Trouserpress

This original Trouserpress, alas, has pressed its last wrinkle. The PHP has gone delinquent on me, and rather than mend its ways, I have re-started the blog at a new address, and in snazzier form. I hope.

There are a few good posts on the old press and I leave them up.

If you are an avid and regular reader of Trouserpress (if there is such a person), you might want to consider bookmarking the new page or resetting the RSS because all future posts will appear there.

That new location again.

My eldest son has two friends stopping over tonight which means that I am effectively a zoo animal in my own home.

I like Japanese people. I get on with Japanese people better than many other Westerners living here, but one thing that gets me down is the attitude to foreigners.

People tend to regard you, the gaijin, with embarrassing idolatry, familiarity, indulgence or outright hostility. With the possible exception of Tokyo, it is impossible to be just another person.

Walking to the station yesterday I passed two youths on an otherwise empty footbridge. One in a mocking and affectedly effete voice said ‘hello’ as I passed. A small thing, but illustrative of the way people can’t leave you alone. People stare at you, they won’t sit next to you on a train and store clerks and waiters panic if you speak to them, even in Japanese.

You are constantly asked about your tastes and lifestyle, and if anything matches the Japanese way of doing things you get a barrage of ‘eeeeeeh!’ noises, the local equivalent of ‘wow!’ or ‘no way!’. Your nose, height, hair colour, and eye colour are more causes for comment.

Tonight in my own living room I got a ‘Mecha ashi nagai!’ (What long legs!). You can just about put up with this outside, but not at home, which is supposed to be a sanctuary.

Imagine if I went up to a Japanese person and exclaimed, ‘wow, what black hair you have, and you’re kind of skinny.’ People would think me an utter idiot.

Next time someone tells me I have long legs, I might just point out that if they were shorter they wouldn’t reach the ground.

I wonder whether this leg-obsessed youth in my living room realizes ‘long legs’ is a term used in appreciating whisky. A well-made whisky is more viscous than water and you can see this after swirling the drink around in your glass in the trails of whisky running down the inside from the tidemark. Long, thick trails are known as ‘long legs’.

This month’s whisky, my Christmas present is very leggy indeed. It is a Bowmore 17 and is a very exciting tipple with or without the legs.

I am thinking of writing a song about it: ‘Bowmore Is Big Leggy’. Do you think it will catch on?

Burned orange. That’s what I thought of on tasting the Bowmore. Peat and burned orange. Earlier this month when trying out the Laphroaig, I threatened to stop reading the tasting notes and think for myself. So this is what happened on Christmas day when I opened the bottle — I tried thinking for myself. I repeated to myself ‘burned orange, burned orange, burned orange,’ like a mantra, utterly convinced that if I checked the tasting notes, I would find lots of references to burned orange. So I was nonplussed after reading four reviews of this whisky to find not one reference to burned orange, not even something that could be considered close to it.

Martine Nouet says:

Nose
Flowery, peaty. Mix of turf, dried herb and heather, lightly smoked. Briny notes emerge. A delicate intricacy of aromas.
Palate
Very smooth and velvety. Malty with an assertive smoky tone soothed by licorice and coconut. Wood keeps control of peat and smoke. A salty feel.

While Dave Broom tells us:

Nose
Richer with scented peat hanging above it all: heather, hint of lavender essential oil, then into cod liver oil, shoreline. Less overtly briny. Well balanced notes of brazil nut, moist tobacco, resin, liqueur chocolate, walnut, dried fruit, Jaffa cake.
Palate
Chewy and soft. Peat has a bigger say in centre, chocolate, mint. A slightly soapy note.

Approximately none of which suggests itself to my nose. Except the peat, which I could have guessed, this being an Islay. So much for thinking for myself.

Nevertheless, a thoroughly fascinating whisky, which as I type is sitting in the bottle begging for me to go over to the cupboard to let it out.

Though the bugger could save me some effort and just walk over here to me on its own legs. Mecha ashi nagai!

Right, another month, another bottle of single malt. This time it’s The Macallan Fine Oak 12 year old.

I skipped last month so that my liver could get its breath back, but I’m gagging for a whisky, I am. I couldn’t hold out any longer.

One of the fun things about single malts is that they are all so different while supposedly being the same drink and I enjoy the fact that the flavours are so complex. I find some tasting notes and then try to spot the flavours. One day, perhaps I’ll have a go at thinking for myself.

Meanwhile, the tasting notes I am using today are from The Whisky Magazine (read here) and also those handy little notes printed on the packaging.

As an aside, I have to complain briefly about the marketing blurb on the box. It is an example of how marketers will write any old bollocks without regard to sense or meaning. The whisky is described as “sublime”. Well, if you tried the drink and thought to yourself ‘I like it, but I prefer a peaty Islay’ then it wouldn’t be sublime, would it? Do they honestly think I am more likely to buy a bottle if told by complete strangers who are trying to flog the stuff that it is sublime?
Whatever.

