Spirit log: Carlos i Solera Gran Riserva

Having already covered the fascinating story of procurement of this latest foray intoSpanish brandy, it is time now to give it its appraisal. How will it compare with its peers or even brandies of different heritage? Let’s find out.

First it should be noted that the ABV is a disappointing 38%. Both my previous dalliances with solera gran riserva brandies, Cardenal Mendoza and Gran Duque D’Alba have lived up to the standard 40. A quick filter of the data on my geeky spreadsheet shows that of all the brandies I’ve purchased [or received as gifts] in the past, only the Tesco Value brandy and Osborne’s 103 would also be members of this sub-strength club – and they weren’t good. Nevertheless, Carlos I (which, like the 103 is produced by Osborne) was the most special offering the supermarket I chose to make my purchase from had. I am hereafter determined to try a bit harder the next time I go to Spain.

Opening this bizarrely (and not particularly conveniently) shaped bottle actually coincided with the death of my last Ikea brandy snifter, so I was “forced” to find the funds for some far better quality John Lewis ones. There’s one in the picture – much better (though you can't really see it all that well).

I don’t know whether it is partially down to the quality of my new John Lewis brandy snifters, but I rate this far more highly than the other aforementioned solera gran riservas. It’s soft and mellow and occasionally there’s a slight hint of caramel in there, along with a hint of balsamic vinegar on the nose. It has proved to be popular with guests and, while I doubt I’ll be opting to buy another bottle in the future, it was of acceptable standard.

It's been a short one this week then. What's next week? I think I might be doing something about weird asian booze. Not sure. Come back next week and find out. Laters.

The Duke vs The Lord

Good evening! We’re looking at brandy this week, and comparing two brands of admittedly different varieties from mainland Europe. From Spain, and in the brandy de Jerez solera gran riserva style, aged around 10 years, it’s Gran Duque D’Alba – henceforth to be known as The Duke.

Its opposite number is from France, and represents the Armagnac style. It’s Bas Armagnac delord – or The Lord, as it will be known from now on, and it is of the Hors d’Age variety which means it should also be around 10 years old.

The Duke was procured from a duty free shop in San Javier airport in Spain, while The Lord was a very generous and thoughtful gift from my friend Geoffray Westside, when he visited from France in July.

I had asked that Geoffray bring me some Armagnac, and provided a list of potential targets, but I had to cancel when I spent more than I had planned on the Golfageddon holiday. Geoffray ignored my instruction and brought it as a gift. Good man.

So what are we looking at here:

Price

The Duke: 21 euros, but you can expect to pay around £45 in the UK.

The Lord: I don’t know how much Geoffray paid, and I haven’t been able to find the exact same bottling online, but it’s looking to be somewhere from £45-60 here. Check this page though, where certain vintages push the price up to beyond £1000. Clearly it is quite renowned.

Presentation

The Duke: quite fancy; it comes in a box that is trying to look old, while the bottle itself is in an interesting cylindrical Benedictine style, according to this website. The top is quite large and it is topped off with a large cork, making a refreshing change from the booze resistor cap you get in so many Spanish liquor bottles. Then there is a faux wax seal and (for some reason) a bit of ribbon, giving a three musketeers feel to the whole thing. Overall it gives the effect of potentially being quite special.

The Lord: here we have the brandy coming in its own little wooden coffin – very special – while the bottle is a kind of flask shape and is frosted. There’s a bit of faux wax on there also. It all adds up to a great package. Of course, you wonder how much you’re paying for the packaging, but who doesn’t like that little bit extra?

Strength

Both are bottled at 40% ABV.

In the glass

I can’t tell any difference; deep and dark.

Nose

They actually smell the same, but The Lord is better, giving more of an impression of wooden barrels and a gentle smokiness on top of the fruity tones that they share.

Palate

Again, they taste the same, but The Lord is better. It’s just that little bit more complex and varied even though I can’t put my finger on a single element that makes this so. I suppose it’s the recognisable Armagnac tang that just edges it over the Jerez bite.

Finish

Equal length. Nothing specific to note.

Verdict

While I can’t compare the value of these two products, since I don’t know the cost of one of them, with the one that I do know - The Duke – it does have to be a consideration. At £45 I certainly wouldn’t be buying it here in the UK when you think of all the classy single malt scotch you can get for that price. However, it does make a decent souvenir to bring back from your Spanish holiday.

