Short Take: Oak and Grist Three-Year Single Malt
After about four months of sheltering in place, my wife had reached her limit. While I was still a little unsure about travelling anywhere during COVID-19, she did her research and found a small, well-kept cabin in the mountains available for short stays. It was close enough that we wouldn’t have to stop too much on the way and remote enough that we would feel we had gone somewhere. When I went to tell Lazarus, I found him staring moodily out the window with my cell phone in his paw.
“Did you see this, boss?”
He held the phone up. It was a social media post from our friends at Oak and Grist. “Do you have your bottle?” it asked. “There are only a few of our Blended Malt whiskey left and it’s the weekend after all…”
He sighed. “They have a three-year single malt now, but I’m afraid we’ll miss it.”
“Strangely enough, I came in here to tell you we’ll be going up that way…” (Lazarus brightened considerably) “but it will be next weekend. I wonder if they’d let cme reserve a bottle?”
He tossed me the phone. “We’re not buying for your boss this time, right? Could you at least get two bottles?”
“No, this is just for us, and you’re right, I might as well get two… and maybe some gin.”
The drive up was very pleasant. Since we had all been cooped up for so long, my wife even offered to let Lazarus come; we wouldn’t have to smuggle him in the trunk this time. She drove us about half-way there before she got tired. We switched places at a gas station and she took a nap in the passenger seat for the rest of the trip to the distillery. Lazarus climbed up the back of my seat as he had before the crisis.
“So… we’re staying in a cabin?” he asked.
“Yes. It’s a Romanticism thing.”
“Should I ask?”
“Well, according to Löwy and Sayre…”
“Good Lord! Another pair of philosophers? Where do you meet these people?”
“We had a mutual friend… at least they aren’t coming with us! At any rate, they argue that the Capitalist system we live in is dehumanizing: it promises personal independence, but ultimately seeks to standardize and ‘objectify’ us. Bosses tend to regard their employees as pawns in a chess game, commodities (like onions) that they can transfer back and forth, or machine tools they can install and decommission as it suits them.”
"Huh,” Lazarus grunted.
“This eventually makes us all into Romantics. As we become more self-actualized, so we become more disillusioned with a system that sees and treats us as things. Accordingly, we yearn for pre-Modern, that is, pre-Capitalist experiences.”
“Like a cabin in the woods.”
“Sure.”
Lazarus was quiet a moment. “But, boss…” he began, “someone had to build the cabin, right?”
“Well, yes.”
“Let’s imagine they took out a loan to either build it outright, or buy it from whoever did. They have to make up that expense somehow, so they rent it out to weekenders like us. They aren’t really interested in us personally, except insofar as we’ll pay the rent and then advertise for them (for free!) by recommending the place or writing a positive review… how is this pre-Capitalist? Don’t you end up just as standardized and objectified as you were in the first place?”
“Uh…”
“Well, never mind. At least we’re getting the booze.”
We rounded the corner to the friendly facade of Oak and Grist in the late afternoon. It was hot and muggy, and the delightful picnic tables, which would be charming in the Fall, were bleaching in the full sun. I had known before we came that we wouldn’t be able to have a leisurely drink in the cool of the bar, but I still looked wistfully in the door as we picked up our box. There was no possible way we could endure sitting outside in the heat, so we got reluctantly back into the car.
The drive to the cabin wound over the mountain ridges: steep, narrow, and serpentine. My knuckles whitened as I struggled to keep the car on the road, and the frequent switchbacks made Lazarus turn a little green. We turned off onto an even narrower driveway that twisted like a corkscrew for something like a quarter-mile, only to find that we had the the wrong address. It took me several minutes to turn the car around gingerly and retrace our route to the next driveway, on the opposite side of the road. This one seemed to go straight up the mountain and passed through a gate that looked like it had been modeled on another one the owners had admired, perhaps from an impound lot or a top-secret government laboratory. As I prepared to turn the car around the second time, my wife sang out, “There it is!”
