Not to scale, mine is much bigger. 

A few days ago, I finally paid off my student loan.

What better way to celebrate than to go kill a few of those brain cells that are finally totally mine.

In other words, beers.

These are the bottles I brought back from Scotland. At first I thought I was going to bring back 12 bottles, but once I got there, I realized that the logistics of bringing back 12 bottles were slightly mind-boggling. Was I going to get an extra suitcase? That would mean a huge (ok not so huge) “2nd bag fee” on BMI and Air Canada. Then there was also the custom tax issue, expensive bottles mean expensive taxes. Add to the mix that I only wanted to bring bottles that I couldn’t find in Canada, and trying to determine the actual value of the bottle was going to be a pain in the butt…*

I managed to sidestep all those issues by not finding a whole lot of really cool and unique bottles I wanted to bring back. That may sound like a negative, but really it’s not. Let me explain.

The best rules are meant to be broken.

Before I left, I had my heart set on a Dalwhinnie Manager’s Edition, for £250.00 (about 400.00 CAD). But after learning that the “Manager’s Edition” was really just a marketing thing – 14 distilleries came out with a Manager’s Edition – I moved on to other things.

The other thing I didn’t really want to do was to get a bottle without tasting it first. Of course, I ended up getting two bottles without tasting them first; the Ardbeg Fèis Ìle and the Edradour.

Of all the bottles I didn’t get, my only regret is the Dalwhinnie 36 year old that I saw at Loch Ness for £400.00 (about 650.00 CAD). C’est la vie.

Here’s what I got

The first bottle I got was the Ardbeg Fèis Ìle. Every year the distilleries on Islay come out with a special Festival Edition bottle. This whisky was matured in two Spanish ex-Pedro Ximenez butts and bottled at cask strength (55.1%). Only 1008 bottles available. Got it at the distillery, one day before the official launch for £80.00 (about 130.00 CAD). Some people are selling theirs on the Web for £325.00 (about 525.00 CAD) or more.

The second bottle I got was the Caol Ila Moch. Moch is Gaelic for “dawn”. This bottle was not a distillery exclusive, but was exclusive to the Friends of the Classic Malts. This is possibly a bottle that you could get online, if you’re part of the Friends of the Classic Malts and live – or are currently – in European markets: Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, France and the United Kingdom. How could I say no to a £30.00 (about 50.00 CAD) bottle?

The third bottle I got was the Edradour 2002 Tokaji Matured from Gordon & MacPhail, the oldest independent family owned and managed firm, bottling Single Malt Whiskies for over 115 years. This bottling has been discontinued for a while, and I snatched the last bottle available at the store. At £52.50 (about 86.00 CAD) it was a steal.

By that time, our trip was almost over and I had high hopes of finding something really special at the Dalwhinnie Distillery. Unfortunately, Dalwhinnie is one of those distillery that doesn’t seem to come up with many different products – they limit themselves to the 15yo and the Distiller’s Edition, both available in Canada. We did however taste a 20yo Double Wood and a 36yo (because they were out of the 29yo – what a shame!) while at the distillery, but those bottles were not for sale.

Thew last bottle I got was the Longrow 100 ° Proof, matured in the same style as it’s Springbank counterpart (mainly in bourbon casks) bottled at 10 years old and 57% (100 ° Proof). I got it from the very cool and helpful guys at Cadenhead’s Whisky Shop in Edinburgh. I was originally going there to get a packaging solution, but since they’re Scotland’s oldest independent bottler and I still had room for one more bottle, I asked the guys if they could suggest something unique. They started by asking how much I was looking to spend (£100.00) and what I liked. After telling me I didn’t need to spend nearly as much as that, they had me taste one of their home blends, taken from various Islay distilleries. No age, no distillery name, no information. Even the bottle had no label (the dram came from a cask, and if I had bought a bottle, they would’ve filled a clear bottle in front of me straight from the cask). The whisky was good, but not great. I pointed out what I liked and didn’t like about it, and they had me taste the Longrow, which was exactly what I was looking for. At £42.00 (68.00$ CAD), it was yet another steal.

In conclusion

I’m very happy with what I brought back. I have four very hard to get bottles, bottles that I’m pretty sure I’ll love when I drink them and I spent less than 350.00$ CAD, way under my 1,000$ CAD budget. Stay tuned for the tasting notes.

Slàinte mhath!

* Note: It turns out that the way Customs calculates the taxes on the bottles you bring back is different than what I understood after reading their website. I thought you paid taxes on the value of the bottles – for example, if a bottle was worth 100$, I’d pay about 17$ for that bottle. It turns out that you pay taxes according to the alcohol by volume (ABV) on each milliliter you bring in excess of the allowed limit.

