Highland Park 30-year-old Single Malt

Found myself at Jack Rose last Monday. I knew that the place had a mind-boggling collection of rare and vintage Scotches. What I didn't know is that most of them are available by the half-ounce taste. Well-aged Scotch is infamously unaffordable, but in half-ounce increments many are almost accessible to working stiffs once in a great while. For $6/taste, C.S. and I ended up trying Highland Park's 30-year-old single malt. It wasn't the "standard" 30-year, either. It appeared to be some kind of limited edition, long since out of production no doubt, but of course I've neglected to write down the exact name. The experience, however, needed no writing down. Color: dark amber, far darker than any other Scotch I've ever tasted. It looked like maple syrup. Nose: pronounced butterscotch (no surprises there) with some citrus and a sharp burn of alcohol. Palate: Butterscotch on the front, noticeable sweetness, very intense. On the mid-palate, surprisingly tannic. I tasted strong black tea. Finishes with a bright, acidic, almost lemony note - a Highland Park family trait shared with the relatively more plebeian 12-year-old. Quite possibly the best beverage in any category I have ever tried.

New Beligum and the earthquake

I guess I’m supposed to be writing about the earthquake, but there’s not a lot to write. Initially thought someone was jack-hammering downstairs, but as the intensity increased, people started coming out of their cubicles, saying “must be an earthquake.” One co-worker was seriously scared – the look on his face was the definition of paralyzing fear. All he could find the strength to say was “run fast.” I guess with both Fukushima and Haiti still fresh in everyone’s mind, I can’t blame him too much. The company sent people home. Cell phone service completely knocked out. The Metro was running, but on a 15-mph speed limit. I walked the five miles home, stopping for a pint along the way.

So instead, I am going to write about New Belgium. Long a staple of the craft beer scene out West, it is available here in Virginia as of last night. Rustico held a release party of sorts, which C.S. and I checked out. Once again I wasn’t taking notes, so I’m commenting from memory.

Ranger IPA (6.5% ABV, 70 IBU): Nice, clean-tasting IPA, balanced but slightly tilted towards bitter hops. Relatively light in body and color. Excellent when the weather is hot but you still want a pronounced hop flavor.

Trippel (7.8% ABV, 25 IBU): Seriously fruity and a little sugary for my taste. The brewers are mum on what they add, besides coriander (which I actually couldn’t taste), but some candy sugar has got to be in there. Not that there is anything wrong with that – adding it is an old Belgian tradition after all – but makes for a bit too much artificial sweetness for my taste.

Kick (8.5% ABV, IBU unspecified): Even more seriously fruity and sour cranberry and pumpkin lambic. Not at all my style. I only got a 3-oz. taste. It’s the sort of thing you like if you like that sort of thing.

I didn’t bother ordering a Fat Tire. Like everything else, it came in 12-oz goblets, which I thought was completely silly. Out West, it’s the quintessential session beer, and it will always remind me of weekend afternoons whiled away with friends on the rooftop of Grapevine in Scottsdale.

David Russell, For David

David Russel's For David: Music Written for David Russell, Guitar is a useful record. It is a snapshot of the state of contemporary composition for solo classical guitar. It is also excellent ammunition for those looking for evidence that modern "serious" music has become an emotionless, over-formalized, self-referential morass.

Of the composers represented here - all themselves guitarists, and all writing specifically for Russell - the American Phil Rosheger is probably the odd man out. His self-contained, single-movement pieces are very much in the tradition of 19th and early-20th century Spanish composers like Tarrega and are the only works on the record that feature themes that the listener recognizes as such. Frenchman Francis Kleynjans' Arabesque en forme de caprice also starts out promisingly enough with a theme that pulls off one of this listener's favorite tricks - evoking a melancholy mood in a major key - but has plenty of time to get bogged down over its nine-minute length, even if the overall effect is less grating than much of the rest of the music.

