X-Radiation

May 20th

The suit was ready at the front desk first thing in the morning. We started the day early and made our way to an art school in Xi’An to give a presentation for both the art school students and the students and staff from the Maya Group studio and school (no relation to Autodesk). The folks at SideFX gave me some T-shirts and mouse pads and I used these to great effect to energize the crowd by tossing a few of them out at the start. It was a similar presentation to the one I’d made the other day. During the Q&A, there were only a couple of questions but as soon as I made it clear that those who asked questions got a T-shirt we were flooded.

We moved the afternoon seminar a few blocks away to an auditorium at the Maya Group School. I presented an introduction to crowd animation and some Q&A as well as passing out some Houdini instructional DVDs. After this presentation Mr. Hu arranged some photo ops with the staff and students of The Maya Group and they made me an honorary dean of the Maya School.

Mr. Hu hosted Daniel and I to a 72 course vegetarian dinner in a private dining room the size of a Westside condo. The chef is a Buddhist monk who manages to make tofu really taste like chicken. We had a private serving staff of 10 beautiful women as well as a private en suite bathroom. The restaurant actually had about a dozen such rooms. Between courses 46 and 47 we attended a private concert by musicologists playing 1500 year old instruments uncovered in archeological digs in 1978. The toasts were nonstop and we knocked back 7 bottles of baijiu. I got to meet some really great folks: Mr. Nu, Mr. Ree, Mr. White and Ms. Li Li. Mr. Nu and Mr. White introduced me to a few Chinese drinking games. Mr.Ree decided I would be his Shifu and he my disciple. Once this relationship was consecrated by a secret ceremony Mr. Ree was required by the dictates of ancient Chinese customs to drink three times for every drink I took.

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6

This one goes out to Mikee and all my homies at the Hamilton Whisky Society.

After dinner Santa Gundam and Rie lead us  to a small whisky bar called Alco-Hall.

For relaxing times...

I proceeded to totally geek out with the proprietor, Nashimoto-san, over all things whisky. He’s a total whisky otaku and the bar has one of the most amazing collections of whisky I’ve ever seed in one place. He probably has over 1000 bottles in his stash. We made a few selections and also tasted his recommendations.

Nashimoto-san is also the regional Glen Livet whisky ambassador and shared a little bit of Glen Livet new make with us. Oishii!

Lots of pictures of whisky bottles after the jump!

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Kobe Beef meat locker. Cooled with big blocks of ice.

Santa Gundam, AKA Inappropriate Santa, lead us on a beef and whisky expedition to Kobe. We took the Shinkansen to Kobe for a gourmet Kobe Beef foodgasm. Had a bit of a delay as Santa Wrong Station bailed off the train one station early but we made up for lost time had one of the most amazing dinners ever.

Blow by blow after the jump!

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The day after SantaCon we met Nori, our Man in Osaka for a tour of the Suntory Yamazaki distillery near Kyoto. We took the Hikari #505 from Tokyo to Kyoto then transferred to the Kyoto line for the trip to Yamazaki Station where Nori met up with us. Nori is a great guy who showed us around Osaka and the Nissin noodle museum last year.

Panorama of one side of the Suntory Yamazaki distillery

After the distillery tour we visited the whisky tasting room where we sampled Yamazaki and Hakushu 12 year old whisky. It was delcious. The Yamazaki is one of the smoothest most drinkable whiskies out there.

My friend Satoru Shimizu arranged a gift of 10 year hakushu in a very nice bottle for me and my friends. After the tour we hit the gift shop with gusto,  procuring several expressions of Suntory products that you just can’t find in the states including a cask strength 15 year old and several cask strength sample expressions, each aged in a specific wood meant to be a component in the final Yamazaki or Hibiki product. I also picked up a small bottle of the corn grain whisky they use in the Suntory blends.

After shopping we went downstairs to the Yamazaki Whisky Library and tasting bar. I wish I could get a library card and check out bottles from this library. It’s an amazingly extensive library of whisky from all over the world.  I guess I’ll just have to be content with photographic evidence for now.

We spent a couple of hours and quite a few yen trying out the different whiskies available with The Yamazaki 25 year old at one end of the spectrum and the New Make at the other end. It was a fine time and by the end of the afternoon we’d worked up quite an appetite so we revisited Aoki-san, the Taisho at my  favorite restaurant in Kyoto called “Okariba” for some of his Omakase specialties. You can see my earlier post about Okariba here.

