a tater in the 6th, and then another and a few more...gawd I love it when the Twins beat the White Sox - sweeps are cool.

The Twins season has been below my expectations, thankfully, my summer has not!

Last Friday night was Bourbonators. Our flavor of the month was Jim Beam Black (you will need to go looking at the site to find it, linking internally to them isn't for the fain't of heart). Described on their website as an 8 year old bourbon, and I quote:

Eight years of aging makes for a complex, sophisticated taste. Mixes well in cocktails. A premium bourbon with a more flavorful character. A must-have for every at-home bar.

Well, we agree, it tasted like Jim Beam bourbon. I touch sweet, definitely smokey oak. I found I liked it very much as a mixer with Coke Zero. This bottle is going to be used for our travelling bottle for a while. It was a great mixer, but if you are looking for something to enjoy neat or on the rocks, this ain't my favorite...not even close.

As for the poker, I was basically card dead the entire night only being helped by the mixing of bourbon and coke zero later and taking advantage of some timely chip ups...out in the middle of the first game, but like you saw in a previous post, first in the last game.

For my birthday, the lovely OhCountess got me a brand new 46" LCD with matching Blu-ray player. Excited, you know it. I hooked up both the blu-ray player and the TV to my wireless network so they could reach out to the Internet. Most of the night, we listened to the Green Day channel I created on Pandora Radio. It could have been the booze, maybe it was we hit critical mass in the loser lounge, but at some point I did demonstrate the YouTube feature of my new TV. If you haven't seen this movie...you need to watch it. This led to the tournament timer being stopped. Easy access to viral videos can stop any home game. You've been warned.

The next day, PokerFool and I headed to Diamond Jo Casino in Northern Iowa for a little $1/$2 NLHE. It's been ages since I played NLHE in a casino. Minnesota only spreads limit, so the hour and 15 minute drive wasn't going to hold us back. PokerFool already wrote up a post about his action, now it's my turn.

I started out pretty well. Took down about $50 pot to start the night when my first BB after my first orbit it walks to the blinds and my LB raises it a bet. This dude had played well over half of the pots on my first orbit so I assumed he was an idiot. In that orbit, he was down about $100 when he'd muck his cards to top or second pair, this made me think his raise (a min raise BTW) meant nothing. Any ways, I had KQo.

The flop comes king high, rainbow. Gin. I lead out and he called, I bet the him all in on the turn and he called. He turned over K2o for a pair of kings and a really tiny kicker. The lack of the deuce sent him packing. The chatter at the table was how unlucky he was, I took this as a good sign since I hadn't seen him get unlucky at all, he just played way to many hands and risked far too much money on a regular basis with questionable holdings.

The nice pot was the last one I saw for the next 5 hours. PokerFool had moved to my table looking for greener pastures but by then, a local pro, Eric, was cleaning up.

Eric admitted it, he was a card rack there for a while. Can't blame the guy, he was hitting top set and the nut flush a lot. Meanwhile, I'm stealing the blinds and limper money with KTo and dreaming about a better hand.

Probably the most notable hand for me was one I was involved with the local pro and a "tourist".

The tourist was someone I had pegged for a loose/passive ego powered guy. I'm not always big on judging people by their appearance, but this was a leisure suit Larry guy. He had the deep dark tan, earring, guy in his 50's with a bad comb-over and big rings. For some reason, I just couldn't stop thinking fish.

The tourist is in the BB. Eric raises from under the gun to $7. Standard raise from him. It gets folded to me in the hijack seat. I look down and find the hand of the devil, (AQo - duh!). I hate playing this hand weak to start and really hate not knowing where I am in the hand so I raised it to $14. This table had been pretty tight and me in particular. I figured this would sent Eric a message that this could get ugly. The tourist just calls.

Eric thinks for only a second, but gets a really serious look on his face. He raises it another $30. That's my reply. He's not gotten out hand in a big pot all night like this. From our conversations, I'm really getting the sense that he respect my game. AQo ain't my favorite hand, as you know, and at this point, I'm quite sure he's got AA or KK and QQ as the only other hand. Seriously, I'm sure he's that big and that big only. According to the tourist, this is where I made the dumbest poker play of the day...I mucked.

