Don’t you drink? I notice you speak slightingly of the bottle. I have drunk since I was fifteen and few things have given me more pleasure. When you work hard all day with your head and know you must work again the next day what else can change your ideas and make them run on a different plane like whisky?

—Ernest Hemingway

One couple told me the Ace was too hip for them, but they loved the pickle-backs. “This would be a shot of whiskey chased by a shot of pickle juice,” the young man said, observing the lobby scene with disdain. “And the pickle juice here is house-made, therefore it is the best pickle juice.”

to hell with martini glasses and Bourbon, a real Manhattan is made with rye and lives on the rocks in a tumbler.

Real talk.

I have yet to sample a craft whiskey that comes close even to Jim Beam’s most basic offering, the four-year-old White Label, let alone its small-batch bourbons like Knob Creek, Basil Hayden’s, or Booker’s.

I’m the first to praise the craft drink movement. I love it. I do my best to support it as I believe these small batch producers will eventually figure out the “special sauce” and grow/improve their offerings.

I like to buy their goods, but many times the taste doesn’t match up with the cost. So, to echo the thoughts of the quote above, let’s support the small batch distillers, but not forget that it’s the quality of product that got them, Jim Beam in this case, where it is.

When it comes to the craft food movement, one of the operating assumptions is that smaller is better. Corporate ownership and large-scale production are not only karmically bad, but they guarantee an inferior product. Two guys carving up meat in a rented kitchen, we’re told, will always do better than Oscar Mayer.

You see, what I do, what I’ve always done, is set a sugar cube in a glass and then introduce bitters. Set the thin orange slices in like this. Yes,you see, and the cherry, a maraschino, at its middle and wait until the sugar takes on this burnt brown stain. Then water it and muddle it until you’ve got this mixture you see and then well, yes, so ever slowly dribble whiskey down the glass. Then stir and stir and stir.