Month: March 2022

Categories
Spec-Fic

The Blood-Curdling Forays of the Savage Turducken

Chapter 1

The following can be considered the ‘origin story’ of the Savage Turducken. Since its accidental manifestation in 1974, it has terrorised the whiskey manufacturers of North America. Just as Frankenstein acts as a warning to the medical profession and pioneers of science, so the story of the Savage Turducken is a cautionary tale for all who fry poultry.

The headlamp beams of a passing car tracked along the ceiling of the test kitchen. Jackson could hear the strains of Grand Funk Railroad grow louder, then fade as the car passed by, rumbling deeper into darkened Butchertown.

“Hey, Bob?” Jackson called over his shoulder. “You mind passing me the cilantro?”

Bob approached the bench Jackson was working at and placed the herbs by Jackson’s chopping board. He had successfully tucked his perm into a hairnet as state hygiene laws decreed; however, a lot of chest hair could be seen through his mostly unbuttoned shirt. Jackson was dressed similarly, a gleaming medallion bouncing gently against his diaphragm.

“Oh man, Jackson – that’s incredible! Where d’ya learn to sew like that?” Bob was one of the longest-serving employees of KFC’s Louisville development branch. He could point to many innovative successes during his tenure such as the strawberry shortcake milkshake cheesecake, bacon fries and of course the Rare Breed BBQ Sauce, but what the newer guys were attempting constantly amazed him. Jackson hadn’t been around long but was clearly going places.

“You know, Bob – living on a farm, you get used to stitching stuff back together.”

Over Jackson’s shoulder, Bob marvelled at the mass of birds Jackson was fusing into a pale, fleshy singularity.

“This the successor to the Poultry Po’ Boy?” asked Bob, practically in a whisper. Jackson’s Poultry Po’ Boy had turned into a remarkable higher value seller, using a modicum of duck meat to enrich a patty of chicken and turkey. Everyone in the larger offices upstairs had been very pleased with Jackson about that one.

“Something like that,” Jackson replied, and flashed a grin.

Whistling appreciatively, Bob returned to his side of the kitchen. “You sticking around longer? It’s passed 8.”

“I just want to get this done and cooked, you know.”

“Love your work ethic, man,” said Bob. “Don’t stay too late, though, you hear?” Donning his suede jacket, Bob made for the door.

Jackson continued to toil at his sewing. More than an hour later and he had completed the final stitch, sealing the duck inside the turkey, the duck having already been forced to accommodate a slight bantam chicken. No noise could be heard in the street. The only sound in the kitchen was the clatter of the extraction system, and the occasional bubbling burp from the largest deep fat fryer.

Jackson quickly chopped the cilantro, adding it to an enormous bowl with secret recipe batter, breadcrumbs, and a hefty glug of Wild Turkey Rare Breed. Grunting, he manoeuvred the overlapping carcasses into the bowl until they were liberally coated, then moved the bowl onto a kitchen trolley and began the trundling journey to the next room.

The larger deep fat fryer he had primed earlier in the evening. It needed to be large to accommodate this new, unique specimen that would revolutionise banquet-style dining in a fast-food context.

Jackson eyed the enormous monster of meat proudly, as a father might. The final task was to winch it into the fryer. Carefully, with calm slowness, he placed the turducken onto a metal gurney, which was itself attached to a pulley system.

Hauling on the rope, his creation lurched into the air. The occasional gobbet of batter dripped from under the bird of birds, frazzling in the fat. Just at the summit of its rise, however, the coils of rope caught. “Dang,” said Jackson.

Stepping closer to the fryer, he used a screwdriver to adjust the pulley hub. Suddenly, the rope slid through its moorings again but – somehow – became caught in Jackson’s gold medallion. The turducken plunged into the fryer like a sperm whale crashing back into the waves, taking Jackson with it.

The next morning, when Bob returned to the test kitchen, he discovered a gaping hole in the wall leading out to the abandoned lot that adjoined the KFC office. There was no sign of Jackson or, they later discovered, the bottle of Rare Breed.

Categories
Whisky Books

White Whales

Neither sublime, nor marvellous.

Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant.

Moby Dick, p. 12

Ishmael, almost at the very beginning of Melville’s masterpiece, feels a kind of hungry wonder while looking at the Spouter Inn’s curious artwork. Thanks to its impenetrability, its ‘unaccountable masses of shades and shadows’, his imagination catches fire. ‘Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you through. – It’s the Black Sea in a midnight gale. – It’s the unnatural combat of the four primal elements. – It’s a blasted heath. – It’s a Hyperborean winter scene. – It’s the breaking-up of the ice-bound stream of Time.’ I feel something very similar inspecting the webpage for Johnnie Walker Blue Label Legendary Eight.