You can read all the recaps by following these links:

• Scotland Recaplet
• 1,737 Pictures
• The Loot
• Scotland Recap – Part one
• Scotland Recap – Part deux
• Scotland Recap – Part three
• Scotland Recap – Part four
• Scotland Recap – Part five
• Ode to Secret-Scotland

The main purpose of this visit was to go eat at the famous Le Garde-Manger, Chuck Hughes restaurant.

The picture doesn’t do justice to the decor. The restaurant is small, with wood and brick walls. There is only one window table, and that’s where we were seated. The whole place feels very warm and cozy.

The food is awesome, but somewhat on the pricey side – total bill for four adults, including wine, taxes and gratuity came to 515.00$ – but we mainly went there for the experience of eating at this famous place.

Between the four of us, we tasted the lobster poutine, the bacon octopus and jerk crab for appetizers, and for the main we had the flank steak with fries, duck with foie gras, crusted bass with an awesome smoked tomato salad and the giant shrimp risotto. Dessert – yes, we had dessert – was the rocky road brownie, the fried mars bar and the caramelized banana. All very good.

We also had a few drinks, the drink of the day was something delicious made with vodka, Grand Marnier, Tequila (possibly something else too) and freshly squeezed orange juice You can almost see the drink in the right of the picture, or what’s left of it. The wine list is pretty good, and we had the Chianti pictured above.

All and all an awesome night.

Also, it was SUPERMOON that night, but that didn’t do anything special for us.

It wasn’t true, the champion really had won, but with the help of the judge, I managed to make him believe he didn’t, so we had a lot of laughs when we told him what we had done after everyone changed and got ready to head out to a pub.

Anyways.

So walking on campus, we started discussing where we’d go for a beer. There was this first place where we used to go all the time, but since it had been recently bought by an older Greek couple, the beer was not as good as it used to. But the fries were much better. Our other option was the Cuban pub, but we were not in the mood to watch a whole bunch of Cubans be loud and play darts all night. Everybody knows that Cubans are awesome at playing darts, and how loud they can be when they get going.

…

And then I woke up.

…..

Can anyone tell me how the hell did I dream about all of this, and where did I pick-up all that knowledge about Cubans and their ability to play darts?

Possibly related: I’m weird.

Today is St-Patrick’s day. Today is also my mom’s Birthday. She turns one year older than last year. It’s always a struggle to post something either for my mom, or for my love of Guinness.

Happy Birthday Mom! XXXX

So just like last year, please wish her a happy birthday in the comments, tell her how awesome of a job she did raising the fine young man that my brother is (I also have an awesome sister but I can’t seem to find a way to insert her in a joke even two years later), send her virtual flowers, do a little dance.

Please refrain from “I’d hit that” kind of comments. Avitable’s already been there, done that. It’s really awkward for me to call him dad.

As for me, I’ll have half of the beers for my Mom, half because I’m Irish (only today).

Unless it’s late and I’m fairly drunk. But I digress. This post is about meat.

I don’t eat McDonald’s. I last time I had some McDonald’s was on September 28 2004 - 6 years, 5 months, 8 days ago. It was all because of Morgan Spurlock and this:

Remember this? Well, it put me off fries for a while, and off McDonald’s for good.

I told you this post is about meat. A few weeks ago, a Facebook friend shared a link to this video:

It’s over ten minutes long, and it’s in French. But you have to see this. This guy will show you how to take old spoiled meat and repackage it as new meat. A practice – he says – that’s fairly common in various grocery stores. It’s disgusting.

Of course, it might be all false, might be the guy’s imagination. He might be a disgruntled employee trying to get back at the store who fired him.

But would you take that chance?

I now buy all my meat from an actual butcher – a place where the butcher cuts the meat right in front of me. Because the alternative would be to go off meat, and that’s just crazy.

I have a sommelier friend who organizes tastings at his place, and yesterday was the “Top 100 Wine Spectator 2009” tasting. We only tasted wines that made the 2009 list. The idea was to try and figure out if that list was just hype, or if there was something to it.

In order to do that, we did a semi-blind tasting, where we did see the wines, but not from which bottles they came (bottles were covered when serving). There is 80$ wine and 16$ wine in the flights.

WARNING: Some of you may think the rest of this post is douchey.

The Bubbly:

• #78 Gloria Ferrer, Brut Sonoma County Sonoma NV

We had the bubbly in the living room, as an ice breaker. Since it was the only bubbly of the whole night, we didn’t try to guess which one was the bubbly.

