The Lush Chronicles: On Whiskey and St. Patrick's Day

Next Wednesday, the international holiday of problem drinkers will once again descend upon the world. I don't really want to get into the uncomfortable racial stereotyping of an Irish celebration necessarily involving large amounts of liquor, but I will say this: Whiskey-making cultures have a right to drink in vast quantities. While I appreciate cold martinis, sensual liqueurs and woefully misunderstood glasses of tequila, my liver and I know that whiskey will forever be king of all potables. Complex but not pretentious, heavy but not filling, tough but refined, whiskey is a drinker's drink. And sure, I'll admit that if I had my choice of whiskeys, I wouldn't go for Irish varieties first. For the record, it's third in line behind scotch and bourbon. I still respect the Irish stuff and I plan on elevating it to the status of a ritual libation come St. Patrick's Day.

So, given that I will be treating an as-yet-unpurchased bottle of Irish whiskey like an old friend next Wednesday, let's talk about how to drink the brown stuff properly. Though I do love being a snob, especially about liquor, I actually don't give a damn how people take their usquebaugh. On the rocks, straight up, with a splash of water, with a soda head, mixed in a sweet cocktail, whatever. That's not what I'm talking about.

What I mean by "how to drink whiskey" is the method one uses to introduce it into the body. Everyone who gets sick on whiskey, just like every time someone gets sick on any kind of liquor, does so because they didn't come to an understanding with their drink. Whiskey has a will imbued to it by the many and varied chemicals gathered by the aging process. As such, whiskey ought to be treated like a house guest. Give it hospitality. Don't rush it or put it to work, let it rest when it gets worn out and don't neglect to feed it.

That's why whiskey shouldn't be taken in shots. Hell, no liquor should be taken in shots, but whereas neutrals will be forgiving and sweet stuff will give clear, queasy indications of when it's time to quit, whiskey will go along with your plans until it decides to kick your ass. If one must drink whiskey, and with the upcoming holiday one really should, nurse it so you can reach a steady buzz.

Here's how I plan to host my Irish guest on St. Patrick's Day. He will arrive in town some time in the early afternoon, at which point he will remain by my side until the wee hours of the next morning. He and I will likely enjoy some light conversation to the tune of a single ounce, straight up, sipped for a reasonable duration prior to lunch. At lunch, he will then enjoy the company of a few ice cubes and a warm meal, possibly a savory sandwich involving beef of some kind. He will then alternate between ice and smaller quantities straight up for the duration of the afternoon until dinner when he may just commingle with some cold water.

From that point on, I will nod to whiskey's discretion. He will tell me when I should back off, when I should drink some water and when I should return to his side. At no point during the day will I divide my attention to beer or any other alcoholic beverage. St. Pat's is Irish whiskey's day. He and I don't visit very often, so I want to make sure I show my appreciation for his role in my life.

I will likely live-blog Irish whiskey's visit next week. Check back for hourly reports of the festivities.

The Only Thing (drink) Is Good For

Individual tastes being what they are, there's at least one person in the world who is happy to drink even the most ridiculously specialized item at the liquor store. Every super-sweet liqueur, weird flavored vodka and mysterious packaged mixer has a fan, but dedicated drinkers are still allowed to be snobs about the stuff they wouldn't let within a hundred feet of their own bars. So, if any of the following things are divine nectar according to your unique palate, I sincerely apologize.

The only thing Kahlua or any other coffee liqueur is good for is making White Russians or as an ice cream topping. Seriously, Kahlua and Kahlua-like coffee liqueurs are so thick, so intensely sweet and so surprisingly unlike the flavor they're supposed to be mimicking that it ought to be thought of in the same context as candy or potato chips. If it's coffee flavor you want, there are better ways to get it. Espresso vodka, for instance. It's also dark and sweet, but it isn't a viscous syrup and it actually tastes like coffee. You could also just make a proper coffee-based cocktail, of which there are several. I will, however, nod to the White Russian. As a dessert drink, there's nothing quite like it.

