Toronto City Life » drink

This is What We Have Been Doing For Days

Katherine — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 17:50:53 +0000

And I present to you, the patio set we bought from IKEA. What a fucking joke to get this thing. Not IKEA’s fault (they can do no wrong), but more like Wal-Mart’s fault.

Story goes like this: make the long trek to Wal-Mart on Saturday to check out patio sets. Find one we like, make sure to ask an asshole associate if there will be any left early Sunday, which is when we rented a car. Get told that won’t be a problem. Get looked at like you are a piece of crap from the guy in the garden center when you ask if they have any left early Sunday. Find out that they are all sold out. Man.

Peace out of Wal-Mart (where they forgot to hand us some hooks we bought while we are struggling to carry a barbecue, therefore we spent money and got nothing in return, jerk offs), and run to Canadian Tire and everywhere else you can think of that sells patio sets. Patio sets are ridiculous, so decide on IKEA. Where we hit the jackpot. Of course we did. No clue why we didn’t go here first, as we ALWAYS go there first.

Cute no? The cushions were almost as expensive as the patio set. Sigh.

Do you have ANY idea how hard it was to put this piece of shit together? I love it and it’s mine, so I can call it a piece of shit. It’s a freaking portable camping barbecue, what’s the problem? Oh right, the instructions were written in a made up language that only ants can understand. It was hot out, it took us all afternoon to put this guy together. Well, I mostly put it together while Dave ‘assisted’. And I only screwed up one nail.

But this is the wonderful outcome. Sitting outside every night after work enjoying some type of girly drink or another.

Oh heeeey! My sister called. Hi Krista! Guess what I am doing?

I am the barbecue goddess. Roles are reversed in this household.

And it’s supposed to rain for three days. What am I going to do after work now? I can’t drink a girly drink indoors. That is WAY to embarrassing!

Do you enjoy every last bit of Summer?

Share / save this post

Drinking with money-grubbing bankers

Patrick — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 03:59:39 +0000

Let me start by laying it all out on the table.

The Macallan Scotch tasting that I was invited to yesterday was put on by word-of-mouth advertising agency Matchstick. The idea behind hosting the event was obviously to provide some publicity for the whisky through blogging / social media / etc., but I want to assure you that it fell well within my guidelines for ethical and responsible shilling. The agency, insists that anyone attending their events is honest and upfront about it, and I wouldn’t have gone otherwise.

TCL isn’t about confessions or selling stuff, but it’s important that you know who was involved, and for what purpose. And that I’ve killed people.

There, clean conscience, ready to imbibe — just the way God wants it. :D

So, instead of just yammering on about booze, I thought that the best way to get into the evening would be to take you along.

I knew bupkis about Whisky when I arrived at the swanky Yorkville hotel. I mean, I’d drank whisky before but had more experience with the sticky tape version of Scotch than with the liquid one. So the first thing that Mark, our host, did was to explain that whisky is Scotch, Scotch is whisky. Only Scotch proper comes from Scotland.

Next, he went on a jovial story in a heavy Quebecois about how thrilled that he, as an avid whisky drinker, was to land this job with Macallan. He really seemed quite pleased about it.

Mark looks a bit of a greedy money-grubbing banker in the photo above, doesn’t he? But no, he’s just genuinely pleased at the prospect of sipping on expensive whisky all evening; it’s glee.

The presentation went into the history of Macallan and the unholy alliances they make with the Spanish to buy wood for their whisky. Mark described the process of making the beverage in which only about 13% of the raw product ends up in the bottle, and with the small equipment they use at the distillery, that’s not so much to begin with.

Then with blissfully brief instructions came the tasting. The first guideline was that dipping your nose into the glass for a deep breath like you do with wine is not how to do it. I pulled my schnoz out of the glass and wafted the whisky gently under my nose as suggested. Much more pleasant!

The glasses were arranged from youngest to oldest, with the ten-year-old Scotch at the left and the eighteen-year-old at the right:

We were assured that the variation in colour were entirely due to the casks in which the whisky was aged, the red coming from the Sherry that had previously permeated the oak.

