Emotive Malts - SMWS 136.1, Eden Mill 2015, 3yo, 61.2%
Sunday lunch at Simpson’s in the Strand had gone on longer than expected and as Lord Eden unfastened the top button of his trousers and reclined into the plush leather upholstery, a waiter appeared next to him with a lighter for his cigar.
He exhaled, whilst drumming his fingers against the oak dining table and as the smoke coalesced above his head like thought bubbles, he involuntarily began filling them. He reminisced about the oysters and stout for the first course, garnished only with a dash of zesty lemon and vinegar and the roast beef that followed, carved straight from the carvery at his table and which had then been drizzled with a sumptuous red wine reduction creating a miniature sea for the roast parsnips to populate.
He remembered dessert had been tricky, offering an almost impossible decision, so he had ordered one of each; custard tarts served with apricot coulis, spotted dick with salted caramel shortbread and treacle tart with clotted cream. Now it was the acidity of a 1987 Colheita that was cutting through the grease and, with a bit of luck, he hoped, the cholesterol that was amassing in his veins.
As darkness began to fall his thoughts turned to a cleansing ale somewhere in Soho and one last postprandial sherry at Gordon’s Wine Bar, before he would be sucked into the tube at Embankment and delivered into tomorrow, from whence would begin another week of gruelling lunches, dinners and social engagement ...
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