Flight

As the last person in the United States to learn what a “flight” of alcoholic beverages is I wanted to let you know that while we are still doing wine tastings with friends, we recently hosted a Scotch tasting with another couple at our home.

It started at a library conference two years ago when Hubby, myself, my cube-neighbor Karacter and a couple of other people were sharing a dinner table. We all ordered a beverage of some variety, splurging as it was a fancy restaurant with a higher-than-usual quality of alcohol choices on the menu. Hubby and Karacter each ordered different Scotches and proceeded to discuss them at length. They clearly had significant experience with Scotch. I knew we had to bust out with a party!

Well, one can’t serve alcohol without food for several reasons. 1) you need to soak up the alcohol so people can drive safely 2) food is one of God’s gifts to share with friends. So, I began searching for what to serve with Scotch. I was completely clueless. I shared the party idea with my friend Dragon and she said of course haggis must be served. Ahm, no. So I turned to my insta-friend Google.

Google, while miraculous on so many fronts, is absolutely useless for suggesting complimentary foods for Scotch tastings. The discussions were heated in the comments sections but I was just looking for a consensus as I’d had approximately one sip of Scotch in my life and was working from complete ignorance. In the end there was so much disagreement I decided to branch out on my own. I took one suggestion: dark chocolate, and picked two other common party foods. Big. Mistake.

Please note: a variety of cut vegetables and home-made French onion dip does NOT pair well with ANY of the eight Scotches we were sampling. Neither does Schuler’s bar cheese and crackers. It was downright embarrassing. The dark chocolate did pair well but it was the last thing we tried.

We pretty much ended up clearing our palettes with water (lots of water on my part, because Scotch is icky). Hubby has been slow to drink up what’s left. He better get on it. I can’t cook with the stuff and it’s all on him.