Pricing considerations aside, it is plain to see that I have a slight preference for The Lord – great package, fine brandy. Nowhere near approaching delivery of the kind of pleasure that my favourite whiskies bring, but that’s entirely subjective.

And that’s all I have to say about that. Next week I’ll be dipping my toe into the waters of one of my least favourite spirit genres: gin, and asking what’s so fucking special about gin?!? So until then… I’ll see ya.

Alcohol and Performance

You may not know me in this particular capacity, but in a former life I was actually a musician. From age 16 to around 33 I wrote songs and played guitar in various bands until one day I decided I was tired of constantly trying different chords next to each other, attempting to communicate my vision to other musicians and hoping someone would actually care, while what I really wanted to do was play a bit more sport before my body gave out. I quit the band and went from playing football once a week to twice – that was the plan at least – the 1^st time I played a second time in a week, I twisted my knee pretty badly and ended up on crutches, putting my first ever Spanish golf holiday in jeopardy.

My knee still isn’t quite right (more than 2 years later), but after a long period of recovery I went back to playing football once a week. I didn’t go back to music straight away though – nor did I miss it. Gone were the days when I thought in music and obsessed about it. I felt it was a shame that I couldn’t call myself a musician anymore, and I felt sad that my skills honed over years of serious playing would atrophy but… you can always go back later in life if you want to – it’s not unlike riding a bike...

…as I have found now that I have returned to music in a much reduced capacity. My friend David’s band required a bass player – for a few upcoming gigs in the first instance – so I offered to help out. I do miss the exhilaration of gigging, of entering a venue just as a guy, and leaving it feeling that you own it – not so much, doing a bad gig and feeling depressed about it, but you got to take the rough with the smooth. So this is good because it requires none of the effort of writing songs and leading a band, but I do get to play gigs pretty much straight away – and in case you didn’t know, guitar players make the best bass players – it’s just hard to convince a guitar player to switch to the bass. Luckily for Custom 12 (as they’re known), I like the bass (thanks to the music of James Brown as well as players such as Mike Watt) and I’m fairly good at it – in my own way.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to change this into a blog about the band or about music, but it does mean that I can cover another aspect of experiencing alcohol, which is what this blog is all about – that of performance and alcohol. I’m not talking sexual performance here, though that could potentially be far more interesting (by which I mean x-rated) because alcohol lowers the inhibitions… and that coincidentally is where alcohol comes in useful in the performance of music – to a degree at least, because as we’ll see, there are parameters that need to be adhered to. Sexual performance and alcohol… can be one for the future.

I remember my first ever gig [wistfully]. My friend Phil and I performed as an acoustic duo in the upstairs room of Sheffield’s The Grapes pub. I was so nervous that I was shaking during the soundcheck. I knew I couldn’t perform like that. Your accuracy and timing can be all over the place when you’re nervous – though conversely,  it can also help you perform to the best of your ability; it’s like you might hear it said that sportsmen ‘raise their game’ against the strongest opponents. It’s a fine line. I later learned not to be so nervous, but on that occasion I knew I needed alcohol.

I think I drank three pints and two double vodkas before we hit the stage that night, and the gig went really well. There was one point where I forgot the next bit of a song called ‘Let’s Make Friends’, and I just paused, trying desperately to remember the next part. Phil continued for a few bars and then stopped.

“Keep going, mate!” I urged.

He set off again, and that proved the jolt I needed to get the next few bars back in my head. I jumped in, and we finished the song triumphantly.

I learned soon after that there is such a thing as too much alcohol before a gig – three pints and two double vodkas would normally represent far too much, but on that first occasion it did the job. Easily the worst example of too much was when my friend Pits and I went to a birthday party in Macclesfield where they had band equipment set up. Having been in a band together before, we figured we could do a quick rendition of Neil Young’s Hey Hey, My My which is a particular favourite of mine. Pits decided he would play the drums, despite his enthusiasm far exceeding his ability on that particular instrument.