Back at the table, I haven’t opened the bottle yet. These days I approach a new bottle of scotch with a similar tingle of anticipation to sleeping with someone for the first time, but with no anxiety about my performance. I’m very good at drinking whisky and I don’t need any reassurance.

According to the box, the nose is “complex, with hints of fruit, vanilla and cut grass.”

I can’t be bothered to quote the Whisky Magazine. Just see for yourself.
[reverential pause while I open the bottle and pour a glass]
Ah. It just dawns on me that I have a blocked and knackered nose today. The smells are not getting through very well. I think I got the fruitiness, and for a moment possibly the hemp that reviewer Dave Broom mentioned. I suppose that could be the cut grass if it had been laying around on the lawn going brown. I like the word ‘complex’ in this nose test. It is safe and covers about everything.

The palate is said to be “medium, balanced with fruit, oak and spice” and the finish ought to be “long” with more of that fruit — now dried, apparently — oak and spice.

I am drinking this without ice or water, as is my habit.

My God, that’s good. Well, I won’t be going anywhere tonight or getting anything done.

The reviews talked oodles of sweet marmalade flavours and so on, which I am not getting. Oak. I am getting something woody which is presumably the alleged oak mentioned on the box, but not by the reviewers. I can get something like dried fruit in the finish where it is supposed to be.

It is rich in flavours, and speaks of open fires and cold windy nights, and yes, dammit, it is complex, and I’m not embarrassed to say so.

I have tried the Macallan 10 year old before and enjoyed it enormously, but I like this one better. Only two years older and there is a real difference in the taste. This is much more mature (the oak, presumably). In the 10, I can really taste the sweet toffee-ish notes. Not so with this one.

It has been a good year for whisky. Before January 2006, I had tried the following single malts:
Glenlivet
Glenmorangie
Glenfiddich
Laphroaig
each in their 10 year old incarnations

This year I have added to that list:
Macallan 10
Macallan 12
Glenmorangie sherry wood finish
Glenmorangie port wood finish
Talisker
Jura
Bowmore
three limited edition and antique expressions from Bruichladdich

I’ll probably go back quickest to Bowmore and Talisker as I have discovered a great partiality to that peat, but there are so many other flavours to explore it might not be soon. Next stop: either Strathisla or Highland Park.

When I started this blog I promised it would be about mortality, decay, loss, exile, and single malt scotch.
Well, we’ve had frogs, lizards and varicose veins, so lets get on with the drinking.
Those of you unfortunate enough to see me regularly are already more aware than you could possible want to be that this year it has been my project to sample as many single malt scotches as possible, and I’ve been doing very well indeed.
This month’s single malt is 12-year Bowmore, which is pronounced with the stress on the second syllable and is an Islay, as eny fule kno. Of the Islay whiskies, I have previously tried Laphroaig, and three different expressions from Bruichladdich. This is my first adventure with Bowmore.
The scotch whisky business in parallel with the wine business has been getting its marketing and branding well honed in recent decades to make the product accessible to your regular punter. Presumably it is in the spirit of this marketability that Bowmore has put its own tasting notes on the label of the bottle. Saves me Googling what flavours I am supposed to be looking for.
The notes tell me that the nose is lemon, pears and honey.
OK. Let’s give it a go.
To be honest. all I got at first was the overpowering smell of peat and whisky. Then it occurred to me to take my nose out of the neck of the bottle and pour some into a proper glass where I could swirl it about and unlock the flavours. Good move, now I can smell something. Something sharp. I’ll call that lemon, though the idea didn’t spring at me without suggestion. For a moment there I had something rich and sweet but then it went away again. Meanwhile I was getting something like fruit that I could accept was pear.
However, I left a glass of the stuff on the table a while and when I came back to it, the odour was pure honey — no lemon or pear. Then I sploshed in a refill and got a snootfull of lemon, but neither of the other fragrances. Mind you, I spent my early adulthood shovelling uncut speed into my nasal passages, so it’s not surprising that they are less than reliable.
Luckily my palate is in better working order. Peat smoke and dark chocolate, the label tells me. I’ll happily go along with that. I haven’t personally smoked peat (or not knowingly) but I imagine this is what it would taste like. As for the dark chocolate, I had some 90 percent cacao once and I can see the connection in the rich dryness and the way the skin on the inside of the mouth tries to shrivel up and hide behind the tonsils.
Finish: long and complex. I’ll say. This is mixed propositions of Wittgenstein spiced with Bohm on the implicate order.
One thing they don’t mention on the label is that having had a thorough taste test, there is no way you will be able to think of a satisfying way to wind up a blog entry.