Today's Shoes

Edward Green half-brogue bluchers in British antique tan (Cardiff model, 89 last). These are EG-made Ralph Lauren-labeled shoes, purchased for a relative song off of Bluefly. 89 last is a bit unusual. It's big, and it's wide. More than that, though, the vamp of the shoe is high and flat. In some ways, it reminds me of something Hungarian (only on the top of the shoe, though -- the rest is completely different). One of the best, most versatile shoes that Edward Green makes.

Last Night's Tipple

The key to enjoying high-proof spirits, at least for me, is letting them sit in the glass for a while after pouring. Alcohol is volatile, and the act of pouring stirs it up. If you drink it immediately, you'll burn your nasal passages on the volatilized alcohol. If you let it sit in the glass for a while, the alcohol vapor sitting over the liquor will dissipate somewhat, making for a more pleasant drinking experience. I did not use this approach last night while drinking Wild Turkey Rare Breed, and I paid for it. I drank it too soon after pouring it, and it burned my nose and wasn't particularly pleasant. The last few sips were much better and showed the quality that previous tastings of this demonstrated. As I have written before, it's a big Bourbon with a decent rye kick, and I noticed the rye more last night than I have before. It would be interesting to compare this to the single-barrel Kentucky Spirit bottling, which I imagine I will replace this bottle with when it's dead.

Bruichladdich Redux

In response to last night's post about Bruichladdich, commenter The Laddie (and with a username like that, he must be a Bruichladdich enthusiast) writes:

For some strange reason, which turned out to be most fortunate, in the summer of 1998 Bruichladdich was reoppened and distilling recommeneced for a few months under the Jura team management. This stock has been invaluable to the distillery as a stepping stone during that closed period.

He's correct, and I was wrong. Andrew Jefford writes in Peat Smoke and Spirit (p. 175):

Between 1994 and 2001, Bruichladdich had only ever worked for six weeks in 1998, when Jim Beam Brands brought the distilling team over from Jura. Interestingly, it was not classic, barely peated Bruichladdich (3 ppm) that was distilled then, but between 100,000 and 120,000 litres of a peaty spirit (at about 38 ppm), which was filled into good casks, including some sherry butts.

Some cruising on the Bruichladdich website reveals that some of this 1998 peated spirit made its way into Bruichladdich's 3D bottlings, which combine whiskies of three different peat levels and which have been tremendously successful for the distillery. It would be interesting to taste, both because of the peat level and because some of it was aged in sherry butts. I just can't get my head around what sherried peated malt would taste like -- certainly a mixture of savory and sweet.

Above Average

At the beginning of Atlantic hurricane season in June, all forecasters that I'm aware of predicted that it would be above average in intensity. It's now halfway through the season, and there has been practically no tropical activity of any sort -- just one tropical storm so far, and that was before the season officially began on June 1. This lack of activity doesn't necessarily mean anything: the second half of the season is more dangerous than the first half, particularly for those of us in the western half of the Gulf of Mexico, because the higher ocean temperatures later in the year are more conducive to storm formation and propagation. Hurricane Katrina made landfall in late August, Hurricane Rita in late September. Still, was there ever any doubt that meteorologists would predict an above average season? There's no glory in being right about a below average or average season, and nobody was ever a goat for being wrong about a doom-and-gloom weather prediction. But imagine the downside if a meteorologist predicted a below average season and a Category 5 hurricane slammed into Florida or Mississippi or Texas. All of the incentives that really matter encourage meteorologists to predict the worst.

Edit: Sure enough, as soon as I post this, we get another tropical storm. It looks like Tropical Storm Chantal is unlikely to strengthen into a hurricane or to threaten any landmass except perhaps Iceland.

Today's Shoes

Day

Gravati cap-toe bals in dark brown deerskin (15441, 500 last). These shoes are unusual in that the seams are both reversed and stitched. Why, I couldn't say. Deerskin is extremely soft, which is reason why it's popular. Unfortunately, it's also prone to scuffs and tearing and stretching, which is why Gravati prefers peccary: peccary has the softness and the look of deer, but it's not fragile. These are probably the best shoe bargain I've ever gotten: $100 new off of eBay. Yes, Brumfield, I realize that every clothing item you've ever purchased put together cost less than $100. In the real world, $100 for these shoes was outstanding.

Evening

Wheeler custom cowboy boots with a square toe and walking heel in dark brown elephant. Since I saw a picture of elephant boots made by Dave Little in San Antonio in The Cowboy Boot Book, I have wanted a pair, and these are them. When I picked them up, Dave Wheeler told me that some of his clients thought that elephant was too durable: they wanted new boots, but they couldn't justify the expense until their old boots wore out; and elephant boots don't wear out.

Last Night's Tipple

It seems that every other distillery in Scotland has a harrowing story about how it cheated death more than once. Given the great whisky bust of the late 1890s, government-mandated closures during the World Wars, hard times during the Great Depression, and the second great whisky bust of the late 1980s, this is not surprising. Bruichladdich has endured more than its share of hard times, most recently between 1994 and 2001, when Jim Beam Brands decided that the Isle of Jura distillery was more valuable than it and that there wasn't a place in their brand portfolio for both. Given the quality of Bruichladdich's whisky, this seems like a ridiculous miscalculation today.

For its present owners, that seven-year silent period makes things difficult. Whisky is not like beer or wine or vodka or white rum; you can't sell any of it for years after it's produced. This means that the present owners (who, being independent, don't exactly have deep pockets) have to finance present production and aging with the stock that they bought with the distillery in 2001, but that seven year silence before they took over makes selling bread-and-butter 10 and 12 year old bottlings difficult. Do the math. The whisky of those ages is gone and cannot be had again until 2011. Stocks of older whisky still remain, but bottles of Scotch over $50 are a hard sell. Necessity is the mother of invention, and the owners have introduced a number of interesting variations to help keep the money flowing. Among them: Octomore, the peatiest whisky in the world, with the 2003 version clocking in at over 129 ppm of phenols (Laphroaig is typically around 45 ppm), and various non-traditional wood treatments like ex-d'Yquem casks. Their efforts have been remarkably successful, making Bruichladdich the darling of the whisky press and a favorite of Scotch geeks, er, enthusiasts.

As for me, I finished my bottle of 10 year old last night. It is a shame. It's fantastic whisky, elegant, creamy, and malty. Bottles of the 10 year old can still be had, but they're around $50 a fifth now. That's a lot of money, even for a profligate spender like me. And I do like to experiment...

(Incidentally, the comment from Armin in the post about Black Bottle is absolutely correct. There are 8 distilleries on Islay. Kilchoman is a microdistillery that recently started up operation near Bruichladdich on the Rhinns, the western portion of the island.)

Edit: See the followup to this post.

RIP, Marvin Zindler

Marvin Zindler, the Houston television legend, died yesterday of pancreatic cancer at the age of 85. He was best known for his white wig, blue-tinted glasses, his trademark sign-off from his KTRK stories ("MAAAAAR-VIN ZINDLER, EYE-WITNESS NEWS!"), and his rat an roach report ("There's SLIME in the ice machine!"). He came to prominence in 1973 when he broadcast a series of stories that led to the closing of the Chicken Ranch brothel in La Grange, which served as the basis for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas musical and later movie. A less-known fact is that he twirled the baton for the Rice University Marching Owl Band back in 1973. I remember seeing Zindler's rat and roach report on the evening news shortly after I came to Houston in 1992 and wondering what kind of place Houston was to have that sort of guy on TV. RIP, Marvin.

Cliometrics and Basketball

Tim Donaghy was an NBA referee with 13 years of experience who resigned recently amid allegations that he had bet on basketball games, including games that he had refereed, over the past two years. Apparently, according to the stories, Donaghy is, or was, a compulsive gambler who allowed affiliates of the Gambino crime family to get their hooks into him when he amassed debts to them that he could not pay off; and he bet on basketball games that he officiated as a way to work off what he owed. The clear implication is that he officiated the game in such a way as to maximize the chances that his bets (and the bets of his Gambino friends) would win. The most likely mechanism for this would have been for him to bet that the total score in the game would be over the over/under line, then call more fouls than normal, which would increase the number of free throws in the game and consequently the score. Donaghy is apparently cooperating with the FBI, but the details of his cooperation, as well as his betting strategies and the games that he bet on, are not generally known yet and might never be.

This news is, of course, red meat for the sports press and for sports fans around the country. NBA officiating has long been the subject of widespread criticism. In particular, it has long been an article of faith that the league has forced officials to go easy on superstars and has fiddled with the assignments of referees for playoff games to increase the likelihood that playoff series will be long ones. The news that a referee was apparently corrupt has caused every sports department, sports columnist, and sports blogger searching through the games that that referee officiated for "proof" that he changed the games' outcome. In particular, all of them almost immediately seem to focus on Game 3 of the San Antonio-Phoenix series in this year's Western Conference finals. San Antonio won that game to take a 2-1 lead in the series and went on to win it. During the game and afterwards, Phoenix players, coaches, and fans howled about the officiating. It just so happens that Tim Donaghy was one of the referees. And so now we're treated to bleating from every corner about how the fix was in and Tim Donaghy stole a game for San Antonio that rightfully belonged to Phoenix. Exhibit A of this phenomenon is an ESPN.com column by Bill Simmons:

Before the Donaghy scandal broke, if you told me there was a compromised official working a 2007 playoff game and made me guess the game, I would have selected Game 3 of the Spurs-Suns series. There were some jaw-dropping calls throughout, specifically, the aforementioned Ginobili call and Bowen hacking Nash on a no-call drive that ABC replayed from its basket camera (leading to a technical from D'Antoni). Both times, Mike Breen felt obligated to break the unwritten code that play-by-play announcers -- don't challenge calls and openly questioned what had happened. The whole game was strange. Something seemed off about it.

At the time, I assumed the league had given us another "coincidence" where three subpar refs (and calling that crew "subpar" is being kind) were assigned to a Game 3 in which, for the interest of a long series, everyone was better off having the home team prevail ... just like I anticipated another "coincidence" in which one of the best referees would work Game 4 to give Phoenix a fair shake in a game that, statistically, they were more likely to win. After all, it's easier to win Game 4 on the road than Game 3, when the fans are pumped up and the home team is happy to be home. (Which is exactly how it played out. Steve Javie worked Game 4, a guy who Jeff Van Gundy deemed "the best ref in the league" during the Finals. Hmmmm.) Look, this could have been an elaborate series of connected flukes. I'm just telling you that none of it surprised me. Which is part of the problem.

Bill Simmons's schtick is that he's just a regular old sports fanatic who just happens to get paid to write a column, and you can see all of the attributes of the know-it-all know-nothings that make up so much of sports fandom here in this excerpt. He called it, you see. He knew that the fix was in on Game 3 right from the start, just as he knew that there was no way that the league would let the Suns lose Game 4 after the officiating travesty of Game 3. We won't examine all of the other things that he has known but later turn out to be inaccurate: sports fans love to make prognostications, but they never seem to remember the predictions that didn't come true.

Anyway, the subtext permeating Simmons's column, and the subtext permeating so much of what has been written about Donaghy and Game 3 is this: but for Donaghy's presence on the officiating crew and his corruption, the Suns would have won the game and might have won the series, thus changing NBA history forever! (Whatever happens in sport is always history, you see.) The problem with this is that we can never known what would have happened, and it's largely pointless to contemplate it. If past were not the past, the future would be different; that's all we can say. If Donaghy had not officiated Game 3, something about Game 3 would have been different. How, we can't say.

David Hackett Fischer calls the error that sports fans make here the fallacy of fictional questions (Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought, pp. 15-21).

There is nothing necessarily fallacious in fictional constructs, as long as they are properly recognized for what they are and are clearly distinguished from empirical problems... Fictional questions can also be heuristically useful to historians, somewhat in the manner of metaphors and analogies, for the ideas and inferences which they help to suggest. But they prove nothing and can never be proved by an empirical method. All historical "evidence" for what might have happened if Booth had missed the mark is necessarily taken from the world in which he hit it. There is no way to escape this fundamental fact.

If foul trouble had not prevented Amare Stoudamire from playing more than 21 minutes in Game 3, undoubtedly the game would have been different; but it's impossible to determine what the difference might have been. Most people presume that this would have closed the margin between the Spurs and the Suns and made it more likely that the Suns would have won, but this is not necessarily the case. Too often, sports fans and sports columnists will pick out a few calls or coaching decisions that they regard as wrong-headed and concluded that their team would have won but for these bad calls or bad decisions. As Fischer writes in reference to real history, this is a fallacy. We can all agree that it if what has been written about Donaghy is true, it is terrible for the NBA and the game of basketball. Just don't begin to argue that Donaghy's corruption proves that the Spurs didn't deserve to win their series against the Suns.

