With the advent of Bad Economic Times, whiskey sales are up.
http://www.latimes.com/...
It's not all whiskeys, either. It's the bourbons, the American and Canadian whiskeys, the ones that please my palate and my personality. I have nothing against Scotch or the people who drink it, though I find it odd why lawyers would prefer a drink with a subtle flavor of smoked fine cow manure. Irish is good in coffee, of course, but for me a bucket glass with three fingers of a fine New World whiskey makes me a new man. The fact that that new man is also thirsty can make things interesting, at times disturbing but never boring.
Whiskey is the perfect drink for Americans during hard times. You don't sit around drinking Cosmopolitans while you think about lay-offs at work. Apple martinis just don't go with those paper-and-pencil moments when you're planning job-search Mondays. All those fruity or creamy liqueurs just don't do it when you're in the grocery store stretching your unemployment check. Southern Comfort is a little different, of course, but it's not really whiskey and only the Reserve has any whiskey in it. I will attest to seeing a couple of people use a passed back-and-forth Southern Comfort bottle to get over flunking a college Chemistry mid-term; they later punched their dorm door into splinters. They were girls and their behavior was considered unusual in those days.
All those white liquors and tequila shooters are for good times and joyful behavior. Whiskey is for serious drinking.
It took me a while to get up and running with whiskey, of course, though it was present at my conception. My Dad, possessor of a Masters Degree in Business Administration and a decorated war veteran, was earthy in a way that a man who spent his youth in Great Depression poverty can be. Though I'd heard the story before, he decided on my wedding day to tell my wife how a bottle of Jim Beam Bourbon Whiskey at a Christmas party made my Mom "forget," which led to my appearance the following September. My wife had already heard the story but she indulged her new father-in-law. My aunt, who was standing nearby and had never heard the story, was appalled.
I grew up in southern California, and like most men of my age cohort the first alcohol to pass my lips was Coors beer. We took pride in this because Coors was limited to west coast distribution at the time, therefore west coasters adopted it as their own. Despite its prevalence and availability to any reasonably-connected teenager, I didn't like it. With the vacant-headed decisiveness bred into spoiled suburban youngsters, I decided that I simply did not like beer. I'd sip at a single can and rarely finish it.
It took until my senior year of high school and a trip to Mexico with my school's madrigal singers before I discovered that not all beer is a urine-tasting soda pop. The tour company provided breakfast and dinner to the choirs but we were all on our own for lunch. Lots of the other folks went to the local stores to buy snack food but I went to the restaurant in the hotel next door with a couple of guys from my choir. We were always seated on the outside deck and warm breezes from the valleys made us relax and generous. I distinctly remember the waiter shaking his head as we considered Superior or Tecate, so I asked him for his recommendation. He suggested Bohemia and to this day I refer to Bohemia as "Mexican lunch." We never ordered food but I don't think the waiter minded bringing "Tres mas Bohemia, por favor," to the laughing Americanos because I'm fairly sure we were tipping him somewhere between 75 and 100% per round.
Being drunk in public wasn't a problem since we were among teenagers away from home. The behavior of other young men by the Olympic-size swimming pool, and they were quite sober, covered any embarrassing moments. Well, most embarrassing moments. We did have to put one of our crowd to bed after he insisted on having a real Mexican Margarita; he was a fourth who came along one day and misunderstood our mission. We knew he couldn't maintain and he was exhibiting a certain drooling horny-ness.
My daily Mexican lunch wasn't my first drunk, of course. That was reserved for an unfortunate lack of choice at a drama cast party during my Freshman year. There was Coors, natch, and there was something embarrassing like Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill. As I've said, Coors and I were not friends so strawberry-flavored wine seemed acceptable. Once.
While whiskey is my favorite and is certainly right for these times and the times ahead, I have been through the other liquors. There was a Rum and Coke phase through college and a Tom Collins phase right after. There were many weekend Margaritas made in my senior-year apartment once somebody came back from Christmas break with a blender. I became a bartender after college (BA in hand and I didn't have a clue what to do with myself) at about the same time as Kamikazis became popular. My mentor bartender partner was very big on us having one at the end of lunch-rushes. I'm pretty sure he started his shifts with one, too.
Because I was a bartender in a college bar (Look, Trojan, I'm not impressed with your Daddy's Gold Card. I have my own Gold Card. Now cash, yes cash, has my attention.), I sampled all of the beers-of-the-moment. If you get college guys to like your beer, they are branded for life, just like Republican politics. I remember St. Pauli Girl sent a St. Pauli Girl to the roll-out night. Her big chest would probably have been a positive at a business bar but it failed in a college bar. I think a lot of the frat boys thought she looked too much like their moms and that made them feel all creepy inside.
Now Corona was a hit, though I have never understood the attraction to a beer that requires a lime squeeze to be palatable. I'm sure some of it was the long-neck bottles; sorority girls giving drunken hand jobs to their beer bottles on the dance floor was inspiration, I'm sure, to many young men later in the privacy of their rooms at the House.
Nevertheless, I have always returned to whiskey. There's a certain cache to whiskey. Whiskey has a way of smoothing-over rough times and whiskey is what is shared between a man and a woman when they are going to get playful or truthful. There's a reason Rick Blaine was hammered on whiskey while he waited for Ilsa Lund to slip away from her husband and seek him out. There's a reason Bogart and Lauren Bacall always drank whiskey in To Have and Have Not and not rum, like Bogart's rummy sidekick. Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade drank whiskey; their readers know that their views on life were not bright and sunny and optimistic, to say the least. Years ago, a female friend of mine bellied up to a bar with me and snapped off an order that demanded attention and respect from all who heard it, "Double Turkey on the rocks and back it up when it's empty. (turns to me) Hey, I'm buying. What'll you have?" She had a perpetual four o'clock in the morning voice and I miss her still.
So I expect whiskey sales will continue to go up while we all wait for the stimulus to stimulate and mortgage relief to relieve. I have a back-up bottle of V.O. in a kitchen cabinet in case California decides to pay teachers with an i.o.u. but if you're buying, I'll take a Crown Royal. None of that Canadian Club, thanks (why someone thinks it's a good idea to toss a shovel-full of St. Lawrence River mud into every vat confuses me). I know I should favor Jim Beam or Jack Daniels to show my patriotism, but Canadian is just a little lighter and smoother than American. Besides, I remember when the Canadians took in our people in Iran and helped them escape.