Blind Muscat's Cellarbook

Walking / Drinking Tour of Portland

Once I heard that Portland, Oregon had become the epicenter of a resurgence in craft distilling, I had to check it out. I am fond of Portland (college daze) and, of course, fond of distilleries; better yet, I can usually find a way to get paid to check such things out. And so armed with a bunch of phone numbers and addresses, I flew up that way this past Thursday to spend the afternoon on Distillery Row.

The trip did not start auspiciously. My flight on Southwest was an hour and a half late taking off (those pesky mechanical problems, due no doubt to never doing inspections). This delay cost me my first appointment of the day, lunch with Steve McCarthy, founder of Clear Creek Distillery, Portland’s first, launched back in the 1980s. (Steve will get his own post, soon.) So I moved on to destination two. When my Former Eastern Bloc cabbie took me from the airport to what was supposed to be my destination, I quickly realized he had gotten the address wrong, despite many repetitions, so I ran after him, yelling and flailing till I got his attention, and finally reached the right address.

The Moleskine® Cult

At a recent lunch and tasting sponsored by an ambitious and well-heeled winery, the 20 or so writers in attendance were all presented with a personalized gift, a small, hardbound blank notebook, about 3-1/2” by 5-1/2”, embossed on the cover with the winery logo.  It didn’t register much with me, but all around me, people were giving off sounds of delight—“Oh, cool, a mole skin.”

“A what?” I asked. “A mole skin, you know, one of those great little notebooks—I use them all the time,” came several responses almost in unison. ”Uh, okay,” I said.

I knew immediately I had stumbled across a cult.

Potato Starch vs. Polysaccharides

Blind Muscat isn’t sure why he’s ending the year with a post about vodka. He doesn’t much life vodka and hardly ever drinks the stuff; he thinks the term “vodka Martini” is an oxymoron, and that the fashion for flavored vodkas is a sign of the decline of Western Civilization.

The goal of vodka-making is to create a flavorless distillate, legally defined as neutral spirits. It is the diametrical opposite of gin, whose goal in life is to cram in as many flavorful botanicals as possible. Vodka costs more than EverClear or, for that matter, ethanol, both of which are much more efficient at altering the consciousness of the drinker. Vodka is like a piece of writing with no ideas in it—which may be why it is so popular with the children of the Internet.

Gin and (Fever-Tree) Tonic

Blind Muscat has a lengthy and colorful medical history, including multiple surgeries and a number of obscure, hard-to-pronounce immune system disorders. But he’s never had malaria, and he owes it entirely to his love for gin and tonics.

Many converts to the joys of wine develop an aversion to, even a contempt for distilled spirits, or at least those not made from grapes. However much elegant, connoisseur-ish prose such prejudices are wrapped in, they remain juvenile. Grown-ups drink spirits, too, in the right time and place. And on a hot summer day on your back porch, a good, icy gin and tonic is worth a tankerful of Pinot Grigio.