(Oh, and about Cliometrics. Fischer talks about self-styled Cliometricians, who, at the time that Historians' Fallacies was written, were attempting to apply economic theory to fictional questions. I define Cliometrics as the attempted systemization of fictional questions.)

Today's Shoes

Continuing with the theme from yesterday, Gravati split-toe double monkstrap shoes with twin-needle stitching on the apron and toe seams (which, of course, aren't really seams) in a medium brown super-soft lightly-grained calfskin (16617, 671 last). These shoes are yet another special order, and when they originally came in, they lacked the apron and toe stitching, just about the only time that I can recall the Gravati factory ever making a mistake. Not to worry! Back to the factory they went for the twin-needle stitching, which, remarkably, could be done without the shoe being disassembled. This shoe is a nice companion to my Edward Green double-monk Fulhams, although the Fulham is a chasse while this shoe is a demi-chasse.

Last Night's Tipple

After my not so favorable impressions of JW Dant Bottled-in-Bond Bourbon a couple of weeks ago, I was eager to see if I would like it any more the second time around. I had another pour of it last night, and I have to say that it did seem better this time. It's grainy with a bit of mintiness on the palate, which I have read is the hallmark of Heaven Hill-distilled Bourbons, and I didn't notice the overt char that impressed me the first time I tried this. It all goes to show you that your perceptions of a whiskey vary greatly depending on factors that I can only imagine: maybe mood and setting, maybe other aromas in the air, maybe even the ambient humidity. I don't know. All I can say is that this tasted like better Bourbon than I remember it being two weeks ago. So take that for whatever it's worth.

Overheard at the Liquor Store...

Woman on seeing the price of the bottle of 30 year old Scotch her boyfriend is examining: "Why don't you just buy a bottle of 10 year old Scotch and put it away for 20 years?"

Alas, it doesn't work that way. Spirits, unlike wine, do not age in the bottle. It's the interplay between the spirit, the wood of the barrel, and the air that gets into the barrel that produces the salutary properties that one associates with well-aged liquor. Alternating warm and cool weather forces spirit into and out of the wood of the barrel, which leaches out the vanilla flavors and amber color from the wood (and also the residual sherry, if the barrels happen to be used sherry butts). The oxygen in the air oxidizes the spirit, helping to take some of the edge off of it. (Note that the limited amount of air in an open liquor bottle can also have an oxidizing effect, although a very limited one when compared to the oxidizing effect of the barrel.) So if you want a 30 year old Scotch, you have to pony up the cash to pay for the 30 year old Scotch. Either that, or find a rich friend you can sponge off of.

(And if I were to spring for a bottle of 30 year old Scotch, it probably would be a Macallan, which is known for its talent with older whiskies.)

Today's Shoes

Gravati half-brogue bluchers with an extended welt and a rubber lug sole in dark brown waterproof suede (16407, 640 last). The rubber lug sole and the waterproof suede were appropriate for the rainy weather, although not so much the sand that my lovely goddaughter threw at me at dinner.

Last Night's Tipple

I was in the mood to try Jack Daniel's Single Barrel again last night, despite the fact that I had had it just last week. It's surprising just how different this is from Bourbon, despite the fact that almost everything about its production is identical to Bourbon production. It's sooty and sweet in a way that Bourbon just isn't. Given just how much of an American straight whiskey is influenced by the barrels that it's aged in, it makes very little sense to me that passing new-make spirit through 20 feet of maple charcoal would make a big difference in the character of the whiskey, but it does.

And yes, this is still very good whiskey.

Today's Shoes

Gravati cap-toe double monkstraps in forest green moon suede with a storm welt and a rubber lug sole (15847, 671 last). Yes, forest green suede. What Gravati calls moon suede is actually a suede with little dots all over the surface, giving it appearance somewhat similar to what sueded peccary would look like. The model is very similar to the John Lobb Paris William model, which is the canonical double monkstrap, and it wouldn't surprise me if Gravati self-consciously was copying William with this shoe. In fact, I have heard that during the period when Wilkes Bashford in San Francisco could not get John Lobb Paris to let them open an account, they knocked off a number of Lobb models with Gravati. Whether this rumor has any truth to it, I can't say; but I can say that just as in the fashion industry, successful shoe designs don't stay exclusive to one manufacturer very long.

Last Night's Tipple

It can often be a significant challenge to figure out who actually owns a whisky brand (or any spirits brand). The world of spirits has been in almost perpetual flux, and that flux has increased in tempo since the great spirits conglomerates began a wave of consolidation in the 1990s. One would buy another (or two equals would merge) and then sell off some of the brands that overlapped in the united portfolios. Keeping straight who owns what is difficult, especially since corporate parents sometimes like to obfuscate their parentage to give the brand an image as a lonely, small, independent producer. Better romance that way, you see.

And so it was that it took me a good deal of digging to figure out which conglomerate owns Black Bottle, a blended Scotch whisky that has the unique distinction of including whisky from all seven operational Islay malt distilleries. Black Bottle is a venerable Scotch blend, having begun life in Aberdeen in 1879, the property of the three Graham brothers, who had begun their commercial life as tea blenders and merchants. The blend was a success (remember that the late Victorian period was the golden age of Scotch), and the brothers eventually abandoned tea blending and concentrated on Scotch blending. The company remained in Graham family until 1964, when it was sold to Lohn John, another blender. Over the next two and a half decades, the Black Bottle blend fell upon hard times and became a shadow of its former self. It was sold to Allied Distillers in 1990 and began its revival. Here's where the confusion begins. I presume that Allied Distillers was a division of Allied Brewers, which later became Allied Lloyd. Allied Lloyd merged with Domecq in the mid-'90s to form Allied-Domecq, which in turn was bought by Pernod-Ricard in 2005. At the time of the Pernod-Ricard purchase, some of the former Allied-Domecq brands were sold to Fortune Brands and to Diageo. The Black Bottle blend is now owned by Burn Stewart Distillers, which is a division of CL WorldBrands and it is blended and bottled at the Bunnahabhain distillery on Islay, which Burn Stewart also owns. The question is, how did it get there? So far as I can tell, Bunnahabhain was never owned by Allied, Allied-Domecq, Pernod-Ricard, Fortune Brands, or Diageo, and I have never seen mention of Burn Stewart purchasing any brands during this series of acquisitions that I summarized above. So, unfortunately, I am clueless about this.

Black Bottle has two expressions: the regular bottling and the 10 year old version. Both have the claim to fame of being the only blends that have malts from all seven operating Islay distilleries. The standard bottling is 80 proof, and the 10 year old is 86. I have the 10 year old version. It's a testament to just how much peated Islay whiskies can dominate anything that they are blended with. The nose is smoky and peaty, and I swear that I could smell Laphroaig and Lagavulin. It's lighter on the palate than a malt Islay, though, and there is some grain whisky sweetness, too. A very nice dram, especially if you like peated whisky.

Today's Shoes

Day

Gravati split-toe monskstraps in Radica 03 calfskin with a combination rubber/leather sole (17194, 697 last).

Evening

JM Weston's canonical demi-chasse blucher in dark tan calfskin (Ref. 598).

Last Night's Tipple

Saint Arnold Fancy Lawnmower beer is a Kölsch, meaning that it is a pale beer without as much hop character as a pilsner, top-fermented at a relatively low temperature. It tastes and behaves like a lager, but because it's top-fermented, it technically is an ale. The Kölsch style originated in Cologne, and Cologne remains the city most associated with it.

Saint Arnold's stated goal in developing Fancy Lawnmower was to produce a lighter beer appropriate for consumption during Houston's hot, muggy summers (after, for example, mowing the lawn, hence the name). They have succeeded in doing this. The beer is pleasant, thirst-quenching, and very drinkable. I first tried this beer about three years ago, and I eagerly await its release every spring. I don't buy a ton of beer, but I will buy this when I see it. I don't know whether it would qualify as a perfect example of the Kölsch style or if it's the best exemplar commonly available, and I really don't care. I like it, it's reasonably priced, and I will continue to buy it.

It appears that Saint Arnold has a not-insubstantial hit on their hands with Lawnmower since Shiner has aped them in creating a Kölsch of their own.

Today's Shoes

Day

Edward Green austerity brogues in antique burgundy calf (Beaulieu model, 888 last). The shoes shown above are identical to my own except that they are on the 82 last instead of the 888. The picture is from LeatherSoul in Hawaii, which is my go-to source for everything Edward Green and Alden. Tom Park, who owns Leather Soul, is a good egg.

Evening

Gravati five-eyelet blucher ankle boot in dark brown peccary with a combination rubber/leather sole (15950, 640 last).

Last Night's Tipple

I have commented about this before, but Old Grand-Dad 114 really is dominated by cinnamon. It's like someone dissolved an Atomic Fireball in a glass of bourbon. I imagine that the high proof has something to do with this, but it must also be due to OGD's high rye content. Anyway, both this expression and the Bottled-in-Bond expression of OGD have grown on me considerably, and they very well may be th best middle-shelf offerings that Jim Beam has. It was a very enjoyable drink.

Almonds!

Do you like almonds? Or, more relevantly, do you like the flavor of almond extract? If you do, check out Blue Bell's Anniversary Cake ice cream. It's almond ice cream with pieces of white cake and a ribbon of almond cream cheese icing and as such is a veritable almond extract extravaganza. It's fantastic and would be perfect in an Amaretto-spiked milkshake.

Today's Shoes

Day

Edward Green double monkstrap shoes with a handsewn apron and toe seam in dark tan calfskin (Fulham model, 82 last). I love these shoes.

Evening

Gravati ghillie-tie bluchers with twin-needle stitching on the apron and toe in tan suede (13555, 500 last). I notice that I wore these shoes last Monday. I apologize profusely for my lack of variety in footwear. I have let you down, and I promise to do better in the future.

Coco Jam

Coco jam, according to FilipinaChef.com, is "is a blend of creamy coconut milk and brown sugar heated to create a wonderful, spread-able fudge that tastes like rich, sweet coconut caramel... sticky coconut Nutella®." Never heard of it before? Neither had I before Mamacita's friend Letitia asked me if I knew of any Filipino grocery stores in Houston. Fortunately for me, Letitia didn't find a Filipino grocery and was curious enough about it to try to make some of the stuff herself. I can't say whether what she made bears much resemblance to honest-to-goodness coco jam of the sort that is sold in the Philippines, but I can say that it is excellent on vanilla ice cream and on toasted English muffins (as an aside, Central Market English muffins are a heck of a lot better than plain old Thomas's). It has the thickness and consistency of honey and tastes like rich coconut caramel. Extremely tasty.

Last Night's Tipple

I am currently reading Andrew Jefford's book Peat Smoke and Spirit: A Portrait of Islay and Its Whiskies, which is a travelogue cum history cum whisky tasting book of Islay. I have to admit that the chapter in which he describes the terrain of the various regions of the island is not the most interesting thing that I have ever read, but the chapters about the history of the island and its residents and about the seven distilleries still active on Islay are enjoyable.

Ardbeg is the first distillery that Jefford discusses. It lies on the south coast of Islay (along with Laphroaig and Lagavulin), and it dates from 1798. By 1880, it was the most productive distillery on Islay, producing 250,000 gallons of whisky a year. Like most malt distilleries, Ardbeg suffered hard times during the Depression and World War II, closing from 1932-1935 and again from 1939-1945. After the war, the distillery passed between a couple of different owners and was on the verge of closing in 1978 when Allied-Domeq bought it. The problem was that Allied-Domeq also owned Laphroaig and consequently had limited use for Ardbeg whisky -- remember that this was during the period before the emergence of single malts, when all malt whisky was destined for use as blendings; the character that Laphroaig and Ardbeg would bring to a blend are largely similar. The result of this was that Allied-Domeq only ran Ardbeg a few days a year to produce what little they needed, and they allowed the distillery to fall into disrepair. They sold it to Glenmorangie in 1997, and Glenmorangie began a comprehensive (and expensive) program of rehabilitation. Two of the most important of these (at least to the character of the whisky) are the rationalization of the wood aging regime and the standardization of fill levels in the stills. Before Glenmorangie bought Ardbeg, new-make whisky went into whatever barrels happened to be on hand; now, it mostly goes into first-fill or second-fill used Bourbon barrels. Because Allied-Domeq only ran Ardbeg a few days a year, they wanted to maximize their yield for those days and consequently overfilled the stills. This reduces copper contact with the spirit, which in turn makes for a heavier whisky. Glenmorangie reduced the fill level and thus lightened the whisky Ardbeg makes.

