The Breath of Bruichladdich

[rayheinrich]

Leanne, Leanne, Leanne; what can be said...

Learning to make Scotch whisky was but childhood training for the
Scot genius who perfected the making of REAL whiskey, straight
bourbon's crown of creation: Lincoln County Process Tennessee Sour
Mash Whiskey. Made from Aztec Maize, not poor man's barley. (The
maize that made human sacrifice possible on a scale only dreamed of
by the feeble bog-people of the Isles.)

One of the improvements, by the way, was hygiene: The abandonment
of tainting God's Brew with the foul smoke excreted from a
smoldering mixture of rotted vegetation and animal feces (peat)
obtained from festering primordial swamps.

But, as Dylan Thomas, who famously preferred Bourbon to Scotch (and
KNEW whereof he drank), was found of saying: "A man survives, he
drinks what we can." So, yes, in the context of survival, the
desperate act of drinking Scotch whisky does indeed make some sort
of pitiful sense.




_____________________________________________________
That was fun, but make no mistake, I mean no disrespect to 
Rabbie Burns on his birthday. I have always appreciated his 
left-wing attitude (being of that persuasion myself) and 
would feel honoured on any day in any universe to drink 
whatever he was drinking.


             __No Churchman Am I__
                                     - Robert Burns

    No churchman am I for to rail and to write,
    No statesman nor soldier to plot or to fight,
    No sly man of business contriving a snare,
    For a big-belly'd bottle's the whole of my care.

    The peer I don't envy, I give him his bow;
    I scorn not the peasant, though ever so low;
    But a club of good fellows, like those that are here,
    And a bottle like this, are my glory and care.

    Here passes the squire on his brother-his horse;
    There centum per centum, the cit with his purse;
    But see you the Crown how it waves in the air?
    There a big-belly'd bottle still eases my care.

    The wife of my bosom, alas! she did die;
    for sweet consolation to church I did fly;
    I found that old Solomon proved it fair,
    That a big-belly'd bottle's a cure for all care.

    I once was persuaded a venture to make;
    A letter inform'd me that all was to wreck;
    But the pursy old landlord just waddl'd upstairs,
    With a glorious bottle that ended my cares.

    "Life's cares they are comforts"-a maxim laid down
    By the Bard, what d'ye call him, that wore the black gown;
    And faith I agree with th' old prig to a hair,
    For a big-belly'd bottle's a heav'n of a care.

                     - - - 



P.S. And a well-crafted poem yourself, Leanne.

"The glass is filled with fifteen years of patience born of oak"

What a line...