Random Things That Are Going On

A lot of stuff is going in right now... here are some bullet points

• My Grandma is moving down in about a week and a half - and is going to live with my parents in Manteca
• We are finally getting the Altima fixed
• We are trying to buy a house (going through the loan approval process right now)
• School, as always, is keeping me busy
• Shannon wants to be a baker
• I want to open a Whisk(e)y restaurant
• Pliny the Elder is for sale
• We are going to Vegas in just over a month

When You Are Engulfed In Flames

Shannon and I had a four day weekend to celebrate the nation's 232nd birthday.

On Thursday I got up bright and early to head down to the DMV and renew my drivers license that expired a few weeks back. I then came home and picked up Shannon and headed to Hacienda where we planned to spend hours upon hours at the theater, taking in 4 movies. Well we got through Wall-E (super good) and Iron Man (also really good) before Shannon had had enough of the big screen. Instead of buying tickets to our next planned move, The Hulk, we headed over to Barnes & Noble to pick up some books and budgeting and starting a bar/restaurant (that's a whole other blog post, but yes, I have a few bars I would like to open). We then headed home and relaxed for a few hours before heading off to dinner with Charlie and my pops. The Elephant Bar in Dublin is now open, and we had to wait about a half hour before getting a seat. But thats ok, the food was good and the E-Teas were quite refreshing. After dinner we all went back to the apartment to watch Dan in Real Life (not really what I expected, but good).

Friday morning was spent cleaning the house and shopping. My dad was coming back out to BBQ and celebrate the 4th. We got the place all cleaned up and headed to the store to buy the food: a combination of steak, chicken and hot smoked sausage worked out quite well. In addition to my dad, Charlie & Pletcher showed up, as well as Jake, Melissa and little Adelaide. We had a great time just sitting, eating good food, drinking good beer, and chatting. We also watched Drillbit Taylor (dumb). With BBQ & Beer left over, we decided to host a poker night the next day to help move through the food and drink, as well as to see some other friends.

We spent Saturday morning cleaning again and setting up the house for two tables of poker along with enough sitting room for those not playing. We had a pretty good turn out with 10 players: Charlie, Pletcher, Tyler, Jake, John May, Ron, Cate, Lori, Karen and myself. We also had a number of people rooting us on: Adelaide, Melissa, Allison, Sarah, Laura and Shannon. We had a blast - Ron ended up taking the tournament, with Charlie in second place and me taking third.

Sunday will be spent relaxing and reading the latest David Sedaris book, When You Are Engulfed In Flames. I'm a huge fan of Sedaris, and I can't wait to dig into this book. He mostly writes about growing and how insane his family is. I definitely recommend checking out his stuff.

Beer, Sausage & Hookahs

Last night Charlie, Shannon and I headed out to SF to meet up with Alyssa and hang out for the night. Turns out Jake Foster was there as well, which ruled, but alas, we did not get to see little Adelaide (hopefully tonight though!). We picked up Alyssa and her roommate and met Jake out at Toronado's, one of the best beer bars in the city.

I had always heard a lot about this place, but this was my first time there. Great selection, lots of local microbrews and stuff you don't see in pretty much any other bar.

Next door is Rosamunde Sausage Grill, which has an amazing array of sausages. I ended up eating duck sausage and lamb & beef sausage - so good. They let you order the sausage and then take it next door to the bar - fantastic!

After spending a few hours at the Toronado's Jake had to head off to pick up Melissa, Kari & the little one so shortly after we headed off as well and made our way down to Kan Zaman Cafe, a middle eastern bar/restaurant that lets you smoke Hookahs indoors. After about 20 minutes were were able to grab a spot at the bar and ordered some drinks and some apple tobacco for the Hookah. It was Shannon and my first experience with a Hookah, and we throughly enjoyed it. None of that nasty tar flavor, but arm rich appley goodness! I also had an Arabic Latte (I think that's what it was called), which Alyssa, suggested. It was great, nice middle eastern spices mixed with coffee & milk. Yummm...The night was a blast, and we will definitely be doing more of these... Shannon and I were talking about how we don't get out enough (walking around downtown Pleasanton just isn't cutting it anymore).

Hatred or mistrust of humankind.

One of my favorite bands is back with their first album since 2003...
Shai Hulud - Misanthropy Pure

Here is the video for the title track:

When It's All Said and Done

Today was our last day of touring distilleries. We visited Wild Turkey and Four Roses. I'm worn out so there will be no pictures until later....

