Mark Megahan
The Glenlivet wants to celebrate some significant milestone ages by cutting some special blends from the unicorn herd for limited distribution. For Americans, especially toxically male ones, the age of 21 is critically important because that’s when you can legally buy whiskey, and begin to indulge in other dangerous pastimes. The age of 25 is crucial because that’s when you can rent a car.
Unleash the Glenlivet unicorns
Distillers at The Glenlivet must be the kind of party reptiles who worship the late great P.J. O’Roarke. By pairing the magic numbers of legal purchase and legal car rental, you have half the essentials to drive fast on drugs while getting your wing wang squeezed without spilling your drink. Remember kids, this is just fantasy so don’t try this at home. Those who survived the 60’s and 70’s learned a lot from those who didn’t.
As P.J. pointed out, even back in the days when people acted like barbarians and it was still socially acceptable, there was a lot of debate. Especially, on the subject of the best car to drive when you’re “half a bottle of Chivas in the bag with a gram of coke up your nose and a teenage lovely pulling off her tube top in the next seat over while you’re going a hundred miles an hour down a suburban side street.”
Glenlivet would apparently agree with P.J. “Some say a front-engine car; some say a rear-engine car. I say a rented car. Nothing handles better than a rented car.”
“You can go faster, turn corners sharper, and put the transmission into reverse while going forward at a higher rate of speed in a rented car than in any other kind. You can also park without looking, and can use the trunk as an ice chest.”
Seriously, though, the distillers at The Glenlivet freshly re-imagined expressions of the nearly-200-year-old company’s scotch whiskey. They revamped their “21- and 25-year-old single malts, which now boast what the brand is describing as ‘deeper, richer and more complex’ flavors.”
You can thank the guys in their Sample Room, they acknowledge. They even labeled the brand for their “creative epicenter.” They do an 18-year-old batch too, one that’s barely legal.
A more premium feel
The Glenlivet notes that the new bottles come complete with custom crafted boxes “designed to give these new expressions a more premium feel even before you crack them open.” They’re just perfect for impressing the kind of girls you want at your next party. Crazy girls.
Ones sporting “pierced ears with five or six earrings in them, unusual shoes, white lipstick, extreme thinness, hair that’s less than an inch long, or clothing made of chrome and leather.” What you don’t want is “girls who cry a lot or who look like they get pregnant easily or have careers. They may want to do weird stuff in cars, but only in the backseat, and it’s really hard to steer from back there. Besides, they’ll want to get engaged right away afterwards.”
The Glenlivet carefully and patiently matured their 21 Year Old Single Malt Scotch by finishing it “in first-fill Oloroso sherry, Vintage Colheita port and Troncais oak Cognac casks.”
That way they can “deliver a flavor profile that blends sweet notes like caramelized pears with the bite of ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon, making it a solid choice for a glass to enjoy by the fire on a cool fall evening.” Not behind the wheel of a Porsche at 112 miles an hour.
The 25 Year Old Single Malt Scotch “is also selectively aged in Troncais oak Cognac casks, as well as Pedro Ximénez sherry ones.” Dig in, The Glenlivet advises, “and you’ll find those ginger and spice notes there, but also hints of blood orange and sweet fig, as well as a touch of oak and even — if you pay close attention — perhaps a bit of charred pineapple.”
We’re in the 21st century now, so the days of getting your pineapple charred with sudden violent death at an early age has faded to quietly sipping by the fire. To “go out in a blaze of flaming aluminum alloys formulated specially for the Porsche factory race effort like James Dean did” was a fantasy which faded. “What actually happens is you fall for that teenage lovely in the next seat over, fall for her like a ton of condoms, and before you know it you’re married and have teenage lovelies of your own – getting felt up in a Pontiac Trans Am this very minute, no doubt – plus a six-figure mortgage and a liver the size of the Bronx.“
