On the Beat

I had supper in the Vaults with an old friend. Walking back after a couple of whiskies – including a very fine Caol Isla in the current list – I saw this sunset over Leith.



My iPod played a really wonderful sequence on the shuffle, which really resonated with my mood…

• Until the End of the World – U2
  
• Charlotte Street - Lloyd Cole and the Commotions
  
• Birdland – Patti Smith (1975)
  
• Perfect Blue – Lloyd Cole and the Commotions
  
• God, part 2 – U2
  
• Baba O’Reilly – the Who

This filled the whole of the journey, and was truly brilliant.

I have writeen a post for ages.

There are lots of things I have been meaning write about - hillwalking, lectures I've been to, things I've seen in the media - but I haven't really got around to it.

I was going to go both to a concert this afternoon and the movies this evening - but the rain kept me in, instead.

Last night, I cooked halibut, which was truly delicious (bought at Edinburgh farmers' market), and I made bread and butter pudding out of currant buns left over from hillwalking last weekend.

I spent half of the week hobbling - walking the hills (which I really will write about - once I've edited all the photographs...) gave me the worse blisters I have ever had.

So I came back a day early and spent a very good afternoon at the Vaults, drinking wonderful whisky and eating smokies.

Walking home from Queen Street, the sun was just setting below the chimneys.

It was very beautiful, and a little sad.

Another tasting at the Scottish Malt Whisky Society, this time down in Leith: a combined chocalate and whisky tasting.

The chocolate - and the talk - was provided by Bertrand Espouy of Plaisir du Chocolat in Edinburgh. There was one white chocolate, three milk chocalates and five dark chocolates - the differences within each category being the percentage of cocoa solids in the chocolate.

The chocolates were delicious, the taste not being largely related to the percentage of cocoa content (as far as I could tell). I prefer dark chocolate, but the milk stuff was good too.

Espouy was very entertaining, dismissive of most British chocolate (ie Cadbury's!), laughing at the idea of organic chocolate (because of the amount of processing involved, the conditions in which most chocolate trees are grown, the remoteness of the farms, and the fact that it doesn't taste any good*). He described the production of chocolate and how he used it in cooking.

And the chocolate went wonderfully with the whisky. There were three whiskies from the most recent list - a Linkwood, a wonderful 38 year old Longmorn and a Laphroig. Whisky really does go well with chocolate: the whiskies weren't matched to the chocolate specifically, but they all tasted great.

I then had another, younger Longmorn - a 12 year old - just to see the difference. (It was still good, but not as great as the 38 year old, which was very special: you could see that just by looking at it - it was a dark, rich colour; and it tasted raisiny, like Christmas cake. Delicious.)

A great evening!

*though to my mind, eating organic is not necessarily about taste - it is about health, food additives, and the idea that there is a better way to work produce food in the environment.

Others have told all the exciting things they got up to on St Valentine’s Day; and those lacking a sense of romance have told us what they haven’t done.

( So here is what we did )

Last week, we went to a wine tasting at Valvona & Crolla, a wonderfully delicatessen and wine shop in Edinburgh. (If you know New York, think Zabar’s or Balducci’s, only smaller and much more pleasant.) They do several tastings, and I go to quite a few, but my wife could make this one, too, so it was more sociable than normal.

The wines were all from Produttori del Barbaresco, a co-operative in Piemonte; all were nebbiolo, and all were delicious. There was the second wine, Langhe – not labled as Barbaresco since it isn’t aged enough to meet the standards; then the standard Barbaresco; and then a whole string of estate riservas, from a couple years and five different estates.

Like I say, they were all good (they were all expensive!); but although they tasted different, I really couldn’t say why. It was really hard to compare on to another – there were a couple I liked more than the others, some I could have drunk on and on, but why those and not the others? All of the estates were nearby – within twenty kilometres or so – so this was a perfect argument against those who dispute the effect of terroir.

V&C’s were generous with their glasses – my wife drained all her’s dry, and had a soar head on Saturday. (“I was fine until I got up”, she told me.)

But god knows why I liked Pora ahead of the others.

And then a couple of days later, I went to a whisky tasting at the Scottish Malt Whisky Society. (Wine; whisky. I see a pattern developing.) The venue was their fine building in Queen St; during the summer, there are fine views to the evening sky in the north, but with darkness falling round about dawn, it was dark; instead of the evening light, the street lights and chemical flares of Fife could be seen across the Forth.

The aim of the tasting was to focus on the different smells, mainly – taste being largely dependent on smell. There were five different whiskies: a southern, Bladnoch (I smelt toffee apples and cough medicine, and tasted vanilla custard; mmnnn, delicious); Royal Brackla, a Speyside (rubber and tyres, pear drops; tobacco, nail polish and liquorish); a 31-year old Cragganmore, another Speyside, which was just delicious (Evostick, flowers and oranges); a wonderful Bruichladdich (we were over in Islay recently; but that is another story), with seaweed, peat, honey and roses; and lastly, a surprising delicious Cooley – surprising because I don’t like Irish whisky; well, I didn’t, before; but this was really good, a find for the night.

Tasting whisky is an odd game, since – like wine – it is all about the smell. Tasting comes right at the end. Normally, you pour the whisky and neck it down – warmth and flavour mixes into one; and nearly everything tastes good. (It isn’t just me: my wife didn’t like whisky, but early on in our relationship we went to Skye, and we stayed across the road from the Talisker distillery [a few miles away from Talisker burn itself]. She tried to put off my insistence that she give it a try, but she had a sip; and she has only ever tasted one whisky since that she didn’t like; and she has tried quite a few whiskies.) But in a comparative tasting – although ultimately everyone is there because they like whisky, and they want to drink whisky – it is bit more refined: the quality is better than one would normally have in the bar around the corner (however elite the corner may be), and the common interest is in the whisky itself – that is why everyone is there.

There was a lot of good chat – you get a good bunch of people – and like I say, a common interest. And the whisky was good: the only one which didn’t make me think wow! was the Royal Brackla, which seemed a bit ordinary.

The rest were lovely; and I’m doing fine.