The next step down is Welsh composer Steve Goss, who contributes a work of three relatively short movements inspired by the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca. The melodies, as a casual listener understands the term, are no longer there, and the development path of any given work is veiled at best, but Goss's saving grace is the same one employed by most other successful modern composers: space. He makes his point with a minimum of notes, and sounds honest as a result. The opening movement Cantiga, in particular, is effective - at less than two minutes in duration, it is essentially a miniature. By definition, it cannot say much, and that is precisely why it works. Too many people have a habit of saying too much in too many situations, and any work that bucks this trend is a welcome change. Listening does require some focus, but it's mental energy well spent.

The rest of the music - other composers represented are Sergio Assad and Ben Verdery - is fiendishly difficult, deeply chromatic and, to these ears, completely unappealing. Throughout the recording, Russell himself is, of course, flawless... and irrelevant. His prodigious technique is more than adequate, but on music with so little emotional content, the interpreter's personality is completely lost. The formal construction of many of these works is, no doubt, impressive, and a few hours spent with the scores would probably be very illuminating. But that is not what we have here. Performed, this music sounds like little more than aimless noodling.

Tyler Cowen

Went to hear Tyler Cowen, the George Mason economist, at Politics & Prose tonight. He was speaking in connection with his new book, The Great Stagnation. Not having read the book yet, I will refrain from detailed commentary. Suffice it to say that he had a few interesting things to say, and in the end I was glad I went.

The gist of his argument in the book seems to be that broad economic growth is driven by technological innovation, and that we have run out of innovation. "Broad" to him means something that the entire population benefits from, not just a narrowly-defined group. And the innovation has to be deep and fundamental to be meaningful -- something that transforms every-day lives of a vast number of people in readily recognizable ways. According to Cowen, for the past three hundred years, such innovation has been relatively easy to come by, and we started to take it for granted and assume that things will continue in the same vein for the foreseeable future. In fact, however, such life-altering innovation has now become very difficult to achieve. We have already picked off all the low-hanging fruit, and anything more will require exponentially more effort. Thus, phenomena like the leveling-off of income growth among many others.

Two points from the talk stuck with me. One is that the Internet is not all it has cracked up to be, at least when it comes to changing people's lives in fundamental ways. The intellectual elite in places like Washington, DC (i.e., all of us) don't recognize this. To us, it has fundamentally changed our lives, and we cannot imagine life and work without the Internet any more than we can imagine it without electricity or telephone service. The same is not true for the population at large, Cowen argues. For a middle-class family of four in rural Ohio pulling in $45K/year, it's a marginal improvement at best, and a bit of a luxury. I tend to agree with him on this.

The other point was a little more chilling. One of the reasons for the slow-down in innovation that Cowen has suggested is the lure of the financial sector for the best-educated. Because so many Harvard graduates (e.g.) go into finance these days, fewer talented people go into basic research, the sciences, and education. Someone in the audience, however, asked a provocative question -- how are we different in that respect from what was going on in the late 1920s, another major boom for the financial industry? Cowen's answer was that we weren't that different. In retrospect, of course, we all know where the events of 1929-1931 led to, especially in Europe. Unfortunately, I did not have an opportunity to ask him to comment on that during Q&A. I asked the question once the event proper was over, but I am not sure he got my drift. He was focused on the economic legacy of 1931 in the US, not the political legacy of 1931 in Europe. He advised me to pay off my mortgage. Thanks, Tyler.

James P. Carse, The Religious Case Against Belief

James P. Carse's The Religious Case Against Belief is a curious book. Carse - a former head of the religious studies program at NYU - starts with a bold claim that pretty much all commonly accepted definitions and, more importantly, understanding of religion is wrong, and sets out to provide the correct one.

The big problem for him are belief systems. Pretty much anyone would agree that a religion is a set of beliefs, and that, according to Carse, is precisely what has led to millennia of violence and intolerance in the name of religion. He spends the entire first half of the book deconstructing and analyzing belief systems and how they work. This he does with clarity, elegance and much nuance. In fact, this analysis is the chief appeal of the book and to many will be the only part worth reading. Carse points out, for example, that a fundamental feature of belief systems is the need for opposition, that they derive their vitality from not only espousing a set of beliefs, but from disagreeing with a set of opposing beliefs just as vehemently. If all of a sudden everyone said to a proponent of a given system, "Sure, you're right, I agree with you," the system would implode. He also points out - and that may be obvious on a bit of reflection, but he does it well nonetheless - that belief systems are by definition closed, i.e. they accept no evidence that does not support the beliefs already held. That is precisely why science does not count. Any scientist believes a great many things at any given moment, of course, but is always open to having his mind changed by new evidence. The mental process that is essential for subscribing to a belief system he calls willful ignorance - a notion that becomes important in the second half of the book.