Let's look at it. If he's got aces. I'm screwed. If he's got queens, I'm screwed. He'd got kings, I'm still pretty much screwed but a little less. I think the common word of "Screwed" is the key, but the tourist just made a point of calling me out called the raise. The hand continued and the tourist and Eric end up making up a couple of hundred dollar pot. The flop had come ace high all hearts. In the end, Eric shows KK with one of them the king of hearts. The turned heart had given him the nuts. Whew! Bullet dodged!

The tourist was steaming pretty well and took a break...I'll be honest, most of his money was now in front of Eric. Well done :) After he'd left the table, Eric asked what I mucked. I told him AQh. "Nice fold!" he said. He'd told me he very much respected my game and that was raise was to make sure I knew he had a big hand. That felt pretty good. He was very much sincere about it and had a good time making fun of the tourist.

I continued to muck for the next couple of hours and ended the day down a little. For 5 hours of play, I'll take it as a good day at school. I learned a lot and had a great time. I can't wait to head back there...PokerFool??? Let me know :)

When PF and I stood up to head home, Eric kinda stopped the game to shake our hands and say good bye. Since we hadn't lost much money, I have to believe this was a good sign. I thought we both played really well, we just never really had much for cards.

I'm still playing in my weekly bar league. We just completed week 6 of an 8 week league. So far, I've finish 1st, 2nd, 7th and 8th. Not too shabby. Good enough for 1st place in points for the league. With two weeks to go, I'd like to hold on to the lead. Going to state would be a good time. It sounds like state will be up by Drizz at Running Aces. This will be so much better then travelling to Fargo. Not that there is anything wrong with Fargo, it's just that when I drive 6 hours, I'd prefer to be in Chicago...not Fargo.

I'm hoping for a little quiet time this weekend and my laptop and maybe play online. That would be fun...I actually am starting to miss it.

Have a great weekend!

Something special at whiskey club

After a bad night at poker league last week and almost no time at home to play online, Friday night's monthly meeting of the Bourbonators was a welcomed event.

This month's meeting was also extra special for another reason.

A few weeks ago, I received a slightly unusual reply on Twitter.

@ohcaptain stumbled upon your blog about the Bourbonators. would love to hear more.

Well, that's kinda cool. Someone found my blog. Being ever curious, I checked out her Twitter page to make sure she wasn't "goooooood girl" and sent her a direct message with an email address she could contact me. A few minutes later, we were talking without the limitation of 140 characters or less.

Seems she was doing some research on whiskey clubs and had never found one quite as organized as ours. We've got a pretty cool club here. It's going on 6 years old and hasn't really missed more then a couple of months in that time. If you want to read more about our club, check out my bourbonator's labeled posts.

Her PR gig was currently focused on working with Canadian Club. Her email also included an offer to send us a sample of 150 Year Anniversary Canadian Club’s 30-year Reserve. Um. Okay. That's a $200 bottle of whisky. It's been sitting in a cask for 30 years. Oaky and smooth come to mind. I had contacted our groups leader with the offer and apparently he too had the same idea I did. "Sure!"

We don't normally drink $200 bottles of anything. We pitch in $5 every month to the whisky fund and through proper bankroll management, our Chief Bourbonator picks out a whiskey, scotch or bourbon within our price range. We average between 10 and 15 people a month, so we usually hover in the $50-$70 range. The whole idea of the club is to give us chance to try a spirit we would normally not get past the wives without risking some serious couch sleeping time.

Our meeting date was set for last Friday. The Chief Bourbonator has been sitting on this bottle for 2 weeks. I've been dreaming about this bottle for 2 weeks. All we need was time to pass and 7 pm on February 20th to get here so we could crack open the wax seal.

Yes, it was sealed with a cork and the top of bottle was dipped in a heavy wax to seal it. This was a bit more fancy then our regular screw tops. It even arrived in this black box with the silky, padded lining. It had a lovely caramel brown color. As John said just looking at it, you knew it was saying "Drink me!"

