Some recent developments in the news cycle have been swirling around in the ole noggin this week and what better companion to contemplative thoughts than a quality whiskey. So promising a stream of consciousness set of impressions, I will just write and see if combining an unrelated rant with tasting impressions has any traction.
Let's break the ice with appearance - absolutely beautiful honeyed amber color in the glass. The Internet is conflicted as to whether Redbreast 12 Cask Strength is artificially colored. Sadly, there is no official word from Redbreast, but it is known that the standard Redbreast 12 year is artificially colored. As such, I have a nagging sense that this Cask Strength version is indeed artificially enhanced. Though it is a gorgeous color, personally, I would prefer au naturale.
Lauda Air Flight 004, a six-month old Boeing 767-300ER, crashed approximately fifteen minutes after takeoff on May 26, 1991. All 223 persons on board, 213 passengers and 10 crew, were killed on that flight departing Bangkok, Thailand bound for Vienna, Austria. The owner of the airline - three-time Formula 1 world champion Niki Lauda, himself a licensed and certified commercial airline pilot - took a decisive and first-hand, though unofficial, leadership role in the accident's investigation. Upon visiting the crash site spread throughout the mountainous terrain north of Bangkok, he noticed the reverse thruster had been deployed on one of the aircraft's two engines. Much of the aircraft's wiring as well as flight data recorder had been irreversibly destroyed in the crash, so no definitive cause for the crash could be determined, but investigators arrived at a probable cause - the reverse thruster on one of the engines had mysteriously engaged while the aircraft was under full power during its ascent to cruising altitude.
Nose - honey, green grass, apple, vanilla, orange, slight alcohol (nowhere near what one would expect from a 58.2% whiskey). The smell alone is worth the price of entry in my opinion. I remember my first experience with Irish whiskey - there was a unique smell that I had no idea how to quantify or describe. My whiskey mentors helped guide me, allowing me to smell fully malted whiskey side by side with single pot still Irish whiskey that uses some malted and some un-malted barley. That unquantifiable smell suddenly was quantifiable - a fresh grass, green grass smell that comes from the un-malted barley. After a splash of water and yet more time in the glass, lemon pledge alternating with sweet vanilla emerge. Soon, I found the vanilla dominating the smell of the dram.
Investigating and assessing blame in high profile situations is an insightful thing. There are generally two types of personalities at the table - those looking to find the truth, even if it hurts their interests and those looking to preserve and shield their interests regardless of the truth. This is where you find the true measure of a person in my opinion, at least when it comes to integrity. The official crash investigation, conducted by the Government of Thailand found the probable (not conclusive) cause of the accident to be an uncommanded deployment of the left engine's reverse thruster making stable flight impossible. Boeing partially rejected the finding however as they were not willing to rule out pilot error.
Taste - just a whisker too much alcohol punch when sipped neat. It is certainly possible to sip neat, but the dram feels a bit like when you induce distortion in speakers by cranking the source volume up a tad too high. With a splash of water and some time in the glass, oh, my, what a taste. Barley, apricot, stone fruits, some gentle perfume/floral notes all accentuated by subtle oak and vanilla as the sip slips over the tongue. This sounds bizarre, but I am reminded immediately of some creme brûlées I have enjoyed in the past, but with a lightly toasted sugar rather than a darkly toasted sugar. All of that Internet hype around this whiskey is making sense now.
Months passed with no official statement from Boeing but eventually Boeing disclosed to Lauda Air that in their internal testing, they had actually replicated an engine thruster deploying without being commanded to do so. On Boeing's test bed, an o-ring in the actuator that manages the reverse thruster failed when under high thrust which consequently caused the reverse thruster to unintentionally deploy. It turns out that the 767-300 featured a new and improved electronic and not mechanical linkage to deploy an engine's reverse thruster. In the older mechanical linkage version, there was an interlock that prevented an engine's reverse thruster from deploying in non-landing situations. No such interlock existed in the new and improved electronic fly-by-wire version featured on the 767-300. Boeing quietly modified the 767-300 reverse thruster system to include interlocks preventing their deployment in non-landing situations. Niki Lauda however was incensed that Boeing would not issue a statement of any kind regarding Boeing's findings in regard to their investigation of the Lauda Air Flight 004 crash. Lauda persisted, waging a public war challenging Boeing to prove that a 767 remains flyable when a reverse thruster was deployed under full thrust. Boeing initially balked, Lauda still persisted, even offering to personally fly on a 767 test where a thruster was deployed in flight if Boeing could prove that such a situation was survivable. Boeing admitted such a situation was not survivable and finally issued an official statement to that effect as well as exonerating the flight crew of Lauda Air Flight 004.
Finish - honey, vanilla, just a bit of astringency. Delightful finish, slow and lingering with continued vanilla sweetness that never quite departs. For me, no real fruit influence from the taste carries over to the finish, this is a pure sweet with a tinge of alcohol astringency finish. Perhaps a bit more water would help tame that astringency, but truthfully I am nit-picking here, this is a sensationally enjoyable whiskey. This finish lasts well into the double-digits in terms of minutes.
I have been thinking of Lauda Air Flight 004 quite a lot this week as the reports of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 swirl through the news. Like Lauda Air Flight 004, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 was a young (four-months old) example of a relatively new variant of long-pedigreed aircraft. Unlike Lauda Air however, around six months ago, a different example of the exact same aircraft crashed, killing all aboard, in very similar circumstances. The cause of the earlier accident, still under investigation, swirls around the aircraft's automation disregarding pilot input because the pilots had not disengaged a newly developed anti-stall safeguard in Boeing's software that is exclusively found in the 737 Max 8 and Max 9 aircraft. Upon closer investigation, it was learned that Boeing had not sufficiently trained or disclosed how this new anti-stall automation behaved or how to throughly interact with it.
I have little doubt that the 737 Max 8 and Max 9 are safe, airworthy aircraft, but there does appear to be genuine doubt surrounding Boeing's thoroughness in disclosing and educating pilots as to the aircraft's modified flight control software. My only hope is that the truth, whatever that might be, will emerge and be put to good use preventing similar tragedies in the future. In my previous professional life, I took an FAA-sponsored course in disaster avoidance where the instructor bluntly stated that the vast majority of today's aviation rules and regulations are written in human blood. The loss of human life is tragic, but it is unacceptably tragic if that loss is not used to help prevent future losses.
Second pour sometime this weekend, perhaps even tomorrow night, who knows, we can't put rules on these things. Also, if interested, here is Niki Lauda in 2017 reflecting on the crash of Lauda Air Flight 004: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E42NN1rU93o
No comments:
Post a Comment