So if religion is not a belief system, what is it? Here, Carse is far less clear. In opposition to willful ignorance, he posits a higher ignorance. A kind of sense of wonder at the ever expanding mystery of the world around you. The key here is that by definition you will always remain ignorant of the ultimate truth, and the more you learn, the greater your ignorance becomes. This is why science doesn't count here either, although he does not say that. Any self-respecting scientist would say that we could eventually know everything about the world. It might be that we never will, but we could.

Mere higher ignorance, however, even if you could pinpoint it exactly, is not by itself religion. Carse defines religion in terms of the Latin word communitas. It takes him a while to arrive at a definition. Mostly, he defines it as being in opposition to civitas (essentially, formal authority), but eventually arrives at this: "[communitas] is a spontaneous gathering of persons who identify themselves and one another as members of a unified body" (p. 83). Finally, longevity is essential - communitas has to have existed long enough to be meaningful. Carse never defines "enough" - it's a case of "I'll know it when I see it." Thus, Catholicism is a religion (as is Christianity in general), but Mormonism is not. So religion, then, is a spontaneous gathering of people that has coalesced around a sense of higher ignorance and has been around long enough. Interestingly, on the same page where he defined communitas Carse says that we cannot really know what religion is. But it's something like that. Note also that I didn't say a religion. This is essential - there aren't many religions, it's all one thing. Christianity and Judaism are mere short-hands (though Carse doesn't use the term) for something that we cannot know and cannot even really name properly.

One of the interesting things is that in an entire book about religion and belief, there is no God anywhere. He is barely mentioned, and even then in passing, while discussing belief. Perhaps more shockingly, the same is true of faith. Again, Carse drops the word once or twice in an intuitively understandable context, but does not really examine it or address its relevance to religion, if any. If pressed, I suppose he would say that it is a requirement for belief, but not for religion.

All this is interesting as far as it goes, but ultimately frustrating. Carse says a lot about what a religion isn't, a fair amount about what it is (or at least tries to), but nothing about what it does. I suppose he would say it doesn't do anything, it simply is. But that's a cop-out. We humans are a practical bunch. Higher ignorance and a sense of wonder is all well and good, but for us to bother, we've got to get something out of it, especially a couple of thousand years ago when we didn't have the luxury of sitting around reading books by retired religion professors. But as soon as we draw the usual inferences - "it helps us explain the world around us," "we have something to blame when things go wrong," etc., we are in the territory of belief and not religion.

So does religion have essentially no purpose? I suspect Carse would say yes. I wish he did - it would have made at least the book useful to some people, if not religion itself. But advocating the utility of something would put is back in the territory of belief, wouldn't it?

Jason Wilson, Boozehound

If you are going to go to school to study writing, don't do it at Drexel University. That is where Jason Wilson, the author of Boozehound: On the Trail of the Rare, the Obscure, and the Overrated in Spirits ostensibly teaches writing, and if the book is any indication, he is not very good at it. But I am getting ahead of myself. Boozehound is actually not a bad book. It's worth checking out by anyone who has any interest in distilled spirits and cocktails, primarily for the recipes. To his great credit, Wilson closes every chapter with a sizable selection of recipes, usually a mixture of classics and new-fangled concoctions, sometimes of his own creation. By the end of the book, all but the most obsessive amateur mixologist will be armed with a year's worth of experimental material.

As to the rest, Boozehound is largely true to food-writing form. Wilson travels around the Western hemisphere on his publisher's dime, visiting distilleries and bars, interviewing distillers and marketers and tasting a variety of spirits, some quite unusual, and marvels the whole time at his great fortune of being able to do this. Last I checked, this was called showing off.

