Elijah Craig (bourbon)

ON THE ROCKS - Smooth bourbon, caramel notes melting with the ice into a grateful palette cooling and warming at once, a joy to sip, all too easy to drain. Not like other bourbons I'm used to, more of the rich balance of an Irish whiskey - but then there is that spicy, heavy, tongue-loosening quality that even mainstream bourbons offer.

W/ FRENCH ROAST COFFE AND 1/2 AND 1/2 - Wow! Some of the best Irish coffee I've made me'self. A generous portion of the whiskey adds only flavor and warmth, no bitter bite to the taste or acidic heaviness with the coffee and cream. The buzz is already pleasant but my second cup isn't at all daunting. I only wish I didn't have to go to work.

STRAIGHT-UP - Brace myself for this high-proof bourbon neat after dinner, clearing my palette (and augmenting my pH) w/ cold water...Sipping spicy-sour from the whiskey glass; THERE'S that bourbon bite I've been waiting for! Still smoother than highschool Jim Beam jug swillin'; for another gulp I'm ready, willin': sparkling embers on my tongue; consume me, ye conflagration! Dixieland - what you do with the gift of Ceres surpasses Bacchus' blood...

W/ SAMUEL SMITH TADDY PORTER - This, my friends, is the way to drink a dark English/Irish beer. And this combination is heads and tails above my go-to boilermaker of Guinness w/ Jameson.

'Nuff said.

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Weihenstephaner Helles

It's been a couple years since I last posted on The Discriminating Wino. Hopefully that means I've been more discriminating and less of a wino! As you all know, Weihenstephaner is one of my favorite brews of all time! If I'm still kickin' 'em back in 2040 (and I ever get around to getting my Real ID) I hope to be in Bavaria, Germany celebrating the 1000th anniversary of the World's Oldest Brewery! You've read about their festbier in my Oktoberfest roundup from a few years back...and now in general I like a brown glass bottle, the way the Germans been makin' 'em since long before I was born, not these canned 4-packs but that's the way the industry's going and as I was on a budget I had an opportunity to revisit their Helles, which I haven't had in a while. It's much lighter than the traditional Munich lager, which is darker and nuttier; but not sweet like a Weisse, closer to a Pilsner but...

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Augustiner-Braeu München Edelstoff

Perhaps the best commercially available beer imported to the States. That fruity, bittersweet taste of Münich; the sentimental languor upon your palette, soft and luxuriant, yet crisp and masculine. Outdoes even Wihenstephan. I sit here in the warm afternoon light of late summer, nostalgic for highschool, the long nineteenth century and the Middle Ages of our Lord before all this wretched progress. At least some things are done right.

The Discriminating Wino

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