It’s the Diageo blending team exercising complete creative freedom. – It’s 37YO Brora. – It’s power and age and balance. – It’s the Pyramids of Giza in Kilmarnock. – It’s the Sutherland coast and the tenements of Dundashill as painted by Turner. – It’s the spirits of the past captured in amber. As Robert Macfarlane has noted in Mountains of the Mind, ‘the alchemy of the imagination can turn a lake into an entire world’. Frequently in my case, the inscrutable depths of expensive blends offer ample space for fanciful speculation. Why?

Mountains of the Mind puts my inclination to mythologise whisky into historical context; Macfarlane examines how, when it comes to interacting with and understanding the physical phenomena that surround us, empiricism and wonder are constantly tangoing with one another. His thesis centres around the Victorian era, when collecting knowledge of the earth’s surface became something of a compulsion for scientists. In the process, it was as though the value of leaving some spaces untouched finally occurred to them. ‘There emerged an impulse to preserve the unknown for its power of resonance, for its quality of nullity.’

It was as if every bagged summit endangered the space in which we could dream. In Macfarlane’s words: ‘The age of realism discovered that it yearned for mysteries.’ There is a valuable mystery at the core of Legendary Eight: just how much Brora did Dr Jim Beveridge OBE and his team dump into the vat? As with all Johnnie Walkers, the recipe is ‘unaccountable’, a mass of ‘shades and shadows’. Like Ahab with his quarry, though, I know the mighty Brora is in there somewhere, I just cannot corner it. This unknown quality of Legendary Eight lends it a powerful resonance.

The Johnnie Walker website has this to say on the Legendary Eight: ‘…made using our rarest whiskies from across the untamed wilds of Scotland’. Pleonasm aside, this reimagines the Blackgrange warehousing complex as the South Sea fishing grounds in Melville. Rare casks resemble sperm whales, pursued for their ennobling oil. Though Brora has been going into Diageo blends for decades (that was its primary purpose, after all), only after many years of ‘lying in state’ has its name become a tool for the storyteller. Brora’s ghostly presence is the whole point – Legendary Eight is like the Spouter’s painting: the vacuum of understanding allows our imaginations to flood in.

As Ishmael notes:

[W]hile in life the great whale’s body may have been a real terror to his foes, in his death his ghost becomes a powerless panic to a world.
Are you a believer in ghosts, my friend? There are other ghosts than the Cock-Lane one, and far deeper men than Doctor Johnson who believe in them.

The sepulchral aura of Brora, and other closed distilleries, is a foundational component of Legendary Eight and the Ghost & Rare releases. Many of us want to believe in and pursue whisky ghosts but we should never, like Ahab, be allowed to get too close to our targets. Such whiskies can operate like Macfarlane’s mountains, or Melville’s ambiguous ‘monstrous fable’, where truth is not as powerful as our interpretations. Any blend in which a lost distillery serves as a headline act is, first and foremost, a Whisky of the Mind.

Because I work for Compass Box, where we fully disclose the contents of the whiskies we make, I should probably have a more conflicted reaction to the Legendary Eight and the Ghost & Rare series. I do believe that recipe information ought to be shared, but – thanks to Macfarlane – I also now appreciate that the mind renews itself amongst ‘shades and shadows’. Like the Victorian mountaineers, I am withdrawing from Everest to preserve its ‘imaginative potency’.

Moby Dick only surfaces in the closing chapters, but he doses the entire novel with threat and awe. In the same way, Brora’s spirit underpins the character of Legendary Eight and it doesn’t matter if the blenders had access to thirty hogsheads, or only a thimbleful. My credit card won’t be harpooning this blended leviathan, however. Legendary Eight cannot hope to be a better whisky in real life than the ‘larger, darker, deeper’ mystery I’ve constructed in my head.

Categories
Spec-Fic

Liquid Sunshine

Placing her birthday card on the floor of the tent, Dara shuffled again inside her sleeping bag. Her left side enjoyed a moment of respite, but her heels and shoulders would soon begin their own protests. Had Irish lawns always been so unyielding? She knew very well that the answer was No.

In the glow of the Solarva Lamp, she read her card again. Without question, 2095 was a bad time to be turning 19. That hadn’t been her parents’ inscription, rather something Dara had concluded for herself.

