Hello, sippers! It has been some time since I posted an installment to this series, where we just sit with a glass of a favorite and chat about anything and everything. Go get yourself a healthy pour, because we are getting thoughtful with today’s Slow Pour, “Time Capsules!” And let me know what you’re sipping in the comments! I’ve got some Elijah Craig Barrel Proof Batch C919, myself.
For the past several weeks, I have had a whiskey thought dancing around in my head: the impact of atmosphere on whiskey and how we think about that impact. Hopefully, most of the time, you’re left with a good impression of your first pour of something. And hopefully that carries to the next pour of that same bottle. But that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes that good impression gets tarnished the next time we have a dram. It’s how we think about those moments and how they come to be “tarnished” that I’m interested in. And is that word “tarnished” truly appropriate?
“How-Did-We-Miss-You” Bottles
I think we can all agree on how the story usually starts. I know sometimes, Dad and I come home with a bottle to review, and we immediately love it. Or there are times when we crack open a bottle for the first time with company. Maybe it’s around a campfire, or it’s with family we haven’t seen for a while. Maybe it’s a brand new experience.
The point is, we open a bottle, and we love it. It’s everything we could ever dream of a whiskey being. It’s warm. Complex. Affordable. Available. It’s a “How did we miss you?” kind of bottle. We rush to the liquor store the next day or next weekend, and we find the Holy Grail bottle (and let’s be honest – we grab two).
We crack open the bottle and pour whatever it is, prepared to be wowed again.
And then we’re not.
And actually, we’re really not. Suddenly, this bottle that was so perfect before, is mediocre, if not downright terrible and unpalatable.
So, what happened?
The People Influence
I’m sure many of our fellow sippers here already know the answer. It’s the company. And many of you, again, likely know this is always one our biggest talking points. Dad and I are fortunate to be in a position where, not only can we enjoy each other’s company during reviews, there are other people in our circle who drink whiskey as well. (In fact, I daresay, we’ve introduced the spirit to many of our friends and family just for others to talk to!)
As whiskey drinkers, and editors of this blog, we love sharing our knowledge on it. But truly, we love enjoying pours with people the most. And as such, we find it relatively easy to get caught up in the laughs and the moment. New whiskey tastes a bit brighter and better than perhaps it does when we find and bring it home.
Now, believe it or not, but I actually have mixed feelings on this cold reality. If you had asked me at the beginning of the summer about this, I likely would have had a few disappointed choice words. However, this summer, I had a once-in-a-lifetime experience. And it’s amazing what those can do to soften hard “no’s” and edges.
The Memory Influence
This summer, our family laid my grandfather to rest in his hometown in Wisconsin, where he lived all of his life. It was an emotional time, and to be quite frank, the pandemic had not made any of the process easy on anyone. Regardless, we made our goodbyes, and the people who could be there, were.
As my dad discusses in We May Never Pass This Way Again, we found ourselves talking whiskey at the family cabin with relatives and friends everywhere. It was truly an incredible moment.
And the whole week we were there, we’d find ourselves sitting around the bonfire every night with whiskey in one hand, and maybe classic Wisconsin cheese or homemade bread or even s’mores in the other. We had a whole variety of bottles to choose from, and at the time, every bottle was stellar. Everything was creamy, warm, complex… and we’d stay up until after midnight enjoying ourselves and laughing with great music.
Facing Cold Reality
Fast forward to us coming back home to Idaho and picking up our reviewing schedule again. Dad and I (and my sister on several occasions) would end up referencing back to that bonfire and the family with almost every review or casual pour we did. Three months later, and we still do.
Eventually we got around to reviewing a bottle we had back in Wisconsin, the Old Scout Smooth Ambler Boise Whiskey Enthusiasts Private Pick. We had brought a bottle out with us for the trip because it was unique (both in vitals and the fact that it was a private pick). Not to mention, it was new to our collection too.
And I had loved that bourbon while in Wisconsin. While I hadn’t poured it every night that we were there, I did partake in several glasses over the course of the week.
But now, coming to the long-awaited review, I sit down… and I find I don’t like it. The shock and initial disappointment I had over this fact had me confused and even frustrated with myself. This bourbon had memories! It was with me and my family for an important event! An event I can’t ever truly go back to, even! And it was one of the most unique bourbons in our collection! I was supposed to love this, not feel that it had been tarnished! (The fact that Dad still did love it, only made matters worse and left me more lost.)
So… I did the review how I saw the bourbon in that moment. And even revisiting this review for the sake of this Slow Pour, I can even see my confusion in my words. And I intend to leave it that way.
Contented Acceptance
The longer I sat with my inner frustrations, however, (aka weeks), the more I realized that it was exactly for those aforementioned reasons that it was alright that I didn’t like the bottle now. The bottle did have memories, and it was a bourbon that I had enjoyed with my family. And now, because I don’t care for the bourbon much, it’s unlikely to get new memories tacked onto it, and my experience with it will be confined to that singular week with my family. And it shouldn’t be a surprise that my setting for it is very reminiscent of the birdhouses surrounding the cabin either.
In essence Smooth Ambler has become a time capsule. It’s a week’s worth of memories in a bottle, and its label I will always get to associate solely with that time. Nothing else can change the magnitude of what that bottle carried.
And I actually find that incredibly special. Do I wish I still enjoyed it? Of course I do. I’d love to be taken back to the bonfire on every pour. But surprisingly, when I open up our bunker to grab a casual pour of the day, and I see Smooth Ambler there… I am taken back. Every time. It looks the same as it did on top of the plates/bowls cabinet at the family cabin. It looks how it did on the tiny kitchen island counter during our massive tasting party Dad references in his article. I can see the birdhouses outside the cabin that I’d look at while sipping this. It’s a time capsule bourbon that I’ve never experienced the likes of before. And I’ll likely even keep the empty bottle once Dad finishes it.
Photo by Johnny Brewer on Unsplash
In Summary, I’m Redefining Things
So long story short (I suppose this is one of my slowest pours of this series), maybe we need to rethink how we revisit bottles that end up being not so great. Is it only a loss? Are they only “tarnished”? – to return to my question at the start of this slow pour. Or, can we call it a learning experience? Can we call it a time capsule of a different time when everything was great? Can we call those bottles the true pause buttons we look for and enjoy when we drink whiskey?
In any case, I think that’s how I am going to choose to look at them from now on.
So I won’t ask if you have any whiskeys that got “tarnished” from one pour to the next. Instead, I think I’ll ask, do you have any Time Capsule Whiskeys? What are they? Click the ..LEAVE A REPLY.. button in the field below if you’d care to share.
A Slow Pour – Time Capsules
written by Hannah Dawson
Whiskey for the Ages editor
Others in the Slow Pour Series:
A Slow Pour – Time to Relax
A Slow Pour – The Empty Bottle
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