In the last entry I mentioned the "Art of Drinking Well."  It's a reference to a book titled "Cocktails, Culture, and the Art of Drinking Well" by Wall Street Journal writer Eric Felten. It's adapted from his weekly "How's Your Drink?" column about cocktails. The column itself is excellent and informative. It's a great read both for mixed drink recipes and the results of blind tastings of distilled spirits. It also provides often fascinating historical and social background on various libations, e.g., Hemingway's Daiquiri, bourbon and the Kentucky Derby, rum, George Washington and the Continental Army and so forth.



Two recent columns are among my favorites. One was about the "Near-Perfect Martini." It was a great piece not only because martinis are another passion of mine, but because it so rightly assumed that there is no such thing as a "perfect" martini.  Very, very good ones perhaps, but perfection is elusive. Martinis are more about alchemy than alcohol.  A bartender in London once told me that the martini is the easiest drink to make, and the hardest one to get right. And he knew how to mix a good martini. His process was pure theater.

The second column appeared in the Journal on November 24, 2007 and was adapted and titled "The Art of Drinking Well" from the last chapter of his book. It is an eloquent statement of the appeal of a good drink beyond taste and buzz, as well as its potential downsides.  Here are some excepts:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Recommending good things to drink is an enterprise fraught with moral peril. Encourage folks to try a cocktail, and there are sure to be some among them who will like it altogether too much.

 

"A well-made cocktail may be a perilous pleasure, but it isn't the only one. More than a few people have been undone by love, but we don't abjure it. Rather, one of the central storylines in the history of civilization has been the effort to make love livable.

 

"A good drink, though not without risk, can be eminently livable. Alcohol is no doubt a drug, but in moderation it is a very social one. It primes the conversational pump; it nudges the shy from the bonds of their awkwardness; it midwives romance; it concludes treaties. Firewater, like fire, can be awesomely destructive; learning to marshal the power of both is a hallmark of civilization.

 

"At its best, a good drink is a sort of secular communion, a cup of fellowship. In his book "Martini, Straight Up," classics professor Lowell Edmunds describes the making of Martinis as a shared ritual and champions what he calls the "communal" Martini. Martini drinkers are united in their commitment to the classic recipe, a secular "sacramental drink that unites in spirit even those who have never met."

Nobly stated indeed.  But lest you think he's getting a bit too high-minded (this is about drinking after all) he nicely level-sets by taking "the pressure off the poor little cocktail, which couldn't but groan under all that weight of Meaning and Importance."

And without using the word, he gets to the craic:

"It's possible to be serious about drinking without being a serious drinker, and especially without taking oneself too seriously. Amusement is the cocktail's real line of work, and a noble one at that.

"If there is anything to be serious about in the way of drinks it is this only -- that one's drink be delicious. And if it can add to our pleasure by having a good story to tell, all the better. Great drinks are like the tunes from the Great American Songbook -- they can withstand the endless variations that come from individual interpretation. And enjoying those drinks makes one part of a living tradition -- a lineage of civilized drinkers."

Which gets us back to the major part of drinking Irish whiskey.  It's about being serious about having fun.  It's all about the craic.  Appreciating, more or less, the distiller's work in the color, nose, taste, feel and finish, enjoying the reactions of your fellow drinkers, and having some stories to tell during and because of the drinking, makes the pleasure all the greater.