 

The only thing American pilsner is good for is gazing at with disdain while drinking any of the thousands of superior beers produced all over the world. In the past decade, American microbrews have made leaps in quality that allow them to stand toe-to-toe with regional European beers. In fact, if you live in the States you have a better chance of finding good American microbrew than a decent import without having to visit a specialty store. For two or three dollars more than you pay for Bud or PBR, you can get your hands on six amazing bottles of something tasty from your region. There are some killer suds coming out of the Pacific Northwest, and the French-Canadian influence in Michigan microbrews is apparent.

 

The only thing premium vodka is good for is getting drunk when you've got a jones for a glass of water. For the past several years, there seems to have been a rush in the market to sell boring vodka in ornate bottles. Sure, the taste of these neutrals is often little more than a burning sensation and whatever the glass touched before the pour, but is that really what vodka drinkers want? In the happy middle between well brands good for mixing and premium brands are a few vodkas that have some character imparted to them from minerals and a careful filtering process. I don't want my sipping vodka to be filtered within an inch of its life, I want it to have some grit. Russian table vodka is a unique joy in this world that has been tarnished by the misconception that the only vodka-drinking experience has to be a flavorless one.

 

The only thing tropical cocktail mixes are good for is making Ernest Hemingway turn in his grave. If you must make a Margarita, make one with sours and lime juice. That's all the mix really is and it's all it ought to be. And the Daiquiri? Simple syrup and lime juice. Maybe some gum arabic if you're feeling fancy. Leave the neon mixers on the shelf.

The Lush Chronicles: Why We Drink- Novelty

My grandmother used to tell me, "Michael, getting old is a bitch." She never really elaborated on exactly why, but I imagine it has something to do with aches, medication, diet restrictions and lost beauty. It didn't occur to me until recently that one of the worst parts of growing older is that there aren't as many new experiences out there. Sure, there are more unique experiences available for any one life to cover them all so it's not like we have to actually worry about running out of stuff to do, but then again not everything is appealing to everybody. I doubt I'll ever skydive or run a marathon, but there may come a day when a drink a glass of rice schnapps fermented in a bottle with the penis of a rhinoceros. I love bourbon now at my tender, inexperienced age, but come some curious night in my personal autumn I might just thirst after something different.

There's been something of an explosion of new beverages over the past ten or fifteen years. Nothing so revolutionary as a whole new spirit, though. I doubt a new kind of basic liquor will be invented until humans colonize another planet with its own unique vegetation. Still, anything that contains sugar can be fermented, filtered, aged and consumed. Also, neutral spirits can be flavored with just about anything.

That last one has led to some unusual trends in alcohol as of late. Some flavors of vodka make sense, at least ostensibly. Citrus of any sort is a given, though plain vodka with a twist will always taste better than brand-name lemon concoctions. Sweet additions like chocolate or espresso have turned out rather well, though the end product is less of a vodka and more of an extra-strong liqueur. Other ideas probably should never have left R&D. Three Olives has more flavor varieties than it really ought to, including Watermelon Vodka that tastes like a poisoned Jolly Rancher and I'm fairly certain that their Bubblegum flavor is designed purely to sell booze to children. No self-respecting adult would actually drink that stuff for any reason other than novelty or maybe some kind of theme party.

I can take or leave the flavor-crazy vodka trend, but the glut of new liqueurs is often both too intriguing and too weird to ignore. Various syrup producing entities have been peddling maple liqueur as of late, which has turned out to be the very epitome of great on paper and terrible in practice. Maple liqueur hits the tongue in three distinct stages, only one of which is at all pleasant. It begins with a confusing, bitter bite that has more in common with mint than maple and finishes with a sickly dissipation into sweetness without character. Only the middle segment after the tastebuds have adjusted to the bizarre combination of syrup and alcohol does anything even resembling maple sneak into the experience.

The problem with maple liqueur is that it's designed with too broad an ambition. Other sweet liqueurs like coffee, chocolate and nut flavors lean on the fact that all those things have an inherent bitterness to them already so the medicine-y taste of alcohol doesn't strike such a bad note. Maple is nothing but sweetness from start to finish. I so wanted this one to work, but the reality of maple liqueur is that its source material just doesn't like ethanol.

