I’m doing my best to become a scotch snob. I’ve experienced some setbacks. Mainly the high price of good scotch. I’m a poor university student, so buying a $70+ bottle at any regular interval is well-beyond my means if I have any inclination to eat. I bought one nice bottle, $70, of Dalwhinnie 15-year single malt. I drank it reverantly, sparingly, mainly because of the price, though also because it deserves to be savored. The amount of time it lasted, at the price it cost, actually seemed fairly reasonable.
The other day, I bought a sub-$30 bottle of Ballantine’s Finest. I suppose the simple fact that it was palatable makes me a very poor scotch-snob indeed. It’s a blend of over 40 malts. I drank the bottle over the course of the past three days. We value the things that cost us dearly, more than those we come by easily. I guess that holds true with scotch as well. No reveration was required. No savoring, nor sparsity, nor even common sense was used. Some weekends you just want to get drunk. Those weekends are rare for me, but I enjoyed the lightly buoyant feeling as I plugged away at my database project.
Now the bottle’s gone, and since I’m rabidly aware of the dangers of over-consumption, it will be some time before I acquire any more scotch. Probably not until the new year, at least.
One of these days I’ll become a scotch snob. Once I can afford it, that is, and they’ve invented artificial livers.