I don’t like thinking about the performance, but let’s just say we were very drunk and it was shit. I knew it was shit from the moment we started, but we ploughed on, all the while aware that it wasn’t getting any better. Occasionally I manage to forget about the whole experience for a while… but then I remember. It’s like when you’ve done something bad that you feel really guilty about and you hate yourself for it, then you forget for a bit, and you go, “wait, I was feeling bad about something… what was I feeling bad about?... oh yeh.” It’s ruined that song for me. I was hoping writing about it might make me feel better, but it’s just reminded me again. I actually started writing about the episode in more detail, thinking it would be an entertaining story, but it was just too painful. Anyway…

It really is a shame that you need to moderate your alcohol intake before a gig because there is often a lot of waiting around, and waiting around breeds nerves – will we play well? Will we be able to hear ourselves? Will there be anyone there to hear us? Too much alcohol though, and I find you can become numb to the music; disconnected and clumsy – you don’t know it until you’ve performed in a band, but a lot of the time you can’t actually hear yourself on stage, or you can’t hear the other members, so it can be very difficult to play tightly and in time. It only takes one person to make a mistake in order to put everyone off, and the more complicated you make your songs, the more things there are to go wrong. Too little alcohol though, and you can be nervous, stiff and boring.

I found through experimentation that my optimum alcohol intake for improved musical performance is three pints. I could have more in rehearsal, but when it came to be the night of the gig, I always stopped at three – but tried to make up for it afterwards. I never made it policy in my bands, but as far as I can remember, each member stuck to it – no one wants to look like an idiot on stage, or be the one to let the side down – that’s why you get nervous in the first place. There aren’t many people who can be the onstage drunk, and get away with it. And if you’re serious about being in a band, you need to be professional. Being in a band is one of the few potential career paths where alcohol is a possibility – even mandatory – but if you don’t do a good show no one is going to like you and you aren’t going to have fun.

I suppose the worst case scenario would be like the bootleg recording I once heard of Jimi Hendrix jamming with Jim Morrison. Morrison was a mess, and just spent the whole time slurring expletives into the mic – poet, my ass. Not cool, even for him. So this is probably the only exception I have found to the BTMTNE rule – Better Too Much Than Not Enough.

I joined Custom 12 four weeks before they were scheduled to play a show at Manchester’s Retro Bar. We managed one (and pretty much) a half rehearsals before David and I had a week’s golfing booked in Spain, after which there was a week in which we couldn’t rehearse due to practice room issues, before finally getting three rehearsals in the week before the gig itself. I put in a bit of time at home as well – I wasn’t going to be the weak link if I could help it.

Summer had hit the UK at last, and on the Sunday before the gig Mrs Cake and I took a walk to a nearby pub and sat in the beer garden with a pint (Bohemia Regent for me, Manchester Pale Ale for the missus). It was one of those days where you have to go out and do something because otherwise it’s a crime. I so desperately wanted to stay there all afternoon, but no, I had a rehearsal that evening, and since there was a gig coming up in a week and I hadn’t even learned all the songs yet, I knew I couldn’t show up pissed. At the ripe old age of 35 it seems, I’ve finally learned some self-control. There’s a time for being cool and rock n’ roll, and there’s a time for being professional. When you’re new to a band and you want to impress, you need to be professional. I would just have to look forward to getting home later that night, when I had decided I’d allow myself to open my Gran Duque D’Alba Solera Gran Riserva brandy.

When I joined the band I was a little excited about being able to make choices about what to drink at rehearsal again. Beer is the classic choice of course, but buying 4-8 cans of something nice every week can get expensive after a while – especially when you have to pay for the rehearsal room and a couple of drinks at the pub beforehand.

To deal with that expense, in the past I would call at Aldi on my way and pick up a bottle of red wine for £2.99. I could make that last two rehearsals, or just get smashed each week. It hasn’t actually worked out that way so far, unfortunately. I’ve been a bit hard up for the last few months, so I’ve been driving to rehearsal with a single can in my bass bag, and having a couple of drinks when I get home instead. And that’s actually ok. I don’t have to deal with the bus home and it saves me money.

As for the gig, well that went well too. I was a lot more relaxed than I used to be – confident that I’d done enough to learn the songs and, since now I’m just the bass player and not the focal point, the whole thing doesn’t rest on me. I don’t have to take personal ownership over everything, which means the pressure is greatly reduced. Correspondingly, the glory afterwards isn’t quite so pronounced either, but for now, I’m happy with that. I just need to make sure my parts are good and that I play them well. It all makes for good times.

Thanks for reading. I was just perusing some of my previous posts and figured some of the personality has dropped out since I stopped posting on a Friday night… I don’t really want to start doing that again, but… for the moment it seems potentially worthwhile. It was kind of nice to sign off with a weekend of booze-fuelled adventures ahead. So here I am, and while it was supposed to be Friday night again, I ended up going to the pub after work, and didn’t fancy sitting at the computer. So now it’s Saturday evening, and while I was intending to be at the Levenshulme Beer Festival by now, I’m actually still waiting to go. We ended up doing a marathon shop in advance of next weekend’s music and booze fest – Bearded Theory (which you might remember me blogging about last year) and now we’re just chillin’ for a bit.  

