Bernard Shaw called it ‘liquid sunshine’ and James Joyce was convinced that the light music when it is ‘falling into glasses made an agreeable interlude.’ They were both talking about whisky… but I’m sure had they tasted Black Dog TGR, they’d have had similar words for it.
Whisky is one beverage that has managed to hug the bliss of literature and also been able to walk the talk of all degrees of humour. The way I see it, it is whisky that walks between bliss and a smile! Even Haruki Murakami writes in ‘Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World’: ‘Whiskey, like a beautiful woman, demands appreciation. You gaze first, then it’s time to drink.’ Lots of people around the world will agree to this and add that there is indeed quite a bit of poetry in this liquid sunshine. And relationships don’t intend to remain sedate in its company… Compton Mackenzie is convinced that whisky speeds up everything all around. He writes: ‘Love makes the world go round? Not at all. Whiskey makes it go round twice as fast.’
With whisky as your vehicle you can scale the depths of a metaphorical existence and even skip and jump in puddles with laughter surrounding you… if, of course, you follow the dictum of this Scottish proverb: ‘Never drink whisky with water and never drink water without whisky.’
Stephen Leacock, author and humourist, has given us the picture that reflects the sort of humour that pairs well with whisky, and this includes Black Dog TGR too:
‘The Scotch (sic) do not drink… During the whole of two or three pleasant weeks spent lecturing in Scotland, I never on any occasions saw whisky made use of as a beverage. I have seen people take it, of course, as a medicine, or as a precaution, or as a wise offset against a rather treacherous climate; but as a beverage, never.’
Yes, a whisky of the stature of Black Dog TGR walks in with a lot of dignified aplomb, but yet does not step back when there is an opportunity to make its lover smile. I remember a friend of mine retold a couple of popular Scot jokes about whisky but not before he had replaced the Scotsman in his lines by a journalist in one and a press conference in another.
How do you persuade a journalist to go on the roof? Tell him the drinks are on the house…
In a press conference a seven course meal is a bottle of whisky and a six-pack of beer.
I was almost tempted to replace journalist with a blogger in the first one… and a bloggers meet in the second one. I know that would have made the pithy humorous lines more new-age.
One fact that is certain is that with Black Dog TGR doing the rounds, there is no need to have any magical oil of conversation because as the philosophic wine trickles down, it converts the insanity of a mundane life into the sanity of a convergence of humour, poetry, and words of wisdom. This is almost reflected in the poem that I stumbled upon while browsing the internet. The poet was not mentioned, so I dedicate it to the creative soul of a whisky drinker:
Someone once asked me,
‘why do you drink so much coffee?’
and I fought the urge to say
if I didn’t drink coffee, it would be whiskey
Because it takes 8 cups of coffee a day
to get my mind racing fast enough
to skip over thoughts of you
But one bottle of whiskey
to forget,
not only who you are,
but who I have been
I remember once when a group of friends were together in the evening and having their blissful sips of Black Dog TGR, one of them asked, ‘Is there a way to drink this?’ As an answer, another friend quoted Jarod Kintz from ‘Sleepwalking is restercise’: ‘As my grandpappy once said, ‘Global warming won’t bother me, because I don’t drink my whiskey on the rocks—I drink it straight out of the bottle.’ Wisely put, grandpappy, wisely put.’
With Black Dog TGR around, you’re always walking between bliss and a smile!
Between bliss and a smile
Black Dog Easy Evenings | Black Dog Scotch | Ginger Claps
Disclaimer: The content of this post is meant only for people above the age of 25.
Arvind Passey
22 May 2014
