When you come home from a hard day’s work, do you simply take some ice from the freezer for your drink? You poor sap, that immediately marks you as a real loser, a nobody. If you were anybody at all, you would buy Gläce Luxury Ice from Dean & Deluca and have it shipped to you, because mere ordinary ice would not be good enough to put into your vintage Scotch.
Here is a description of what you get for just $75:
Gläce Luxury Ice is a meticulously designed and differentiated ice brand specifically designed for use in premium drinks and cocktails. The Gläce Mariko Sphere is a perfectly spherical 2.5″ piece with a melting rate of 20-30 minutes. The Gläce G-Cubed, a symmetrical 2.5″ cube has a dilution rate of 20-40 minutes. Gläce Ice pieces are individually carved from a 300lb block to ensure flawless quality and a zero-taste profile, never contaminating the essence of premium liquors and drinks.
You get two packages of five cubes each, which means that each cube costs a mere $7.50 (excluding shipping and handling).
The company warns that this product requires Next Day Shipping to ensure freshness. This is very important because putting stale ice in your premium drink absolutely destroys the flavor.
One might quibble with the ad wording since a melting ‘rate’ would require different units than minutes, but those who would point such things out are clearly not in the league of people who use such ice, and can be ignored.
(Via Rebecca Schoenkopf.)
A symmetrical cube?
What will they think of next?!?
As soon as I learn the secret recipe for ice, I’ll have my own premium ice -- cultured from the evaporated vapor of the tears of people stupid enough to pay $7.50 for a single ice cube
I’ve meta-snobbed their ice snobbery
What blasphemy is this? Vintage scotch is meant to be drunk neat, with water, or not at all. Ice -- even spherical or in cubes (symmetric or asymmetric) -- is simply unacceptable!
If one must be a barbarian and put cold objects in one’s drink (not a bad idea for Jack Daniels actually, IMO), why not cooled stainless steel, or soapstone cubes? Melting rate of ∞ minutes, give or take.
choke splutter cough… ice? Scotch? What sort of barbarism are you promoting here?
My friend the Scotch-head bought a set of those. Sadly, he tells me they suck at keeping drinks cool -- they just don’t have a high enough heat capacity!
“Luxury Ice” for those discriminating dullards who can’t tell dollars from dognuts.
Your high-end ice will be shipped to you in vacuum-sealed plastic trays individually sectioned and ready to insert with great care into your own possibly $5000 refrigerator with its own control pad complete with flashing lights relaying second-to-second status of the marvelous state of temperature inside. Monitoring the process of freezing these $7.50 marvels of marketing will be so easy with finger-tip touch control. Upon usage of your absolutely superior pure water ice, one should dispose of the used trays immediately before atmospheric contamination sets in. It is recommended that each tray-unit be wrapped in a heavy-duty 6-mil Zip-Loc® freezer bag, zipped shut, and heat sealed to keep out the cooties carried by the trash and garbage processor people and other lesser beings. Only in this way can we be assured of safe disposal of these wondrous packages.
I’m not a drinker with an alcohol-anaesthetized palate, so I can tell you that quality scotch and many other distillations suffer from the addition of ice whatever the source. Ice adds an astringency and bitterness that detracts from the full flavor of scotch, other whiskeys, and many other spirits.
But many swear by ice and contend that no drink can be truly enjoyed without the addition of ice in many different configurations. I have tasted ice with and without accompanying liquids and can attest that there is no water superior to steam-distilled water for ice (except for some factory-bubbled commercial ices), although many tap waters come close in taste and purity. Distilled Water is available at most grocery stores for about a dollar a gallon, which will make about 175 conventional ice cubes, for about ½ of one cent apiece.
If you doubt my expertise on ice, just let me say that I live in a very hot place and consume 2 or 3 litres of water in the form of ice every single day.
Because ice absorbs much more heat than steel or soapstone per unit volume. 50g of ice at just below freezing is enough to cool 200g of water from 20C to 0C. To accomplish the same thing with stainless steel you would need nearly 1.8 kg of stainless steel at -20C, requiring a colder freezer and a volume of steel greater than the volume of the drink.
If you’re a snob with a preference for cold drinks, what’s wrong with a little liquid nitrogen?
I haven’t seen this done in a very long time, but I have seen it done, so my standard for exclusiveness is set well above water ice of any provenance yet known, though ice nine might be interesting.
ha.
but, seriously, are people spending money on this? good thing all our other problems are solved…
at that rate, wouldn’t it be cheaper to either buy a special freezer that can solidify your beverage of choice, or to buy some sort of actively cooled drinking flask?
on another note… how’s dry ice work as a drink coolant? (personally, I chuck it in water just cause I like the mistyfoggystuff that roils out (but I work in a lab, so it’s all getting disposed, whether it’s the sink, outside, or my favorite beaker of water).
I agree strongly with everyone who’s pointed out that one does not put ice in a decent Scotch.
However, I can’t get worked up about expensive ice. There are people out there with obscene amounts of money, and I regard relieving them of as much of it as possible to be both a public good and a moral duty. Since punitive taxation seems to be politically impossible, this is what we’re left with.
i would be impressed it the ice were icosohedrons. or even better, if they diplayed 5 fold symmetry.
Are they still working on the asymmetrical cubes? The impossible, as is said, takes a little longer?
There is nothing wrong with pouring good single malt Scots whisky over ice. The idea of using no ice is an old, uninformed prejudice. Even professional whisky tasters recommend a splash of water with a shot of Scotch.
The idea of a large clean, clear cube of ice in your whisky is to cool the Scotch and add that small splash of water without diluting the drink too much. My complaint is that most ice cubes are either not large enough or are not clear or are ridiculously expensive. I make perfectly clear, pure, beautiful 2 inch cubes of ice for free with my $50 Artisan Ice Kit, 12 at a time. There’s no reason everyone can’t have beautiful clear ice at home.