Upon opening the bottle, we passed around the cork. You notice right away the subtleness of the smell. We weren't sure what to expect, but this definitely didn't have a real strong boozy smell. John had started pouring everyone their glass. As is customary, we each get one finger in a low ball served neat. No ice, water or mixer. We want to taste this thing!

My first reaction to the first sip was a little sharp at first. Some whiskys start soft, but this had a little bite. Like many of the Canadian whiskeys we've tried this one was sweet and bit fruity. The finish on the drink was remarkablly smooth. What else would you expect from something that spent 30 years mellowing.

Our Chief Bourbonator wrote a review he posted on Facebook: 

Tasting the whiskey, I found two things that I expected: It was very smooth, and it had a nice oakiness to it. I expected those things for a few reasons. For one thing, Canadian whiskeys tend to be quite smooth in the first place. Aging for 30 years it only going to make it even smoother and creates the oakiness. What I didn't expect was how sweet it would be. There was a caramel tone to it, with maybe a bit of vanilla. Very tasty, but a little too sweet for me personally. I'm not saying I didn't like it, just that it's something that I wouldn't want a lot of in one sitting.

That seems to be the sentiment of most of the people in the group. He went on to write:

So, what's my final verdict? If I were to give it a grade, I think it would be a B+. You might think "A B+ for a $200 bottle? Must not be very good!" However, when you consider the fact that any other Canadian whiskey that I've tried would likely score a C at most, a B+ is actually a really good score. Do I have a bias against Canadian whiskeys? Sort of. I'm a flavor guy, and Canadians don't have that wow factor in flavor like bourbon or Scotch.

I agreed with a lot of this. It was a very good whisky. We definitely enjoyed this opportunity. Our sincerest thank you to the Canadian Club people.

And you know what. We also played some poker.

Last month, I had a pretty good month. A 1st and a 2nd. I'm still hoping to keep that trophy you see at the top of this post.

There were 11 guys here this month. Not too shabby considering we had a pretty major snow storm coming our way. We decided that we really wanted faster play so we divided into two short tables to get it going.

I had Bodie25 at my table to start. He came out firing with a 3 chamber bluff to get things going on the first hand. Unfortunately, the 3rd chamber was emptied into the sounds of the word, call. Probably pretty close to half his stack. I knew at that moment, Bodie was here for aggressive poker. If past months are any indication, there will be some weak/passive play falling right into his plans.

I chose to play nothing but very tight small ball poker. I planned on only playing hands where I could have position on Bodie and be able to keep the pots small.

This worked pretty well, but so did Bodie's planning. He was amassing chips like he was on a mission. I used his aggression to double through but for the most part, I really didn't see many cards. He got a really sick runner kings to beat AQ with KJ...yes, he knew he sucked out. Marshall had hit top pair top kicker, and Bodie was dead to runners.

I some how kept going long enough to make the money. On our first hand after the bubble, Mumblingsages raises from the button, I fold with my usual vigor and Bodie puts him all in.Click the picture to see just how sick it was. That's Bodie slamming down the Aces. I have a picture with Mumblingsages reaction...he's throwing down the cowboys.

This brought us to heads up. Holding about 5% of the chips in play, I really only had a couple of hands to make something happen. Shoving 65o from the button proved pointless because Bodie had been dealt his 275 consecutive hand with at least one ace in it. (That's an exaggeration...sure felt like it was true though)

A few guys left, and a new guy arrived (we saved him a glass...we aren't barbarians!) To mix things up, the second SNG was pot limit HOP. Hold 'em, Omaha and Pineapple. By now, everyone is comfortably lubricated and the gambooling began. I continued being card dead but ground my way along. One timely shove with KdQd2h during pineapple proved to be a fantastic way to quintuple up. My ability to fold to the money continued and without really playing many hands, I finished 3rd to break even on the night.

Not too shabby. So, my last 4 Bourbonator sngs go like this: 2nd, 1st, 2nd and a 3rd.

The whisky really was a fun experience. We've got big dreams for this group, even considering the idea of spreading it around. It really is a fun way to get together with the guys and learn something new...granted it's about whisky, but hey...learning is good, right? Interested in learning more? Let us know!