The weather’s good though, so maybe I’ll see you at the Levy Fest in an hour or so, or at Bearded Theory next week. Have a good ‘un and I’ll see you back here next week (though probably on Thursday rather than Friday), when at this point I am intending to post about an Irish Cream three-way. It’s not quite as interesting as it sounds, but if you like Irish Cream and you want to know how three different brands compare… this is where you want to be. So, yeh… not as interesting as I made it sound. BOOBIES!

If you happen to find a pair of knickers down the back of the sofa...

To give you an idea of the things Mrs Cake and I do to make ordinary things interesting, let me tell you about one Saturday night recently… when we went babysitting. Yes, you heard me.

You see, for some mad reason my dangerously generous wife offered to babysit for some very good friends of ours while they went out for a swanky 60^th birthday celebration. The little girl, Megan is something like 18 months old and, we were told, would sleep right through. Mrs Cake sold the idea to me by:

1.       Getting the request in early – ie, before I’d managed to plan anything else.

2.       Packaging it like a teenage thing – you know, where the boyfriend comes round (I can be a bit kinky like that). Mrs Cake hadn’t had a boyfriend to come round when she did babysitting as a teenager, so you could say this was a dream coming true for her…

3.       Confirming all the usual things (snacks, pizza, booze, TV) would be present.

Why not then?

We loaded up and headed over to Altrincham where our friends live. I offered to stay in the car until they’d gone out to facilitate the whole teenage fantasy thing, but evidently we weren’t taking it that seriously, so in we went.

I had decided to spend the evening drinking the Gran Duque D’Alba Solera Gran Riserva brandy that you may remember me buying in Spain (see Golfageddon), and even took my own brandy snifter, in case our friends didn’t have any of their own. [achievement unlocked: glass geek].

 I had taken disc 1 of series 1 of 24 that I had just borrowed from someone at work, but the DVD player wasn’t connected, so it was telly or on demand movies for us (for the record, we never got beyond episode 4 anyway). We proceeded then to spend about an hour browsing the on demand stuff and not finding anything much… finally we settled on a film we’d never heard of, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone with Steve Carell. It was pretty good – along the lines of Anchorman and the like, though not quite as good as that.

And that was our Saturday night – the same as so many others, just at someone else’s house instead of our own.

The brandy went down fairly nicely but I’m beginning to think it lacks a little complexity, particularly in comparison to the Armagnac, Bas Armagnac Delord Hors D’Age. I suppose though, you can’t ask for too much for only 26 euros… mind you, that’s fairly expensive for Spain.

When our friends returned after midnight they made a quip about ‘making out’. “Let’s just say if you find a pair of Mrs Cake’s knickers down the back of the sofa, you can return them next time you see us,” I said.

There were no knickers down the sofa. Just to clarify. Or if there were, they weren’t ours…

Golfageddon

In a change to this week’s planned post that I did myself the favour of not advertising in advance, I’m going to take you back now to some “research” that I did in July of this year. And by “research”, I mean drinking heavily and playing golf in Spain - an event that we chose to christen Golfadeggon. San Javier in Murcia, was the location, where there are more British per capita than there are in Manchester. That’s not necessarily a fact; it’s just intended to give you an impression of how many British people live and visit there. You don’t need a word of Spanish, but I found that you can mightily impress the locals with just a tiny bit – one taxi driver was bowled over when I handed him a two euro tip and said, “para ousted.”

“Oh-ho-ho! Speak Spanish!”

“Uh… un poco.”

With our flight at around 3pm, plans were made to meet at the airport at 12.15 – for ‘a few scoops’. When I got that message from Chris, I thought he meant he wanted to play golf before we went (if you knew him, you’d understand), so I said, “no, I’d best not; I don’t want to mess up my game before we even get there.”

A couple of days later I asked what time he wanted to meet at the airport, and he asked if I’d been drunk the other night, since he’d already told me – 12.15.

