For this pub crawl, I was planning stops within walking distance of the hotel. The goal was simple: good drinks, good food, questionable decisions, and absolutely no need to figure out who was driving.
Blackrose Whiskey Club wasn't originally on the list. Nat is a bourbon drinker, I frequently indulge in Scotch, and somewhere along the way the conversation turned to where exactly we should go if we were going to drink whiskey together. Blackrose came up, and once we realized they had a ridiculous whiskey selection, it was pretty much game over.
Blackrose Whiskey Club is the kind of place where you walk in thinking you know a thing or two about whiskey and walk out questioning every decision you made before discovering Scotch.
There are SO many whiskeys here. Enough options to make a confident person immediately develop imposter syndrome. I started with the Tomintoul Cigar Malt, with an ounce of Drambuie on the side. The plan was to try the Scotch on its own first, then turn it into a Rusty Nail. The first sip was smoky, but ridiculously creamy and smooth. Add the Drambuie, and now we're getting somewhere.
This little experiment also managed to convert Nat, a dedicated bourbon drinker, into someone who actually likes Scotch. Welcome to the cult.
Granted, this wasn't a traditional Rusty Nail. We went half and half rather than the usual two ounces of Scotch to one ounce of Drambuie. Nat thinks the traditional ratio would be even better, and she may be right. We just weren't about to start screwing with the ratios when we were already sitting on top of a perfectly good experiment. At over $20 an ounce, some scientific discoveries can wait for another night.
Then came the Indian Paul John Peated, and holy fucking ammonia. This thing smelled like toilet wine brewed in a jail cell. You know that imaginary alcohol someone would make by fermenting whatever the hell they could find in a toilet for the prison moonshine program? That. Except this came in a proper whiskey glass and someone had the audacity to charge money for it.
Then you take the first sip and the whole thing changes. The nose had you expecting one experience, but the taste went in a completely different direction. It hits hard, but the flavour is nothing like what your nose threatened you with. The nose is basically a guy in a prison bathroom threatening to shank you, then the first sip is him politely asking if you'd like to share his snacks. I did not see that coming. Give it a try. Seriously. Let your nose threaten you first, then let the whiskey prove you wrong.
Then came the La Diabla, a mezcal margarita that woke up and chose violence. Good on its own, but then we smoked that bitch with applewood and let it sit until the smoke dissipated and science could do the talking. The inside of the glass and the Tajín absorbed the smoke, adding another layer without actually hurting the drink itself. If anything, it made the whole experience more interesting. We basically gave a margarita a smoke bath and somehow got away with it.
Daryl (unsure of the spelling) and his wife own the joint, and you can tell there is some serious passion behind the place. The owner has also created an interactive selection tool designed to narrow down your drink choices from the absolutely ridiculous whiskey menu. It's a genuinely cool idea and can be surprisingly helpful when you're staring at enough options to require a minor in Scotch. The navigation buttons can be a little finicky, though. They don't always pick up the touch command on the first try, and making them a bit larger would make navigating the menu much easier, especially after a few drams.
Blackrose isn't just a place to grab a whiskey. It's a place to get lost in whiskey, accidentally discover something you've never heard of, smoke a margarita, convert someone from bourbon to Scotch and leave wondering whether you actually chose your drinks or the drinks chose you.
Highly recommend.
Just maybe learn how to use the selection tool before the third dram.