I Want My Pickle Back, Pickle Back, Pickle Back...
There are really only a handful of places on the planet where an event like this could possibly exist. I'm going to say Brooklyn, Portland, and, well, I'm pretty much out of places. Even Portland was a stretch. I've never been there. I'm just assuming.
A whiskey tasting is one thing. Happens everyday in almost every corner of the world. Nothing new here. And locally distilled, artisanal whiskeys? Slightly less common but hardly unheard of. But homegrown, artisanal pickles? Now your really narrowing it down. Pickling things as a fad has really only stretched so far on this planet. Yet, okay, I'll concede its existence.
No, the ingredients of last weekend's "Event" at Brooklyn Oneology weren't earth shattering on their own; it was the combination of the two, a whiskey tasting with a pickle back extravaganza, that threw me for the loop. I learned (yes, I went to this event having no clue what it was) that a pickle back is drinking the brine from a jar of pickles after sipping on a whiskey to cut the harsher tastes. Wrap your head around that for a hot sec. Sounds pretty good right?
Well, pretty good is probably where I'd leave it. The pickle back concept is fun-ish, but I probably would have preferred the pickles to snack on while tasting the whiskeys, call me conventional. I had already been introduced to two of the three whiskeys, Hudson Whiskey's Baby Bourbon and Breuckelen Wheat "White Wax" Whiskey, the third being a McKenzie Rye, and had eaten pickles from two of the three of the jars that the "backs" came from: McClures and Rick's Picks Smoked Okra "Smokra", the other being the Brooklyn Brine Co's Whiskey Sour Brine (all pairings being respectively listed). All of these products are good enough on their own, it was the pairing of whiskey and brines that left me feeling befuddled. In no instance did I necessarily feel like the booze and brine were complimenting each other, not to mention enhancing each other. Instead it felt like just a progression of small glasses to sip from that just happened to alternate from whiskey to pickle juice to whiskey to pickle juice (after the second pairing my mouth felt like I had just spent the day boogie boarding; you know what I'm talking about).
Will the pickle back live on? Yeah, probably, as long as artisanal whiskeys and artisanal pickles continue to grow up in the same neighborhood. But you can go ahead and drink the brine, I'll eat the leftover pickles.
