Whiskey

Sometimes the best live music clubs are tucked away in unlikely places. The Whiskey 1803 is one of these. Since last November, this intimate space above seafood restaurant B.F. Biggins in Annapolis has hosted some of the area's better bands. With plenty of free parking (always key in Annapolis) and rich acoustics, it's a welcome addition to the local music scene. Last year, local musician David Tieff proposed turning the banquet room upstairs into a live music venue. "I really saw this as an opportunity -- especially with owners that were willing -- right in our back yard to make a place that's not only band-friendly but music-fan friendly," Tieff said.

With the arrival of the holidays, as Baltimoreans prepare to go into gustatorial overdrive, tossing aside concern over caloric intake as easily as credit card worries at Towson Town Center, talk invariably turns to gourmet delicacies and purveyors long gone but fondly remembered.What of the oysters from Dunlop's on North Howard Street and tureens of steaming terrapin stew at the now-demolished Rennert Hotel? Or thinly sliced pieces of cured country ham beneath the bonnet of an old-fashioned Maryland Beaten Biscuit (before the medical community started screaming about the inherent cholesterol danger and ruining it all)

It is time to sniff the mint, unleash the muddlers, and start making juleps. That's right, Honeylamb, the Kentucky Derby, the first leg of horse racing's Triple Crown, will be run Saturday. Two weeks later, the racing crowd comes to Baltimore for the Preakness Stakes, and then, in June, on to New York for the Belmont Stakes.According to tradition, you are supposed to sip juleps on Derby Day, enjoy Black-Eyed-Susans on Preakness Saturday, and toss back White Carnations on Belmont Saturday.

Fourteen men arrested in North Laurel last week were charged with soliciting undercover female officers posing as prostitutes.Members of the Howard County Police Vice and Narcotics Unit conducted a sting operation between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. Thursday in the 9000 block of Whiskey Bottom Road near Washington Boulevard, a police report said.Police said three undercover officers walking along Whiskey Bottom Road were solicited for sex acts. The men were arrested a short time later by officers waiting nearby.

"YOU WENT FAR afield when you printed a recipe for a mint julep obviously concocted by a misguided Yankee."So begins a letter from Robert Talbott of Monkton. The letter is one of several objections I have heard since my mint julep recipe ran in this space last Wednesday. Some objections came by mail, some came electronically, some messages came the old-fashioned way. Namely, people stopped me on the street and told me what they thought.The reaction both surprised and delighted me. I was surprised because I had thought that the days of rhetorical battles over how to make a mint julep had ended.

SCAGGSVILLE needs a new name, say people who have moved in recent years to that southeastern Howard County community. However, Marylanders who live in towns named Finksburg, Funkstown and Cavetown must wonder what all the fuss is about. So, too, the folks of Accident, in Garrett County. Or Baltimore's Pigtown. Or Savage, also in Howard County. In the 19th century, Scaggsville was known as Hell's Corner.Why all the fuss over Scaggsville? Newcomers to the growing area can't bear the thought of a Scaggsville address.

THE SELF-STYLED Freemen of Montana, holding off federal law enforcement, are in an American tradition as old as the republic. But so is the authority that must in the end prevail. Most of the Freemen were debtors who came to dispute the legitimacy of the political authority enforcing creditors' rights. So were some Chesapeake tobacco planters in the 1770s who became Patriots in the American Revolution.More relevant forerunners were the farmers of Western Massachusetts who rallied behind Capt.

County police arrested a Laurel man Friday evening and charged him with solicitation for prostitution during a sting operation near Whiskey Bottom Road.A female undercover vice squad detective was standing at the corner of Route 198 and Whiskey Bottom Road when a man drove up about 7 p.m. and offered the detective money for a sex act, police said.James Owen Snider Sr., 44, of the 300 block of Compton Ave. was arrested and charged, police said.

Police logNorth Laurel: 9700 block of Whiskey Bottom Road: A generator was stolen from a storage shed Tuesday morning, police said.

POLICE LOG*North Laurel: North Laurel Road/Whiskey Run Road: A blue 1984 GMC van with Maryland tags 069512M was stolen Friday, police said.

A motorcyclist was killed yesterday evening in Laurel when he struck a sport utility vehicle that turned in front of him, Howard County police said. Police said the driver of a Toyota RAV4 traveling north on Whiskey Bottom Road about 6 p.m. attempted to make a left turn into a store parking lot. The motorcyclist, who was not identified, was traveling south on Whiskey Bottom and struck the SUV. He was thrown from his motorcycle. The motorcyclist was pronounced dead at Laurel Regional Hospital.