It was sweet, and not a little risky, of her parents to continue the physical card tradition. Normally, your 18th birthday was the last occasion on which you could look forward to greetings cards that contained genuine wood pulp. Thereafter, sustainability legislation mandated that ‘Happy Birthday’ was a sentiment solely expressed digitally.

Little wonder her mum had discreetly slid the envelope into Dara’s duffel bag as she left for Cork and the protest. It wasn’t handmade, though; no scavenging of old cereal boxes had occurred – it had been bought directly from Dara’s favourite local illustrator. There was an aura of care and love.

All around Dara, the frantic rustling of Gore-Tex could be heard as activists clattered around inside their tents, posting monologues to their social ecos about how excited they were to wake up tomorrow and speak the truth to the GDL. Dara should probably do likewise – her following on HiDrant could do with a boost.

Since Irish Distillers had merged with Diageo’s Scotch arm to form Gaelic Distillers Ltd. in 2052, concerns around whiskey sustainability had only grown. When Dara’s parents were at school, Net Zero for every business was still a recent achievement, and one that was roundly celebrated. The whiskey industry had given itself a collective pat on the back as one of the first to get there.

Then more severe symptoms of climate change had wreaked havoc, as earlier greenhouse gas excesses refused to be so neatly offset. Talk turned from beef in the Amazon to distilling in Speyside, Kentucky and Cork; was the diversion of so much barley to brewing and distilling justifiable?

The climate action group of which Dara was a part decided that it was not. Just like the eating of bluefin tuna and cheap beef, whisky now faced similar opposition as a frivolous use of the Earth’s resources. Yet it continued to be made in large volumes, for the wealthy. As the costs of growing cereal crops outdoors mounted, and the scarcity of cooperage oak worsened, no one Dara knew could afford the genuine article anymore.

There was a lot less land now. Sea levels had risen by 2.3m, not quite the 2.5m some mid-century estimates had predicted for 2100, back when her grandparents stopped eating meat altogether. That was a shift that had come too late, as well.

“We didn’t know, Sparrow,” her grandfather had told Dara when she was little. “We were raised on mince and potatoes. Couldn’t do better than Irish beef for a growing family.” He raised a tumbler of whiskey to his lips and Dara’s sensitive 6-year-old nose had recoiled slightly at the hot sweetness that wafted towards her.

Back in 2095 and it still didn’t sit quite right with her, protesting the industry her grandfather had loved, had worked in for most of his life until the distillery buy-out. Dara had talked it through with her own father, who made it clear that Gramps would have been proud of her stance.

“You aren’t protesting whiskey, Dar. You’re opposing a company that has grown too big and whose record over topsoil retention needs to be a lot better.”

While more of her counterparts harangued millionaires for drinking what hungry people might have eaten, Dara tried to focus on her father’s argument. Surely there was a place for whiskey?

Dara put the card back in her duffel bag. Reaching deeper, questing for an inside pocket, she retrieved a little glass bottle. Greenish/grey, like wind-dried dulse, the glass itself proudly showcased its high, post-consumer, recycled content. It made the canary yellow liquid inside appear translucent. Could she crack the capsule? Now, on the eve of the protest?

Dara knew that hot, sweet smell would revive more than just memories of Gramps. The spirit would sing of soils now blown away and underwater. The curious toffee/caramel headiness the whiskey had pulled from its wooden nursery would speak of thriving white oak forests in Missouri and Kentucky, forests that had been further depleted each year by the eastward spread of the wildfires.

There was a tap on the tent. “Dara? You in there?”

She stuffed the miniature back in her bag. Getting caught with Public Enemy #1 was not what she needed before her speech, planned for the perimeter fencing of the Midleton Complex the next day.

“Hey, Josh! Just a sec.”

Dara wriggled out of her sleeping bag and checked her trousers and jacket all had the right zips done up. Opening the tent flap, she peered up at the boy who was even now tucking those wilful black curls into his bandana. “What’s up?”

Josh smiled easily, but Dara could tell the excitement was straying into stress. This was definitely the biggest protest he’d organised. 2.5 million followers on CHANGE got you most of the way there, though.

“I’ve just been to the harbour! Another forty KAYnos arrived today, with 200 people on them! We’ve so many good friends in England and Wales.” Another ringlet escaped from the bandana cordon and he made to sweep it back again.

