Now, where was I?

Sorry for the inexcusable interruption in postings. Well, slightly excusable. Since my last posting a couple of months ago, my wife and I have left Maine, where I've lived for nearly two decades, and moved all of our accumulated stuff (and a great many bottles of rum) to New Orleans, where we've bought a house. This is has been more disruptive than I thought, especially since I've still had to keep up with writing deadlines, all the while.

But enough of the excuses. I'm now feeling reasonably settled, although it still appears that we're living a warehouse of corrugated cardboard, and you can't look anywhere without seeing a major household project in need of immediate attention, some Katrina-related, most not.

Yet there's this bit of light: just a few blocks away, at 5000 Prytania St., I wandered into a shop called the Wine Seller, run by Ben Lazich. And here I was pleased to find several good rums that were hard to come by in Maine. Especially pleasing: Ron Zacapa Centenario can be had here for $34, about $6 less than I ever found it in New England. (Although I did see it once for $33 in New York City.)

This is the 23-year-old rum that I write about briefly in the last chapter of the book. And today it also gets props in Eric Felten's "How's Your Drink" column in today's Wall Street Journal [subscription required].