I'm hoping that the recent resurgence of absinthe and its fellow travelers ends soon. Anyone who's ever done the research knows that the Green Fairy doesn't contain any hallucinogenic compounds whatsoever and that the supposed intensity of its effects was just a lie invented by the temperance movement to demonize the bohemian drink of choice a whole century ago. In the end, absinthe is nothing but anise liquor that hasn't been balanced properly. Ouzo is just as good, only cleaner, and those looking for a sweeter experience can enjoy some chilled sambuca.

I'd like to believe that this search for new or unusual beverages will yield something special, something that lasts. Most of the fancy bottles, bright colors and powerful flavors in the bar's freshman class won't see another decade. Maybe there'll be a star or two to come out of the mix, though. I've got an itch for floral flavors like lavender and rose. Perhaps the future is up to the bees. Until then, I'm still too young to need novelty. For my sake, I hope bourbon satisfies me for several decades to come.

The Lush Chronicles: Why We Drink- Distraction

In the middle ages in Europe when local economies were driven as much by barter as by hard currency, food found its way into the wages of everyday laborers as much, if not more often, than precious metals. Some fiefdoms ended up having to deal with drunk workers because many of them were paid in high-quantity spirits like beer. After all, alcohol kept for a long time and could be parceled out in discreet packages like bottles, bags and jugs. For your average feudal worker, an ale today had more value than a coin to be spent tomorrow. And why not get a little sloshed when there's wood to be cut and fields to be plowed? An alcohol buzz is distracting, pleasantly or otherwise. Though we today aren't permitted to drink on the job, there are plenty of us who would gladly take the opportunity to do so.

For the rule-abiding and healthy among us, drinking during work hours has fallen by the wayside. That's not to say it's been gone from our lives for long, or has been completely removed from the table. As indelible a symbol of the 1960's as tie-dye and LSD, the martini lunch was a real-life indicator of power and success. But what does it mean when certain individuals in our society are permitted, even expected to drink on the job?

Well, for our executives it's a measure of ubiquitous leisure. The captains of industry have worked themselves to the bone for years getting to that high office. The martini lunch and the decanter of scotch next to the filing cabinet are as much a part of the perceived perks as the private jets and presidential washrooms. Alcohol is, as it has always been, a holy libation. If our priests today are the Chief Executive Officers, then we accept that they've earned the privilege of achieving altered states while on the clock.

But I think it's deeper than that. Alcohol isn't just an ephemeral symbol, it's a medication. We take aspirin for our headaches, caffeine for our energy slumps, and likewise ethanol for our doubt and stress. Alcohol is a distraction from reality. Whether it's during the pressure of the work day or a decompressing agent after all the cubicles have been abandoned, we want to forget ourselves for a portion of the day.

Whether or not it's a good idea to self-medicate with the distraction of booze is ultimately a philosophical question. The Muslim world came down firmly on the practice hundreds of years ago, forbidding it for essentially all the same reasons why Western culture praised it. By alcohol we become numb, or less self-conscious, or downright forgetful. We are not workers while drunk, not learners or reliable judges.

I suppose that's why it has become half a punchline and half a real expectation for our creative types to employ mind-altering chemicals. What is the writer, the painter or the musician without his drink, pipe or needle? We want him to be uninhibited, to be honest and emotional and utterly incapable of applying himself to the mundane. All those philosophical musings that inevitably happen over bourbon rocks and double-file beer bottles, we want on demand from our artists. After all, artists create our sober distractions, so we need them to be distracted while they create.

The Lush Chronicles: Soused Snowflakes

We're all unique little snowflakes. Bear with me here. When in comes to the way our bodies handle mind-altering chemicals, there's a lot to consider before we can really judge just how we'll react or who we'll become when the chemicals get to altering. There are real, scientifically observed, physiological reasons why one guy is a sloppy drunk, one guy is an angry drunk and another guy is a fun drunk. Alcohol, unlike most drugs, gets into the body in a wide variety of states with little to no concern for the individual attributes of that body. Here's a little bit of a primer on why we are who we are when we drink and how to judge (roughly) what kind of drunk we want to be.

