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Instead of using a koan - a sound or word like "OM" to take you out of your head and allow you to be meditatively present - really present - in the present, I'm suggesting you use mindfully inhabiting the rich tapestry of flavors and aromas in your glass. Instead of using a koan - a sound or word like "OM" to take you out of your head and allow you to be meditatively present - really present - in the present, I'm suggesting you use mindfully inhabiting the rich tapestry of flavors and aromas in your glass. Instead of using a koan - a sound or word like "OM" to take you out of your head and allow you to be meditatively present - really present - in the present, I'm suggesting you use mindfully inhabiting the rich tapestry of flavors and aromas in your glass. She wrote a fascinating article on this topic titled:"Becoming an expert in anything, whether it’s wine tasting or mathematics, changes the way you perceive the world."In this article, she's talking about wine tasting - but you can see how everything she says is directly applicable to whisky tasting too:

When he asked if I wanted to participate in a blind tasting he was organizing for Diving For Pearls blog where we would taste a ladder of Elijah Craig expressions ranging from a pre-fire Heaven Hill (DSP-KY-31) EC12 from around 2001, to the current NAS in the new taller slender bottle, I jumped. I had never tasted EC12 from the old Heaven Hill distillery before, so the flavor signature was somewhat new to me, but it had a constellation of the features I associate with old Bourbon: dank sweetness, richness, darkness, and a funky untidy quality. Then I added the assumption that Heaven Hill's evolution of Elijah Craig was a straight-up linear growth in demand with a somewhat fixed supply of aging stocks and a growing premium market, so there would be a linear decline in quality as the expressions moved through time. By the time Heaven Hill was planning to ditch the age statement, by hiding it on the back, they were probably already pulling out the honey barrels for higher-priced premium bottlings, and then in the NAS era, they were free (or forced) to use younger and younger whiskey so that the flavor slope should be a one way decline.

Last October I got to geek out about the history of rye whiskey in New York at an event called "New York Whiskey - Past, Present, Future" - part of the Empire Rye appellation celebration and New York State Craft Beverage Week, held by Josh Richholt at his cavernous super-bar Last October I got to geek out about the history of rye whiskey in New York at an event called "New York Whiskey - Past, Present, Future" - part of the Empire Rye appellation celebration and New York State Craft Beverage Week, held by Josh Richholt at his cavernous super-bar (and I don't use the term lightly here) of Coppersea Distillery - one of the founders of the Empire Rye idea, Reid Mitenbuler (author of Bourbon Empire, and a serious whiskey geek), myself, and Josh Richholt (dusty enthusiast, owner of The Well, and another serious whiskey geek) - right to left in the photo below - discussed the long and fascinating history of rye whiskey in New York State. If Chuck Schumer had just researched a little bit - or had talked to any of us who know and love the ongoing story - he could have delivered a real whiskey gauntlet to Mitch McConnell, and everyone in America might be talking about whether New York just might actually be a whiskey power, instead of laughing at Schumer and at the idea of New York whiskey.

In this case we have Lewis Rosensteil's Schenley operation - which would become the second largest liquor company in the United States (second only to American Medicinal Sprits, which became National Distillers after Repeal). the back label on this bottle says that whiskey from Stewart Distillery, Baltimore was "bottled for" Gibson Distilling Co. of Brownsville, PA (the heart of the Monongahela region), at Schenley's concentration warehouse. this medicinal pint represents a rare opportunity to taste the whiskey from a vanished and historic Baltimore MD distillery which was part of the formation of Lewis Rosensteil's Schenley Industries in its heady formative days. This bourbon is should be a rich with that mid-century heavy vanilla and brown-sugar loaded sweetness and that characteristic Jim Beam "funk" (which some people tastes like a barn smells - and other people say is "earthy").This is a classic case of a historic American distillery which is still in major production.