Speaking of lightness, that's not a word one usually associates with peated whiskies. But Ardbeg's operation is geared toward producing light whisky. Relatively small fills of the stills has this effect. So does the presence of purifiers on the lyne arms of the spirit stills, the lamp-glass shape of both the wash and spirit stills, and the relatively narrow spirit cuts. All of this increases contact between the spirit and copper, which allows the copper to react to impurities in the spirit and this filter them out. So Ardbeg is something of an anomaly: a lighter, peaty whisky. When you first nose the 10 year old bottling, it's all peat smoke and bacon. That blows off after a little while to reveal a fresh, malty whisky. It was very enjoyable, more so than I remember it.

(Incidentally, my bottle was a gift from Ben and Sara from a few years ago. This means that its contents were distilled during the Allied-Domeq reign; and you can tell it from the extremely pale color of the whisky, which is a result of them using old barrels that had little color left to impart. It will be interesting to try the newer Glenmorangie-made whisky, which should be coming onto the market within the next year or so. This should be more deeply-colored and wood-influenced, lighter, and more peaty due to some innovations that Glenmorangie has brought to mashing that increase the quantity of phenols that make it from the malt to the wash.)

Today's Shoes

Day

Cleverley bespoke split-toe bluchers in Russian reindeer calf. It really is amazing how comfortable these shoes are.

Evening

Martegani long-vamp penny loafers in London tan calf (Cortona model).

Last Night's Tipple

One of the things that I find wondrous about high-quality spirits is that they are chameleon-like: they present different facets of their personalities at different times, depending on the conditions under which they are tasted and the moods of the taster. When I tried Laird's Straight Apple Brandy back in June, I wrote that it tasted like apple whiskey, meaning that it had the same aromas and flavors from its barrel aging that I associate with American whiskey (namely, char and vanilla). When I tasted it last night, the char and the vanilla were still there, but my dominant impression was of fresh apples, with cinnamon and nutmeg in the background. It reminded me of a young Calvados, to be honest, something that I didn't think was possible. It was a totally different experience, but similarly satisfying.

Today's Statistics Lesson

Apparently, the winning number for Texas's Pick 3 lottery game was the same in both Thursday's and Friday's drawing. The three numbers that you pick are between 0 and 9, meaning that the winning number is just a three-digit number between 000 and 999. The fact that the winning numbers were the same on two consecutive days apparently caused some questions, to which Texas Lottery officials replied that the drawings were completely legitimate and that the chances of this happening were 1 in 1000. This is, of course, correct because each drawing is an independent event, there are 1000 possible combinations, and each combination is equally likely. The idiot morning DJ, however, chimed in to say, "Really? I would have thought that the odds are much higher, like 1 in 10,000 or something," once again proving that any moron can get a job in radio.

Today's Shoes

John Lobb unlined Venetian loafers in dark oak calf (Chester model, 6000 last). The shoes pictured above are the same model, but they're in a lighter color than my shoes.

Last Night's Tipple

The way to growth for most large producers of alcohol these days is to sell less volume at higher prices. People around the world are drinking less than they did, but they are buying more expensive alcohol. Most producers have to accept that their case volume will decline year over year, and the only way that they can make up the difference is to sell better stuff more expensively. Not Jack Daniel's, though. Their case volume (8.9 million cases last year) is increasing at 6% a year. When you combine the increasing case volume with the annual price increases that Brown-Forman, the corporate parent of Jack Daniel's, Jack Daniel's practically has a license to print money. It would be difficult to overstate how influential Jack Daniel's is in the world of whiskey. Brands ranging from Jim Beam Black Label to Evan Williams have copied JD's square bottle shape and label style. Boutique offerings like Maker's Mark raise their prices in lockstep with JD's increases. Used JD barrels go all over the world to producers of just about every kind of spirit: Ardbeg, probably the most distinctive Islay malt whisky, ages their whisky almost exclusively in old JD barrels.

More than three quarters of that is the standard Old No. 7 Black Label bottling, and most of the remaining is either Green Label No. 7 or Gentleman Jack, which differs from the rest in that it's charcoal filtered twice instead of once. I'm not a big fan of the standard Black Label bottling. It's young, one-dimensional, and has some off-putting flavors. I've never tried Green Label or Gentleman Jack, but my understanding is that Green Label tastes even younger than Black Label and that the Gentleman Jack, what with the double filtration, is even more one-dimensional. Which brings us to the last of Jack Daniel's bottlings: the Single Barrel. As the name suggests, "honey barrels" are dumped and bottled one at a time to make Single Barrel. The whiskey contained in these barrels has been aged between 6 and 8 years, or between 50% and 100% longer than the standard 4 year old JD Black Label. I'm not sure if Master Distiller Jimmy Bedford knows that a whiskey will become Single Barrel when he puts it into the barrel, but I would imagine at the very least that he, like every other competent distiller, knows which areas of which warehouses are likely to produce the quality and flavor profile he's looking for. It's bottled at 94 proof, too, which means that it has more concentration and more of a kick than the Black Label, which is bottled at 80 proof. The bottle that I bought on Saturday was from barrel 6-3094, rick L-34, and was bottled on August 17, 2006. This is largely just marketing fluff because these are utterly meaningless to me and I'm unlikely ever to find another bottle from the same barrel (each barrel produces approximately 240 750 ml bottles). In any event, though, the whiskey inside is very good. It has the distinctive JD smoky sweetness, but there's more vanilla and caramel on the nose. It's lighter than a comparably-aged Bourbon, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. At $35 a fifth, JD Single Barrel is not a bargain, but it's not a rip-off. And I'm glad to be able to say that the largest American whiskey distiller is capable of making excellent whiskey if they want to.

Tattling

There is an interesting post up at Parent Hacks about children and tattling:

From Sara:

Kara and her local playground moms sit at a picnic table while the kids play. Around this table they've drawn a circle in the dirt. Why? Well, the circle is the "no tattling zone". Brilliant, isn't it?

It is, for those kids that understand the concept of tattling. Frankly, I find that concept hard to teach. There's a fine line between snitching and coming to an adult for legitimate help. It's a subtle distinction -- too subtle for my kids (and sometimes even me) at this point.

Any thoughts?

Kara's No Tattling Zone makes sense to me. Tattling is not reporting legitimate problems to parents. Rather, it is a mechanism that children use to involve parents as the nuclear bomb to gain an advantage over other children with whom they are having disagreements. Children need to learn the ability to resolve their own disagreements without running to mommy and daddy, and parents who reward their children's tattling are doing them no favors.

There are a number of comments to this post that are very dismaying. Following is a representative sample:

I worry that this "don't bother us" method may teach kids that they are failures if they can't solve their own skirmishes or unhappinesses without external guidance or the guidance of adults.
...
I remember the 'no tattling' rules at school being very isolating - it felt very much as if nobody cared how I felt.
...
Sounds more like a "Don't bother mommy zone" to me. I think that (especially in today's society) kids need to feel free to come to adults for help no matter what the situation is.

Sometimes, I get the feeling that many modern parents are intent on using their children as yet another form of conspicuous consumption. By this, I mean that they attempt to compete with their peers by conspicuously displaying their concern for their children and the seriousness with which they take parenting. When children get older, this can take the form of the parent inserting himself or herself into the child's academic career, arguing over grades with the child's college professors and dictating what courses the child take in college. When the child is younger, it can take the form of refusing to let the child be a child and figure out things about life and dealing with other people by himself. Like I wrote before, parents like these commenters are doing their children no favors.

Today's Shoes

Gravati split toe bluchers in red-brown Lama calf (16532, 655 last). Interestingly enough, this pattern is identical to that used for my blue suede bluchers except for the apron and toe stitch. This stitching is aesthetic only, not structural, though, so Gravati could just use the exact same pattern and execute the stitching as a sort of post processing. Anyway, like most Gravati shoes, the back seam is reinforced with a strap of leather rather than a dog's ear.

Last Night's Tipple

As before, Knob Creek really didn't do much for me last night. There's nothing wrong with it, especially, and it's better than many Bourbons that I've tried; but it never succeeds in exciting me. This is unfortunate, given Knob Creek's ubiquity and good price.

Today's Shoes

Gravati plain-toe monkstrap in dark brown peccary with a combination leather/rubber sole (16371, 640 last). Torrential downpours this morning, so a rubber-soled shoe seemed the most prudent option.

Last Night's Tipple

Another pour of Van Winkle Family Reserve 12 year old Bourbon. My impressions largely match those in June, but I did notice an off-putting pine resin note on some sips. Perhaps it's due to the extensive time in wood.

Scotch is different from Bourbon in many ways, ranging from production methods to marketing and distribution to business practices. The Bourbon business and the Scotch business are both dominated by very large companies now, but the way those large companies operate is significantly different. Scotland has over a hundred operating malt distilleries. Industry consolidation there has largely consisted of multinational spirits companies buying up as many of these distilleries as they possibly can. In contrast, industry consolidation in American whiskey has involved spirits companies buying distilleries and brands and aging whiskey stocks and closing the distilleries. The number of large-scale distilleries producing American whiskey is very small: Jack Daniel's, Jim Beam, Buffalo Trace, and Heaven Hill probably produce well over 50% of the American whiskey on the market; and if you add in Maker's Mark, Wild Turkey, Four Roses, and George Dickel, you likely have over 90%.

The American whiskey and Scotch whisky businesses are both incestuous, but in different ways. American distillers form something of a social club, and they're all more than willing to scratch each other's backs. The master distiller of Heaven Hill is a Beam; and when the Heaven Hill distillery burned in 1996, the Jim Beam Distillery allowed Heaven Hill to distill what they needed on Jim Beam stills. In Scotland, this incestuousness takes the form of each distillery being willing to sell whisky to anybody else, even their competitors. That's why there are many non-distillery bottlings of Scotch and why the various good Scotch blends are so good. There are very few non-distillery bottlings of American whiskey, and what ones there are are likely to become rarer. The modus operandi of American whiskey distillers if they have surplus aging stocks is to come up with a new brand and sell it. There isn't a whole lot of bulk whiskey on the spot market, and it's likely to get rarer in the future. Companies like Kentucky Bourbon Distillers that buy and bottle aging whiskey will find it increasingly difficult to operate successfully.

What does all of this have to do with Van Winkle? Well, it goes to explain the deal that Julian Van Winkle cut with Buffalo Trace in the late '90s whereby Buffalo Trace received the rights to bottle and market Van Winkle whiskeys and Julian Van Winkle received the right to get his pick of Buffalo Trace aging whiskeys for his bottlings. Before this agreement, Van Winkle was an independent bottler (although they did own their own stocks of Stitzel-Weller whiskey). Julian knew that his Stitzel-Weller whiskey was running out and that he would be hard-pressed to ensure that he would able to buy quality whiskey in the future if he remained independent. So he threw in with Buffalo Trace. Given Buffalo Trace's attitude toward distilling and their demonstrated ability to make good whiskey, I have to think that this was a good decision.

Skunked!

Central Market carries singleton bottles of beer, and I figured this evening that, in light of the fact that I was too cheap to shell out $8.50 on a six pack, a bottle of Pilsner Urquell would be nice with some chips and salsa. So I bought one. Alas, it was skunked. Skunking is name given to a chemical reaction involving the hops in the beer and catalyzed by light. It's one of the reasons why (good) beer tends to come in dark brown bottles: to prevent light from hitting the beer and skunking it. Not Pilsner Urquell! They preferred a gentle emerald green for their bottles, and condemned me to skunked beer. The bastards!

Today's Shoes

Day

Cleverley bespoke three-eyelet plain-toe bluchers in 18th Century Russian Reindeer. The shoes are just beautiful, if I do say so myself. It is mighty stiff, though.

Evening

Gravati austerity brogue bal in a red-brown Lama calf (14953, 640 last).

