REQUIEM FOR A DEAD SOLDIER

The remains of the day: The last dram from a fine bottle of Talisker Distiller’s Edition.

The Missus and I are engaged in a little project at the moment: converting our sunroom into a dining room, and vice versa.  Which means moving a whole bunch of furniture and associated objects, including my Little Lacquer Liquor Locker.

Alas, my inventory has far outstripped the storage capacity of said Locker.  The overflow has spilled over into the adjacent area... and that’s not counting the miscellaneous bottles kept in cold storage or in the basement.

I blame myself.  I am, after all, a bit of a Pack Rat, and I rarely will discard a bottle that has anything drinkable in it.  But today, we conducted a serious bit of triage.  All those rarely-used bottles of Rose’s HFCS-sweetened goop lurking way in the back - eighty-sixed.  Old bottles of vermouth?  Gone.  That 39-year-old bottle of crème de vanille I picked up in Tijuana?  Well, I’ll keep that - for now, anyway - but it goes into the basement, along with all the other arcana ’n’ exotica.  That way I’ll have room for my growing inventory of gin, rye, and single-malt Scotch.

Likewise, the glassware will be ruthlessly culled.  All those cobalt blue Margarita glasses that we never use?  Away with ye!  Champagne flutes?  To the basement with ye!

In the midst of all this liquorly pillage and rapine, I found the above bottle... a fine selection from the Talisker distillery on the Isle of Skye, hand-carried from Scotland by a good friend several years ago.  I had resisted draining the last few cc’s from that magnificent bottle, but it was, at last, time to send it to its final reward.

Ave (hic!) atque vale.