This time our meal consisted of the following items:

Grilled Wild Boar Skewers

Steamed Bear Shoulder in lemon shoyu

Smoked goose

Venison

Horse Sashimi (Basashi)

Misoyaki Vegetables

Grasshoppers

Bees and bee larvae

Okinanwa Snake Whisky

Giant Killer Bee Whisky

A Very Large bottle of sake

As much beer as we could drink.

We made it back to Kyoto station in time to catch the last Hikari Shinkansen of the evening back to Tokyo. We called it a night since we had to get up early for our flight to Okinawa the next day.

Dec. 15th

Woke up early and checked out of the hotel. Met Sneery and his friend Ming in the lobby. Headed out to Shinjuku to grab some food. The plan was to scout out the basement food shop at the Isaten department store and eat at the park on their roof.  I also wanted to check out their whisky selection.  We got there a bit early so went for some coffee to wait until they were open.  I got several croquettes (Okonomi, Imo, Ebi, Kani) and one big Ebi Fry. We picked up a bottle of sake and went up to the roof to enjoy the fruits of our hunt.

We wandered around Shinjuku for a while. We saw some guy taking what looked like a small dog out for a walk but I did a double take when I realized it was a spider monkey.

We ran across the local franchise of my favorite Mongolian Hot Pot restaurant, Little Sheep.

We found a really great liquor store with an amazing selection of rare whisky called Shinanoya.

I got back to the hotel, grabbed my bags and hit the train for Yokohama. I put on my Santa suit and registered for SIGGRAPH.

Hooked up with Oyabun Santa, Santa Maki and Baby Santa Juno.  Got back to the hotel, linked up with Santa Michael and wandered around Yokohama’s china town looking for some dinner and damn if we didn’t find it.

We ended up at this place called “To Ki” or “Toki” and had some of the best noodles ever. It’s a style from the Shanxi province of China called dao-Xiao-mein. At Toki, Chef Wang uses a large chunk of freshly kneaded wheat  flour dough and hand shaves flat strips of raw noodle dough into a big wok of boiling water. The cooked noodles  have a rough and chewy texture with a very unique fresh wheat taste.  We also tried their delicious Mabo Tofu and a spicy Salt & Pepper shrimp dish, similar to what I’ve had before but this was probably the best version I’ve every had.  Simply outstanding.

Stopped off at the combini to get some desert. Picked up some Sweet Potato flavor haagen-daaz ice cream and hit the sack pretty hard.

On Wednesday, Oct 14th, High West Distillery master distiller David Perkins presented a tasting of High West Rye Whiskey at a special dinner pairing hosted by David Driscoll, the Spirtis Buyer for K & L Wines, at Alembic in San Francisco. The cost for the dinner was $100 + tax, inclusive.

David Perkins is a chemist who worked for several bio-tech firms in the Bay Area before packing up to follow his dream of producing fine American whiskey. Between each course and pairing David gave a presentation that included the history of distillation, a bit of chemistry and some wonderfully opinionated  stories about his personal inspiration. The team at Alembic provided several small platings designed to pair with each rye whiskey David presented.

The first course was a delicious crispy ocean trout served over turnips, gnocchi, tart apple and carmelized onion dashi paired with High West Rendezvous Rye. Rendezvous Rye is a vatting of at least two different rye whiskies and carries no age statement. It’s smooth and spicy.

The second course was tamarind glazed sweetbreads with cranberry beans, endive and horseradish paired with High West 16 year old Rye. I was surprised how much I enjoyed the sweetbreads. Good sweetbreads can be really good but anything less than excellence reminds one just a little too much of the offal from which they originate. This was a bold but successful move by Alembic. The High West 16 year old Rye complimented the minerality of the dish with the signature spice and christmas cake notes I’ve come to expect from High West but with a smoother more rounded flavor profile than the Rendezvous Rye.

The third course was a foie gras terrine with a bit of caramel corn, cashews, huckleberry and asian pear served with a pour of High West 21 year old Rye. This was probably the least successful paring of the evening. The 21 year old rye is a delicious drink, even smoother than the 16 year old, with a rich mouth feel and even more spice. For some reason the foie gras just didn’t set the rye off like it should have. Perhaps the coating of fat from the terrine got in the way of my palate. The terrine itself was lackluster.

