Perfect Days

Indulge me as I begin on a philosophical note. (Or don't. I won't know the difference.) At one point during our Cabinet Meeting two nights ago, I mentioned the movie, Perfect Days. If you haven't seen this 2023 Wim Wenders masterpiece, take it from me, you need to. It follows the everyday life of a Tokyo public toilet cleaner. On the surface, this may seem very far removed from the business of a scotch whisky tasting club, but it is not. It's about how reality is rarely perfect or as we hope it will be, but that, barring extremes of distress and suffering, it doesn't matter. There is abundant beauty and joy available in every ordinary imperfect moment. Before you begin to compose your hate mail regarding the unacceptable banality of these Hallmark sentiments, let me explain the relevance.

We usually drink marvelous whisky at The Cabinet. But sometimes we don't. Sometimes we drink whisky that is boring. And sometimes we drink whisky that is appalling. Yet... we never have a bad meeting. Sitting there that evening, contemplating an organisational error (I'll get to that shortly), sipping a disappointing dram, I thought of Perfect Days. The Cabinet shouldn't aspire to drink inferior scotch, but when it happens to, it should aspire to find "beauty and joy" regardless. And it does. 

What was this organisational error? I'm embarrassed to say this, but I left deciding on the theme to the last minute and had a mental lapse regarding independent bottlers, conflating them with blending houses. The former bottle the contents of individual casks that they have purchased from a specific distiller, whereas the latter, of course, do the opposite - they combine the contents of many casks from several distillers. Consequently I lined up the Scarrabus Islay Single Malt and Hepburn's Choice 9 y.o, Speyside with the Famous Grouse Smoky Black and a mystery house blend. Not a fair comparison. 

We began with a blind tasting of the house blend, which was deemed to be "acceptable" and, in fact, similar to specific regional variety of whisky. I'm not going to write any more about it because two members were absent and will sample it at the next meeting. This was followed by the Grouse which was also "acceptable", but considered dull and bland. The advertised smoke is on the nose, but not evident otherwise. An improvement on the regular Grouse, but that's a relatively low bar. 

Then the theme-busting leap to something completely different. The Hepburn was a carnival for the palate (in a good way, I know carnivals can be nasty too) and the Scarrabus was an almost perfect whisky - full flavoured, multi-layered, powerful, lingering, and, well, delicious.   

Would drinking Scarrabus all the time lead to even more perfect days? I don't think so. Even taking into account that I mean "all the time that I would be drinking scotch anyway" rather than truly "all the time". Not only is there the described ability to be happy regardless, but there is the fact that mediocre scotch also serves to highlight the excellence of the good stuff. Otherwise the baseline drifts up to the good stuff. This is called the hedonic treadmill, but that's a topic for a future Philosophy of Scotch Drinking post.

Until then, try to find a bottle of Scarrabus, watch Perfect Days, and look for something beautiful in the moment when someone insists you try a glass of their house blend.

Slainte!