Last Night's Tipple

Another pour of The Famous Grouse 12 year old vatted malt whisky, and my reactions to it are much the same as they were back in June. The knock on vatted malts is that the malt distilleries are only willing to turn loose of the sub-par barrels while keeping the good stuff to bottle under their own labels. Aside from the fact that this doesn't sound plausible given that some of the most sought-after malt bottlings are done by non-distillery bottlers like Gordon & McPhail, which wouldn't be possible if the good stuff weren't available, that argument doesn't even add up because the vast majority of whisky produced by every malt distillery, even the huge names like Glenlivet, goes into blends. Malt distilleries could not survive without selling large amounts of whisky off for blending and vatting. In the case of The Famous Grouse vatted malts, another reason to reject this argument is the fact that The Famous Grouse shares the same parent company as the premier flavoring malts that go into the Grouse vatted bottlings: Highland Park and the Macallan. The Edrington Group, the last remaining major Scottish-owned spirits company, owns them all. If they want Grouse vatted malts to have good whisky in them, they will have good whisky in them. And, if the 12 year old bottling is any indication, they do want good whisky in them. This bottle is almost gone; and when it is, I will be buying a bottle of the 18 year old. It is supposedly even better and a heck of a bargain at under $50 for a fifth.

(Incidentally, the Edrington Group also backs JMR Easy Drinking Whisky Company, makers of such bottlings as The Big Spicy One, The Smoky Peaty One, and The Smooth Sweeter One. JMR's stated goal was to demystify and desnobify Scotch and to build up a following for it among younger consumers, most of whom opt for vodka and white rum. I like the idea: despite the renaissance that Scotch has experienced over the past 10 or 15 years, it desperately needs to bring new consumers into the fold if it hopes to avoid the bad times of the '70s and '80s. By all accounts, their whiskies are tasty and well-priced, but they haven't had the success one could hope for. Recently, the brand was withdrawn from the UK market and from certain US cities; and I fear that it will fold up shop completely before too long. That would be a pity. I will have to give a bottle a try before that happens.)

Today's Shoes

Day

Gravati three-eyelet wholecut bals in burgundy Lama calf (14391, 683 last). I've been trying to figure out why this three-eyelet wholecut is not as successful as Berluti's iconic club wholecut. Part of it is the fact that I don't wear the Berluti shoe, which means that it's only ever a picture or the equivalent of a piece of sculpture to me; whereas I do wear this Gravati shoe and consequently think of it as an actual piece of footwear. Part of it also is that Lama is so soft that the throat of the shoe does not hold its shape when laced on a foot as well as it would were the shoe made from a stiffer calfskin. But I bet that my shoes are more comfortable than the Berluti model would be.

Evening

Gravati saddle bal in mid-brown peccary with a leather/rubber combination sole (15578, 640 last).

Last Night's Tipple

Another pour of George Dickel Number 12 for me, and this one killed the bottle. My impressions this time were similar to the last time I wrote about Dickel, but I would amplify a couple of things. First is that Dickel, like Jack Daniel's is very sweet. Alcohol can impart sweet flavors by its very nature, and this tendency is accentuated by the caramelization that aging the spirit in charred new oak barrels imparts. But while Bourbon is sweet, Tennessee Whiskey is sweeter, probably because the Lincoln County process (filtering the white dog spirit through twenty feet of maple charcoal before it goes into the barrel) adds even more caramelization on top of what the barrel does. Second, it really is amazing how much better Dickel is after a half hour in the glass than it is freshly poured. With time in the glass, a wonderful vanilla aroma develops that is much, much more appetizing than the unbaked apple pie aroma that it has straight out of the bottle.

Since it won't do to be completely out of Tennessee Whiskey for very long, I will be forced to buy another bottle of either Dickel or Jack Daniels some time soon. This next go around, though, I think that I'll try one of the premium bottlings: either JD Single Barrel or George Dickel Barrel Select. I hear that both are good...

Of Barley, Malt, and Peat

The marketing materials produced for spirits companies commonly appeal to tradition. Our Scotch must be good, the implicit (or explicit) message is, because our master distiller has inherited hundreds of years of knowledge from many, many generations of master distillers. We've been making whisky in exactly this way since God was a boy. Well, it's all a bunch of bull. You wouldn't want to drink what Scotch distillers made in 1800: it would be harsh, unaged, and full of headache-inducing congeners and non-ethanol alcohols. Everything about it, except the site of distillation and possibly the water used for it, would have been different, including the type and size of the stills, the varieties of the barley, the way the barley was malted, the way it was dried, and the types of barrels used. Distillers constantly tinker with everything about their process in an attempt to improve the taste of the whisky they produce, to make the process more efficient, or both.

Take barley, for example. No modern distiller could stay in business using the varieties of barley that were common in Scotland in the 19th century. There simply wasn't enough starch in those barleys to convert into alcohol in an efficient manner today. For time immemorial, man has genetically engineered the crops he plants, but the pace of genetic engineering barley (and many other crops, of course) accelerated dramatically in the 20th Century with the advent of academics and industry-funded institutes whose purpose in life was to make barley better -- more weather- and insect-resistant, higher in starch, higher in potential alcohol, and whatnot. The first barley variety to take Scottish agriculture by storm was Golden Promise, which was developed in the 1960s and withing a few years accounted for more than 90% of barley plantings in Scotland. By the mid '80s, though, it had been superceded by other varieties. Currently, the most prevalent barley variety is named Optic, although it will undoubtedly be made obsolete by something better within a few years. Some "tradition-minded" distillers still use older barley varieties, but the likelihood of those varieties being older than Golden Promise is vanishingly small.

Yeast plus starch equals not much. Yeast plus sugar equals alcohol. Grain has lots of starch and little sugar. Converting that starch to sugar is essential for producing something that can be fermented, which can then be distilled. For Scotch, that conversion is accomplished by malting the barley. This means steeping the barley in water to cause it to germinate, which releases enzymes that convert the starch in the barley to sugar. After germination, the process has to be stopped to keep the barley grains from growing into new barley plants. Not only that, but the malted barley has to be dried to prevent it from rotting. This is done by heating the malted barley in a kiln. Traditionally in Scotland, this was done in kilns fired by burning peat. Now, it mostly is done by coal- or gas-fired kilns. It used to be that each distillery would do its own maltings. This is now rare -- most malt today is now bought from one of the huge commercial malters like Port Ellen.

Peat-dried malted barley gives a distinctive smoky aroma and flavor to some Scotches, most famously those from Islay. The peatiness of a whisky is measured by the parts per million of phenols it contains (I have been unable to find out exactly how the ppm of phenols is measured or whether it is measured in the malted barley or in the finished spirit). Ardbeg, generally acknowledged to be the peatiest of the widely-released Scotches, has around 50 ppm of phenols. Laphroaig has 40 ppm, and Caol and Bowmore have around 35. Not all of the phenols come from the barley -- because water on Islay filters through peat bogs there, whisky made from unpeated barley but Islay water will still have 2 ppm of phenols. It is possible to make something much peatier than Ardbeg, and in fact Bruichladdich has -- an experimental bottling that contains 167 ppm of phenols. I also don't know how this is achieved: do they smoke the barley longer, or do they use a higher proportion of peat-smoked barley? And do the peated malts of today use a certain percentage of peated barley and a certain percentage of unpeated barley? Hopefully I will be able to figure this out soon. Stay tuned...

Today's Shoes

Day

Gravati punch cap high-lace balmoral ankle boots in dark brown calf (10278, 683 last). A person can't have too many high-lace boots, I say. I was considering today whether it would be a good idea to have this pattern made up with a wing cap instead of a straight cap, and I concluded that it was not. A plain toe would work, however.

Evening

John Lobb Paris split-toe penny loafer in dark brown pebble grain calf (Campus model, 3198 last).

Last Night's Tipple

I have nothing much new to add to my previous writeup of Wild Turkey Russell's Reserve other than to say that I am rethinking my opinion expressed therein about lowering the proof of this Bourbon from 101 to 90 not being a bad thing. The fact of the matter is that Bourbon does not come out of the barrel at 90 or 101 proof, meaning that it has to be watered down to reach that level. What I like most about Bourbon are the vanilla, caramel, and butterscotch aromas and flavors that come from the barrel; and it stands to reason that adding water to what comes out of the barrel reduces the concentration of those things. It is true that the reduced alcohol tends less to deaden one's taste buds, but perhaps the trade-off isn't worth it. Maybe if I had a bottle of the 101 proof RR, I could compare and arrive at a definitive conclusion; but, alas, I can't.

Today's Shoes

Day

Edward Green plain-toe side-buckle monkstraps in Edwardian Antique (Stowe model, 808 last). Stowe is Edward Green's answer to John Lobb Paris's sublime Jermyn II, the difference being that Jermyn II is a wholecut where Stowe has separate pieces of leather for the vamp and quarters. In recent years, Edward Green has retired this model in favor of the Oundle, which has less sweep in the strap, because the configuration of the strap and the vamp/quarter seam in the Stowe is not particularly comfortable or particularly durable. My Stowes were a special order from Edward Green's Burlington Arcade store (before they shut down that store and moved to the current one on Jermyn St.).

Evening

Gravati split-toe ghillie-tie bluchers in tan suede with a rubber sole (13555, 500 last).

Limoncello

Problem: a lemon-flavored liqueur is perfect in a large number of summertime drinks, but the limoncellos available in the United States are sickly sweet and as often as not have such high doses of artificial yellow coloring that they almost look radioactive. Solution: make your own limoncello. It is true that Sorrento lemons, which are typically used for limoncello in southern Italy and are usually regarded as the perfect fruit for the purpose, aren't generally available over here; but common Eureka lemons can do just fine. Here's the recipe:

1. Zest a dozen good-sized lemons. Don't get any of the pith.
   
2. Immerse the zest in a fifth of 100 proof vodka. Seal in an air-tight container.
3. Wait a few weeks.
4. Strain the liquor (which should now be bright yellow) off of the zest (which should now be white).
5. Add another fifth of vodka.
6. Add simple syrup (50-50 mixture of water and sugar) to taste. I think that I added around 2 or 3 cups.
7. Let the mixture marry for another few weeks.
8. Enjoy, and make fun of those who claim that the liqueur is too strong.

Okay, that last part is not strictly necessary. Adding 2 cups of simple syrup will make the final liqueur around 76 proof if you use 100 proof vodka to start. If you use 80 proof vodka, the final liqueur will be around 61 proof. If you do use 80 proof vodka, however, you will need to let the zest steep for longer. The recipe also works with other citrus zest: I also made some from sweet limes.

Last Night's Tipple

I had Barton's 1792 Ridgemont Reserve Bourbon again last night, and my impressions were much the same as when I had it back in May. If anything, I liked it better: it's thick and dark and very flavorful, and it's an excellent buy for $25 a fifth. I have read a number of reviews that criticize this whiskey as being thin, flavorless, odorless, and alcoholic; and for the life of me, I don't know how the reviewers can be tasting the same Bourbon I am.

Barton Brands is not a big name in the Bourbon business. It owns a number of brands (Ten High, Tom Moore, etc.), but the only one before the advent of Ridgemont Reserve that had any degree of prestige was Very Old Barton. This has quite a good reputation, but it is distributed only very spottily outside of Kentucky. Most other distilleries, if they wanted to create a new brand of premium Bourbon, would have selected the "honey" barrels of their main brand because doing so would reduce the amount of time between the decision to launch the brand and the brand's actual lauch. Not Barton. Barton decided to create Ridgemont Reserve from the ground up, developing a new mashbill for it significantly different from the one used for Very Old Barton. Not only that, but they decided to change the mashbill not by doing anything traditional like substituting wheat for rye or increasing the rye content. They decided to jack up the percentage of malted barley used. Typically, the malt percentage in Bourbon and rye mashbills is very low, and the malt is only used for the enzymes it contains that convert the starch in the other, unmalted grains into sugars so that the yeast will have something to ferment. Barton is the only Bourbon distillery that uses it as a flavoring grain. I can't honestly claim to be able to taste the malt in Ridgemont Reserve, but I can say that Ridgemont Reserve is different from other Bourbons that I have tried.

Today's Shoes

Gravati plain-toe wholecut blucher with reversed seams on the eyelet facings in a caramel tan calf with a rubber lug sole. It rained this morning, it was Big E's 6th birthday, and I had the feeling that I would either be running around getting stuff for the party or be in the muddy back yard or both.

