To Single Malts & Good Blends

Since I was of legal drinking age, the alcohol of choice has always been whisky. I love my whisky. Rather than drunken debauchery, it has always been easy nights of tasting. I'm not particularly sure why people would want to get smashed on good whisky. Such a waste, don't you think? Partying and drinking shouldn't be about getting drunk till one is embarrassingly flat out or buzzed till one becomes a prick. Sure, we might have done that at what...20 years old...but not now certainly. The point has always been to check out the different whiskies for their unique characteristics, to flesh out how they grow and mature to adopt different colors, texture and nose.

We've had such wonderful bottles in 2011. Tasted some excellent years from the various distilleries, and even more from our hosts' private collections through the year-end festive feasting and get-togethers. Can't wait to discover even more exciting flavors and characteristics from the various regions.

"In January 1920 it became illegal throughout the United States to manufacture, transport, sell or possess - but not to purchase or consume - alcohol. For all the recalcitrance with which Americans greeted it, Prohibition was not foisted upon an entirely unwilling population. When the national law was passed in 1919, thirty-three of the forty-eight states were already dry. 

Reformers saw Prohibition as a necessary instrument of social improvement -  a way to help the poor and needy help themselves. They associated alcohol with urbanization, with violence, laziness and corruption, and with unwelcome immigrants. Sober men, thought Prohibitionists, would be better Americans. They would stop beating their wives, hold down jobs, go to church (preferably a Protestant church), save their pennies. A sober society would be patriotic, stable, pious and prosperous.  

Warren Gamaliel Harding, the Republican President elected in 1920, viewed Prohibition in much the same light as most of his fellow Americans, who were virtuous enough to praise Prohibition but not quite virtuous enough to practise it. Harding may have voted in the Senate to ratify Prohibition but in private he had no intention of abiding by its strictures. He could see nothing wrong with his own fondness for whisky, especially when it was accompanied by a well-chewed cigar and a few poker-playing cronies. Prohibition was a little like an unpleasant-tasting medicine: people recognized its merits and uses, but if they did not think they were sick (and very few did) they were unwilling to swallow it themselves. As a New York World satire went, 'Prohibition is an awful flop. / We like it... It don't prohibit worth a dime, / Nevertheless we're for it'.  

The reformers had also failed to foresee that once alcohol was illegal it would take on an irresistible glamour. Rather than encouraging people to stop drinking, Prohibition made them want to drink. Writers like Scott Fitzgerald rhapsodized over forbidden cocktails like 'the iridescent exhilaration of absinthe frappé, crystal and pearl in green glasses' or 'gin fizzes [the] colour of green and silver'; the sparkle of champagne suddenly gave drinkers a delightful new sensation of naughtiness; liveried bell-hops rushed up and down hotel staircases bearing soda, buckets of crushed ice and thrillingly discreet brown-paper packages. The popular 1920 song said it all: 'You Cannot Make Your Shimmy Shake on Tea'. " 

~ "Anything Goes" by Lucy Moore.