What can brown do for you, part II: Black Bush
I was going to move a couple years ago. The details are unoriginal. Love, hopeful enough to offset abandoning Manhattan for a city that would endlessly strive to prove it was okey to live there instead of, etc. All came crashing down, roughly 12 hours before the truck was scheduled to arrive. I pulled the pin, but I also reserve the right to spread the blame liberally.
In probably the only instance of cat-like agility I've ever demonstrated, I was able to call in a favor from a friend who I had kept in rent money by paying her $50/hr in the internets heyday to read the Times while I dithered and avoided delivering a project to the most prestigious investment bank outfit in the Milky Way (in a nice bit of parallelism, it was the failed relationship that I was ardently pursuing that kept me from producing, for a good 12 months).
This fiasco/fortune resulted in me taking up residence in the back half of a TriBeCa loft, large as it was dark, agreeing to pay 100% of the rent, which was still less than half I was paying for a bucolic bungalow in a decidedly less than bucolic neighborhood of the abandoned west coast up and coming utopia. You don't want to know how little rent it was. I don't like thinking about it (my roommate eventually evicted me when her now husband, found on Craiglist, moved in). I probably spent more on whiskey than I did on rent.
The first bottle of Black Bush, I'm sure, was a purchase of pure affect. For some years, I was a pretty solid drinker of Jack and soda, one of the benefits of which is you never need to ask if a bar carries Jack. And frequenting dives both theatrical (anything south of 23rd Street in Manhattan, save Sophie's or the Blarney Cove) and authentic (anything in my hometown in Ohio) made this preference it slightly easier to feel at home.
The only decent liquor store in TriBeCa is on Greenwich, just south of Jay. I forget the name. Decent selection, decent prices, friendly and knowledgeable staff (if they don't have it, they tell you where to get it). Part one of my program to avoid the implosion of my personal life was to avoid going to the office most days. The logical part two seemed to be drinking a great deal. This was leavened with trips to Rockefeller Park so I could watch hot moms with hot nannies attend to children named Tristan.
So I imagine I spent some time staring at the smallish selection, aiming for a good deal on a good product. Black Bush by the liter is a pretty good deal (though I must say, the amount of time I've spent in my head trying to rationalize or not the four dollar spread that separates quite a number of browns hasn't done much cost savings for someone who earns his bread as an hourly billable kind of guy).
It's very distinct from Bushmills. I'm the last person to ask about the cultural rankings of Irish Whiskeys (a friend swears by Powers, which I find odd), though I would place it low. Black Bush is much richer than the usual Irish spread (until you get into pot still products like Red Breast). I use the descriptor 'dry' for too wide of tasting experiences, but the barley content makes all Irish Whiskeys somewhat astringent to me -- which has its place (often I end up with Jameson because the I find the corn makes bourbons too sweet). But if brown is a sensation derived from color and its connotations, they mostly rate in a different category.
Black Bush is nothing like bourbon. But it is darkish, and fairly rich. Very little sweetness. If you are a defender of said Powers, or are one of those inexplicable Jameson fetishists, stay away. If you want a certain complexity, and yes, perhaps a slightly cheap complexity (think of it as the Dave Eggers of Irish Whiskey, instead of being the William Gaddis of Irish Whiskey), then it is a better investment of your time and money. It you want a truly difficult and complex whiskey, go with Connemara (cask strength). On price alone, I'd go with Red Breast (which also comes with the fairly valued endorsement of being Dewey Dufresne's favorite). Though in a town rife with gaelophiles, it's not on many a shelf. Black Bush turns up enough that it stands as the occasional best option.
In probably the only instance of cat-like agility I've ever demonstrated, I was able to call in a favor from a friend who I had kept in rent money by paying her $50/hr in the internets heyday to read the Times while I dithered and avoided delivering a project to the most prestigious investment bank outfit in the Milky Way (in a nice bit of parallelism, it was the failed relationship that I was ardently pursuing that kept me from producing, for a good 12 months).
This fiasco/fortune resulted in me taking up residence in the back half of a TriBeCa loft, large as it was dark, agreeing to pay 100% of the rent, which was still less than half I was paying for a bucolic bungalow in a decidedly less than bucolic neighborhood of the abandoned west coast up and coming utopia. You don't want to know how little rent it was. I don't like thinking about it (my roommate eventually evicted me when her now husband, found on Craiglist, moved in). I probably spent more on whiskey than I did on rent.
The first bottle of Black Bush, I'm sure, was a purchase of pure affect. For some years, I was a pretty solid drinker of Jack and soda, one of the benefits of which is you never need to ask if a bar carries Jack. And frequenting dives both theatrical (anything south of 23rd Street in Manhattan, save Sophie's or the Blarney Cove) and authentic (anything in my hometown in Ohio) made this preference it slightly easier to feel at home.
The only decent liquor store in TriBeCa is on Greenwich, just south of Jay. I forget the name. Decent selection, decent prices, friendly and knowledgeable staff (if they don't have it, they tell you where to get it). Part one of my program to avoid the implosion of my personal life was to avoid going to the office most days. The logical part two seemed to be drinking a great deal. This was leavened with trips to Rockefeller Park so I could watch hot moms with hot nannies attend to children named Tristan.
So I imagine I spent some time staring at the smallish selection, aiming for a good deal on a good product. Black Bush by the liter is a pretty good deal (though I must say, the amount of time I've spent in my head trying to rationalize or not the four dollar spread that separates quite a number of browns hasn't done much cost savings for someone who earns his bread as an hourly billable kind of guy).
It's very distinct from Bushmills. I'm the last person to ask about the cultural rankings of Irish Whiskeys (a friend swears by Powers, which I find odd), though I would place it low. Black Bush is much richer than the usual Irish spread (until you get into pot still products like Red Breast). I use the descriptor 'dry' for too wide of tasting experiences, but the barley content makes all Irish Whiskeys somewhat astringent to me -- which has its place (often I end up with Jameson because the I find the corn makes bourbons too sweet). But if brown is a sensation derived from color and its connotations, they mostly rate in a different category.
Black Bush is nothing like bourbon. But it is darkish, and fairly rich. Very little sweetness. If you are a defender of said Powers, or are one of those inexplicable Jameson fetishists, stay away. If you want a certain complexity, and yes, perhaps a slightly cheap complexity (think of it as the Dave Eggers of Irish Whiskey, instead of being the William Gaddis of Irish Whiskey), then it is a better investment of your time and money. It you want a truly difficult and complex whiskey, go with Connemara (cask strength). On price alone, I'd go with Red Breast (which also comes with the fairly valued endorsement of being Dewey Dufresne's favorite). Though in a town rife with gaelophiles, it's not on many a shelf. Black Bush turns up enough that it stands as the occasional best option.