Last Night's Tipple

In the early days of Kentucky Bourbon, not everyone who wanted to distill had enough wherewithal to afford a copper pot still. It was common in such circumstances to improvise a pot-like still from a log. That's right. A log. A log was split in half, hollowed out, and joined back together. The top was fitted with a thing that looked like a hollow Hershey's Kiss with a copper pipe running out of it. Another length of copper pipe ran through the hollowed-out portion of the log. The distiller would fill the cavity of the log with his beer, run steam through the copper pipe in the cavity, and collect the alcohol running out of the copper pipe coming out of the Hershey's Kiss on top. This method of distilling was called "running the log," and one of the early distillers who used it was Joseph Washington Dant, who began distilling in Nelson County in 1836. The Dants became one of the first families of Bourbon, with JW's eponymous brand of Bourbon and son Joseph Bernard Dant's Yellowstone Bourbon being two of the best-selling Bourbon brands in their day. Just as you can't turn around today without meeting another Beam in Nelson County, so too do Dants abound, although they have been out of the whiskey business since shortly after Prohibition. The JW Dant brand kicked around a number of different owners and finally settled with Heaven Hill in the 1980s. It's not a prestige brand anymore, and its distribution is limited; but it does have a modest following.

The bottle of JW Dant that I bought was Bottled in Bond. The back label says that it was distilled and bottled at DSP-KY-31. The interesting thing about this is that DSP-KY-31 is the old Heaven Hill Distillery, which burned in October, 1996 and has not been rebuilt. The bottom of the bottle has the digits "06," which suggests that it was bottled in 2006. This means that the whiskey in the bottle is either 10 years old, or Heaven Hill is using old labels. After tasting the whiskey, I think that the latter explanation is more likely. The nose is all char and wood, developing into vanilla with some time in the glass. The palate is grainy and hot. This does not taste like an old whiskey, and I would be absolutely shocked if it was actually distilled in 1996. It's not spectacular, but it is a decent enough whiskey for $15 a fifth.

The Crack Sandwich

Today, I sampled some of Mamacita's Crack Sandwich at the Stone Mill Bakers at Westheimer and Kirby. It's sliced turkey and cantaloupe with lettuce and mayonnaise on jalapeño corn bread (kind of a misnomer because while it does have corn it it, it has neither the texture nor the flavor of corn bread), and it's very good. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's addictive, but it was better than my BLT on jalapeño corn bread. This is all the more surprising because I don't like either cantaloupe or mayonnaise, and I don't have much use for sliced turkey.

Today's Shoes

Gravati wingtip bals in walnut waterproof suede (15902, 640 last). These are another Gravati special order, one of the first ones that I did. The idea for these shoes came from a pair of fawn suede Ferragamo Tramezzas that came out a few years ago. I liked the shoes but wanted something with my own stamp. The color of suede that I selected was a bit darker and a heck of a lot oranger, and I made it more of a casual shoe than the Ferragamo shoe that was its model. It has natural-colored Rapid stitching along the sole edges and matching natural laces, and it has a relatively extended double sole (along with extended heels). The sole and heel treatments are identical to the tan Gravati 16407s that I have. Had I to do over again, I would have selected a last a little less clunky than the 640. Oh, well. Them's the breaks.

Shortly after I got these shoes, I was wearing them while working on a Saturday afternoon. I had a carton of greasy hot and sour soup on my desk, which I promptly knocked off and spilled all over my new shoes. I was scared to death that I had just ruined my brand new shoes, but they cleaned up just fine with some white vinegar and water. You can't tell today that any greasy pseudo-Chinese soup ever spilled all over them, a testament to just how resilient the waterproof suede Gravati uses is.

Last Night's Tipple

I had a hankering for Old Grand-Dad, so I had a pour of it last night. Nothing new to report: notes are similar to when I first had it back in June.

Today's Shoes

Alden two-eyelet reverse-welted chukka boots in polo suede with a leather/rubber commando sole (Barrie last). The picture shown to the right illustrates the Alden model that these boots were made with, but mine are lined and made in a beautiful medium red-brown suede instead of that ghastly light tan desert-boot-type stuff. They were a special order from Alan White at the Alden Shop in San Francisco. Alas, Alden no longer does one-off special orders, or I would have more shoes in polo suede.

Last Night's Tipple

Bulleit Bourbon again because I was posting something on Ask Andy about Four Roses Distillery (which distills Bulleit by contract for Diageo), and this put me in the mood to write it. I can't improve on what I wrote about this last month, so I'll just say that Bulleit is an enjoyable Bourbon despite the marketing crap that Diageo spews about it and lament that Four Roses Bourbons are not available in Texas yet.

Buffalo Trace Mashbills

Ben comments in my post about Buffalo Trace Bourbon:

Bought a bottle of this a few days ago. Do you know what's in the mashbill? The heat and spice make me think it must have a high proportion of rye.

At any rate, I don't much care for it compared to Knob Creek, but at $15 I certainly wasn't ripped off.

According to what I have read online, Buffalo Trace Distillery has four different mashbills: the rye whiskey mashbill used to make Sazerac Rye; the wheat mashbill used to make wheated Bourbons like WL Weller; the low rye mashbill used to make Bourbons such as Old Charter, Eagle Rare, and Buffalo Trace; and the high rye mashbill used to make Bourbons such as Ancient Age, Elmer T. Lee, and Blantons. See here, although I have seen and cannot now find something more comprehensive before. I don't know the exact proportions of each mashbill, but I have read (from Chuck Cowdery, author of Bourbon Straight: The Uncut and Unfiltered Story of American Whiskey and a noted authority about Bourbon, Rye, and other straight American whiskeys) that Old Charter's mashbill (ie, the Buffalo Trace low rye mashbill, which is also used for Buffalo Trace Bourbon) is more than 80% corn.

I will not address whether Ben's preference for Knob Creek over Buffalo Trace proves that he is a philistine.

And in Whole Foods News...

Things just get curiouser and curiouser in Whole Foods' attempted acquisition of Whole Oats and the FTC's lawsuit to prevent it. The Wall Street Journal has a front-page article about posts that Whole Foods CEO John Mackey made on the Yahoo message board for Whole Foods' stock ("Whole Foods is Hot, Wild Oats a Dud -- So Said 'Rahodeb'", p. A1). This would be strange and probably unwise if he had done it under his own name, but what can you say about him doing it with a pseudonym? How about the fact that he trashed Wild Oats repeatedly and talked up Whole Foods?

In January 2005, someone using the name "Rahodeb" went online to a Yahoo stock-market forum and posted this opinion: No company would want to buy Wild Oats Markets Inc., a natural-foods grocer, at its price then of about $8 a share.

"Would Whole Foods buy OATS?" Rahodeb asked, using Wild Oats' stock symbol. "Almost surely not at current prices. What would they gain? OATS locations are too small." Rahodeb speculated that Wild Oats eventually would be sold after sliding into bankruptcy or when its stock fell below $5. A month later, Rahodeb wrote that Wild Oats management "clearly doesn't know what it is doing .... OATS has no value and no future."

This is so bizarre that I can't think of anything better to say about it than Harvey Pitt, former chairman of the SEC, did in a quote in this article:

For an executive to use a pseudonym to praise his company and stock "isn't per se unlawful, but it's dicey," said Harvey Pitt, a former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman. Told of the Mackey posts, Mr. Pitt said, "It's clear that he is trying to influence people's views and the stock price, and if anything is inaccurate or selectively disclosed he would indeed be violating the law." He added that "at a minimum, it's bizarre and ill-advised, even if it isn't illegal."

Today's Shoes

Day

Gravati plain-toe side-elastics in burgundy (055) Radica calf (16624, 683 last). Have I mentioned recently how useful side-elastic shoes are?

Evening

Ferragamo wing-tip bluchers in cognac calf. These shoes are about five years ago, and I would be surprised if I've worn them in the last three. They epitomize both what is good and what is not good about Ferragamo. On the good side of the equation is the sleek round toe, the color of the calfskin, and the unusual sunburst medallion design. On the bad side is that, attractive though the last may be, it doesn't have good fit characteristics: it's too long, it's too full in the forefoot, and the heels are too wide. At least for me. In addition, they're not made as well as they should be for shoes that were as expensive as these were. Of course, once the shoes are in one's closet, it doesn't matter what one paid for them. It only matters whether one gets good use out of them. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten very good use out of them.

Last Night's Tipple

It's not uncommon for Speyside Scotches to be referred to as "feminine," usually when in the next sentence the writer refers to an Islay Scotch as "masculine." I'm not sure what this means except that Speysides typically don't have an aroma that explodes out of the bottle and hammers the drinker over the head. This is not to say that Speysides cannot be extremely aromatic and flavorful. Macallan is one such, and Cragganmore is another one.

Cragganmore is another distillery that was part of the Great Scotch Explosion of the second half of the 19th Century, having been founded in 1869 by John Smith. Mr. Smith is known largely because of the strange design that he arrived at for Cragganmore's spirit stills (Scotch is typically distilled twice, once in a larger wash still and a second time in a smaller spirit still). He made them small and narrow, with a flat top and a lyne arm exiting the still at a right angle to the neck. His goal in making his stills this way was to produce a relatively light and aromatic spirit, and he succeeded. Cragganmore claims on its neckband that it is "an elegant sophisticated Speyside with the most complex aroma of any malt... astonishingly fragrant with sweetish notes and a smokey maltiness on the finish," and Diageo, on its Classic Malts website, quotes spirits author Michael Jackson as saying that Cragganmore is "[t]he most fragrant of whiskies." It's not all marketing hype. I don't know about it being "the most fragrant of whiskies," but it has a powerful honeyed nose with hints of thyme. The palate is very malty, with some grassiness on the finish. This is one of my favorite Scotches: fragrant, appetizing, and drinkable.

Rant of the Day

Memo to Morning Radio DJs

The fact that the weather forecast calls for the day to be sunny with a low chance of rain is not a necessary and sufficient condition to label the weather for the day as "perfect". When, for example, the predicted high temperature is 98 degrees and the humidity is high enough for the dew point to be in the mid-70s, the vast majority of the American population would consider the weather as being far from perfect, even if there isn't a cloud in the sky and the chance of thunderstorms is 10%.

Today's Shoes

Day

Edward Green bespoke bals in dark brown calf. The dominant feature of these shoes is that the U-throat, the diamond-cap, and the counter are all done with the pie crust-style hand-sewing that typifies the Edward Green Dover. Edward Green's bespoke program is now defunct since their lastmaker, Tony Gaziano, left to found Gaziano & Girling with Dean Girling, who is one of the best bespoke makers around. Tony designed these shoes based on an idea of mine, Tony made the last for them, and Dean made them. After they want out on their own, Tony asked permission to photograph them with G&G trees for display on the G&G website; and I readily agreed. He liked the design well enough that a rendition of it called the Gable is included in his RTW line.

I'm really proud of this design. It all started with a Sutor Mantellassi shoe that I saw a picture of. The shoe was a wholecut with twin-needle stitching forming a standard cap-toe design. I thought that it would look good with a wing-cap and a U throat, and I asked if Gravati could do it. They said that they could not. I asked Ron Rider if Martegani could do it. He said yes, and a few months later I got my hot little hands on the finished shoes. I liked the result so much that I decided to get a bespoke rendition of it. One of Tony's design signatures is the diamond tip, so I decided to replace the wing-cap with a diamond-cap. I also thought that the Dover-style pie crust-style would be more elegant. I think the results are spectacular. But I'm hardly objective.

Evening

John Lobb Paris Venetian loafers in dark brown calf (Chester model, 6000 last).

Last Night's Tipple

Vatting lesson #1: Islay dominates anything it touches. That's what I learned from vatting Clynelish and Caol Ila 50-50 last night. The result smelled like Caol Ila, and it tasted like Caol Ila. I really couldn't detect any of the Clynelish in the blend, even though Clynelish is hardly an unassertive malt. My purpose in doing this was to see how the vatting compares to Compass Box Eleuthera, and the clear answer is that Eleuthera was both better and more complex. With Eleuthera, one could pick up elements from both Clynelish and Caol Ila. With my vatting, I could not. The moral of the story, I think, is that if you want to combine a Highlands Scotch and an Islay one and get elements from both, you need a lot more of the Highlands Scotch than of the Islay. Perhaps I will repeat the experiment with a 75-25 ratio.

Today's Shoes

Day

Gravati cap-toe bal in mid-brown Lama calf (16592 , 500 last). I really need to get this shoe in dark brown Lama, too. The informality of the grained calfskin contrasts nicely with the formality of the shoe style.

