Monday, June 3, 2013. Day 2 of Backroads Ireland bike trip. Riding from Bantry to Kenmare. Lunch at Ewe Sculpture Garden. Treats at Lorge Chocolatier. Park Hotel Kenmare. Whiskey tasting.
Today is monday june 3rd second day of our trip um and it’s starting off to be a beautiful day this old honda motorcycle caught my eye as i was coming up the hill so i stopped to take a picture and look what name is on the mailbox
Here’s my ancestral dog barking at me this is the house next door to the dun house and they have their own work of art in front as well this is the road and valley we’ve been climbing out from balalicky and we’re headed in that direction we’ve turned on to the bera peninsula and
It’s got a lot of growth i’m amazed at all the ferns huh this is the entrance to the u experience yes hmm all um another incredible backroads luncheon spread it’s a really pretty spread oh they always do a great job i’ve seen the secret cookbook and it’s wonderful right there’s the u
Garden where we had lunch and this is called the kaha pass so here’s a guy just hanging out apparently the owners paint a die on them to mark them as theirs i’ve seen sheep with red also there’s a buddy i think i see a lake way in the distance
And that is still county cork we’re about to go through these tunnels and we’ll be in county carry this is molly galvin’s cottage this is all the old stuff that would have been in your grandmother’s kitchen way back and it smells wonderful so so this is large chocolatier and i have just sampled
Dark chocolate and cumin duck chocolate and basil dark chocolate from madagascar with smoked almonds it just started to sprinkle a little bit out there yes it’s hot careful it’s very hot i understand what it smells heavenly there you go want to get a picture of the kitchen yes
What are you working on right there i was gonna say in case when you wake up you say what is strange green color it’s actually a white chocolate with matcha tea matcha matcha it’s so special it’s a traditional japanese tea that they use for celebration
Yeah it’s like a green tea but it’s 150 times more antioxidants on a regular tea so they use that for special occasion wow so your choc the chocolate is really um thank you which chocolate would you choose okay and the chocolate that you will choose should give you your personality here we go
Sorry for you you have to pick one i’ve got it i’m a caramel omaha we don’t know how much but we’re gonna discover wishi your power of intuition are exceptional your big artists tween with skinny judgement and you can sum up situation in seconds no so this is the kenmare river
This is the kenmare pier originally built by the third marquis of lansdowne in 1826 this is my room in the park hotel kenmare the hotel was built in the 1840s this is in the central stairway of the kenmare hotel um and i’m not sure if you’re qualified in
That sense but um a whiskey connoisseur yes and um i’m not going to say too much more because he can tell you all and enjoy and thank you i’m sure and you are all welcome to us so and i suppose one person sick the early name for whiskey in ireland is ish
Meaning of water of life because in the early days the monks set out to create something to cure people it was a long time away from enjoying it recreationally as we did now and the same applies to the latina but the aqua beater and the french devotee and distilling came to ireland
With the monks originally coming here from the 400s up to about the 700s we know from history that there is recording of distilling by aristotle and stuff like that and this still took a long long time to evolve from the early days of where it is now yes exactly
So this is 65 65 i was doing this as a back road tasting one evening and my mom and her daughters were there and the daughters i loved it and the mom was horrified and she said how did you do that and this is this college mom her mother yeah yeah
That helped me personally yeah yeah and the mom learned more about whiskey that day than if she wanted to know exactly but it has a good flavor it has a good flavor yes it really does yeah and long long ago you never bothered aging whiskey you
Would have it like this but much much rougher because you uh in this you don’t have the four shots or the fans and chemically there’s about 20 different alcohols in the whiskey which is quite a lot so this is quite i think everybody will see you could deal with it now
Tennessee this is generous how long in the uh usually about two years but so if jack daniels is eight years old it’s what did they do for the other six years isn’t this much nicer now and the color and the flavor that you see now is coming from the temple
It’s a lot smoother a lot more than the ground is brought down now as well as down to 40 percent yeah and the alcohol is brought down by adding more water earlier on and then leave it in the cask as it is and then out of the 40.
And the grain then thinks oh my god i’m in the desert last so it stops it smells like it’s stronger than the last we had it is not uh stronger in that sense but if the peat makes you think so also if you do this with this if you put
Someone in your hand this is my morning after shave always and rub it like this and then breathe it in you just breathe in peaceful small yeah you can really smell the difference yeah yeah there’s a lot of iodine notes in here a lot of c notes because this is
Right on the c so you can see where the notes are phenolic notes it is a northern ireland for a startup but it’s still an irish whiskey bushmills and bushmas is there uh my license since 1608. yes the bourbon cast and then moved to a sherry cask
And it moved again to a port castle so one you have the coppery color of port there’s another little this is the bush mills aged 86. 16 years 16 years old single mom single mom and it really is lovely it will be quite sweet and you’ll find little notes of sherry
There as well now was peat used in this one no no okay this is dried over like an anthracite type of fire or no like gas or air dried thank you i’m going to try and f why are you doing that i’m fine for that what a difference what a contrast
Among all three what do you think of this ladies should light us more so than the middle one yeah um so this is an account of exercise excisement versus a neighbor who was watching papa’s going on i said one morning i was driving up before breakfast and taking a turn in the beautiful
Valley i saw before me at some little distance about 25 highland horses tied to each other and carrying two kegs of whiskey each they were attended by 10 or 12 men summoned kilts and all their bonnets and plants and carrying large bludgeons when they saw me approach two of them fell back
Until i came up with them they scrutinized me sharply and said to the fine morning sir to which i responded then one turned to the other and said ah it’s okay you need that mind it’s the son of mitchell the man on the higher roles he didn’t turn to me and said
Was you took a dram and on my saying yes he took out of his pocket a round thin slot spots didn’t count but without a lid holding about a large wine glass full and filled it with whiskey from a bottle which he took out of his style prophet
After some kindly greetings and talk and drinking my dram i passed on and the other men politely touched their balance as i left because they thought first that he might be a tax inspector and when they realized it wasn’t it was the son of a neighbor
That kind of said he’s safe let’s get out of it and they offered him a drink it keeps changing the drink so you’ll never get a hand jameson lagoon just think of what happened to the titanic when they added the ice it’s the same with the whiskey is fatal
The same as ice to the titanic well i’ve noticed