The Compass Box Great King Street Artist’s Blend (50 ml holy water travel vial)

Tasting notes: 

[Knock, knock!] 

Who is it?

[Knock, knock!]

Hold on, I’m coming. Who’s there?

It’s us, the King Street wedding caterers!

Who?

The Compass Box Great King Street wedding caterers!

I don’ t think I’m getting married today.

Well, maybe it’s a suprise gift of a cinnamon roll honey fine-grain Madagascar-bourbon-and-Calvados-drenched vanilla-twig-inflected-butter-triple-layer-studded-with-Persian-sultana-raisins-sauteed-in-oloros0-sherry-(and a drop of port) wedding cake extravaganza special.

Excuse me?

Maybe someone loves you? Wants you to be happy? Has given you a delightful gift?

Is this a practical joke? Am I on Candid Camera or being Punk’d? Are you Ashton Kutcher?

No sir. And this comes with sculpted bison-shaped butter balls on a recently-polished sterling-silver platter, engraved with Islamic-inspired arabesques, sprinkled about (tastefully) with cleaned and sterilized, but not denatured, cherry blossoms.

Well, it certainly looks lovely. More to the point, it smells wonderful—are you sure this isn’t a prank?

Yes sir.

Then what’s that other smell rising up? Kind of like the, the, the, what was your word, the “denatured” musk of Rajah from the cartoon Aladdin?

That’s me, sir. I’m a eunuch, and I’ve been baking all night.

Excuse me!?

Putting loaves in hot ovens, sir. So to speak.

I’ve had about enough of this!

Please sir, just try one bite. You’ve said yourself that it smells spectacularly delicious.

No, that was you who said that. But I must admit, it is one of the most savory smelling wedding cakes I’ve ever shared a doorway with.

Let me give you this lightly hazelnut-oiled teak fork to nip a bit off with…

Oh. My. Goodness. I need a second bite. A second layer. Let’s drink two! (Editor’s note: An homage to Mr. Cub, Ernie Banks) Er, eat two. Whatever.

You see sir? No joke.

My mouth is…is filled with sheaves of golden grain; grilled ghee and scalded cream poured with Chardonnay into a bowl of steel-cut organic oatmeal.

Of course, sir. And what else?

Anise, pimpinella anisum bursting with dense umbels. Festooned with an oblong dry schizocarp.

My word, sir! You’re the first person ever to say that to me! And I’m a eunuch.

Pfeffernüsse…yum.   

Hasenpfeffer, sir?

No, you knuck (lehead)! Pfeffernüsse…………yum, yum, yum. I want to be dissolute. I want to be solubulized….

“Solubulized,” sir?

Okay, I made that one up. Give me more, now! —Much better. Much, much better. I want to be rendered, tendered, splendored.

A poet, are we sir? I like a wee bit of the Robert Burns.

It’s peppery in my tummy. I feel like toasting a book contract, like eating an XXL chalupa, laughing at IRS agents, chasing after Jehovah’s witnesses, talking with car mechanics…

I knew you were a poet, sir.