I wasn’t, as it happens, but now I understand what “a few scoops” is; it’s a few drinks. I suppose that should go in the Booze Terminology section…

So it came to pass that the four of us – myself, David, Chris and John – met in the upstairs bar in Terminal 1 of Manchester Airport, where they actually have some interesting beers on tap. I stuck with Amstel – little did I know it would be wall to wall Amstel in San Javier, where it was an astonishing 2.2 euros per pint up and down the strip.

One night I asked if they had any Spanish lager, whereupon the English waiter said, “Amstel”, to which I replied, “Amstel isn’t Spanish” and Chris chimed in with, “It’s Dutch.”

“Is it?” said the waiter. “I literally had no idea that was the case.”

Amstel it was, then.

We did pick up some Estrella in the supermarket, but it wasn’t the red kind you get in Barcelona. Instead the cans were green, and looked to have been brewed in Murcia. Later, at the airport, we found some red cans and discovered that the red variety is a noteworthy 5.4% ABV, while the green is a disappointing-but-still-not-to-be-sniffed-at 4.8%.

Unfortunately, the green one isn’t as tasty as the red.

I was a little disappointed at the beer choices because I like Spanish lager; Estrella, San Miguel, Cruzcampo, Alhambra, Mahou… they’re all good. I suppose that’s what you get for going to a largely British resort. Still, at least it wasn’t a choice between Carling and Fosters.

Since we were staying in an apartment on the golf complex – as far from both the course itself, and the actual town as it was possible to be… we made it top priority to get supplies in on the first night. I knew that soft drinks, beer, bacon, eggs and bread would all be essential, but was surprised to see everyone else’s baskets piled high with biscuits, sweets and chocolate. I didn’t even pick up a basket because all I wanted was beer, whisky and perhaps aguardiente de orujo.

DYC 10...

...and in the shower

John had located a Spanish single malt, DYC 10 year old, while I was still seeking out the booze aisle. “I want that. Where did you find it?”

I hotfooted it off to get one of my own. It’s packaged in a chunky Bruichladdich style bottle, weighs in at a standard 40% and cost under 15 euros.

That very evening I cracked it open, eased out the oversized cork, and sampled the malty goodness. I had actually been looking for the DYC 8 year old blend that scored a remarkable 90 in Jim Murray’s 2013 Whisky Bible [clean and cleverly constructed, he says, “Just so enjoyable!”]… but they didn’t have that. I figured a 10 year old single malt must surely be even more interesting, though I didn’t recall reading anything about it in the guide. Well, we all liked it anyway. Light-bodied and easy-drinking, we would get through three bottles of this between us over the course of the week.

David also bought a Spanish blended whisky called John Cor. That one was under 5 euros, and John confessed to preferring it over the DYC.

I uh… don’t remember too much about the John Cor. It certainly wasn’t bad – for 5 euros – but I don’t think I’d want to pay too much more for it. Spirits are so cheap in Spain as a matter of course that you don’t ever need to buy anything that cheap. It becomes more the sort of thing that you go, “well, if this is only 11 euro, I may as well also get this at 5 euro”, because it’s still cheaper than a bottle of Bells at home, and you’re getting two interesting new bottles.

Chris' Johnnie Walker Red (after a day)

Chris went for a Johnnie Walker Red, which he finished off in a little over two days – with coke, I might add – but he can’t drink beer like the rest of us and cider can be hard to find in Spain, so he had to have something to rely on.

As a result of all this freely flowing booze, my poor hipflask didn’t get a look-in. One swig on the first day was all it got, and ever after it was just sat on the kitchen counter. I had considered taking it on a round of golf with me, but the need to maximise my performance asserted itself from day one, and by the 5^th of the 6 rounds I had started playing the best golf of my life and didn’t want to jeopardise getting a great score.

I did get my best ever score for the course we played (which I had played 5 times previously, two years ago) – 118, but it still wasn’t a great score. And that wasn’t even on the days when I was playing my best golf! On the best days I was striking the ball beautifully, but hitting all the hazards and getting some rotten luck. Still, I now feel great about golf again – no doubt until my next round, when I’ll realise I’ve forgotten the technique that started working so well for me.

Our general routine for the next week revolved around golf, booze and food. If we had a morning round it would be up and out, a breakfast of Coca-Cola and chocolate, followed by lunch and a couple of pints at the clubhouse after the golf, before swimming, cans, possibly a snooze, and a shower at the apartment before heading to the main drag where the evening would be spent eating and drinking at the various bars and restaurants.