Evening

Gravati plain-toe monkstrap in dark brown peccary (16371 , 640 last).

Last Night's Tipple

I regret to inform you, the faithful readers of The Last Shall Be First, that I am a good-for-nothing layabout and have consequently not attempted by Caol Ila-Clynelish vatting experiment yet. I have nothing to offer in my own defense except the fact that I felt like having a Bourbon last night. Buffalo Trace's Elmer T. Lee fit the bill nicely. I have nothing to add to what I wrote about this whiskey before, but it was very pleasant.

A Pillow Bleg

For those of you who are side-sleepers, have you ever tried one of those hourglass-shaped neck pillows like the ones pictured to the left? If so, do they work? And does anybody have a recommendation for something else to avoid getting a neck crick during the night? Thanks in advance...

Yes, Virginia, Japan's a Bit Different From Here

Lexus is a fantastically successful luxury car brand in the United States, but Toyota (which owns Lexus) is having a difficult time establishing it in Japan. It was only introduced there in 2005, and, according to a front-page article in today's Wall Street Journal ("The Samurai Sell: Lexus Dealers Bow to Move Swank Cars", p. A1 -- yes, I know that half of the moderately interesting things that I write about come from articles in the Journal; my existence is circumscribed), it's struggling to get traction. BMW and Mercedes-Benz have a stranglehold on the Japanese luxury car market, and most Japanese associate Lexus with the middle-brow cars from Toyota that dominate the market in less-expensive cars. So Toyota has tried a number of tactics to dissociate Lexus from the larger Toyota brand and to compete with BMW and Mercedes. Some of them sound like things that a company might do in the United States. For example, because of the price of real estate in urban Japan, most car dealers have minuscule showrooms and do most of their sales via home visits, but Lexus has opened a number of spacious and luxuriously-appointed showrooms. But other tactics are, well, very Japanese. Lexus sends its employees to a three-day etiquette training course at Fuji Lexus College, where they learn elaborate, traditional Japanese etiquette. This etiquette, at least as interpreted by Lexus, calls for them to

[point] with all five fingers to the [car door handle], right hand followed by left. Then, [they] gracefully [open] the boor with both hands, in the same way Japanese samurais in the 14th century would have opened a sliding screen door.

Sound a little odd? Well, consider how Lexus salesman serve potential clients coffee or tea:

When serving coffee or tea, employees must kneel on the floor with both feet together and both knees on the ground. The coffee cup must never make a noise when placed on the table.

Can you imagine the awkwardness if someone did this for an American client? The point is not to hold the Japanese up to ridicule. After all, I'm sure that we have more than a few etiquette norms that would mystify and amuse the Japanese. The point is that despite the similarities in our economic systems and material accouterments, we're still very different from one another.

Today's Shoes

Day

In honor of a day that promised to have a lower chance of rain than any day in the past two weeks, I broke out the good shoes again: Cleverley size-elastic shoes with hand-sewn one-piece apron in burgundy calf. Have I mentioned recently how perfect side-elastic shoes are? Perhaps I should get a wholecut with a floating medallion next...

Evening

Continuing with the I'm-so-glad-that-it's-not-raining-today theme, I decided on my Gravati cap-toe bals with reversed seams and a stitching detail on the toe cap and throat that imitates brogueing in tobacco suede (16492, 655 last). Suede is traditionally a material for the fall and winter, but I pretty much ignore that convention.

Last Night's Tipple

There are two beers that I think about when I look back nostalgically at college. The first is Pearl. The second is Shiner Bock. Shiner Bock was the first decent beer that I ever had, and throughout college, it was what I and many others reached for when we wanted something other than the boring insipidity of American megabrews like Budweiser or MGD. It had no pretensions to being a gourmet beer or a microbrew but was rather always a simple, flavorful, well-made beer in the best tradition of American regional breweries.

Since that time, the Spoetzl Brewery in Shiner, Texas, which makes Shiner, seems to have decided that their future lies in going the way of craft brewers, or, at least, making it seem that way. Packaging has gotten slicker. Prices have risen. Where previously there were really only two varieties offered (Shiner Bock and Shiner Blonde), those are now joined by a Kolsch, a Hefeweizen, a Dunkelweizen, and a Light. And, in honor of the five years leading up to the Spoetzl Brewery's 100th anniversary in 2009, there have been a series of special-edition beers, a different one each year. This year's is called Shiner 98 and claims to be something called a "Bavarian-style lager". I don't know exactly what that is, but I can tell you that the beer is malty with a goodly kick of hops. It's not heavy, and it's not sweet, despite the maltiness. I enjoyed it, although I can't say that it was worth the $7.49 a six pack I paid for it. I could get any of the Saint Andrew's lineup for less, and I think that Saint Andrew's makes better beer.

Calvinball!

In his comment to Mamacita's blog entry about him teaching his son Emmet to play chess, Papi Chulo writes:

I wouldn't say I taught him chess. I just clarified that whatever game it was he claimed to play and repeatedly defeat Miranda during game day at school was not chess. It was apparently Calvinball with chess pieces.

He has so far found chess to be excessively unfair in comparison to that game.

I had no idea what Calvinball was (although, knowing Emmet and other kids his age, I could guess), so I had to Google it. This page was the first one that popped up. There are a lot of rules to Calvinball, but the one that best captures its essence is Rule 1.2:

1.2 Any player may declare a new rule at any point in the game (Figure 1.2). The player may do this audibly or silently depending on what zone (Refer to Rule 1.5) the player is in.

Watching Emmet play Calvinball with chess pieces would have been amusing.

What Do You Know? Economics Works!

There is a front-page article in last Tuesday's Wall Street Journal that discusses the increasing difficulties some American firms are having with outsourcing software development to India ("Some in Silicon Valley Begin to Sour on India", p. A1). As is typical of Journal articles of this sort, it mixes anecdotes with more general statistics, in this case to portray wage inflation and the accompanying job turnover in the Indian tech sector as reaching uncomfortably high levels.

The result [of the limited pool of qualified software developers who have the language and technical skills to work for American companies] is increasing competition for the most skilled Indian computer engineers and a narrowing U.S.-India gap in their compensation. India's software-and-service association puts wage inflation in its industry at 10% to 15% a year. Some tech executives say it's closer to 50%. In the U.S., wage inflation in the software sector is under 3%, according to Moody's Economy.com... [T]he experienced engineers Silicon Valley companies covet can now cost $60,000 to $100,000 a year... Increases like that [in compensation] have spurred a lot of job-hopping in India. Pervasive Software Inc. of Austin, Texas, opened a Bangalore unit in 2004 and hired 45 people. But soon its turnover was more than 25% a year, says the company's CEO, John Farr. The company kept having to invest in training workers, only to see them leave. A year ago, it shut its Bangalore unit.

What I read in this story matches the anecdotes that I have heard about Indian outsourcing recently. I have heard stories from more than one friend or colleague in the industry about terrible problems with turnover: they get good people trained up, and those good people leave for a better salary. That's not surprising, and I can't blame the Indian programmers who do this. However, it does significantly change the value proposition of outsourcing software development to India. Major outsourcing companies have responded by opening up shops in places like China, Mexico, Poland, and Brazil. The wages in these new places are significantly lower than they are now in India, but they also don't have some of India's advantages. Because of the good Indian system of technical education and the fact that the language of education there is English, India has a large pool of qualified people who speak English. Countries like Poland and China likely have large or at least significant pools of people with the technical skills, but English is not nearly as pervasive there as it is in India. Mexico and Brazil have an advantage in that the time difference between them and the United States is small or non-existent, but I wonder if they have large enough populations of people with the necessary technical skills.

Too many managers in the US have believed that they can save tons of money on software development by simply outsourcing it to India. Well, guess what, guys? The law of supply and demand works in India just like it does here. If the demand for Indian-based software developers increases dramatically and the supply of qualified Indian-based software developers remains relatively static, the cost of obtaining the services of some of those developers will also rise dramatically. The same thing will happen as more companies move into China, Poland, and elsewhere. Outsourcing is not a magic bullet that will slash the cost of software development to nothing, no matter how much US managers wish that it was.

Today's Shoes

Mephisto four-eyelet plain-toe bluchers in dark brown pebble-grain calf with a rubber sole (Marlon model). This is the second time that I have worn these shoes; and I think that in the future, I would be better off getting the narrow width. Even though these are supposedly medium, my feet are practically swimming in them. I can barely touch the side of the shoe with my pinky toes. The reason that these shoes exist is for walking comfort, not for aesthetics. That having been said, their aesthetics are not horrible. I wouldn't go so far as to say that they're beautiful, but they are wearable without embarrassment.

Last Night's Tipple

I know that I said I would vat Caol Ila and Clynelish together and compare the result to Compass Box Eleuthera, but I didn't feel like it. I promise to refund every cent of the money that you paid to access this site. Instead, I decided to give Old Overholt Rye a try.

Old Overholt is one of the grand old brands in American Whiskey. The Overholt distillery was founded in 1810 by Abraham Overholt in western Pennsylvania, although the Overholts had been making whiskey in the New World since the mid 18th Century. Their surname was originally Overholtzer, and they were (shockingly enough) German immigrants. Most people who give the matter a casual thought believe that the pioneers of the American whiskey business were predominantly Scottish and Scotch-Irish, but this is not universally so. Many or most of the distillers of rye whiskey in Pennsylvania and Maryland were of German descent, and the same is true of some of the early Bourbon distillers in Kentucky. The Beams of Bourbon fame were originally the Boehms, immigrants from Germany. I have read that American rye whiskey has its roots in an unaged, colorless rye-based spirit produced in eastern Germany and western Poland (ie, something very close to vodka), although I have not been able to find a reliable source for that. In any event, Old Overholt was family-owned until the late 19th Century, and that family was of German extraction. Through a series of coincidences, by 1919 two thirds of the distillery passed into the hands (either directly owned or controlled in trust) of financier Andrew Mellon, who became President Harding's Secretary of the Treasury in 1921. His ownership in the distillery was no small embarrassment to Mellon when he became Secretary, not least because one of his chief duties was to regulate and shut down distilleries during Prohibition. He unloaded it as soon as he could, although not without Democratic-leaning newspapers attempting to make his ownership and the sale of his stake into a scandal. Through a series of transactions in the middle and late part of the 20th Century, the Old Overholt distillery and brand passed into the control of Jim Beam in 1987. The distillery was soon closed, but the brand lives on, produced at the Beam distillery in Claremont, KY.

Jim Beam makes two rye whiskeys: Jim Beam Straight Rye and Old Overholt Straight Rye. Both are made from the same mashbill on the same stills, and both carry age statements saying that they are four years old. But they don't taste at all alike. Jim Beam Rye is grassy and young and zippy, and to me, it doesn't taste like a typical rye. I like it, and I think that a lot of the grief it gets online is a result of snobbery rather than an evaluation on its merits; but it's not like other rye whiskeys that I've tried. Old Overholt is. In fact, if someone were looking for a whiskey that typifies the style, I would recommend Old Overholt. There is a powerful spicy rye punch as soon as I smell the glass. With some time, that mellows into some vanilla, which seems a bit odd to me for a whiskey that's only four years old. It's smooth and spicy on the palate. This is just about the most drinkable whiskey that I've tried. By that, I don't mean that it's the best, just that it's very appetizing, and it doesn't tire me out. I would be interested to see what this would taste like at 100 proof instead of 80, but, alas, such a beast does not exist. At $12 a fifth, this is an outstanding bargain and the perfect way to get into American straight rye whiskey.

Today's Shoes

Gravati five-eyelet blucher ankle boots in antiqued tan calf with a rubber lug sole (15950, 640 last).

I also stopped by Harold's in the Heights today to see what shoes they have on sale in my size. They had some that were interesting, including a Moreschi driving moc in tan Scotch grain. I liked them but ultimately decided that I could somehow live without them. I was tempted by the Gravati split-toe bluchers in dark brown crocodile; but I would prefer a crocodile shoe in a cap-toe bal, and it was still too much money to spend on a pair of shoes I wasn't sure about.

