Anyone who reads here regularly knows that Henke is fond of a drop of the whiskey or the ‘uisce beatha - the water of life’ as it might be called here in Ireland. I’m fond of a drop myself, particularly around Christmas - great to play a few tunes on a winters evening and have a wee drop of the quare stuff. Mind you, you could get fond of it too easily, so I usually limit myself to a couple of bottles this time of the year 
Now, it happens that my dear wife grew up in a family pub here where they bottled their own beer at one stage and she regularly worked behind the bar after school etc. When her father passed away about a dozen years ago, nobody wanted to carry on the business and the licence and pub was sold after a while. So, off we goes down to clear out the old cellar under the bar - we must have filled a dozen skips with the detritus of a couple of generations. Kept a few keepsakes of course but her dad really was loath to throw anything away so there was a lot of ‘rubbish’. Anyway, a good few bottles of unopened spirits were collected up and put in someone’s attic.
My wife’s mother is still in good health and when visiting her over Christmas, it seems that these boxes were returned to her and she was trying to get rid of them. Most of the stuff was standard bar stock like vodka and that Southern Comfort stuff. But I espies an old bottle of Jameson poking out - the label looking a bit greasy and worn, wondering was it still drinkable at all. So I takes the old bottle of Jemmy and it’s sitting there at home last weekend looking at me. I open it and have a whiff and pour a small glass - smells a bit ‘buttery’ but that smell has gone now, maybe now it’s open to the air. It’s lovely and smooth and very drinkable indeed.. as evidenced by the fact that the bottle is near half gone! Here is a photo of said bottle and my trusty Murray. The label says John Jameson, Dublin Whiskey, 10 years old bottled by A.Millar etc.
So, I was reading about Henke’s trials and tribulations minding his father’s animals and only having the poor reward in terms of spirits and I decides he’d like to hear of this bottle but I wonder what age it is. You know where this is heading - don’t you… ! A bit of googling later and I finds that Jameson ceased production in Dublin in 1971 and that they started bottling their own in the 1960’s … oops better look up a vintage whiskey site and there I see a bottle of similar description though with a fancier label, with a nice little price tag of £350!!! 
I can tell you, I nearly fell off my chair and it wasn’t the whiskey. Jaysus, I could have bought a dozen bottles of decent stuff for that or a nice down payment on a flute or a few whistles or whatever.
And so, there was nothing to do but pour a glass of the £350 whiskey and play a few tunes in front of the stove on a very frosty night here yesterday in rural Ireland. Mind you, it was difficult to play at all 'cos I couldn’t stop laughing at the thought of it or that should I be kicking myself up the backside as I didn’t check before opening. Now, if it was on old flute we found in the cellar …
The only thing for certain, is that if there is an afterlife, my late father in law must be having a good laugh too - he would surely have approved of the few tunes and a drop of the bottle he had probably lost or stashed away!!
He could thus even claim he wasn’t wandering so far off topic too…
