Short Take: ONW Straight Bourbon
“So, boss, are we all caught up?”
Lazarus rolled over on his back, and I scratched his furry chest absently.
“More or less… oh!” I remembered, as I closed my files, “we got a review!”
“Really?” Lazarus rolled back over. “Somebody actually reads these things?”
“Well, to be fair, I sent the article about Deleuze and Guattari to an academic friend of mine.”
“... Why?”
“He wanted to know how I came across the two of them, and it seemed faster that way.”
“That’s one way, I guess. So…?”
“I have it here, let me see… ah yes: ‘OK, this is charming, if not exactly edifying.’”
Lazarus looked at me. “Uh…”
“Hey, I’ll take it.”
“You’re the boss. Maybe for the ‘About’ page? What we have there now is a little obscure.”
“Good thought! Especially since DeKuyper’s doesn’t make gin anymore.”
In the previous four months, we hadn’t gone much of anywhere.
Lazarus did some research, and said that while it seemed unlikely that opossums could get COVID-19, he didn’t have anywhere to be particularly, and he’d stay on to keep us company. The bottles began stacking up in the recycling bin at an accelerated rate, and my wife had put us both on notice. Accordingly, we agreed not to start drinking until 4:00; during the early afternoon, I switched to drinking either coffee or Monster (for my health), while Lazarus drank a sort of fennel tea.
Ironically, my anxiety had actually decreased in the face of the pandemic, and I was coming off of the SSRI I had begun in September. In order to offset some of the gloom of withdrawal, I spent the mornings working in front of a very bright lamp, called the Beatific Beam™ made by Lux Aeterna®. Lazarus, who is nocturnal, thought this was silly, and did his part to keep me in a positive frame of mind by teasing me about it constantly. The titles of the articles I was reading for my research also delighted him no end. “The Historical-Political Semantics of Asymmetric Counterconcepts,” for example, had him literally rolling on the floor laughing.
In the afternoons, we tossed ideas around about what to do with the site. We had planned to visit Doc Porter’s, Top of the Hill (TOPO), Southern Artisan Spirits, and Durham Distillery in May and June, but obviously this was out of the picture. Lazarus pointed out that we still had access to the booze, and we tentatively agreed to continue the concept, possibly with email and/or phone interviews.
In the meantime, the FDA had allowed all of the local distilleries to make hand sanitizer, and one by one, our friends shifted their production. Don and Joe of Broad Branch offered theirs for free, and we went downtown to get some. “Whiskey Wash,” as they call it, still smelled like moonshine, and I was delighted by the idea of (eventually) taking some to work… maybe just to freshen up before staff meetings. We joked about converting to hand sanitizer reviews, but it would have required buying a lab’s worth of equipment to make any meaningful comments, and Lazarus couldn’t get very excited about relaxing on the porch with a bunch of bacterial cultures.
“They aren’t very good company,” he insisted. “Particularly when you’re killing them.”
At about this time, the Governor cautiously relaxed the lockdown, and our friends at Old Nick Williams were able to reopen the Busted Barrel with outdoor seating. We drove out one Saturday evening with the kids and a deck of cards, and a very friendly hen came out to take our order. She stiffened when she saw Lazarus, however, and refused to serve him. I hardly knew how to respond, and started, weakly, “Gee, I’m sorry, buddy… let me…”
“Don’t sweat it,” he sighed. “I’m not exactly blameless here. Their eggs taste awfully good”
I went in to get him a drink. Zeb was working the bar, and as he poured their vodka over some ice, I commented that we would need to pick up a bottle of the bourbon before we left.
“Actually, we’re all out,” Zeb answered. “I had to go out to the ABC Store just to stock the bar. But in ten days, we’ll have the new batch…”
This sounded intriguing. “Well, we’ll just have to come back, then.”
As it happened, my younger son was thoroughly charmed by the ONW goats, and conveniently asked to go visit them again. Lazarus and I were delighted to find that the “new batch” was a straight bourbon, aged two years.
“Well,” Lazarus said excitedly, “‘Ask and it shall be given’!”
Although my wife continued to monitor the amount of alcohol coming into the house, we quietly collected a bottle of the previous, eighteen-month Bourbon from the local ABC store for comparison, and waited patiently for the late afternoon.
“Boy, it’s good to be back at it!” Lazarus exulted as I prepared four shot glasses. “Tell you what…”
He turned on my Beatific Beam™ and held up his pair of glasses against it. Indeed, the straight bourbon was slightly darker.
“Six more months in the oak ,eh?”
“You got it, boss!”
On the nose, the eighteen-month rewarded us with its familiar caramel and just a touch of barley/cream. The straight bourbon was richer, “with a hint of spice, maybe?”
“Possibly,” Lazarus frowned.
“Is it me, or is the malt/barley flavor more present?”
“I think I can perceive what you’re getting… it might just be the oak, though.”
We sipped the eighteen-month, and enjoyed its familiar warmth, with caramel and butterscotch notes. The straight bourbon was again, deeper, richer, and more buttery.
We took a moment to enjoy the sensation.
“They’re really onto something here boss.”
With some ice, the straight bourbon became even more full-bodied
“Well, I’m in, certainly.”
“Why don’t we just refill the glasses with this?”
I looked over my shoulder. “I think we could get away with that...”