This Liquid.

This pale lemon, gold-flecked sparkle. This tawny, amber, dew.

This glittering, glistening gift from the earth.

Heavy, oily, light, dry. Velvet mouthfeel, and long finish.

Tongue coating, lips tingling, warmth rolling to the heart.

Sensuality in liquid, golden body in glass beguiles us.

Uncork the bottle;

A pocket of the past enters the present.

Air space between liquid and cork holds history.

You need to be quick to smell the past in the present.

Liquid memory coming alive in our hand, our mouth.

A smoothing, soothing, golden promise.

We gaze; soft mouth cavern slavering.

Breathe. In.

Sharp intake of flavour laden air.

Heady, sensuous, swirling, spiralling memory.

Tingling alcohol burn,

little hairs inside our nose quiver and undulate.

Aah, we nearly have it, something we know. It’s, it’s… warm, soft.

We imagine fruit in a woven basket.

We smell it.

Aroma molecules bounce around our nasal cavity.

Mouth coating, creamy weight of living liquid

held in soft, pink cup of tongue.

Drinking whisky, we drink the world.

Earth, air, fire and water

come together, creating something greater than the

sum of their parts.

A dram is a map, a map of the past.

To drink whisky is to be in a never-ending present,

with the past right there.

Right Here.

With the past alive in a literal sense.

We are drinking time. We drink ‘a time’.

Drinking Uisge Beatha,

one’s own atoms mingle with atoms from that time.

As we drink the dram, both we and the whisky are changed.

Written by Rachel MacNeill