“How’d you ever find a room?” the hotel shuttle driver asks. “Springsteen has a concert here tonight, the Steelers are playing, and there are conventions of tattooed people, high school science geeks, and who knows what-all everywhere. Every hotel within 60 miles is completely booked.”
“Internet,” I reply. Good timing, I guess.”
The van winds along back streets, zips through narrow alleys, makes a U-turn under a graffiti-scrawled bridge (“a short cut,” the driver says) and drops me at Pittsburg’s Rivers Casino. I’m here for a whiskey festival and have no idea what to expect.
It’s early so I wander around the casino floor, the usual acre of roulette, blackjack, poker, and crap tables with easily a thousand slot machines set in rows everywhere — penny slots, $100 slots, and many denominations in between. The Friday-night packed house fills the air with whirring, dinging, clattering, and buzzing sounds and, at least once, a siren and accompanying whoop from a winner. I don’t gamble but I know two things about it: 1) the only way to win big is to play big money tables, and 2) if you play long enough, you’ll lose everything.
At 6:00 PM the velvet rope comes down and the long line of people who’ve paid $100 apiece to taste whiskey ride the escalator to the second floor. We’re each handed a clean glass at the top with the implied direction of “go forth, grasshopper; find what pleases you.”
Exhibit rooms are arranged in trade-show format but instead of rows of tables containing dental supplies or safety equipment, they offer every kind of liquor I can think of. And it’s not just whiskey; brands of vodka, rum, cognac, gin, and tequila are here for sampling as well. Company representatives behind the tables, whether dressed casually or in top hats, white vests, and bow ties explain their products and, more to the point, pour me a small measure of whatever I select.
This is the beauty and genius of it: everything I’ve wanted to try but was reluctant to spend $15 a shot or $100 a bottle for is here for the asking. Thus I begin my tour of displays sticking to Scotch, bourbon, and Irish whiskey to avoid stomach turmoil, tasting familiar products first.
The crowd has grown to about a thousand people now, predominately mid-thirties and early forties, so many it’s hard to navigate. It’s not just a bunch of guys hammering booze. There are as many women here as men each with a tasting glass eager to try something new. I’m engulfed in a wave of lovely, smiling ladies in short skirts and dresses and clicking stilettos. “Livin’ the dream, bro,” I text to my brother.
Restaurants on the floor offer a selection of Asian, Italian, and barbecue fare plus dessert for those so inclined. Unlimited food is included in the admission fee to keep drinkers well fed. There’s also entertainment. An Elvis impersonator sings Elvis songs. A hawk-faced man in a black suit and fedora, black tie and red shirt sings Frank Sinatra songs. Later on a woman in flowing black skirts and dangly jewelry sings Amy Winehouse. It seems appropriate.
I’m on my second round by then tasting “small batch,” “barrel select,” “single cask” and similar upscale spirits. I linger at the Macallan table trying everything. No surprise: it gets better as it gets older. A taste of Johnny Walker Gold fills in the one I’d never tried. Buffalo Trace is a new name to me but its bourbon is wonderfully smooth. And if bourbon had a voice, Woodford Reserve would boom forth like James Earl Jones. Michael Collins single malt Irish whiskey tastes of smoke, Laphroaig Scotch tastes like iodine, but Dalmore 12-year is a delicious find. Into the final round I’m going for anything I missed: a couple cognacs for the experience, a sip of White Dog moonshine (aaarg), then a dramatic finish with Knob Creek Rye, Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries in a glass.
I’ve had about eight ounces of spirits over the course of three hours and it’s time to head back. Good thing I chose a hotel with a casino shuttle to avoid driving an unfamiliar city in the dark.
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This event took place as described in Pittsburg in October 2012. I happened to be in the neighborhood. –Mic