“Music fills the infinite between two souls.”
- Rabindranath Tagore
There is a room I keep coming back to.
My parents’ home sat in the hills above Kandy, surrounded by jungle. At night, the house could become almost completely still.
My father would sit in his listening room, surrounded by books and music.
The equipment was beautiful in its own right.
Tube amplifiers.
Clean lines.
A soft glow in the dark.
Much of it had once belonged to my cousin, Sandeep.
Even while working his corporate job, Sandeep spent time on the side at a hi-fi audio shop.
Years later, some of that equipment ended up in Kandy.
I remember sitting there with my father one evening listening to Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Journeys.
The first piece was Mohini.
A voice emerged into the dark room.
For a few minutes, there was nothing else.
Sandeep died recently.
He was older than me.
In some ways, an older brother.
In others, a little more distant.
But when I look back, he seems to be everywhere.
The Quiet Detail
Some of my earliest memories involve food.
Thanksgiving, and Sandeep experimenting with the turkey.
Trips to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, lowering a piece of chicken tied to string from a dock and waiting for a blue crab to grab hold.
Later there were cigars. Whiskey. Bourbon. Music.
And the saltwater aquariums.
Five or six large tanks filled his basement.
Rare corals he was proud to show us.
Elegant fish moving through the water.
A brilliant eel appearing from between the rocks.
He was just as interested in what sat behind the tanks as what was inside them.
Pumps.
Filters.
Tubing.
Clear water.
Salt held in balance.
Everything alive.
Visiting Sandeep usually meant being brought into whatever he was interested in at the time.
A bottle he wanted you to try.
A cigar.
A jazz recording.
A blues track.
He might sit you in front of the speakers and point out something in the sound, or suggest a piece of music to test on my far more basic system.
After my father died, Sandeep would come back to the evenings they had spent together in the garden in Kandy.
The music.
The long conversations.
Life. Philosophy. Whatever question happened to carry them into the night.
Years later, those were the evenings he remembered.
My father died in that house several years ago.
He was almost ninety-two.
Three decades older than Sandeep was when he died.
The house was where he wanted to be.
Jungle.
Silence.
Books.
Music.
My father and I shared books too.
One was Absolutely on Music, Haruki Murakami’s conversations with Seiji Ozawa.
Murakami writes about listening without preconceptions, “simply opening my ears.”
I still think about my father’s shelves in Kandy.
Dusty books.
Sometimes a little mold at the edges.
Pulling one down without knowing exactly what I was looking for, then disappearing into it for an afternoon.
There was tea too. The pot. The cups. The pouring.
Meals.
Books.
Music.
Somewhere along the way, wine found its way into that same part of my life.
Certain restaurants. Certain bottles.
Things returned to often enough that it becomes difficult to separate the thing from the people who were there.
Bottle of the Week
Balvenie DoubleWood 12
Balvenie was founded in Speyside in 1892 and remains in the Grant family.
It still holds onto some unusually old ways of doing things: floor maltings, its own coopers, a coppersmith, even some of its own barley.
DoubleWood spends twelve years in American oak before finishing in European sherry casks.
I’ve opened it more times than I can count.
Raisins, sultanas, preserved fruit and baking spice take me straight back to my mother’s Christmas fruitcake. The heat stays in the background. Round, warm, familiar.
What I’d pay: Under $55
Costco: $48.99
There is something a little strange about that price.
Japanese whisky can command extraordinary premiums. Cult bottles of bourbon and American whiskey disappear before most people ever see them at retail.
Meanwhile, Scotch like this remains quietly accessible.
Distinctive. Consistent. Made in the same place, by the same family, across generations.
It feels almost like a secret.
What to Notice
The dried fruit comes first, then honey, spice and oak.
But this isn’t really a bottle I sit down to analyze anymore.
I’ve known it too long.
A Short Detour
There were evenings in Kandy when the listening room eventually gave way to the garden.
My brother and I drank the DoubleWood neat.
My father added ice and soda.
We talked for a while.
Then not at all.
The jungle moved in the breeze.
Above us, the Milky Way.
A glass of DoubleWood in my hand.
Until the next bottle,
Manj
P.S. Sandeep would have argued about the ice. I can almost hear him now. Would you have?
Instagram: @le_dosage | Notes on wine, taste, and attention