First of all, let's talk about what alcohol actually is, pharmacologically speaking. Like barbiturates and anesthetics, the methyl-methylene-hydroxyl compound ethanol is classified as a depressant. Strictly speaking, this means that it inhibits or otherwise slows chemical reactions and neural activity, i.e. less efficient organ function and limits on how well the brain communicates with the body and other parts of the brain.

But it's not as simple as that. If ethanol was just a straight-up depressant like medical anesthetic, it'd just be the opposite of coffee. It'd slow you down, make you sleepy and sap your attention span. Sure, alcohol does all of that, but not right away and not at the same intensity in all people. Here's why.

The human body processes ethanol in two "limbs", the ascending and descending. First the body freaks out and does weird things (ascending), then it tries to keep you from further poisoning yourself by going into lockdown (descending), to use terms that make sense to those who didn't work on the research team of Drs. Holdstock and de Wit during their 1999 study into the stimulant and depressant effects of alcohol on human subjects.

During the ascending limb, high doses of ethanol, such as what one would find in hard liquor, cause the bodies of roughly half of all people to experience a stimulant effect like that which is caused by caffeine, cocaine or nicotine. Part of this is because a human liver hit with alcohol spills large amounts of sugar into the bloodstream, resulting in a rush. The other big reason is a sort of neurochemical coin toss. Alcohol inhibits brain activity, which can mean a lot of different things. If it inhibits a positive action, like motor skills, it slows you down. But if it inhibits another inhibitor, like impulse control or self-consciousness, it basically lets you off your mental leash. For an as yet unknown reason, some folks are more prone to inhibitor inhibition during the ascending limb.

Of course, everybody experiences the descending limb the same way. The depressant effects of ethanol go into full swing as organ function slows, neural activity becomes more broadly inhibited and the body gradually shuts down as a defense mechanism against further drinking.

A few ways to judge what kind of drunk you'll be tonight, with lots of room for error, are to assess your SMT (Sex, Muscle and Temperature). Generally speaking, men's bodies have a higher muscle-to-fat ratio, but a more muscular woman will enjoy some of the same benefits. Muscle contains a higher concentration of water than fat does, so when the body reacts to ethanol by spilling excess water into the bloodstream to dilute the alcohol, muscular folks will have less potent stuff to metabolize. The temperature of the alcohol you drink is also important as the chemical reactions necessary for absorption and metabolization can only occur when the substance is warm. The colder your drink is, the more slowly your body will absorb it and later you'll experience the descending limb.

As always, if you're going to drink often enough for it to be a concern it's best if you just get to know your body on a more intuitive level. Still, keeping the SMT and the frequency at which you experience a stimulant effect will help you become a more responsible, or maybe just more accurate, drinker.

The Lush Chronicles: Why We Drink, Part One- Pain and Potables

Liquid culture fascinates me. You can tell a lot about a person by how they drink, and I really mean that. Not just what they drink, but when, where, why and by which means. For example, you'll never meet someone who both only likes super-sweet drinks and is also a respectable adult.

All kidding aside, human beings have a real connection to ethanol. It has long been a source of everything from religious inspiration to rights of passage. Though roughly a billion or so members of our species forbid the stuff, the other five usually find a way to have a very complicated relationship with alcohol. Unlike most other recreational drugs, we drink for a wider variety of reasons than the high, or addiction, or pain relief. Drinking, like the great human experiences of love and wanderlust, is strange and irrational. Mine is a complex question with as many answers as there are barstools in the world. Why do we drink?

Me, I gravitate toward the aesthetics of the tragic and ironic. It's not because I'm a particularly glum guy, which I'm not, but because there's an equalizing beauty in the realization that everybody lives with some kind of trouble. It's why we still enjoy tragic fiction. People like to watch Romeo and Juliet go off the deep end because it's cathartic, a way to face pain and dive down deep into it without actually doing any lasting damage. I think self-abusing benders are effectively the same experience, only chemical.