“That’s great, Josh. I can’t wait!” Dara could hear the buzzing from his wristwatch as countless notifications assailed the superstar protest leader. Keira was always saying she should go for it with Josh. They had briefly dated in school. What Keira saw as charisma, though, Dara had started to interpret as something else.

“How’s your speech?” Josh asked.

“It will be fine. I think I’ve just about memorised the statistics.”

“Amazing – that’s superb. I’m so pleased you’re here.”

There was a pause in the flow of motivating chat. An activist walked past swaddled in a dressing gown.

“I was thinking of turning in,” Dara said. “See you at the coordination meeting tomorrow?”

“Of course, yes! We all need some rest. Good night, then.”

Dara resecured the tent and regained her sleeping bag on the hard, sun-baked earth. She glanced across at her duffel bag. In the darkness, away from the Solarva Lamp’s glow, her Gramps’s whiskey waited for its chance.

Categories
Uncategorized

A Sober Perspective

I was speaking to friends recently about Dry January. One said that he used to do it annually but the appeal steadily waned. Maybe starting two successive years under pandemic restrictions was hard enough without further, self-imposed, denial. This piece isn’t about judgement.

Going the whole of January without a drink has never been a conscious goal of mine, but then my alcohol intake is miniscule anyway. It’s often a surprise to people when I tell them this – a whiskymaker who barely drinks.

Much as my parents more-or-less successfully taught me that booze is to be enjoyed but respected, the main cause of my current temperance is a mild form of PTSD carried over from two years as a brand ambassador for Chivas Regal in Dubai, and the toll three hangovers a week took on my health.

For a desert state, the UAE is one of the wettest places I’ve known. If you’re a European who has spent any time in Dubai or Abu Dhabi, ‘Brunch’ will trigger very particular, albeit hazy, memories. With so many events between Sunday and Thursday evening for my job, I tried to foreswear Brunch and keep my weekends clear of booze. But many of my friends didn’t drink for a living, so hanging out with them on Fridays and Saturdays often involved a glass or two of something.

I was never one of those remarkable specimens who can wake up hangover-free after a skinful, and my body increasingly struggled with the toxins I was asking it to process. When the end of my two-year stint approached, I made it clear to my employers that a role doing something in a sample room 9-to-5 (it was actually more like 7-to-4) would suit my interests much better than another 12 months as a tanned cadaver.

Once back in the UK, I revelled in what I had only been able to briefly experience during the UAE summers, when religious holidays made the bar scene way more low-key: with no alcohol entering my system for days at a time, I felt fantastic.

While Sinatra’s famous quote about pitying teetotallers is hilarious, I can definitely attest that the 5pm relief at finally being able to stomach solid food is a hollow win.

Without meaning to, I’ve gone a month without a drink. In a challenging first two months to 2022, stringing many alcohol-free days together has had cumulative benefits for me. Sleep is better and with improved rest comes the option to do more during the day. I’m running regularly again and feeling fit and strong all the time is – sorry to say – preferable to the merry benevolence that comes halfway down your second pint.

The single biggest benefit, though, is cognitive. After ten days without alcohol, I find that my mind can process things more effectively. I cover mental ground more rapidly and self-critical thoughts can be managed more easily. It’s like sweeping all the background programmes from your desktop while also muting unhelpful notifications.

From a purely rational perspective, then, drinking looks a lot like the voluntary impairment of my own faculties. Hemingway is a strange and fascinating creature. But I am also battling a productivity imperative, one in which the demon on my shoulder has disguised itself as an angel of industriousness. Teetotalism feels a tad fundamentalist, throwing out the socially-rich and flavoursome baby with the alcoholic bathwater.

Flavours behave differently in the glass compared to the mind. Sipping a dram reveals further facets over tasting alone. As much as Liquid Texts deals with the imagination, it will only succeed in my eyes if it allows me to engage – in deep ways – with the world of people, atoms and physical processes.

This phase of giving up will end and once again I’ll be experimenting with how much alcohol and how often. My month off has reminded me of hedonic moments tea cannot get anywhere near: takeaway pizza from a proper pizzeria with a glass of chilled red wine; cask strength whiskies with good friends; Champagne from Ulysse Collin (a sadly infrequent occurrence); a perfectly made Negroni in a swish bar. These are moderate delights that warrant feeling a bit below par for a day or two.

I have experienced the kind of clarity that comes with tea’s alpha waves and running’s endorphins, as well as the particular insight alcohol can occasionally bestow. While I do benefit from time spent in both worlds, I will always favour the writer over the imbiber.