An American original and a traditional favorite of Marylanders, rye whiskey can be as pricey as its better-known cousin, small-batch bourbon. Bottles of aged, 20-year-old rye fetch upward of $100 a bottle. Fortunately, there are a handful of flavorful rye whiskeys at lower prices. These are ryes, if you will, for recessionary times. Rittenhouse Straight Rye Whisky Heaven Hill Distilleries, Bardstown, Ky.$15.99 for 750 milliliters. 100 proof. Reliable Churchill, distributor Produced in what is known as the Pennsylvania style, which apparently is close to how the colonists made whiskey, this rye was named the top North American whiskey of 2006 in a blind tasting in San Francisco.

Sometimes the best live music clubs are tucked away in unlikely places. The Whiskey 1803 is one of these. Since last November, this intimate space above seafood restaurant B.F. Biggins in Annapolis has hosted some of the area's better bands. With plenty of free parking (always key in Annapolis) and rich acoustics, it's a welcome addition to the local music scene. Last year, local musician David Tieff proposed turning the banquet room upstairs into a live music venue. "I really saw this as an opportunity -- especially with owners that were willing -- right in our back yard to make a place that's not only band-friendly but music-fan friendly," Tieff said.

While George Washington may have been "First in War, First in Peace, and First in the Hearts of his Countrymen," in his 1799 eulogy to the late squire of Mount Vernon, Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee failed to mention that he was also the first president to own a distillery. "There were lots of little distilleries in the 18th century that made whiskey, but what makes Washington's unique was that it was the largest distillery in the country at the time. This was a major commercial enterprise," said Dennis J. Pogue, assistant director for preservation at Mount Vernon in Virginia.

Boston first baseman Kevin Millar said Red Sox players did shots of Jack Daniel's whiskey before Game 6 of the American League Championship Series against the New York Yankees, according to a report on ESPN.com. Millar also said, because it worked, they did it before every World Series game. He made his comments on Fox's The Best Damn Sports Show Period and on Boston's Channel 4. "It was one of those group team things, like shaving our heads last year," Millar said. "What we had was one small Gatorade cup, with a little Jack Daniel's in it. We passed it around and everyone symbolically drank out of the same cup, because we are a team.

WITH ALL the hugging, the crowd in the cafeteria at Laurel Woods Elementary looked more like a family reunion than a birthday party. Those who came to celebrate the school's 30th anniversary May 21, found the halls still held plenty of happy memories. Young and old lingered over photo albums filled with 30 years of class pictures. T-shirts and memorabilia were scattered along a cafeteria table where former staff members Kathy Jacobs and Nancy Ottey shared their memories with newcomer Michael Martirano, administrative director of a school cluster that includes Laurel Woods.

WINDING DOWN the day with a wee dram of well-made whiskey is an appealing notion. Yet I surprised myself recently by driving some 150 miles, racing daylight and getting temporarily lost in New Jersey, to sample the scotch being poured at an Atlantic City hotel. This, however, was not ordinary hooch. It was single-malt Scotch whisky from the House of Macallan, one of Scotland's distinguished distillers. Merely mentioning the name causes the taste buds of scotch aficionados to salivate and their wallets to open.

Many economic depressions ago, in Baltimore, a wholesale provision firm named Hopkins Brothers resorted to a merchandising expedient. The head Hopkins, a man named Johns, agreed to let rural customers settle their accounts by bartering. They would send him corn whiskey, barreled at the many small stills in the valleys of Virginia and North Carolina; the firm would rectify and bottle the stuff, then retail it. The brand name: Hopkins' Best. A descendant, Helen Hopkins Thom, told of this business undertaking in her 1929 book Johns Hopkins, A Silhouette.

MOUNT VERNON, Va. - George Washington was a great president and an extraordinary general, but his whiskey was so strong it would make your neck hair stand up straight and come to attention. I say this after sampling some of our Founding Father's liquor, a batch made at Washington's homestead by some of the nation's top distillers from a recipe researched by some of the best brains at Mount Vernon. The whiskey sipping, as well as a smoky re-enactment of the whiskey-making process used by Washington's workers, was part of a joint effort by Mount Vernon and the Distilled Spirits Council of America to raise funds for the restoration of Washington's original distillery.

You don't have to be Irish to have yourself a wake and you might not even have to be dead. Witness the most famous wake of them all, Tim Finnegan's, which is celebrated in the Irish ballad James Joyce used for the title of his novel, Finnegan's Wake. The song ends with this stanza: Then Mickey Maloney ducked his head, When a noggin of whiskey flew at him, It missed, and falling on the bed, The liquor scattered over Tim! The corpse revives! See how he raises! Timothy rising from the bed, Says, "Whirl your whiskey around like blazes, Thanum an Dhoul!