I make it a point to distinguish between lushes and drunks like food critics distinguish between gourmet cuisine and fast food. Drunks are sloppy and artless, having long abandoned the idea of drinking for any other purpose than just to drink. Drunks are addicts, plain and simple. Lushes, on the other hand, are people who at least make an effort to invent reasons to drink, then follow through with some kind of style. Is it any less self-destructive to be a lush? Hell no, but at least it's got some dignity.

This whole preamble is necessary to frame my thoughts on the experience of Pain Drinking. This isn't drinking to relieve pain. Rather, it's drinking for the express purpose of self-harm. Like I said, drinking is irrational, but it's not divorced from art. I acknowledge that for some of us, there are a select few days over the course of our lives that beg for the kind of drinking that is so painful it's actually kind of therapeutic. This has to be done right, though. It's a plum fool who drinks because he's sad, but it's a downright imbecile who gets pain-plastered on his favorite cocktail. Drinking far too much of things you actually like is a good way to stop enjoying those things. What's the point of that?

No, the right way to Pain Drink is to get your hands on something you know you're going to hate. The last time I set out to hurt with libations I found myself in a liquor store browsing the shelves for the worst bottle of scotch I could find. At the time, that distinction went to McClelland's Speyside. Go ahead and put that term into your favorite search engine, then promptly grab the biggest grain of salt you can find so you can take it with the reviews you'll see in the first few pages. McClelland's is a pale gold tincture of pure agony, a single malt that hates every sorry sod who ever even looked at it. I'm no smoker, but a stiff sip of this stuff makes my mouth taste like I've been inhaling Black and Milds at a rate of three per hour.

I bought and drank that bottle of McClelland's Speyside because it was on the bottom shelf and it didn't cost me a cent over $13.00. The price for this stuff has since doubled, but at the time it represented in numbers the very concept of swill. I went looking for just such a product because, for my own reasons, I had to hurt, and fast. I wouldn't wish this stuff on my worst enemy, but I'd still recommend it to a friend who needs some ethanol shock therapy.

Since that day, I haven't so much as run my ink-stained pinky over a bottle of McClelland's, but then again I haven't really had a reason to. Sadness, readers, is an awful reason to drink. People with any sense avoid doing it altogether. For the rest of us, sometimes it's necessary. If you really must hit rock bottom then keep on going with the help of a jackhammer, do yourself a favor and give the job to the sorriest bottle of hell you can find.

The Lush Chronicles: Cold Weather Drinking

Ask any of my friends or close relatives and they'll tell you that I'm one vodka-soaked olive short of a total lush. Or alternately, ask any of the sworn enemies I've collected from a solid year of making fun of people on the Internet and they'll tell you I'm an inveterate drunk. Though there's likely more than a kernel of truth to these accusations, I'm a writer, it's part and parcel to the profession and has been since Homer. All the same, us varsity-level drinkers get to be smug around the holiday season as the more responsible folks start indulging for the usual reasons people drink during yuletide festivities. I've never been one to join in on the absurd sloshing about of Christmas and New Years, but there are a few drinks I enjoy exclusively in the month of December. These are my cold weather drinks.

First off, I need to nip this whole eggnog thing in its ridiculous bud. I know it's the stereotypical Christmas drink, but I refuse both in principle and by experience to consume this cheap joke of a holiday libation. Everything good about eggnog can be found elsewhere in a less absurd package. I like brandy as much as the next guy, but I see no reason to pair it with an overly viscous, eggy cream covered in, of all things, nutmeg. If you're going to adulterate brandy, which I'm not sure there's any reason to in the first place, why not make a Gentleman's Tea instead? Take a good, simple black tea, especially any strong British variety, and hit it with a shot or two of respectable sipping brandy and maybe some sharp spices like cinnamon. Stir just enough to diffuse the alcohol throughout but not so much that a fair portion doesn't settle at the bottom. The resulting drink is warm, relaxing and tasty.

