Slideshow

I've got an exam coming up, and a lot of work to do in general, so I'm not going to get much done on the manga front this week. Since this is a blog (supposedly) I'm just going to throw up some pictures from who knows how long ago.

This dates back to July. This stuff was good, but I can't afford to drink like this anymore now that I'm back in school. What I wrote down in July was: "It doesn't seem to have much of a nose (my nose is kinda clogged though) but once it hits the mouth, it explodes. Lots of flavors I can't really make out, with a spicy finish that goes gradually oaky." I went to the store this weekend and saw this on the shelf, alongside some new (and even pricier) offerings from High West Distillery. Feels bad man.

Oh, this is from August. It's Akitabare "Koshiki Junzukuri" sake. I have only a vague remembrance of what this tasted like. Was it a "young" sake? Can't remember.

Bought CPM's first volume of Otogi Matsuri on close-out from RightStuf. Saying that they screwed up the tones is an understatement. I laughed and I cried.

Master Grade Zeta Gundam that I'm never going to finish.

Tried natto; it's not bad. Don't know what all the fuss is about.

Lately "local" and "artisanal" spirits have been in vogue. Death's Door Gin is one of them, I suppose, made from Wisconsin wheat. It's a rather sweet gin. Kind of buttery too, whatever that means. Originally I wanted to try these guys's whiskey, which is a "white" whiskey that's not aged on wood. Still haven't gotten my hands on a bottle; totally slipped my mind when I went to the store this weekend. Did notice that they've changed the bottle for the gin, though.

This arrived last week from bk1. So far I'm 3 for 3 for sea shipping. Let's see, I ordered on January 8th. Some stuff got backordered and it didn't ship until the 27th. Arrived March 15th which is about par for the course. Sea shipping isn't all that much cheaper than SAL, though, when you consider that it takes over twice as long.

Maybe I'll talk about the stuff in this pile some other time.

Ohyama Tokubetsu Junmai

I've had this stuff two times before now, but this is the first time I really enjoyed it. The first time I think my mouth chemistry was screwy, and the second time was at a sushi restaurant that inexplicably smelled of turpentine. This time, though, everything went right.

Sake is pretty amazing stuff. I say amazing because there's an amazing range of flavors and textures that come out of fermented rice. You can go from a near-flavorless Daiginjo, with most of the rice polished away, to a Ginjo that's like a dessert wine. (I'm thinking of the Yuki Honoka, which has an amazing sweetness yet fades cleanly away.)

But anyway, the Ohyama Tokubetsu Junmai is a somewhat acidic sake, with a bit of fruity sweetness. I'm not good with identifying flavors, but I might say there's a bit of apple in there. It hits the mouth cleanly, with some acid astringency (is that redundant?), with the finish drawing out the flavors. Like some other sake, it tends to leave a rice-y consistency in my mouth, but I try not to think about that. At $10-12 for a 300mL, it's a decent value.

Hear the SF Chronicle's wine reporter say gushing things about it here.

Finally, some Sazerac

For a while now, I've been wanting to get my hands on the Sazerac-label rye, a six-year-old item that seems to be a standard-bearer among ryes. Presumably it has something to do with the glorious Sazerac cocktail, made with rye, absinthe, and bitters. I was in the city today, so I dropped by Cask, the spirits store that's an offshoot of Bourbon & Branch, and picked up a bottle.

My usual rye is the Wild Turkey 101, which packs quite a bit more heat than the 90-proof Sazerac does. I'm sipping my way through a bit right now, and it's taken some sips to recalibrate my mouth's expectations. So far, I can say that the Sazerac is a complicated dram: beautiful aroma, astringency in the mouth that becomes tender sweetness, and a pleasant lingering burn down the throat. (Very tsundere.)

I was in the city to see the dentist, got a filling replaced and whatnot, so my cheek was numb for quite a few hours. I walked up to City Lights Books, read through a few things. First time I've been there, but it felt just like other quirky bookstores in the Bay Area. I read a bit of Kenzaburo Oe's A Personal Matter, which I'll have to find some time to read in its entirety. Then I looked through James Gleick's Faster, which had a riveting opening but seemed to run out of steam. Then Ross Duffin's polemic about equal temperament caught my eye, and I flipped through his arguments about how ET is not always the best, and how various other tuning systems have gone in and out of favor through history. I ended up taking home James Gleick's Chaos, and the All Over Coffee book, which I've been meaning to obtain ever since it came out.

If you're ever in the SF Financial District for lunch, you should go to Muracci's, which makes the best tonkatsu I've ever tasted. I had it for lunch today, and just thinking about it makes me salivate for more.

Mizuwari

I forgot to publish my Bartender=alcoholism post, but having a mizuwari reminded me.



Follow these fine directions to make your own. The 13.5 stirs is essential. I made the mistake of adding too much water. Also, using an expensive blend (Famous Grouse) was probably a mistake... should've settled for the Ballantine's.

Bartender turned me into an alcoholic.

They knowingly conceived this project to exploit the finely romantic sensibilities of dreaming youth, lost youth, and youth being lost. It seemed, and now undeniably is, so natural, so beautiful, to forge one's courage, drown one's failures, or relive one's past through the lens of a cocktail. The bottles spin away into the horizon, endless labels of industrially distilled spirits, each containing glimpses of a dream. The strangely earnest jazz trickles past, a tributary to the river of sentimentality. And Ryuu creates his Glass of the Gods for the evening, and stricken with a desperate need to savor the same flavors and feelings, we rush out to buy gin and Drambuie and champagne and tonic water.

Well, we're not that desperate. I did end up having to try my friend's "Jack Rose", which he made by adding apple cider (or was it apple juice?) to a bottom-shelf brandy, together with some citrus component that wasn't a lime. Suffice it to say, it didn't really work. For my part, I bought a bottle of gin, which I gradually figured out how to drink. After that came a bottle of (lousy) tequila, and then a bottle of (awesome) rye. Now I think we have ten bottles of whiskey in the house.

I can't completely put the blame on Bartender for my alcoholism. Recent years have seen resurgence of cocktail culture in the United States, and perhaps the madness has made it to Japan. There are no melodramatic TV shows in the US about cocktails, though. Just articles and columns in the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times. And some great books.

On your personal road to developing an emotional dependence on alcohol, I advise not buying the liquors featured in Bartender's product placement spotlight. Spend a bit more to get top-shelf liquors. Your cirrhosis will be far more pleasant to develop. Now excuse me while I deal with all this acetaldehyde.

Manhattan
2 oz Rye Whiskey
1/2 oz Red Vermouth
3 dashes Angostura Bitters
Assemble ingredients in mixing glass with ice. Stir a good bit, then strain into other glass of choice. I drink everything out of a "Scotch glass".



(Note to the PC police: alcoholism is a serious problem. Professional help is advised.)