But ultimately, who cares? I was there to taste the stuff!

The only suggestion there was to add a couple of drops of water to break up the alcohol’s surface tension and “open up” the drink. So I did.

The first whisky tasted like … whisky. “Inoffensive”, would be the word I’d use — but still with enough of that alcoholic bite to remind you that it’s hard liquor.

As the whisky got older, the bite mellowed out so that by the time we hit the 18 year-old, it was very kind to the throat. And it wasn’t one of those more-drinkable-as-you-drink-more deals either; there wasn’t enough in the glasses for that :)

Nope, a genuinely pleasant experience. The differences in the whiskies were pronounced enough to justify the cost (the stuff ain’t cheap). Other than the samples in the parting gift box, I’m not sure if I’ll have a bottle of Macallan on top of my fridge any time soon, but I’m thinking it’d make a good Christmas gift; the 12-year-old one great for in-your-face flavours, and the 18+ crowd for a more mellow drink. Or as a novelty, I’m considering the ice-ball maker that Mark busted out in the middle of the demonstration. The point was simply to demonstrate that spherical ice melts more slowy than cube ice, but the audience were more fixated on the almost magical speed with which the demo cube turned into a ball (in the glass):

Cheers!

But ultimately, who cares? I was there to taste the stuff!

The only suggesion there was to add a couple of drops of water to break up the alcohol’s surface tension and “open up” the drink. So I did.

The first whisky tasted like … whisky. “Inoffensive”, would be the word I’d use — but still with enough of that alcoholic bite to remind you that it’s hard liquor.

We moved on to the second one. Definitely lighter and I detected some vanilla in there. Hmmn, not bad. Mark invited us to follow up with a sip of the first one to see if we could detect the toffee flavour now that it had mellowed out a bit. It wasn’t so much a detection of toffee as it was like having a hunk of toffee shoved up my nose. I could not, in good conscience, describe the whisky as having mellow hints of anything.
And as the whisky got older, the bite mellowed out so that by the time we hit the 18 year-old, it was very kind to the throat. And it wasn’t one of those more-drinkable-as-you-drink-more deals either; there wasn’t enough in the glasses for that :)

Once again, the host failed to supply female accompaniment or monetary contributions, but at least this time around, there was something to drink!

–>

Share / save this post

A fermented, non-crap alternative

Patrick — Wed, 27 May 2009 00:45:53 +0000

Breasts, bikes, and beer; the triumvirate of alliterative seduction is now complete!

At around this time last year, the Rickard’s beer company (one of a number Molson‘s subsidiaries), introduced a white wheat beer that I had absolutely no interest in. It’s not that I don’t enjoy beer but my interest in it wanes, much like my interest in full-time employment. Currently, it’s waxing.

Usually I imbibe my alcoholic beverages with deep political convictions; a pint of Guinness with a sipping shot of B52, for example. Rickard’s White, though, doesn’t really make a statement other than “I taste good” — which it does.

White ale, if you’re not familiar with it, is an unfiltered beer (hence the cloudiness), that has orange peel and coriander added to it to produce a slightly citrusy flavour. Unlike lager, ale is fermented more quickly and at room temperature (lager’s kept cold).

I’ve poured all sorts of fermented crap down my gullet and this drink is truly inoffensive. The slice of orange (sometimes lemon), shown in the photo is how it’s served at various pubs around Toronto. Friday afternoon’s tart and bitter post-work bitch-outs at Shoeless Joe’s just wouldn’t be possible without it.

I’m hardly a scholar of beer and it’s fair to say that the term “enthusiast” wouldn’t apply to me, but I can recommend this one. It’s the gateway drug of the legal alcohol world.

If I could leave just one parting note to our American neighbours, I would point out that Canadian beer tends to contain a man-level of alcohol (5.5%+), so take your time. And for the rest of you who may be wondering why this entry is uncharactersitically short, you will find your answer at the bottom of my pint glass.

Cheers!

Share / save this post