As for the creamy requirement of holiday season drinking, December is the one time a year I'll allow myself to indulge in Irish Cream. A proper Irish Cream on ice is excellent for sipping in front of a fire. I tend to avoid any extraneous flavors, like caramel or mint, if only because they make this already decadent drink a bit too busy. Given the relatively low alcohol content (typically 20% by volume, that's liqueur territory) it's both difficult and ill-advised to pursue more than a mild buzz from Irish Cream. Any dedicated acolyte of Dionysus knows how to distinguish between relaxing beverages and full-on mood altering cocktails.

While I don't abide by mint-flavored Irish Cream, I can appreciate the importance of peppermint to the overall palate of the holiday season. I've yet to acquire a taste for a specific mint cocktail, so I usually allow December to be a time for experimentation with the allure of the candy cane. The classic mint cocktail is, of course, the julep, but there's something absurd and unnecessary about that drink I just can't get behind. Bourbon is too fine on its own or simply on the rocks to gussy it up like a mojito. I'm more forgiving of the Grasshopper, a half-classy cream drink involving creme de menthe and creme de cacao. Still, if I wanted to drink a York peppermint patty I'd just chop one up and throw it in a milkshake.

A more respectable alternative is a cheeky cream drink called Alexander's Sister. This cocktail references the excellent early 20th century mix called the Brandy Alexander, one of my personal favorites. The sweet gent's sister involves equal parts cream, white creme de menthe and gin shaken gingerly and garnished with a slice of fresh cucumber.

I know you casual drinkers like to use this time of the year to cut loose and it's adorable that you try, but that's no reason to be irresponsible with what and how much you put in your body over the holidays. Enjoy yourselves but don't try to keep up with us professionals. We do these things so you don't have to.

Pairing and Why It Matters

There are a few hallmarks of culinary snobbery that are near universal. For instance, the baffling number of forks at a full table setting. While it actually is pretty absurd to dedicate an entire fork to, say, shrimp, other dining particulars aren't so baseless. One I'm particularly interested in defending is the careful pairing of drinks to certain kinds of food. By no means do I believe that these are hard and fast rules, but they are good suggestions that, at best, are intended to make the dining experience more pleasant.

Wine: White, Red or Blush?

We've all heard this one before. Red wine for red meat, white wine for fish and blush for poultry. But why? It's certainly not an arbitrary rule. Rather, it's about allowing the many subtle flavors inherent to wine to co-mingle with and ultimately amplify the flavors of the dish in question. Let's take a look at all three.

Red Wine

Reds have a tendency to be full-bodied with undertones of spice and warm floral elements. The red meat, red wine rule relates to the way the savory protein flavors in dishes like steak or lamb interact with the heavy, complex strands in a good red wine than it does with any particular chapter in a book of etiquette. Red meat isn't refreshing, it's powerful and complex. Likewise, the wine we drink with it ought to reflect that. It should also be noted that red wine pairs well with vegetarian dishes that favor pepper and balsalmic tones.

White Wine

On the other hand, white wine tends to carry sweet flavors, like fruit. This means that it pairs well with fish and seafood because fish and seafood itself has a compliment in sweet fruit and tart citrus. Most would rather see a mango salsa on a piece of fish than on a cut of venison, so one should seek out white wine for that fish as well. White wine is generally light and refreshing, so it naturally pairs better with crisp or gentle meals.

Blush Wine

Honestly, I'm on the fence about this one. This is my bias against blush wine speaking, but I often don't see the point in rose varieties when it seems they have all the weaknesses of both red and white but none of the strengths. There's no problem with leaning on a sweeter variety of red wine for gamey poultry like turkey or duck, then favoring dry white wine for lighter fare like chicken. Ultimately, it comes down to taste. Food should always be about what tastes the best to the individual, not what some dusty custom dictates.

 

Liquor

This is a somewhat more complex subject and also considerably more individualized. All the practice in the world won't make someone acquire a taste for scotch, but when one does there is nothing quite like a call brand on the rocks with an unconventional pairing. I find that scotch does particularly well with, of all things, East Asian cuisine like Chinese, Japanese and Thai. The smokey elements of scotch work well with spicy pepper flavors and the inherent heaviness of whiskey counterbalances the relative lightness of Asian food.

