Imbibers,
This past weekend was spent in Montreal to unfortunately attend my maternal grandmother’s funeral, last grandparent and last of the first generation (My father’s parents emigrated from the foreign far away land of Romania, and my mother’s mother emigrated from the foreign far way land of, uh, New York).
This was an expected occurence and the weekend was not all sadness as I managed to take the nieces and nephews out to lunch and then see The Amazing Spider-Man 2 over the course of the weekend as well and of course managed to stop by the SAQ as well.
So why is this update in the Beer & Spirits section? Because this time, the acquisition was all about high-end spirits. As well as being a Cognac, fan I’m also a big fan of Calvados and Brandy de Jerez. I find the former quite a bit more flavorful than Cognac in terms of pure fruit and the latter more flavorful due to the different grapes used and sherry casking frequently employed.
At the Signature downtown location, I traded in a bottle of 12, 15 and 18 year old Calvados – which is a lot of Calvados to give up when you think about it – to get my hands on a real treasure: the Houard 30 Year Calvados. 21 year old spirits have my standard benchmark for a while now in Cognac, Rum (El Dorado 21 YO), Canadian Whisky (Century Reserve 21 YO) and Scotch (Glenlivet 21 Archive, Balvenie 21 YO Portwood) but this is the first time I have broken the 30 year old barrier.
Speaking of which, I also acquired the Jaime I 30 Anos Brandy de Jerez. It comes in one of the most beautiful designer decanters as well as a very attractive metal caging packaging that is unfortunately a pain to transport and therefore had to be recycled.
My last acquisition was another Brandy de Jerez from Cruz Conde. Unlike most Spanish brandies, it uses the VSOP designation even though it’s a Solera aged brandy with 15 years average. It is sherry cask aged unlike the Torres.
Oh yes, there was some wine acquired as well: the very last bottle in the entire SAQ system of the 09 Domaine Huet Le Mont Vouvray Moelleux, the 09 Ca’Rugate La Perlara Recioto di Soave, and the Cruz Conde Solera Fundacion Pedro Ximenez sherry.
Looking forward to cracking these open and sharing my thoughts with everyone.