The only ice I'm thinking about goes in a glass. So have a vacation drink with an apropos name:

It is actually really, really good. And strong like bull, so beware. It is however, meant to be an American Rye based drink. If you have a stash, give this a try. Otherwise there are some LCBO-available options to consider.

Consider this a buy-local, unpaid, unsponsored, personal opinion product placement.

First up Dillon's Rye. They are a Niagara distillery located just down the road from John Chayka's hometown. Now, I am not a professional whiskey reviewer. If I were, at least half the rating would be based on how easy it is to get the damn cork out of the bottle. But this whiskey is correctly named, with the word RYE in big caps. That's what this is. It's a whiskey that crashes into your house and yells RYE at you at the top of its lungs.

An aside for any Canadians who have only ever had big distillery Canadian rye. This bears no resemblance and the two are really not interchangeable.

Anyhow, back to loud RYE. It's really useful in a cocktail because it has all the spice and bite of rye, and although it's not 100 proof like the usual American ryes, it's strongly flavoured enough to get over the hump of the lack of alcohol burn.

My other suggestion is John Sleeman & Sons various whiskeys. They are made in Guelph, and are a bit more spendy than the Dillon's, depending on the variety.

The Traditional Straight can sub in for bourbon. The High Rye and the Cooper's Rye are both 48% ABV so they have the punch of Rittenhouse or such like, and also some spice and real rye flavour. The High Rye has corn and barley too, so it's kind of a bourbon curious rye.

The gin they make was not pleasing. Corks come out of the bottles easily enough. The only thing worse than these precious corks everyone wants to use now is the screw cap on Campari. I have to use vice grips to get it open the first time.

Other fun summer activities will involve me fixing an issue from a couple of years ago when I added a solid state drive and installed windows on it, not realizing the boot sector was still on the old spinning hard drive. Oops.

But best of all, I get to leave my phone wherever, never look at it, never look at social media and I don't need to care about any news of any kind.

You get cat gifs (dogs allowed) and pun threads. Start thinking idly about the T25, though, it will be fun and also still very difficult to sort out the glut of similar not-likely prospects.

I think regular service, aka complaining about how boring the lack of news is, will resume around the 27th and the T25 is likely going to start after the Civic Holiday given how early it is this year.

From The Branches