So I try not to write about personal things, because a good blog is not a bad version of Dear Diary.
HOWEVER: It’s my birthday and I’ll blog if I want to. (Believe this is a song from the ’50s. Could be wrong. Not gonna check.)
Though I rarely drink now, my wife gave me two bottles of fine bourbon this morning: Knob Creek and Buffalo Trace.
A while bag, I toured the Buffalo Trace distillery while in Kentucky’s capitol, and they spent hours educating all about bourbon, which is rather complicated and interesting.
Also, the governor made us Kentucky Colonels.
I kid you not. Not really a military thing. Honorary advisory role from way back. Colonel Sanders wasn’t an officer who fought in World War II, then decided to open fried chicken restaurants. He was a Kentucky Colonel.
So yeah, those of us who went on this trip still joke around and call each other Colonel, though none of us have gone to the annual reunions.
The interesting part about the tour wasn’t just the ABC’s of bourbon and how each barrel was worth $25,000.
At lunch, they gave us pulled pork sandwiches and little taster cups. Columns were ingredients: rye whiskey, bourbon, vodka and so forth. Rows were age, with six months on the bottom row, a year, two years then the expensive stuff on the top row aged something like seven years or more.
Here’s the thing: didn’t matter if you loved whiskey and hated vodka. Every single thing in that bottom row, the six-months old, tasted like cheap moonshine. Rocket fuel. It was terrible, no matter what ingredients they used.
The next row was better. Third row was great.
Weirdly, the top row, the expensive stuff, wasn’t universally wonderful. Vodka doesn’t really taste like anything, so it was fine, but other cups weren’t smooth like the middle rows. Some of them tasted seriously off. Spicy, heavy, more concentrated. You’ve probably run into this if you’ve ever had an expensive bottle of wine. Uncorking it after thirty or sixty years is rolling the dice. Could be amazing. Could be sour and terrible. Either way, it’ll cost you as much as a used Honda Civic.
On the same line of thought, I’d always thought the Z3 was the best-looking car ever since Remington Steele drove one in GOLDENEYE: SEAN BEAN DIES AGAIN. (Love the Swedish subtitles on this video. Perfect.)
Last week, I spotted a Z3 at our friend’s house with a FOR SALE sign. Beautiful car, low miles.
She gave me keys to drive it. A dream, right?
Hated it. A fine car, just way too small, my head would poke out of the top of the soft-top. I felt cramped, like an astronaut shoved into a space capsule. I honestly feel far more comfortable in the Epic Black Car Part II: The Sequel, which sounds weird to say–I’d rather drive that instead of a Z3? But yeah, I would.
Sometimes, expensive is just expensive, and something one-third the price is twice as good.
The Red Pen of Doom 