Utilizing some of the best of intrinsic human resources (laziness, slothfulness, pure blind random luck), I once invented what I believe to be the only one of its kind:

A whiskey liqueur.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no such animal.  Scotch has a liqueur in the form of Drambuie, but the closest you'll get to a whiskey liqueur is leaving a bottle of Southern Comfort out in the sun for a day.

Until I invented The Magic Elixir.
 

This is going to be an 'interactive' narrative because you get to spend the whole time trying to figure out what the secret is.

And count your blessings.

I had to wait ten years.
 

 
I've never been a big fan of booze's effects, but I've always liked the taste of cordials and hard liquors.  I usually have a pet fave stashed somewhere around that I'll (hic!) nip on (hic!) now and then.  But, honest, just for the taste. (hic!)

Then one day I discovered this marvelous stuff:

The Black Sheep of Canadian Liquors

It's a tough, 100-proof, real-man's whiskey, but with a very unique taste, a tiny bit sweet, and much better after it's been allowed to breathe for a while.  When I order it out, I get it in a brandy snifter, warm it slightly with a cigarette lighter, then let it sit for 10 minutes before touching it.  At that point, it's like the essence of whiskey.

So, for a handful of years, Yukon Jack became my sippin' whiskey of choice.  And I mean "sippin'" literally.  Every now and then I'd remember it, take a tiny sip or two (just for the taste — honest!), then put it back in whatever little stash spot it claimed.

Then one day it disappeared for a few months.
    

I had been shuffling some things around and had stashed it over behind a speaker so it wouldn't get knocked over, being uncapped at the time.  And the sipping is such an inconsequential event that even when it popped into my head, I wouldn't have bothered getting up and fetching it from its hiding place.

And then one day I was doing some cleaning and noticed it.

I took a small sip.

And this flood of sweet whiskey brilliance washed over my palate in one of those taste explosions that defy description.  It was whiskey times a thousand.  It was whiskey as it never dared to be before.  It was sweet — in that cloyingly sweet way that cordials have — but it was still whiskey.

It brought a word screaming back from a thousand years gone by:

Elixir.
 

 
And here's the thing:

If you went out and bought a bottle of Yukon Jack, removed the cap so it could breathe, poured two-thirds of it out and stashed it behind a speaker for a few months, it would taste like a nice, mellowed whiskey.  But, in essence, it would not have changed at all.

And that's because you missed the secret I revealed up above.

And, for ten years, so did I.
 

 
By the way, have you ever heard the term "backwashing", as in soda bottles?  It's actually kind of amazing bodily phenomenon, and I flat-out didn't believe it the first time I heard about it.

I was over at a good buddy's place, it was hot out, and I asked him if I could take a swig off his Pepsi bottle.  He said sure, as long as I didn't backwash it.

I asked him what that meant and he said that every time you take a swig from a bottle, some of the liquid in your mouth goes back into the bottle.

"No way!", I said, and he invited me to test it out with a bottle in the kitchen.

And I'll be double-dipped if he wasn't right.  It's almost impossible not to let a little flow back into the bottle.  You really have to work at it, tilting your head back and slowly lowering the bottom of the bottle.  Like I said, it's a pretty strange phenomenon.
 

  
And then the ten years passed.

And there I was at bartending school and the instructor was talking about the history of making certain liquors around the world.  He got to the Japanese and their long history of making the rice wine, sake.

And this is your last chance to guess the secret.  I'll give you the same clue that I received when it hit me in a blinding flash:

My instructor noted that the ancient Japanese would spit into the rice jugs to start the fermentation process.

And I thought, that's it.
 

 
It was my saliva in the backwash from all of those little sips that started the fermentation process and allowed it to caramelize the liquor, turning it into a bona fide liqueur.

And the fact that it was allowed to sit undisturbed for a few months played just as large a role, else it otherwise would have been drunk like normal.  Thank goodness for my slovenly cleaning habits.

Whether or not this would work (or taste near as good) with other whiskeys is anybody's guess, but I'd think not.  As I said of Yukon Jack in the beginning, there's this certain sweetness way, way in the background that can be drawn out with warmth and breathing, and that might be the critical element that makes the difference.  It might be that many have tried this exact process with their favorite whiskey, only to have it turn into a sick, unpalatable mess.  Given how different Yukon Jack is from every other common whiskey out there, it might very well be that it's the only whiskey in the world this process works with so successfully.
 

Your Turn

If you're thinking of trying it, let me replicate the original event as much as I can.

• It was in that semi-unique 4/5ths-of-a-fifth bottle they have.
   
• It took about 3 months of nipping to get it down to 1/3 full.  I really just like it for the taste (honest!) and only take a nip when I think about it, so that roughly translates to a few small sips every two or three days.
   
• The cap had long been thrown away.
   
• It sat undisturbed in a fairly warm computer room, away from both direct and indirect sunlight behind a bookshelf speaker sitting on the computer table.
   
• My best guess is that it sat there for around two months, possibly a bit longer.  It felt like "a fair while" when I thought back on it at the time, trying to reconstruct what had happened.  But what I also knew at the time was that just leaving a whiskey bottle lying around uncapped for a few months wasn't going to create this — hence the mystery.

If you actually blunder your way upon the exact formula, it would have a huge market potential — although I'm not sure how the customers would feel about the spitting part.  And I'm not sure if anyone's invented synthetic spit yet.

And, at the risk of getting you even tipsier as you perform your arduous backwashing chores ("It's a tough job," you tell everyone, "but somebody's gotta do it."), you should certainly try it with your own favorite whiskey at the same time.  Hell, just write off the next six months and test dozens of brands.