Where Wilson really lost me, however, was the anecdotes of his supposedly misspent youth. Suburban New Jersey in the 1980s is an endless source of amusement to him, even all these years later. You would think that a college professor, ostensibly happily married with two kids, would have moved beyond this, and traveling around the world tasting exotic spirits would blow making out with a big-haired girl in a Camaro out of the water, but apparently not. Maybe it's just me. I never had the exhilarating experience of almost getting lucky with the most popular girl in the class on a high-school trip to Paris. But for my money, a well-mixed cocktail is best garnished with a twist of lemon peel, not a heap of teenage escapades.

The Astor Martini, or How I Failed to Broaden My Horizons

Going out of your comfort zone now and again is healthy, or so they say. Try something new for a change, you may surprise yourself. It'll broaden your horizons. My friend Clive, who knows a thing or two about beverages, recently shared a recipe for what he calls the Astor Martini: graprefruit juice, Campari and - here's the clincher - vodka. Ketel One vodka, specifically. Well, it is definitely grapefruit season, and Campari has been a staple in my home bar ever since Clive introduced me to the Negroni all those years ago. The problem is vodka. I do not drink it as a rule, and I tend to avoid cocktails based on it. The sole exception is the Bloody Mary, but even that is a rare treat these days. This despite, or maybe because, my origins lie in a place that invented the damn thing. So Ketel One was out of the question.

When I inquired about the possibility of using another brand, Clive equivocated, relaxing his dictum a bit but insisting on a certain minimum level of quality. Well, no doubt to his great disappointment, vodka quality is a foreign concept to me, and I am not likely to change the situation any time soon, due more to a lack of available liver capacity than interest. So I reached for the only thing I had ready to hand - a bottle of U.K.-made Three Olives that I bought a long time ago for a party.

Clive's photos show an unmistakably ruby-red grapefruit, but I had a yellow one on hand (really a pale pink once you cut into it). After a minute of squeezing, measuring, pouring and shaking, I had my cocktail. The original is apparently served without a garnish, but to me there is something incomplete about an ungarnished martini-style cocktail, the minimalist appeal notwithstanding, so seeing as I've already sacrificed a grapefruit, I gave the glass a generous swath of its rind. Then I strained and looked. Clive's photos show a decidedly red, almost blood-hued concoction, but mine came out unapologetically pink. I am talking blatant, 1980s nylon windbreaker pink. Girly pink, if I may use the term. Good thing no one is watching, I thought.

I sniffed - not much. A little pleasant citrus scent. I sipped. I must admit the flavor was appealing. Nice balance of sweet and sour, with just enough of the trademark Campari bitterness coming through to make it interesting. A little coriander, I thought - probably an ingredient in the famously secret Campari brought to the fore by the grapefruit. And then... nothing. The drink was a pleasant fruity bauble. Not nearly sweet enough to fall into the liquid-candy category - the grapefruit's tannic character saw to that - but it didn't exactly pack a punch, either. Perhaps it's the comfort zone thing, but I expect most drinks served in a martini glass to be potent, occasionally even overwhelming. After you take a sip of a properly made martini, you shouldn't want another one for a good long time - this is the reason why they should not be made too large and must be served as cold as possible. Same with the Manhattan - the best ones are made with a high-proof spirit like Rittenhouse Rye and a rich, viscous vermouth like Punt e Mes. The Astor, by comparison, was a breezy, whimsical thing, smooth to a fault, best served over ice at brunch. To be fair, the drink did originate at a Miami Beach hotel, and Clive recommended using it to "evok[e] holidays in balmy, exotic climates." My mind must be so far removed from such delights that even a cocktail can't bring it back.

Or did I do something wrong? Could it be that the vodka really does make a difference? Would the legendary (and expensive) Ketel One have added a whole new dimension to the drink, a level of depth and complexity that my semi-swill-grade flavorless alcohol vehicle just could not match? Maybe. In fact, I hope so. I am definitely looking forward to tasting a properly made specimen made by someone who know what he is doing. Until then, seeing as my days of plying unsuspecting female guests with deceptively smooth fruity cocktails are long since over, I am unlikely to attempt another one.