Boozehound - Jason Wilson [2]
I got my first inkling of how little I’d known about drinking on a cold autumn afternoon, back when I was a young and clueless college student. A successful, older mentor took me out for a drink. The reason why is lost to me now, but surely it involved some pointed career advice that I never followed. Anyway, this septuagenarian gentleman—who in my hazy memory wore a brimmed hat and a flower tucked into his lapel and carried a pocket watch—took me to a hotel bar. I was dressed, as usual, in a well-worn flannel shirt, wrinkled khakis, running sneakers, and a beat-up baseball cap. As we sat, he announced to the bartender with a wink, “Jimmy, as of today, I’m putting you on official notice. I’ve switched to my winter drink.”
Without a word, the bartender, dressed in white coat and tie, promptly mixed and served him a Stinger. The gentleman laid a crisp hundred-dollar bill on the bar and told me to order, so I asked for a vodka and tonic, hoping it seemed more sophisticated than the cheap beers and shots that I normally drank with my fake ID. The gentleman appraised me, my slovenly attire, and my vodka and tonic, and gruffly declared, “That’s a summer drink.” Then he told the bartender he’d better make another Stinger.
The implication was clear: What sort of adult doesn’t know when to switch from a summer drink to a winter drink? What sort of soft generation was this that needed to be told how to drink at all?
“Vodka has no taste,” he continued. “It’s flavorless.”
“But what’s in a Stinger?” I asked.
He eyed me skeptically. “Crème de menthe. Brandy. Jimmy has made yours with cognac.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. I assumed cognac had something to do with rich old guys and pipes and velvet jackets and slippers and maybe sitting in a plush chair and reading a huge book with gilt edges and some title like The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I knew cognac was expensive, but what could it possibly be made from? Maybe the sweat of French people? Or perhaps cognac was sort of like those fur coats that patchouli-smelling college kids like me were protesting, the ones made from the soft, soft fur of Persian lamb fetuses? In any case, I sure as hell had never witnessed anyone drinking a cognac. And I expressed this to my would-be mentor by scrunching up my nose and saying, “Cognac?” The gentleman gave me a look that suggested he was witnessing the decline and fall of contemporary civilization before his very eyes.
It’s been a very long time since I ordered a vodka and tonic. I’ve made a very long journey from my youth in the South Jersey suburbs to becoming the sort of man who sips a three-hundred-dollar cognac in the morning and calls it work. But it wasn’t as if, one day, I switched from vodka tonics to strange foreign libations. I moved slowly, through the years, from vodka to gin, and then on to whiskey. I learned to love bourbon and rye and Irish whiskey. It hasn’t always been easy. When I started my job, I had to admit a dirty secret, a skeleton in the closet: I’d never really been a huge fan of single-malt Scotch whisky. I realize this does not rise to the level of, say, shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die. But since I was a spirits writer, it caused me some discomfort. I worked my way through lighter, so-called chick Scotches, and then slowly into peat monsters that received the macho seal of approval from Scotch snobs. Eventually, single malts took their place of pride in my liquor cabinet.
But beyond whiskey, I still wanted to know more. That quest is where this book takes its shape. When it comes to flavor, I am drawn to the Old World. I like liquor with hard-to-define tastes: the bitter complexity of Italian amari, the ancient herbs of Chartreuse, the primal maltiness of Dutch genever. And I’m also