Desert was a brioche served family style at the table paired with the peach infused Vodka 7000. High West Distillery sits at 7000 feet above sea level, hence the moniker. While fruit infused vodka is not my usual cup of tea it did pair well with the brioche. The family style serving of a single slice of brioche ensured that each diner got only one bite.

Once dinner service concluded, David Perkins shared a few surprise distillates. I sampled some rye new make he calls White Dog and an experimental new make distilled from oatmeal that he poured at 110 proof. The oatmeal new make was deliciously complex and I’m looking forward to tasting how it ages in the barrel. Another surprise from High West is the upcoming “Bourye” whiskey, a vatting of bourbon and rye whiskies with a unique flavor profile that rolls over the mouth in three chapters. The initial taste is like a rich bourbon with notes of corn and sweetness which subsides after a moment into the characteristic High West spicy rye flavor followed by a dry woody finish that lingers on the tongue. It’s an excellent beverage.

I learned a few things, drank some fine whiskey and ate some good food in good company. David Driscoll and David Perkins were great hosts.

The Hamilton Whisky Society hosted a small whisky tasting at Chez Xray. My friends J-Girl and G-Man were kind enough to create a meal of roast chicken, seared pork, cous-cous and greens that paired exceptionally well with the whisky. There was plenty of chocolate for desert. We capped the evening with Joya de Nicaragua Antano 1970’s and Perdomo ESV  91’s.

When Robin Coupar visited the Hamilton Whisky Society this summer to present The Glenrothes tasting he invited myself and my buddy Michael to join The Glenrothes Kindred Spirits.  Today we received a very cool package in the mail with The Glenrothes Kindred Spirits Tasting kit.  I’m just counting down the days to WhiskyFest S.F. on October 16th! Among other things, I’m looking forward to vintage samples of The Glenrothes from 1975, 1979, 1985, and 1991 as well as the Select Reserve.

Here are some picture of the kit that Michael took:

On Thursday, Oct. 1st the Hamilton Whisky Society convened it’s weekly tasting. We had our library and several guest bottles visiting for the evening but everyone was excited to try the new Whyte & Mackay The Thirteen blend which I’d won from Richard Paterson’s poetry contest. It does not seem like W&M has much, if any, distribution in California so it’s a rarity on the Western shores of the United States of America. In fact, most members of the Society had never heard of it before. This was our first exposure to the Whyte & Mackay brand and we felt fortunate to try this blend.

The Hamilton Whisky Society usually focuses on single malt whiskies from Scotland so it’s not often that we get exposure to blended whisky and it was a real eye opener. This was a much richer blend than what I’ve experienced from other brands. The Thirteen is rich and smooth. Lots of sherry and cinnamon on the nose. The palate conveys a complexity I’ve missed in other blends. The  sherry and spice from the nose plays across the tongue and reveals layers of  nutmeg, allspice, cloves and a slight woodiness.

We tasted The Thirteen side by side with The Dalmore Cigar Malt.  The Cigar Malt  has more fruit and less spice than The Thirteen but they share enough of the sherry and spice to draw a pretty straight line between some of the components in the Cigar Malt to The Thirteen. This side by side tasting clearly identifies The Dalmore influence on The Thirteen.

I’m looking forward to trying other blends from Whyte & Mackay as well as malts from The Dalmore, Jura and anything else Richard Paterson has up his nose… um, I mean sleeve.

Last month I entered a poem in a contest on Richard Paterson’s facebook page. Richard is the Master Blender for Whyte & Mackay, The Dalmore and Jura whiskies. He’s known as “The Nose”. He has a blog called The Master Blender and you can follow him on twitter at http://twitter.com/the_nose.

The idea was to write a poem in thirteen lines about whisky and Whyte & Mackay (rhymes with “eye”) to celebrate the release Whyte & Mackay’s The Thriteen blended whisky. Voting was open to the public. Here’s my winning entry:

An Ode to Whyte & Mackay

Raining down on Scottish plains
growing malted barley grains.
Harvest and sprout then dry and grind.
Mash it in tun then ferment in kind.
Distill it twice (in Lowlands times three)
low wines middle cut; foreshots debris.
Casked and matured the new make awaits
one among many possible fates.
Bottled in vat or bottled in blend,
Bottled as O.B. or in the end
bought by the cask and sold by a friend.
But only the finest juice in supply
will make it’s way into Whyte & Mackay.

The bottle is going into the library at the Hamilton Whisky Society.

Read more for the other poems.

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