Water of life

My post yesterday sparked an exchange with someone who’s also a Mary Black fan, during which I made the comment (referring to the plethora of sad songs you can count on from the Irish) that it’s a good thing I don’t have any whiskey in my house.

Which is true enough, because I don’t. I am (temporarily, I hope) in a whiskeyless state. But if I did have it, it wouldn’t be Irish. I’ve just never got my mouth around the taste of the stuff. (A nice, single-malt from Spey, now… But since that’s kind of on the ruinously expensive non-essential side of my shopping list, it’s just going to have to remain a dream.)

If this affronts your sensibilities, then all I can say is, get over it. Think about it this way—it leaves all the more for you.

Sure, I’ve had it in Irish coffee—whoop-de-do. You pile enough sugar, coffee and whipped cream on anything, it’ll taste fine. (Except Brussels sprouts.)

Winding up my trip to Ireland, back in the 90s, I went to dinner at some posh hotel in Dublin, where the silverware at my place setting marched in serried ranks to either side of the table. I’d been drinking nothing but Smithwick’s lovely ale since my first night in that very town two weeks earlier. (I’d had the obligatory portion of Guinness—a glass, which I gagged my way through only half of before giving up on it—then, at my next pub of call, I asked for a recommendation, was handed a Smithwick’s and set for the duration.)

And, in fact, I had a Smithwick’s in the posh hotel bar while waiting for my table. This being Ireland, being in a posh hotel is no barrier to civilized conversation, and I’d chatted for a while with a couple of blokes who explained to me that all these young chicks milling about were dressed up because there was some sort of event analogous to a prom taking place there.

They also asked the inevitable question when the Irish found out you were an American traveling through their country: where’ve you been and how did you like it. They were pretty impressed with the amount of territory I’d covered—all four provinces, only missing deep Kerry.

“You were moving pretty fast,” one observed.

“I had to,” I replied. “Otherwise I’d have moss all over me.”

(It rained a lot while I was there. And when they call it "The Emerald Isle, they're not talking about precious stones.)

Anyway, I was escorted into the posh dining room and settled at my table, with my book (I think I was reading Boccaccio, but I’d have to verify) in a little walled-off area where a couple of business guys were having dinner. Looking at six different types of forks and spoons on either side of where the plate goes makes me nervous. I told the waiter that, while I wasn’t a big fan of Irish whiskey, I’d like to try one of the local products, if he’d recommend one. He did.

He asked me (reluctantly, I believe) if I’d like ice with it. I countered, “How is it properly drunk?”

“With a splash of spring water, madam.” (They madam you all over the place in Ireland and Britain; go figure.)

“Okay, that’s how we’ll do it.”

There was some small ceremony—a smallish glass with maybe an inch or two of the whiskey (and at this point I don’t recall what it was; but it wasn’t the stuff that’s made in Ulster), and a small carafe of water. He poured the latter carefully into the whiskey and then left me to it.

Well, reader, it still didn’t taste very good, and I’ve not had another drink of it until a couple of weeks ago when I was at the RSA Conference in Moscone Center, and there was some “Irish Tech” booth there with some chick pouring Tullamore Dew into tiny plastic thimbles. What the hell, I thought, I needed something to wash down the ibuprofen with. So I let her give me some. There might have been half a tablespoon’s worth.

I still ditched about half of it when I got out of her sight.

Oh—but I did have a very nice conversation back in Dublin with the Irish businessmen in the posh hotel dining room about their constitution and the recent stopover by Boris Yeltsin, when he’d apparently been too drunk (or possibly hungover) to get out of the plane even though the Irish Taoiseach was standing out on the tarmac ready to welcome him to Ireland and encourage him to buy from the duty free shops.

See—in Ireland, you don’t need no stinkin’ whiskey to get the crack flowing.