Ken’s search for the greatest rum in the world started nearly two decades ago, although he didn’t know it at the time. He was on one of his early visits to Cuba with a few friends to chase the “silver ghost,” a bonefish, when Fidel Castro’s personal cigar roller told him the story of the Isla del Tesoro (“Treasure Island”) rum.
As with every aspect of our lives, the world of wine and spirits is heavily regulated. Growing grapes, making the stuff, distilling, selling, even (perhaps especially) drinking it. Here Ken Gargett takes a light-hearted look at some of the newer and crazier laws and regulations around the world.
You may be familiar with numbers such as 18,000 vph, 28,800 vph, and even 36,000 vph describing the frequency of a watch’s regulator, but few really know what those numbers mean. Watchmaker Ashton Tracy explains why watch frequencies matter, but he oscillates in choosing a winner. Follow the discussion here.
Why watches? Ask what makes a watch enthusiast tick and the idea of the “soul” of a watch might well feature in the response – the idea that something elevates the watch from a cold object of engineering to something of greater import. Here Ryan Schmidt tracks “soul” down and gets contemplative on its nature along with some very special imagery.
Despite the virus restrictions, GaryG has managed to venture out from time to time for brief, top-secret rendezvous in parking lots and on park benches to receive and return the generous loans of friends’ watches to photograph. Recently, he had the chance to shoot a true classic: a second-series Reference 3450J perpetual calendar made by Patek Philippe, which he shares with us here.
There is, quite simply, no other wine in the world quite like Seppeltsfield’s 1918 100-Year-Old Para Vintage Tawny Port-style wine. Where else could you hope to find a wine whose current release is the 1918? It exists, but only thanks to the extraordinary vision of one man.
The first Black Tot Day was in 1970, the last day on which sailors in the United Kingdom’s Royal Navy were issued their daily rum rations (“tots”). Pusser’s has taken the exact recipe used by the Royal Navy when it discontinued the daily ration on July 31, 1970 and used it to make its rums, the only producer in the world to do so. Here, Ken Gargett fills us in on everything tot – he luckily doesn’t go “sipping the admiral,” though.
In its simplest form, the equation of time is defined as the difference between the time displayed by the position of the sun (as by a sundial) and the mean time displayed by any modern clock or watch. But that’s just the beginning. Watchmaker Ashton Tracy explains more.
Tenuta San Guido’s 2015 Sassicaia was a warm vintage but an exceptional one, and that is reflected in the wine. It is considered to have similarities with the sensational vintage conditions of 1985, which Ken Gargett has tasted twice and has rated 100 points standing on its head both times. Sassicaia is one of the most famous wines of Italy, and often one of the country’s very best.
In this first of a short series called “History of Ferrari Watches,” Elizabeth Doerr takes a look into the Panerai collaboration, which took place between 2005 and 2010. Start your engines!