On the other end of the spectrum, citrus-loving spirits like vodka and gin go remarkably well with both general seafood and subtle regional fare like French and Spanish food.

I would always recommend supplementing any hard liquor with a glass of water during a meal. Liquor can compliment flavors, but it can't quench thirst. Responsibility and moderation are highly desired, even on a full stomach.

 

Beer

Especially given the wonderful (and relatively new) availability of hand-crafted microbrews in America and Canada, beer is back on the menu for proper pairing techniques. Beer does remarkably well with simple, greasy food like hamburgers and pizza because it has a high water content and favors a few strong flavors rather than any amount of complexity. Italian food, especially pizza and pasta, benefit from beers with a lot of hops because the floral tones mingle well with the herbs and spices of tomato sauce. Meanwhile, blunt and bitter ales carry the weight of simple pub fare with a surprising amount of grace, while heavy porter beers interact nicely with the acidic notes in fried fish and french fries.

 

Beverage pairing is a useful art, but it always comes down to individual preference. The "rules" are more like guidelines based on a few logical compliments. As in all cuisine, aim for whatever feels right, but don't discount the wisdom of the ages.

Liquor Loves Lost

There's a psychosomatic effect by which the body rejects substances or experiences that at one time resulted in an extremely negative experience. In layman's terms, it's the mechanism by which we learn to never again drink the substance that resulted in our very first hangover. I've heard several generations of drinkers tell similar stories about the ill effects of Southern Comfort, a liqueur sweet enough to entice novice drinkers into familiar territory, but also brutal enough to push many of them away from the hard stuff for a long time. While I personally never much enjoyed SoCo, I had a much crueler first hangover experience that, several years later, I am still coming to reconcile.

Back when I was a very ignorant, very arrogant college student, I attended a campus-wide party with what I recognize in retrospect was a poorly stocked bar. My friends and I showed up at the event fashionably late at approximately 10:00 PM and all that remained of the paltry liquid angle was a somewhat respectable beer and the worst excuse for gin that ever glanced at a juniper plant. Inspired by the kind of hubris that can only manifest in a young man of insufficient worldly experience, I consumed an ill-advised quantity of this gin sans ice or any other element that might have made it halfway palatable.

In my inexperienced state, I first believed that the righteous revenge this sad excuse for gin took on my poor stomach was the end of its horrors. On an intellectual level I understood the concept of the hangover, that mysterious state that compelled drinkers to swear oaths to never drink again, but I had never experienced one for myself. I couldn't get the taste of that horrible imitation hairspray out of my mouth and I felt like absolute hell for a good 24 hours. The whole world moved too slow and I regretted my ambitions from the previous night.

As a result of this youthful indiscretion, I have had the hardest time in subsequent years enjoying anything even vaguely gin-related. Even victuals that are only vaguely associated with gin, like benedictine liqueur, repel me. It's not rational and I decided recently that I'm depriving myself of a wonderful potable by reinforcing my first bad experience.

The fashionable thing these days is for liquor producers to attach the term "drink responsibly" to their products. Of course they mean that we ought not to drink ourselves stupid, always a smart move on its own, but I've come to adopt a second meaning to this phrase. We ought not to just drink in moderation, but also drink with a discerning palate. It wasn't that I drank too much gin that night in college, but that I drank too much of the wrong gin. There's no reason to reject an entire beverage just because I chose poorly out of the gate. To make a counter-point, I'm a big fan of tequila, which I believe is woefully misunderstood. Just because so many people first experience tequila as a cheap shooter that gets them sick doesn't mean that proper tequila is a bad drink. So too with gin. There are good and bad varieties. I shouldn't damn the good because I began poorly.

So, for all of you responsible drinkers out there, I encourage you to slowly approach your off-limits beverage with a renewed sense of appreciation. There are people out there who work very hard to make quality products. You shouldn't blame them for your own youthful indiscretions.

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