The Worst Intersection In Houston

Well, it might not actually be the absolute worst intersection in Houston, but it is the one that causes me the most annoyance. It's intersection of Spur 527 and Elgin in Midtown. Actually, it's the intersection where Spur 527 changes into Brazos St. and Westheimer Rd. changes into Elgin St. There are three main problems. First, there's one of those red light cameras at the light as you're going from Spur 527 onto Brazos, which makes you deathly afraid of having the light change as you go through the intersection. Second, there is no pedestrian walk/don't walk light at the intersection, so it's impossible to get a sense of when the light is about to change. Third, an HPD car has a habit of camping out at the next intersection up Brazos (Rosalie St.) to catch speeders coming off Spur 527. So, because of the red light camera and the lack of pedestrian crossing lights, your tendency is to speed up when approaching the intersection to make sure that you make it through on green, but HPD has a speed trap immediately after the intersection, which is made all the worse by the fact that the speed limit on Spur 527 is 50 while the speed limit on Brazos is 30. In other words, it seems like the City of Houston crafted this intersection with the express purpose of generating as much revenue as possible from it, not to make it safe or anything boring like that.

Last Night's Tipple

Islay whiskies enjoy quite a following among Scotch enthusiasts for a number of reasons, I think. There are only seven Islay distilleries, and bottlings from all seven are readily available in the United States if one expends a little effort and a bit more than a little cash. This means that it's possible to sample and become familiar with all seven without Herculean effort, something that's just not possible with, say, Highland Scotches or Speyside Scotches. With their peatiness, Islay Scotches stand out apart from the crowd. They're extremely distinctive -- a mellow Speyside like Glenlivet has a flavor profile that shares more similarities with Canadian Whisky than it does with a peat monster like Ardbeg. And, let's face it, there's a bit of posturing one-up-manship among Islay enthusiasts. Peaty whiskies are MANLY in the same way that extra-hoppy beers are manly. At a subconscious level, I think that many Islay drinkers like the fact that they can handle a peaty, briny whisky that the vast majority of spirits drinkers would spit out.

Among Islay enthusiasts, Caol Ila has developed quite a bit of a following in recent years. Despite the fact that the Caol Ila distillery produces more Scotch than any of the other Islay distilleries, it's less well-known than Bowmore, Laphroaig, or Ardbeg. It's also harder to find because most of its production goes to the blenders. Aside from the novelty and rarity factors that appeal to snobs, however, it also has a following because it's very good. As is typical of Islay, the 12 year old has a big, peaty nose and a briny palate. But there's more to it than that. With some time in the glass, the nose mellows out a bit, and a big dose of malt comes through. Too, it goes down smooth and gentle, completely without the gasoline-like properties that some other Islays have. It's a beautiful, complex whisky that has merit outside of its Islay category. I can see why it is so popular with the blenders: it offers a big dose of smoke, but it's not one-dimensional.

Having sampled Clynelish and Caol Ila independently now, I will see how they behave when blended together tonight, a la Compass Box Eleuthera. Wish me luck: neither one of these is cheap enough to pour out lightly, so I hope I get something drinkable.

Today's Shoes

Alden split-toe bluchers in Color #8 shell cordovan (2210, Aberdeen last). The split-toe blucher is one of Alden's canonical shoes (although I think that Nettleton invented the style rather than Alden), and in shell cordovan, it's a legitimate classic. The picture and my shoes are from the Alden Shop in San Francisco, whose proprietor, Alan White, is another of the good guys in the shoe business. I saw this same model in whiskey shell cordovan at the Alden Shop on Madison Avenue in New York this past March, and it was a fantastic shoe. Unfortunately, they did not have it in my size; and they said that they had been waiting two years for fill-ins. Whiskey shell cordovan is not very common, you see.

Last Night's Tipple

The Scottish like to think of Scotland as the mother of whisky, but that honor probably belongs to Ireland, with Scotland being a relative Johnny-come-lately in the world of distillation. By the 19th Century, Irish Whiskey had developed a style similar to that of Scotch but distinct. Where Scotch (at least malt Scotch) used only malted barley, the Irish had begun to use a mashbill of both malted and unmalted barley because of a tax on malt. Where Scotch malt was dried over peat fires, Irish malt was dried via indirect heat from coal fires. Where Scotch distillers typically distilled their spirit twice in pot stills, the Irish tended to opt for a triple distillation, which produced a lighter, cleaner spirit.

A combination of factors, including overproduction and Prohibition in the United States, conspired to bring hard times on the Irish distilling business. There used to be dozens of commercial distilleries in Ireland. Today there are three: Bushmills (actually in Northern Ireland), which produces only malt whiskey; Midleton, in County Cork; and Cooley, a recent start-up on the Cooley Peninsula and the producers of Ireland's only peated malt whiskey (Connemara). Most of the Irish Whiskey sold today, including most of the grand old brands that are still extant, is distilled at Midleton, which is truly an industrial-scale distillery. That includes Tullamore Dew. The Tullamore Distillery in central Ireland began production in 1829, and its flagship brand began production in the closing years of the 19th Century. Supposedly, "Dew" is an acronym of the name of the distillery's general manager, Daniel E. Williams, although that sounds like a just-so story to me. What isn't a just-so story is Tullamore's famous advertising slogan: "Give every man his Dew." Williams's grandson, touring the US in 1947, observed that the tastes of American drinkers had shifted to a lighter-bodied product, and this observation led him to introduce Tullamore Dew blended whiskey in that year. This was the first blended Irish whiskey on the market, and it was the beginning of a trend that almost killed Irish malt and pot-still whiskey. It didn't save Tullamore, though, and the distillery closed in 1959. The brand didn't die, though, and it's owned by a firm called Cantrell & Cochrane, which contracts out production to Midleton.

The 12 year old bottling that I have is a bit older and more expensive than plain old Tullamore Dew. It's still a blended product, and the vanilla aromas that waft up from the glass make this clear. In addition, though, there is this unique pungent sour smell that is hard to describe but that Tullamore Dew shares with other blended Irish Whiskey that I've tried like Jameson's. I don't know what it is -- maybe it's the unmalted barley from the whiskey's pot still component. I'm not sure if I like it or not, but it is distinctive. The palate is smooth, sweet, and not particularly memorable. This whiskey is okay but not spectacular, and I don't think that I'll buy it again when this bottle is gone. I will gladly try a 100% pot still whiskey like Redbreast, though, or a premium blend like Midleton Very Rare.

Amateur Typist?

In Perjury, Allen Weinstein's book about the Hiss-Chambers affair, there is an excerpt from Alger Hiss's December 4, 1948 statement to the FBI about the typewriters that he and his wife owned in the late 1930s:

During the period from 1936 to sometime after 1938, we had a typewriter in our home in Washington. This was an old-fashioned machine, possibly an Underwood, but I am not at all certain regarding the make. Mrs. Hiss, who is not a typist, used this machine somewhat as an amateur typist, but I never recall having used it.

Hiss was wrong: the machine was a Woodstock, not an Underwood, and his conflicting and obfuscatory statements about the typewriters he owned and used during this period eventually became some of the principal incriminating evidence in his perjury trials. More about that when I actually finish reading the book; but what I was struck by in this passage was Hiss's phrase "amateur typist." Can you imagine a time when those who typed could be divided into those who did so professionally and those who did so as a hobby?

I was also struck that typewriter forensic science had advanced to such a point in the 1940s that it was possible to identify not only the typewriter a particular document was typed on but to identify who typed it.

Today's Shoes

Day

Gravati side-zip ankle boots in dark brown kangaroo (16821, 683 last).

Evening

TO Stanley cowboy boots with dark brown kangaroo vamps and shafts and a walking heel. These boots were a special order; and to remind me of that fact, they have my initials in tan calf on the shafts. They appear to be well-made, but I don't like the foam rubber pads that Stanley puts in the heels of the boots.

Last Night's Tipple

I know, I know, Baker's is another repeat, but it wouldn't be right to drink anything other than American liquor on the Fourth of July. And since Bourbon has been declared to be "America's Native Spirit" by the US Congress, I might as well have some of that. (In actuality, the original American spirit was probably rum, which was widely distilled in colonial New England. After that would have to be rye whiskey, which was the whiskey of the Whiskey Rebellion in 1793. But hey, who am I to argue with Congress?) There's no real point in repeating my tasting notes from before, such as they are, but I will say that I would like to line up Baker's, Booker's, Knob Creek, and Jim Beam Black and try them all at the same time. They all have the same mashbill, and they all are of similar age. Just how different is the flavor profile of each? It would be a fun experiment and a good excuse to drink some Bourbon.

Women's Shoes

In her comment to this post, Sara writes:

Do you have opinions about women's shoes? Specifically, if I was going to buy a "20 year" pair of shoes, I don't know what would even last that long, style wise. Ballet flates. Tennis shoes. Loafers, maybe. But fashion drives so much of the styles in women's shoes (even more classic ones), and if one was to look back 20 years and see what still looks wearable...

I will confess that I know next to nothing about women's shoes, but lack of knowledge has never stopped me from having an opinion about anything before! As Sara notes, women's shoe styles are much more ephemeral than are men's (where virtually no worthwhile style has been created in the last 60 years) and that what is stylish today may not be so stylish two years from now, to say nothing about twenty years. Women's shoes are ephemeral in another way, too: they're not as sturdily-made as men's shoes, and most, even if you wanted to keep them for twenty years, could not possibly last that long. Dress shoes especially try to look slim and dainty. The way to achieve this look is to use a thin leather sole and to glue it to the upper. The sole won't last very long, and it's hard to imagine how such a shoe could be resoled. If you want those cute little Blahnik alligator strappy sandals to last very long, don't wear them very often.

The way that you get women's shoes to last as long a time as quality men's shoes is to make them as quality men's shoes, men's shoe manufacturers have for quite some time been attempting to branch out into women's shoes. The results haven't always been good. The picture above is from an Edward Green catalogue from the late '80s or early '90s. I think that you'll agree that no matter how well-made the shoes pictured are, they are hideous. Edward Green is a bit of an outlier, of course, but their efforts here are typical in that they're selling exactly the same designs as they sell for their men's shoes, only in smaller sizes and with some element included that they think will "feminize" the shoe. Regardless of the manufacturer, the result is usually dowdy at best and utterly revolting at worst. Most men's dress shoes simply don't work for women.

There are, however, a couple of models in the men's shoe canon that work very well for women. One is the penny loafer. The second is the Chelsea boot. Any woman could use at least one of each, neither one is going to go out of style, and both are designs conducive to being made as men's shoes typically are made, which means that good examples can last for many, many years. Consider this example of a Chelsea boot from Crockett & Jones. Wouldn't it be perfect for any variety of casual outfits?

On This Day

On this day in 1863, Confederate Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton surrendered his Army of Mississippi and the city of Vicksburg, Mississippi to Union Major General Ulysses S. Grant and his Army of the Tennessee. Pemberton's army had been trapped in Vicksburg and under seige since May 18, 1863, had run out of food, and had given up hope of relief. The fall of Vicksburg, coupled with the fall of Port Hudson, Louisiana five days later, removed the last Confederate obstructions to unfettered Union navigation of the Mississippi River, cut Texas and Arkansas off from the rest of the Confederacy, and signaled the beginning of the end for the South.

Because of the Yazoo River and the Mississippi Delta just upriver from Vicksburg, approaching the city from the north is difficult. Indeed, Grant spent some four months trying to get his troops downriver into position to assault Vicksburg, and his efforts came to nothing but grief. In a flash of genius, he decided to run his naval units past Vicksburg at night, march his army below Vicksburg on the west bank of the Mississippi, cross back over to the eastern bank, and assault Vicksburg from the south. He crossed back into Mississippi on April 30 and quickly marched east to take Jackson before turning back to Vicksburg, sweeping aside various Confederate forces in his way. Grant has the reputation as an unimaginative butcher, but this isn't fair. He didn't shrink from fighting, but he had a first-class military mind. Anyone who doubts that should study the Vicksburg campaign.

Today's Shoes

Gravati plain-toe four-eyelet bluchers in waterproof blue suede with a microcellular rubber sole (15445, last 433). Wearing Italian shoes on Independence Day, you ask? Well, I'm not proud of it, but it is rainy outside today, and none of my decent American shoes are waterproof. And, in my defense, these shoes are blue.

Last Night's Tipple

I know, I know, I've had this one before, but it's not feasible for me to try something new every day. One of the reasons that I like American whiskeys (at least good American whiskeys) so much is they are constantly evolving in the glass. Take a whiff and a sip, and you'll form one impression. Put the glass down, come back to it in a minute or two, and try it again. It's likely that you'll get something else. Not only that, but these two things are both likely to be very pleasant. Such is the case with Wild Turkey Rye (and with every other Wild Turkey product that I've tried). There's this rye graininess at first, which evolves into a fruity, cinnamony character and later on to smooth vanilla. The thing about it is that this isn't an old whiskey, either: it's probably five or six years old, if that. It's young and vibrant and full of everything that I like about American whiskey. I imagine that it would make a heck of a Manhattan, too, but I'm too lazy to make one.

