As I sit here typing, I’m sipping a nice juicy snort of Jim Beam, with five small ice cubes, from a paper Dixie cup. So let’s see.
Moderately to very intelligent: Hey, I know my left from my right!
Fairly well-read and well-educated: Do Marvel Graphic Novels count?
Fatalists or pragmatists: Episcopalian.
Well-traveled: The usual.
Connoisseurs of “the finer things” but very at home with, for want of a better metaphor I’ll call “down-home” things: I don’t get out much.
Seriously, though, I do love bourbon, but my taste really does run to the cheap stuff. I grew up drinking cheap booze with my father (I’m not kidding; I used to finish his Scotch starting when I was nine years old). For me, it’s the effect the stuff has more than the actual taste. I’ve tried more expensive stuff at the urgings of well-meaning friends, but I guess I fixated early on the harshness of Jim Beam bourbon and Inver House and Passport Scotch. I just love the feeling of the breath being knocked from me right after I take that first enchanted liquid barbed wire sip.
Give Heaven Hill a try. It runs a couple bucks less per litre than Beam, and I think it’s a better whiskey…less sweet, certainly.
When I started drinking it, it was the only bourbon that came from an independent distiller and not produced by a corporate entity…not sure if that’s still the case, at least as far as general-run bourbons go. Those single-batch types are probably produced by corncob-smoking hillbillies back up in the hills and hollers, or at least I like to think so.
peep: Thanks for the tip. I’ll pick up a jug of Powers this week!
Ukulele Ike, thanks! I wrote down Heaven Hill and I’ll get a bottle this week, if I can find it at my local liquor store. I’ll let you know how it is. Yeah, the idea of old hillbillies making the stuff is definitely a great image. (My dad and I are big “Li’l Abner” fans.)
Come clean or I’ll tell them about last weekend’s panic at 4000 feet.
Now then, for the record I only drink Whiskey Sours. However, I prefer them made with Jack Daniels. Some bourbon drinkers have called me a heretic for such behavior, but they were so drunk they couldn’t catch and repress me.
“Heretic”?! That’s not exactly the first insult that came to my mind. Whiskey Sours, indeed. Good waste of expensive hooch, far as I’m concerned. All I can tell you is that my Great Aunt Margaret drinks Whiskey Sours. Great Aunt Reenie drank them too. And my mom. I dunno… that’s lookin’ like a ladies’ drink to me, Mister.
And I’ll remember that crack about me trying to steer the plane (that’s what Grok is referring to; he’s a private pilot, and trying to teach me to fly the plane a little. I found myself, in the heat of the moment, to be directionally challenged).
Maybe I’ll have me a few of your Whiskey Sours before we go up, next time… you know, to calm my nerves so I can remember left and right?
Perhaps it is the company I keep, but the only bourbon drinkers I’ve ever known have been rowdy, large, rugby-playing, cow-tipping, ag-engineering students from Virginia Tech. They were all smart, down-to-earth, live-and-let-live types who could be counted on in nearly any situation. The fact that they all drank bourbon, while I only drank Scotch, made it much cheaper for me to have them as good friends (I could keep a bottle of Scoth around much longer than they could, collectivley, keep a bottle of bourbon). I’ve never been able to acquire a taste for bourbon and my associations with those that do drink it haven’t added or detracted from its appeal.
I will add that one of the finest men I’ve known in my life, George “Slug” Mitchell, had a single shot of Old Crow every night that I ever knew him (nearly 20 years) and, I suspect, had one every night of his entire adult life. If drinking a little bourbon every night will make me a quarter of the man Slug was then I say “Bourbon, neat, no chaser.”
Heaven Hill was, to me, the proof of the “unpretensiousness” argument. I’d seen it on the bottom shelf often enough, and never tried it for that reason, going with the “you get what you pay for” argument. One day in a waiting room, I was glancing through a cigar-snob magazine, and saw a favorable review for it. I tried a bottle on my next visit to the packy, and was pleasantly surprised. I’d put it up there with any of the better mainstream brands I favor, most of which have been mentioned already (Kickin’ Chicken [OK, Wild Turkey], Beam, MM, Granddad). And with the lower price, it’s prolly the best bet in terms of “bang for the buck.”
I do, however, see a general attempt by the marketers to get bourbon drinkers on scotch’s single-malt-yuppie-snob bandwagon with the highfalutin’ barrel bourbons. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tried many barrel bourbons, and generally like 'em, though I don’t think most warrant the high sticker price. I particularly liked Booker, though my first uncut bottle was almost at the “too-strong-to-enjoy-sipping” threshold.
My all-time favoritest bourbon, though, was the Jim Beam 200-year commemorative batch. Scrumpt-dilly-icious! Too bad it was a limited release. I discovered it near the end of the run, and went back for the last 2 bottles my store had. They lasted a couple of years, but are sadly gone now.
Have any of the other bourbon sippers had trouble ordering their whiskey the way they want it? I’ve had bartenders not understand “neat” and even “straight up” before. No, I don’t want it in a shot glass, thanks. I sometimes like an ice cube or two, and asking for “just a couple of rocks” has gotten my shot drowned in a glassful of melting ice. I learned to get around this by asking for the bourbon neat, with an ice back.
Bourbon drinker right here. Read a lot, travel a lot, still dumb as rocks. But I like good whisky. MM is my standard, but I usually keep a bottle of Grandad around, especially for hot toddies before bed. I take my Makers neat.
I did get sucked into yuppie bourbon, though, and I confess I don’t regret it. Blantons and Woodford Reserve are goddamned good, even if the bottles are a bit costly. I break out the good stuff for appreciative company.
Turkey’s quite pleasant as well, but I never seem to have it around. But I simply cannot abide JB whatsoever.