Whisky
Whisky is demanding. Unlike a wine or a beer, where the esters come quickly, easily in a swirl of inviting association (melon? citrus? bread?), on nosing a neat whisky you are hit with a harsh wall of alcohol - a punch to the olfactory cortex that leaves you recoiling, with a sharp intake of breath to clear the screaming burn. Aggressive greeting over, that bright, vicious ethanol heat sidles up to you on each interaction - around the inside of your mouth as your mind works to identify the flavours, sketching out and inking in lines between sensation and memory - it burns. Along your throat, as you swallow and contemplate the finish - it burns. So appreciating a good whisky takes both a suppression, and an approach: the deliberate forcing aside of that overwhelming rush of sensation to enquire after the gentler things.
But for me, whisky means comfort - a familiar retreat into a pre-linguistic, dreamlike enclosure, where attention narrows to a singular unrelenting dance. Lift the glass. Nose. Sip. Me and the liquid, playing out the same encounter, each time tracing the steps (lift. nose. sip.) in search of the intense not-likeness of each experience. First, peat. On our second turn - spices. Which spices? Taste again. The astringent woodiness of oak. Again. Yes, this time the peat, but also the vanilla smoothness - the barrel's second signature. Again. Now the spice (still unidentifiable), redolent and suffused with memory - but what is it? Again. The peat smoke lingers in the mouth and the mind, along with a simple sweetness. Again. Pepper? Or cinnamon? Again. Pepper. Again. Again. Again.
I emerge dazed from these private sensory dialogues, struggling to communicate to others with an alcohol-warmed tongue the overwhelming grandeur of that labile felt sense, which snake-like slips away as soon as the linguistic, categorising mind turns to fix its gaze. Oh, I say, as the crystallised boundaries of common language rise up, I think the peatiness was quite well balanced, and the sherry cask wasn't too excessive. It's very nice, but perhaps not my favourite. My companions nod and speak, and the kind waves of shared chatter turn to preference and price and proof.
But we have felt together, you and I. We have had our dance.