There it was indeed. A tiny cabin with blonde wavy-edge siding, red trim, and a red roof. It was cute. The inside was well-appointed, with quaintly rustic décor, and comfortable furniture. It was small, but it seemed to be just enough space. Lazarus abruptly burst out laughing.
“Pre-Modern, Boss? A rustic cabin in the woods with solar panels, air conditioning, and … “
“Oh look! we have cable!” my wife interjected.
“To be fair,” I started, after we’d had a lovely dinner in town. “I’ll give you that this place is not only decidedly Modern but even somewhat fashionable: you saw the fixture in the bathroom sink? It’s like something you’d find at an upscale restaurant. However, Löwy and Sayre acknowledge that Romanticism is a ‘modernist critique of modernity,’ and that Romantics don’t challenge the Capitalist system as a whole, but rather, only it’s worst aspects.”
“Lucky for you.” Lazarus grinned.
“For certain, without the air conditioning this place would be miserable. And without indoor plumbing, I wouldn’t even consider it.”
“Enough. Let’s open the Single Malt!”
Unlike the Stripling Series, the Single Malt came in a full-sized bottle. The label, informative as usual, indicated that the spirit had been aged in 53 gal. barrels from Four Roses. On the nose, in addition to the barley, we found the raisin notes the most present. We both took a sip, breathed deeply, and looked up at the ceiling.
“Wow.” Lazarus said finally. “I get what Ashley said about there being a ‘big apple pie energy’ to their products.”
“This is ridiculously good. I want to say it’s ‘dry’ - not too sweet, but definitely spicy…” I took another sip. “Do you suppose that’s what they mean by ‘leather’ on the label? I may have to go back to a leather shop and check that out.”
Lazarus frowned and sipped again, “Maybe. I get what they mean by ‘dry meadow’ for sure, but I think what I’m tasting the most is ‘quality.’ You can tell this was fussed over. It isn’t like that other stuff you have.”
“What, the ‘bread mold’ single malt from… that other distillery?”
“Yes, that stuff.”
“There’s no comparison. I’m willing to give their rye another chance, but the gin tastes like mouthwash and I can hardly drink the single malt… and I’m not that picky. This stuff, though—this will be hard to beat!”
”By the way… I notice that you picked up another bottle of the barrel-rested gin…”
”Coming right up.”
The next morning arose clear and bright… or at least I assume it did. The sun was already up when I stumbled out of bed, and my wife had already driven back over to the twisting mountain roads to Black Mountain to get breakfast from the Blue Ridge Biscuit Company.
As I lurched into the kitchen, she sang out, “I got you that fish thing you like!”
As if by magic, she produced a “Lunker”: fried catfish with red pepper remoulade over one of their massive biscuits. Life was good.
Lazarus said he’d already eaten, but offered to sit with us anyway.
“Well boss, as much as I teased you about your ‘Romanticism,’ this is a great place. I haven’t seen bugs like this for some time: roaches, ticks… you name it. Fat and juicy: I almost felt bad for them.”
My wife, who had made the trip across the convoluted switchbacks twice to bring us breakfast without incident, started to turn a little green.
”To each their own, certainly.” I said; and then, to change the subject, “I was thinking last night… or, at least I think it was me… that, you’re right, the stripe of Romanticism we’re subscribing to with this cabin is decidedly elitist, and you might argue that the deliberate exoticism of creating a triticale whiskey, for example, would also be consistent with elite values, but the commitment to tradition evident at Oak and Grist places them above reproach. This is certainly not a tired, homogenized commercial product, which is why we were so eager to get up here in the first place. It was precisely because this is so unique that…”
Lazarus grinned. “You take these things too seriously, boss. Be who you are, and let Löwy and Sayre drink cognac or cachaça or whatever makes them happy.”
“What are you talking about?” my wife interjected. “We’re not elitists!”