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20170215_213025Life is full of milestones.

Birthdays. College degrees. Marriage. The first child. The new house. The second child. The third child. Another degree. The fourth child. A little bigger house.

Okay, enough of the milestones. Especially the ones involving procreation.

I hit a milestone the other day while driving our 2011 Chrysler Town and Country. Yeah, I was pretty excited. See for yourself.

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You guessed it. I hit 100,000 miles.

Now, you might be thinking, That’s not all that many miles for a car that is (at the time of this writing) only six years old. That’s only about 16,600 miles a year. What you need to know is that we bought the vehicle in early 2014. It had 52,000 miles on it. That means we’ve put 48,000 miles on it in a little more than 3 years. But you also need to know that my wife has been the primary driver for the van, at least until we traded six months ago—she took the Explorer and I took the Town and Country—and when we did this, it had 79,000 miles on it. In two and a half years, she put 31,000 miles on it. Not bad. But if you continue with the math, you’ll discover that I managed 21,000 miles in six months. Goes with the “traveling clergyman” territory.

A bit of advice—never buy a used car from a clergyman. You’ll get something with high mileage, a whole lot of duct tape, homemade seat levers, and most likely some rear seat cushions permanently creased by child safety boosters.

20170215_213102I hit another milestone today. I came full circle on my conversion to Canadian whiskey, and it would seem that the Two Brewers Yukon Single Malt was the one to do it. After a 160 mile round-trip jaunt to and from a funeral just beyond the borders of Detroit, this lightly peated delight really hit the spot.

The nose reminded me of a familiar Speyside attempt at peating a Scotch—The Balvenie 17-year-old Peated Cask—except the Yukon Malt (and I’m having a hard time believing I’m saying this) was better, less forced—subtle, in fact. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love The Balvenie’s rendition, but when the scent of the sweet vanillas over the oven-baked challa breads begins to rise from the dram, you’ll realize that Two Brewers has managed to kick the bar up a notch in comparison to its Scottish counterpart.

The palate is a fascinating tour through a fresh-fruit market—honeycrisp and gala apples, Asian and duchess pears, and maybe some nectarines—all downwind from a newly kindled peat fire on a cool autumn day.

The finish is somewhat bizarre in that I expected it to be longer and a bit dirtier, but it wasn’t. It’s short and really rather clean. There’s a little bit of the peat that lingers, and perhaps a tad bit of alcohol, but not enough to ruin the experience.

And now I’m praying that Two Brewers doesn’t get consumed by some massive conglomerate so that it ends up among the likes and of the quality of Crown Royal. I’m sure there are some who would consider such an event to be a positive milestone for both the conglomerate and Two Brewers. I’m thinking it would be more like buying a used car from a road-weary clergyman.


Once again, thanks for the sample, George!