MAKE NO MISTAKE, I have nothing against wine. When I visit my wife’s relatives in Tuscany, I drink their Brunello with an urgency that could be better addressed by an intravenous drip bag. Likewise, I have no quarrel with beer. These six-pack abs didn’t build themselves. They’re imported–from Milwaukee.
But there is only one drink for which I’ll wax purple: bourbon. It is the ideal spirit–1.5 ounces of perfection distilled in an amber elixir (1.5 being Health and Human Service’s definition of “one drink”–though in my house, HHS obviously isn’t doing the pouring). Bourbon isn’t as eager to please as rum, nor is it as buttoned-up as Scotch. Vodka is schizophrenic–by its very definition, it’s colorless and odorless, so it takes on all the properties of whatever touched it last. And gin is so, well, ginny.