Wild Turkey was one that I was really looking forward to. We got to tour the distillery with Eddie Russell, who is Jimmy Russell's son. Jimmy is the Master Distillery and has been working at the distillery for 54 years. Eddie, who has only been there a short 27 years is probably next in line to take the job. He is currently the Assistant Distillery. Besides a few small differences, the tour was the same as all the others, not that it was a bad thing, but what I really enjoyed about this tour was Eddie's stories about the generation of master distillers that are either retired, passed away or on their way out: Elmer T. Lee (Buffalo Trace), Parker Beam (Heaven Hill), Booker Noe (Jim Beam) and Jimmy Russell (Wild Turkey). It was really great.

We then headed to a restaurant called Kavanaugh's School Diner. It was a former school, that was a house previously, that is now a diner. They serve everything buffet style - and it was fantastic.

After lunch we headed to the Four Roses Distillery. Four Roses was a brand that was HUGE around WWII, but shortly there after put all of its focus in exporting - and turned the whiskies that were in the U.S. into garbage - before long all U.S. product was gone. Then the Japanese brewery Kirin bought the distillery and has started turning it around. Products have been reintroduced into Kentucky and the surrounding states and are supposed to come to CA in July of this year, but who knows as the date has been pushed back several times already. The tour was ok - nothing really new except that they distill 2 different mash bills and have 5 yeasts - which make 10 different whiskies. These whiskies are then combined in various ways to create their releases. We were able to taste the 3 main products they make: Yellow Label (which is around 6 years old and contains 8 different whiskies - Small Batch which is around 7 years old and contains 4 different whiskies - and the Single Barrel which is around 8 years old and only has one whiskey.

After Four Roses we headed back to Louisville to have dinner at Bourbon's Bistro. Good Lord, after eating and drinking at this place I want to open a Whiskey Restaurant SO BADLY! They featured around 100 bourbons or so - which cost anywhere from $5 for a pour, up to $75. They also let you pick three whiskies to taste as a flight - smaller pour but at half the price listed. I did a flight of Buffalo Trace 9yr Single Barrel, Parker's Heritage and Wild Turkey American Spirit. Shannon had a whiskey sour with Maker's Mark. All four were fantastic. I had Ahi Tuna and Shannon had a pork chop stuffed with chorizo for dinner. Both dishes were amazing. We left so full we could barely walk and broken hearted that there is no place like this in CA (until I open my restaurant!)

We fly out at 10:30am tomorrow and are excited to get back - its been a fantastic trip, but I am ready for my big screen TV and my comfortable bed.

See ya soon!

Spitting Out Bourbon and Other Strange Happenings

Following our own example, we started off the morning eating our usual breakfast (see post below) and hitting the road - we were on our way to Buffalo Trace. Flash back to a month ago...Being one of the two distilleries that I didn't have a supplier contact for - I was originally afraid that we would have a hard time getting in. Luckily my friends at Young's Market were able to pull a few strings and get us in. I was very appreciative as some of my favorite whiskies are created here: Buffalo Trace, George T. Stagg, Eagle Rare, WL Weller, Van Winkle, and the list goes on and on.

Alright, back in the present. I knew that we were going to have a chance to meet Mark Brown, the president and CEO of Buffalo Trace - so I was very excited to arrive. Who would have thought that our experience there is something I will never forget. As we walked in, I asked the lady in the gift shop for Margeret as she was our contact - turns out that she was her (bad english I know). She was amazingly nice - greeting us with a huge smile and bringing us into her ongoing conversation with a few other BT employees about an article in Delta airline's magazine which highlights Lexington and includes bits on the distillery. She then introduces Shannon and I to Carey, the gentleman that will be taking us on the tour - but first we had to go up and meet Mark.

We walk up to Mark's office - he and two other employees are in the middle of a meeting, but take a break just to sit and talk to us. We chat about business on the west coast, the economy, how Safeway is doing, etc. Then we turn to talking about Bourbon and what we like, what we find interesting, etc. He kept saying that it was such a pleasure having us at the distillery, which blew me away, because I was in awe of who I was sitting in front of.

Mark is one of the most forward thinking people in the whiskey industry in my opinion. He is constantly experimenting with different concepts and whiskey making ideas. To read more about his experiments check out the blog What Does John Know and also the most recent Malt Advocate magazine. BT has even bottled some of the experiments, most of which are whiskies that were aged (for at least some time) in used wine barrels. Much to my surprise, Mark presented me one of the Zinfindel finished bottles as a gift. Considering that some of these are going on eBay for upwards of $80 for a 375-ml - I was extremely grateful as they are next to impossible to find in any store.