We took in some of the entertainment, which was limited to one-man tribute acts singing to recordings, and in one place for which we had free drinks vouchers, a Michael Jackson act that was a guy dancing to a live Michael Jackson video… Chris spent about an hour at the bar trying to get our free mojitos in there.

If we had an afternoon round, it would be a lie in, followed by lounging around, golf, a couple of pints at the clubhouse, a shower and straight out for dinner and more drinks. I tried to take a whisky into the shower with me every day, as any good alcothusiast should. 

We got a couple of games of poker in, using lightweight Monopoly money instead of chips, but I was having no luck. I think we were all pretty smashed by the time we got down to it anyway, so there was far less caution and far less tension that there usually is.

Time at the clubhouse and on the strip was invariably accompanied by an opening period of silence as everyone got onto the various free wi-fi and played Super Stickman Golf 2 and Wordfeud – intermittently glancing up to watch for passing freaks and ghouls. The pints go down easy, and the food, while unadventurous, is good. Being lads, we nary saw a vegetable the whole time we were there. It was pretty much meat, chips and bread all the way.

So 108 holes of golf, and seven days after arrival, the day of departure came. It was beer for breakfast for me, as we still had a few cans left. We followed that up with an afternoon sat in a bar on the strip, eating chicken wings and drinking beers until it was time to get to the airport… and Duty Free – one last thing to look forward to.

I had decided to get at least one purchase in before the airport because I figured there was a risk – with Murcia Airport being tiny – that there wouldn’t be much choice on offer. I’d been hoping to get one of those exclusive to international travel Highland Park expressions, but knew the chances of this would be low.

I called at the supermarket a day or two early then to pick up a bottle of the standard Cutty Sark blended scotch (40% ABV). It’s readily available throughout Spain, but much harder to find in the UK. It features in my 101 Whiskies to Try Before You Die book, and at 11 euro, is perfect for a casual purchase, leaving room for further acquisitions later on. It was tempting to get something else at this time too, since you can nearly bring back as much as you want, but I was worried about the possibilities of breakages within my golf travel bag. The stingey weight allowance on Jet2 of 20kg doesn’t allow for much clothing alongside your golf clubs to pad out the contents.

 I wrapped the Cutty Sark in a towel, stuffed it in one of the larger pockets of my golf bag, and stuffed a few more clothes on either side.

Duty free was slightly disappointing, but there was still enough there to choose from. There are two shops selling booze, but from what I remember, the only scotch on offer is the standard Glenfiddich 12. Instead I focused on the Spanish stuff, where in the second of the two shops I found the DYC 8 (40% ABV) that I had been looking for. It was only 14 euro, so I figured I may as well get something else as well, and went back to the first shop to get some Gran Duque D’Alba Solera Gran Riserva brandy de Jerez that was 20% off at 21 euro. The Cardinal Mendoza was there too, but I decided to try something different this time.

A good haul really, and one that leaves me with 6 unopened bottles of spirits back at the old homestead. I’ve decided to finish one or two before I open anything new, but with me, you know that’s not going to be long.

It wasn’t all good outcomes. Despite a lovely enthusiastic welcome from Mrs Cake, we discovered the week long alcohol abuse has left me with a vastly inflated belly. I’m hoping that works itself off naturally, since with my back, sit-ups are out of the question. On top of that, because of all the holiday cigars, I just felt so dirty – and not in a good way. At least, not just in the good way. I mean, I always have that general background feeling of dirtiness anyway. That ain’t going nowhere.

So, let me see, were there any particularly funny moments? I don’t remember anyone falling over in a comical manner or anything like that but… Chris’ profligate swearing through the various rounds of golf had us all laughing. One time he exclaimed, “You son of a fuck!” which we soon transposed into “Son of a fucking fuck” and rode on for the rest of the week.

There was one time on the course where David had a particularly tricky bunker to get out of, and hit two or three shots before the ball jumped out into the heavy rough just in front of the bunker. On his next shot the ball jumped right back into the bunker where it began. Oh, I howled with laughter. I don’t think that’s considered good etiquette on a golf course, but it lightens the mood, and I’d prefer people to laugh at me when something like that happens, than they remain po-faced.

There was definitely a lot of laughing, but those are the instances of note that I recall.

I’m not sure I’ll be able to justify tagging along next year too with further booze tourism adventures already in the planning stage, but definitely the year after that.

Gran Duque d'Alba

So I hope you’ve enjoyed the brief travelogue and have had a terrific weekend so far. I’ll see you next week with something else, hopefully.