Three Guys, Two Hours, Ten Limited Edition Whiskies: A Love Story

From left: Tommy Tardie (owner of Fine & Rare and the Flatiron Room); writer & bon vivant Robert Haynes-Peterson; yours truly.

It’s a rainy, chilly Friday afternoon. I’ve got deadlines up to my eyeballs. Election Day is 18 days away and the entire country is having a nervous breakdown. So you’re going to get what an editor of mine used to refer to as “repurposed content.” But this particular slab of gently-used content happens to be one of my favorites of all the pieces I’ve written over the years, so if you decide to click the link (which is right here), you’re in luck as far as I’m concerned.

The premise: I had the latest collection of Diageo’s Special Releases — a group of rare and noteworthy single malts from distilleries owned by Diageo, which they release every year. I have no problem drinking by myself, but I thought that sampling the lot in one go with a couple of friends would be even more fun — and it would hopefully make a more interesting writeup.

The fact that I had two esteemed tasters of whisky, writer Robert Haynes-Peterson and bar/restaurant owner extraordinaire, Tommy Tardie, on hand made my work a little easier, but my having to transcribe a couple of hours’ worth of our nattering made it a lot more time-consuming. Whatever. I think the results were worth the effort for all of us. I hope you enjoy reading about our sodden afternoon as much as we enjoyed drinking ourselves silly. And again, here’s the link!