Today's Shoes

Day

Edward Green half-brogue bluchers in British tan calf (EG calls it Edwardian Antique -- Cardiff model, 89 last). Edward Green made these shoes for Ralph Lauren, and I got them on sale from Bluefly. These are among the most elegant bluchers that I've ever seen: the coloration, the brogueing, and the lack of the heel counter are just perfect. Whatever else one can say about Ralph Lauren, he does know good shoes. Well, sometimes, at least.

Evening

Martegani Cortona penny loafers. They're the perfect accompaniment for my brand-new orange gingham check shirt.

Last Night's Tipple

The gentleman to the right is John Glaser, the founder of Compass Box Whisky. For a number of years, he was first US marketing director then global marketing director for Johnnie Walker. He left in 2000 to start Compass Box with the stated mission to "revolutionize" the Scotch whisky world. In evaluating anything that John Glaser says, of course, it is useful to remember his background: he did work for Johnnie Walker (and so naturally absorbed some of the Johnnie Walker philosophy of whisky), but he did so as a marketing person rather than a whisky person. I have no doubt that he knows and cares a lot about Scotch whisky, but it is undeniable that Compass Box is a slick marketing machine (how else can you respond when he says that he wants Compass Box to be the Ben and Jerry's of the Scotch world?) and that his business plan was well-crafted to avoid the pitfalls of the spirits world. The two biggest problems for spirits producers are the capital investment required (stills and barrels are expensive, and one has to pay taxes when one distills the spirit, despite the fact that the spirit can't be sold for years) and the difficulty in creating a consistent brand. Glaser decided that Compass Box would be a blender, buying whisky in cask from distilleries, blending it, and bottling it under their own label. Because they buy the whisky in cask, they avoid most of the capital investment required of a distillery. Because they blend the whisky they buy, they can make it consistent, even when buying relatively small quantities. Combine these two things with fancy packaging, good marketing, and good whisky, and you have something.

This last ingredient is key: the whisky has to be good. Otherwise, the brand will fail, at least when it's primarily marketed to whisky snobs. And John Glaser was smart enough to hire people who knew Scotch and knew blending. The Compass Box whiskies that I've tried have been very good. The one that I had last night, Eleuthera, whose stated mission is to be assertively smoky but not one-dimensionally smoky. It succeeds in that. According to the Compass Box website, the centerpieces of this vatted malt are Caol Ila, Glenlossie, and Clynelish. I've never had Glenlossie, but I do have bottles of Caol Ila and Clynelish on hand. I can certainly see how both of these fit into the blend. The nose at first is all smoke and bacon, but over time, it tones down into just a smoke-tinged sweet orange. On the palate, it's a bit briny, but mostly sweet, waxy, and smooth. I'm tempted to mix Caol Ila and Clynelish 50-50 and see how close the result is to Eleuthera. It's an enjoyable Scotch, and although not mind-altering, it does show quite clearly what blending can achieve.

(The bottling that Compass Box is most known for is Hedonism, which is a vatting of Scotch grain whiskies. As such, it is utterly unique in the market -- nobody else uses grain whiskies for anything other than blendings. I would think that the result would be similar to a gentle American straight whiskey or an aged Canadian whisky, but I don't know. I am intensely curious. Alas, Compass Box doesn't appear to be available in Houston.)

There is No Santa Claus in Men's Shoes

Saturday's Wall Street Journal had an article by Ray Smith about inexpensive men's shoe brands attempting to go upscale with slightly pricier offerings that ape some of the styling details found on much more expensive shoes ("Footing a Higher Bill", p. P7). Some of the shoes mentioned were a $140 pair of Hush Puppies made from "pre-aged leather" with a hand-stitched detail across the vamp; Bostonian's Italian-made Luxe line, featuring "antiqued leather" and a $170 price tag; and Rockport's $110 pair of wingtip bluchers with "hand-stitching on top and leather made to look vintage." Some other tidbits in the article include the fact that sales of men's dress shoes increased 13.5% last year, compared to a 0.6% increase in sales of men's casual shoes.

First, a word about potential biases. I have been interviewed by Ray Smith before (for a story that never came to fruition), and he had contacted me about doing an interview for this story. Ultimately, he and his editor decided that they wanted the story to go in a different direction, so the interview never took place. I enjoy Ray's articles in the Journal (nearly all about men's clothing); and although I think that they're often a bit basic, they probably fit well with the average Journal reader.

It shouldn't be a surprise either that the cheaper brands are aping the more expensive ones or that they're trying to get more money for their shoes. This has been going on in the clothing world (and with every other kind of consumer good) since time immemorial. The types of design elements that Ray mentions came into vogue on more expensive brands several years ago, and it's not surprising that they would trickle down. What I have noticed about such knockoff shoes that I've seen is that they give it the ol' college try, but they don't quite get it right. One of the quotes in the story hits it on the head:

Evaluating the Hush Puppies model, Eric Rizk, a conflicts analyst for a financial advisory firm, was surprised by the cost of the pricier shoes by Hush Puppies and Johnston & Murphy. "This stitching looks cheap," he said, evaluating the Hush Puppies model. "It doesn't even look like leather." He thought Johnston & Murphy's $295 shoe should also be priced less, at about $150, calling the look and stitching merely OK.

Quality leather isn't cheap, and it's getting more expensive. Good hides are harder to come by these days, and new environmental regulations have driven many European tanneries out of business. Quality construction isn't cheap, either, and the decline of the dollar relative to the euro has made decent European-made shoes increasingly expensive. When brands attempt to copy the look of $800 shoes for $140, it's just not going to come out quite right. Corners have to be cut to meet the price. There's no way around it. Not wanting to pay $800 for a pair of shoes is entirely rational, but recognize the trade-offs you're making when you spend less.

(As an aside, note that not a whole lot has to be done to a pair of shoes in Italy for them to be legally labeled as "Made in Italy". Typically, most of the work is done across the Adriatic in Slovenia or Croatia, where labor costs are very low. The mostly-made shoes are then shipped to Italy, finished, and emblazoned with the "Made in Italy" label. Nice, huh?)

Today's Shoes

Day

Crockett & Jones full brogue bal in antique tan calf (Downing model, 330 last). These are another pair of rain shoes that I don't wear that often because I am not particularly enamored of C&J Handgrade shoes. They aspire to be in the same league as Edward Green, but they don't quite make it. That's not something to be ashamed of, but I would rather spend the extra money to get the Edward Green shoes or spend less and get regular old C&J shoes.

One peculiar thing about all C&J shoes regardless of the level of construction is the way that they do heel counters. A heel counter is a piece of leather around the heel of a shoe. It serves two purposes: to strengthen any heel seams on the shoe and to provide decoration. Only, with C&J, it can't serve to strengthen the heel seams because it is actually two pieces of leather with a seam up the middle. It's purely decorative, and it's very odd. I have no idea why they do counters this way, and I don't really like it.

Evening

Gravati three-eyelet half-brogue bluchers in dark brown waterproof suede with rubber lug soles (16407, 640 last). Another wet, rainy day.

Last Night's Tipple

All major Scotch blenders have a core malt around which to base their. For Johnnie Walker, that malt is Cardhu. For Civas Brothers, it's Strathisla. For Dewar's, it's Aberfeldy. The Aberfeldy distillery was built by Tommy Dewar, the marketing genius behind Dewar's, in 1898, during the golden age of Scotch distillery construction. Before building Aberfeldy, Dewar had to buy his malt whiskies from other distilleries, and doing that was always a risky proposition: there could be no guarantee that he could get the whiskies that he needed to keep his blend consistent. Owning his own malt distillery solved that problem.

Such was Dewar's need for malt whisky (and such was the state of Scotch marketing) that Aberfeldy has until recently been almost unavailable as a single malt. Recognizing which way the luxury liquor winds were blowing, Dewar's began bottling a 12 year old of Aberfeldy in 1999 and an 18 year old version a few years later. The bottle classifies Aberfeldy as a Highlands malt, and I suppose that's accurate. The nose has a bit of orange and a hint of sherry sweetness. The palate has some honey overtones on some malty sweetness. It's a clean and enjoyable whisky. It's not earth-shaking or mind-altering, but I would never turn down a bottle.

Just For You, Ben

My friend Ben excused himself for wearing revolting hiking boots with his shorts to brunch today by saying that it was rainy outside, and his boots were waterproof. Hmmph, I say. If he were really concerned about his boots being waterproof, he would have been wearing something like the Crockett & Jones Snowdon boot pictured to the left. It's made with Veldtschoen construction, which means that the upper is turned out instead of in to the welt, that the tongue has a bellows construction, and that there are very few seams on the upper that could possibly allow water into the boot. The term, and the shoemaking technique it describes, originates from the Boers. It used to be a common construction method for British country shoes back when most Britons still cared about quality; but with the advent of cheap, disposable shoes, it has become rarer and rarer. The Snowdon is one of probably less than 20 Veldtschoen models left for the Northampton shoemaking firms. One frequently sees veldtschoen shoes and boots made from Scotch grain leather, but these are made from a waxed oxhide that is virtually impermeable to water. They're about as impermeable to weather as it is possible for boots not made of rubber or plastic to be, and they're a damn sight more attractive than those monstrosities that he was wearing. Although I wouldn't recommend these for wear with shorts, either.

Today's Shoes

Vass split-toe Chasses with a reverse welt and a rubber lug sole in dark brown pebble-grain calf (Norweger model, Budapest last). The shoes to the right are the same model from Vass, but I don't believe that they're on Budapest, and they certainly don't have a reverse welt, rubber lug soles, or dark brown pebble-grain uppers. I ordered these to be my New York walking shoes, and while they have never seen service as that, they certainly do very nicely on a rainy day like today.

Last Night's Tipple

Sailors have a reputation for drinking a lot. Nowadays, this is done ashore. Before 1970 in the Royal Navy (1862 in the US Navy) a lot of it was done on the ship. Royal Navy regulations entitled every sailor to a gallon of beer or wine per day. That's a lot of beer, and it took up a great deal of room aboard the ship. Not only that, but it would spoil or otherwise become unpalatable on long voyages. Captains began to substitute brandy, which had the dual virtues of taking up less space and of being immune to spoilage. After the English captured Jamaica in 1655, they had easy access to another spirit, rum, and rum gradually replaced brandy as the spirit of choice aboard Royal Navy ships. Because it was stronger than beer or wine, Royal Navy officials figured that a pint of rum was roughly equivalent of the required gallon of beer. Half a pint was issued in the morning, and half a pint in the evening; and the sailors were required to drink it all at once. Not surprisingly, this caused a non-trivial amount of drunkenness aboard the ship (can you imagine climbing up into the rigging in your bare feet on a rolling ship in heavy seas after having consumed a half pint of spirits?), and Admiral Vernon introduced grog in 1740. This was a mixture of rum, water, and lime juice. The quantity of rum issued did not decrease, but Admiral Vernon believed that watered rum was less intoxicating than full-strength rum. This mixture had the added benefit of introducing Vitamin C into the diets of Royal Navy sailors, which made them less susceptible to such common sea-going diseases as scurvy. By 1970, the rum ration was down to only an eighth of a pint per day. Parliament, believing the practice archaic, abolished it entirely in that year.

Pusser's Rum claims to be authentic Royal Navy rum. It has no added color or flavorings, a rarity in the world of modern rum; but what makes it truly unique is the way that it's distilled. Pusser's uses pot stills, but they're not like the copper pot stills of Scotland or Cognac. They're wooden. That's right: while the necks are copper, the body of the pots is wood. And it's not new wood, either. Some of it is up to 200 years old. Pusser's claims that using seasoned wood like this gives the rum a unique, full-bodied aroma and flavor. They're right about that. It's unlike any rum that I've ever had. Pusser's also claims to be the single-malt of the rum world. That's an accurate description, although perhaps for reasons other than what Pusser's intended: it smells and tastes more like a malt Scotch than it does a rum. It's perfectly dry, without the vanilla and molasses flavors that aged rums usually have. The nose is austere and musty. The flavor is, if anything, grainly and malt-like. I can't decide whether I like it or not, but it certainly is unique.