Tasting Notes:
A little too sweet to my taste, but I like really dry and dusty Champagne. It has a honeydew, apple and pear nose, and some residual sugar  flavors. For 22$, this is a great value, but will not replace my Paul Goerg Champagne as my go-to bubbles.

First Flight:

• # 41 Kumeu River, Chardonnay 2007
• #5 Barone Ricasoli Chianti Classico Castello di Brolio 2006
• #7 Renato Ratti, Barolo Marcenasco 2005
• #15 Castel Giocondo Brunello di Montalcino 2004
• #10 Brancaia, Tre Toscana IGT 2007

Tasting Notes:
The white (#41) was really easy to identify, it was the only white. Oak, big taste, lots of flavors. Unfortunately, I waited too long to taste it and it was way too warm. The other four wines were tasted semi-blind, and we had to try to figure out which was which. I’m not really good at this. To my surprise, my favorite wine was the Chianti (#5). It’s surprising because I normally don’t like Chiantis*, but this one was by far my favorite of the night, followed for this flight by the Brancaia (#10), a 22$ wine. The Barolo (#7) was too young, but would’ve worked well with a wild mushroom risotto.

*I go to wine tastings to discover new things. Finding out that I like Chiantis is a good thing, and now I can stop saying I don’t like Chiantis. The same thing happened with Pinot Noir – I couldn’t stomach that wine, I fount it too acidic. Turns out I don’t like “cheap” Pinot Noir. Who knew!

Second flight:

For the Second Flight, we had two “mystery wines” thrown in. They’re in italics.

• #XX Lailey Vineyards Syrah VQA 2008
• #3 Domaine du Vieux Télégraphe Châteauneuf-du-Pape La Crau 2007
• #43 Schild Shiraz Barossa 2007
• #54 Peter Lehmann Shiraz Barossa 2006

Tasting Notes:
Right off the bat, most of us had all the wines completely mixed up. In this flight, we had the most expensive wine, and the least expensive wine of the night. I cheated a little and noticed that two of the bottles were screw caps (3rd and 4th) so I knew those couldn’t be the Châteauneuf-du-Pape. I still managed to get every wine wrong (I flipped 1 and 2, and 3 and 4). Most of us really like the first and fourth wines, and they are not the most expensive wines at all. The Châteauneuf-du-Pape (#3) was not that impressive, and when you factored in the price – around 80$ – it didn’t help. the Lailey Vineyards is the “exciting discovery” of the night – and a Canadian wine!

After all of this, here’s my list of favorites.

1. #5 Barone Ricasoli Chianti Classico Castello di Brolio 2006 [55$]
2. #43 Schild Shiraz Barossa 2007 [22$]
3. #10 Brancaia, Tre Toscana IGT 2007 [22$]
4. #54 Peter Lehmann Shiraz Barossa 2006 [16$]
5. Special mention to Lailey Vineyards Syrah VQA 2008 (not on the top 100 list) [28$]

This seems to indicate that the top 100 list is a myth. Of course, taste is a really personal thing, YMMV, and all that fun stuff.

So tell me: What is your favorite wine and how much does it cost? Do you believe in top 100 lists or point systems?

Click to embiggify… If you can’t see the eggs.

I’m telling you it’s a disease. Look at those eggs RIGHT ON THE EDGE of the shelf.

Today I cleaned the fridge.

This is the before shot. Click to embiggify.

Now before I show you the after shot, let’s talk about the before state of my fridge a little. If you look closely, you can see a Styrofoam container with chicken breasts leaning against a Dijon mustard container. You can see mangoes in the vegetables drawer. You can see an eggplant right on the edge of the fist shelf, a ziploc container on the edge of the second shelf. Short containers in tall spaces, tall things in short spaces. Yogurts on two different shelves.

Chaos.

Now here’s what I did without throwing anything away. In fact, I even added a juice container.

This is the after shot. Click to embiggify.

Of course I started by cleaning the inside of the fridge and all the shelves themselves. I swear I’m the only guy in the world who knows that those glass inserts actually come out of the plastic frame if you pry hard enough.

Notice how all the yogurt is huddled together. Notice how tall items are on a tall shelf, and short items are on a short shelf. when they share a shelf, taller items go in the back, and shorter items go in front so we can read the labels – which are all facing forward in case you didn’t notice. Fruits are in the fruits drawer, vegetables in the vegetables drawer and meat is in… The meat drawer. Notice how nothing is precariously perched at the edge of a shelf, and how nothing touches the inside surface of the fridge to facilitate better airflow?

Now if you’ll excuse me, I just realized I didn’t clean the items in the door.

Do you see it?

Look closer…

Please tell me I’m not the only one finding this really funny and really hard to do.