Whsiky live Cape Town, day 3

 The panning for Day 3 included:  Triumphant finish to three days of restrained hedonism.  Joining with the buddies, drink lots of whisky and go to Highland Park tasting.  Most plans do not survive contact with the enemy⁽¹⁾.  Mine showed early promise. 

I had the best pizza, OK pizzas, I have ever tasted.  I was on my way to my favourite Cape Town Asian food purveyor the Sea Palace where they have Chinese and Japanese food and also quite important, Boston Beer on tap.  Boston goes very well with cat. ⁽²⁾  Last year I lunched, dinnered and snacked at the Sea Palace during the whisky festival as it kept on being geographically between the festival and my hotel.  This year it involved me sauntering ⁽³⁾ quite some distance to the restaurant.  Sting sings that “A gentleman will walk, but never run” Well, neither will I.  Walking towards my goal, I saw the sign for Colcacchio’s and remember The Blonde recommending it. 

It is a pricey joint, but value for money.  When the description says “Mushroom, onion and chorizo” you don’t need a microscope to detect the toppings.   Even a bat could find it without trouble.  The base is very thin which does detract from mechanical stability when shovelling a heavily toppinged piece towards your mouth. But they have napkins which compensate for this failure.  So you taste the topping rather than the base.  It does however; leave you feeling you can accommodate another one.  Under normal circumstances I would not attempt this for two reasons:

1: My inherent stinginess

2: Although Mr Newton’s law on gravity have it that big object attract small ones, I have little success with attracting women or money, both being normally much smaller than me, so I am trying to quit that way of life.

But these pizzas are great!!! And I walked there, so half a butter chicken and yogurt and half olive and anchovies got the nod.  Extra points to my waitress who did not even blink when I asked for another and for bringing me buffalo milk mozzarella.  For the first time I realised it not have to taste like a steadler eraser.  After grazing it was time to point the stomach in the direction of my temporary abode.  And start walking. 

I met the Bald Eagle and both the Ghananians and tried to give them a quick tour of what I thought was good.  Our pleasure was somewhat spoiled by the idiot who left a gate open so half of Cape Town’s great unwashed could also attend the festival.  I have a mild form of people-o-phobia and there were too many of them for me to enjoy the evening.  The others received free tickets to a talk with Jonathan Miles on Old Pulteney and AnCnoc.  I went to HighlandPark. 

Highland Park (HP) makes some very good whisky.  The peatyness is different to that of Islay.  Apparently the weather in Orkney (the one north of Scotland not the one with the gold mines and Ouboet) is so miserable that even millions of years ago trees refused to live there.  Temperatures are so even that the only difference between winter and summer is the sports on TV.  Wind coming off the North Sea sprays sea water across everything so only heather can grow there.  This gives the peat a different flavour to that of, say Islay.  You are what you eat so in the case of whisky you are what you peat.   And peat is what it was, only older.   So it brings a different dimension to Highland Park.  Some of the malt apparently has the same phenol quantity as Ardbeg malt, but the taste is very different. 

Coming back from the HP tasting (12, 18, 25 and 30 year old) I was confronted by a mass of drunken, sweaty Cape Clownians.  ⁽⁴⁾  Now I am not going to get all sanctimonious about getting drunk.  But it should be done walking distance from your own home with the express purpose of getting some good looking person to lower their standards enough to include you and go to bed with you.  Or so you can forget that such things don’t happen to you.  No prizes for guessing which category I fall in. 

So confronted with my own mild phobia I just bought some whisky and left.  Back temporarily home I wrote and sampled my purchases from Wellington, Pretoria and Orkney.  Some of which was made before people who can now vote (legally) were born. 

(1)    VonMoltke.  And he ought to know.  Although today beating the Austrians and French at war doesn’t seem much, it was in his day.

(2)    Obviously a joke.  The dark meat of a cat needs something sweeter, like a Belgian Dubbel.

(3)    I was going to perambulate, but it turns out that means walking without a goal.  Clearly I had a feeding goal.

(4)    Kapenarre is snaakser in Afrikaans