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Saturday, January 26, 2008

Burns Night Dinner

We went to a Burns Night dinner tonight at friends of ours in Lambertville, NJ. We, ah, didn't do any of the prescribed stuff: no piping of the haggis, no poetry, no singing, no Selkirk Grace. We did have music (about half the folks there were musicians; fiddle, guitar, bodhran, penny whistle, mandolin), however, and of course we had plenty to drink.

I took a couple six-packs of Old Chub (always delicious, full, malty, sweet, wonderful), a bottle of Balvenie 25 Year Old (which we didn't get to, dammit), a bottle of Rittenhouse Rye 23 Year Old (which I found I liked more than last year's 21 Year Old: woody, but still quite spicy, and possessed of a minty coolness), and a standard bottling of Glenlivet which I'd obviously let sit, never opened, way too long -- I opened it to use in a Honey and Whiskey Cake to take along, and the cork just crumbled. Okay, I stuck a wine stopper in it, and sat in on the table at the dinner and said, 'ye mus' drink it all!' That's Scottish, and that's nae crap.

It was an excellent time, and made up for missing the Burns Night at Sly Fox last night. We tasted a six year old mystery malt from 'a Lowland distillery' (it's a Signatory bottling; anyone know if this is Glenkinchie or Auchentoshan? I was guessing Auchentoshan), a 10 yr old Auchentoshan, and a 10 yr old Glenkinchie. I also got some of the Tuthilltown Hudson Baby Bourbon 4-Grain, and...I think I'll wait till production has been going on a while longer before trying it again.

The main opinion I shared with our hosts is that we should get together to drink a dram or four more often; the typical reaction to a Burns Night dinner. Now...to execute on that...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks. We are thinking of having Burns night this year for the first time. With the surname Burns, you would of thought we might have considerd sooner than my 61 years. Edward Burns