We then headed down to meet Carey for the tour. We got the "hard hat" tour which took us through the entire process. We had this experience once before at Maker's Mark, but Buffalo Trace is HUGE so the parts involved in the process are even more incredible. Too much to go into detail but it was just amazing.

Following the tour, we were brought up into the experiment lab. Buffalo Trace has nearly 1500 barrels dedicated to their experiements - and are always trying to create something new. In addition to the barrels they also have a new micro-still that will be used in creating the whiskies. In the lab we were allowed to taste some of the experimental whises that they are considering releaseing in 2009 and 2010. We tasted 4 different batches, and at least two of those, no one, outside of BT employees, had ever tasted. Simply Incredible. Now they weren't all great, but they certainly weren't bad - but I was just in awe that we got to taste them. I don't really want to say what they were as I'm not sure if BT would want the info getting out, but they definitely have some wild ideas. By the way - the lab was "taste & spit" no getting drunk while at work! So they had several large spitoons spit the bourbon into - pretty cool.

After the tour and tasting we headed back down to the gift shop, bought some souviners and then headed back up to Mark's office. We sat there for another half hour to hour just going over the tour, asking questions, talking about everything from Kentucky to the upcoming WhiskeyFest. He signed a bottle of Eagle Rare for us and we went on our way, amazed by the experience we just had.

We then headed over to Woodford Reserve (after our good friend Garmin gave us bad directions). Compared to Buffalo Trace that has 11o buildings on the premise, this place was TINY! The majority of the "work" is done in two rooms. This is one of the few places that "creates" their seasons by heating and cooling the rack houses. Every other distillery lets nature take its course. We then headed back to the gift shop & visitor's center for a sample of the bourbon.

The drive to and from Woodford was amazing - the distillery is surrounded by horse farms - and is landscaped just beautifully. It was a wonderful drive.

We are back at the hotel now gearing up for our last day when we will visiting Wild Turkey and Four Roses. See ya tomorrow!

A Little Slice of Heaven (Hill), (Coconut) Pie and Jim Beam

Today, we made our way down to Bardstown, KY after our typical breakfast of biscuts and gravy, eggs, sausage for me and biscuts and gravy and cereal for Shannon.

We had a 10 o'clock appointment at Heaven Hill to tour through their rack houses (the distilling is done in Louisville, and the bottling line is off limits to visitors) and do a tasting. They also have a nifty little history of bourbon display in one half of the giftshop/heritage center. The rackhouses were pretty cool, had some pretty old barrels - up to 27 years old....

We then headed into their tasting room and in addition to the usual tastings of Evan Williams Single Barrel and Elijah Craig 18 yr, we were able to taste Bernhiem Wheat Whiskey and Evan Williams Single Barrel 23 yr. The later is only available at the gift shop and in Japan - and sells for $350... it was FANTASTIC! - but no, I did not buy one. However I did get another bottle of one of my favorite whiskies - Parker Heritage Collection Cask Strength Bourbon. Not sure if I can drink it though - as it is signed by Parker Beam, the semi-retired Master Distiller. It will go next to my Evan Williams Single Barrel that is signed By Craig Beam, the full time Master Distiller.

We took off from Heaven Hill and headed into Bardstown to see what small town life is like... had lunch at a restaurant that was opened in the 30's. Back then, the family lived upstairs and ran the restaurant downstairs. The same family still owns it, but they live somewhere else (I think). We went to the Oscar Getz Whiskey Museum that has all sorts of cool stuff - whiskey bottles (some still full) from the late 1800s / early 1900s - prohibition and anti-prohibition propaganda - various marketing tools from a number of distillers.

Afterwards we went to a bar/tavern that has been opened since 1779. Some say the Old Talbot Tavern is haunted - and we - NO JOKE - saw a half full pint glass slide off of the table next to us, right after the lady sitting in the seat that the glass landed in got up to go "ghost hunting" - the husband looked at us and said "did you see that?!?!". So that was pretty crazy... history has it that everyone from Abraham Lincoln to Jesse James spent time in the tavern/hotel.

We then headed to the Jim Beam Outpost (the visitor center at the Beam Distillery). We got there 15 minutes before they closed - so we ran in, looked around, bought a Booker's T-shirt and headed back. But not before we snapped a few pictures with Booker Noe himself.