The Three Ages of Alcohol
Or, an inept amateur’s attempt to navigate the chaos
O panoply! O embarrassment of riches! How is one to choose, when one is confronted with the multitudinous shelves of enticing and appealing bottles on display in the wine and spirits aisle of the local grocery store! Some of the paralysis which comes from an excess of options can, however, be allayed when one remembers that, as the proverb says, there is a time for everything, and everything in its season, and that the three main provinces in the kingdom of alcohol — namely, beer, wine, and whisky — correspond quite exactly to the three ages of man.
I fondly salute the youth, who ventures unexperienced into the brawl of ideas and boldly stakes his claim to a chair at the round table where the Great Conversation is raging endlessly forth. One of our local poets said that the youth is certain that all of the world’s problems can be solved with just a few hours’ talk. Our youth sallies forward, untried yet unafraid, in the company of his friends who will forge the course of the future with their words. In the great eternal forum of discussion, no idea is too sacred to be questioned, and no theory is too farfetched to be left unconsidered. Beer is, of course, the conversational lubricant of choice in these modern-day symposia, and perhaps the ancient Greeks would have been a little more wise if they had replaced wine with beer as the favored drink in their famous colloquies. As it is, they watered down their wine, which is a move in the right direction. Beer’s low alcohol content means that a great deal can be drunk before any ill effect sets in; it is purchased for a low price in lots of a dozen bottles or more, meaning everyone can drink, and talk, at their own pace; and beer’s easily apprehended range of flavors, its quickly understood variations, means that the talk will be less likely to veer off topic and get bogged down in discussions of the drink itself. Let the words flow on! What better drink is there than beer, to accompany the rhetorical flights and flourishes of youth at last aware of its own ability?
There is a time, however, when the youth grows into a man, when the power to choose one’s path in life ripens from a luxury to be contemplated to a necessity to be practiced. Cares multiply — cares of work, home, and family life, and in the day-to-day attention given to one’s responsibilities, a glass of wine at the dinner table may be the only alcohol one can expect to imbibe on a regular basis. But no matter — the province of wine is a rich land, to be explored gradually, carefully, and attentively, preferably with a loved one at one’s side. And what better way to teach the rising generation about the right use of alcohol than with a glass of wine at the family table? For it is here, among the rituals of the communal meal, that wine finds its true place; and it could be said that the proper way to drink in polite company is as important a lesson for children to learn as are the lessons of using a napkin or knife correctly — perhaps more important. Wine comes in bottles that can be consumed by two adults easily, but with little, if any, left over for the children — and this is a good thing; impetuous youth must learn to wait its turn, and the pleasures of full adulthood are not yet for the immature. And wine, with its nearly infinite subtleties of taste and quality, teaches an even greater, more humanitarian, lesson — that differences must be respected, even celebrated. What more important precept does the present have to bestow upon the future?
When life’s sun has passed its zenith, when the shining light of maturity begins to give way to the golden glow of advancing age — then is the time for whisky, golden as the sunset. One’s children are grown — one has the time to contemplate one’s life in its fullness, to evaluate the course that has been run. Will the words, well done, my good and faithful servant, be uttered as the spirit ascends from the only now just-visible grave? Such deeply critical evaluations require the input of another, one who is close, but who still has objective distance. Therefore whisky, the most masculine of drinks, is only ever shared with one’s closest friend, never with one’s wife. It is always drunk slowly, in small quantities. An invitation to drink whisky with a friend is an invitation to be slow together, an opportunity to savor the fleeting moments with sober-minded satisfaction. Such are the exclusive privileges of those who are advanced in years; for this reason whisky cannot be drunk sincerely by anyone who is under the age of fifty.
And now, at the end, a few words must be said about some other forms of alcoholic beverages which are encountered from time to time. There are a great number of mixed cocktails, perhaps an excessive number; but in general they tend to rely too much on sweetness and fancy ingredients to be taken seriously. They are most often served over copious amounts of ice, which practice prevents their flavors’ being properly understood, or even detected. They are appropriate, by their inherent silliness, to parties, where such things as little paper umbrellas, maraschino cherries, and pink plastic monkeys or flamingos fit well with a spirit of merry festivity. But over dinner, or during the subsequent talk, they are out of place. The host who serves his guest such a thing as a Mojito, or an Old-Fashioned, when he could have offered them wine, commits a grievous social faux pas. A special scowl must be directed towards the Bloody Mary, a disgusting attempt to allow people to decorously begin the process of getting sloshed as early as noon. Treating the good gift of alcohol this way, as a means to intoxication rather than a blessing to be savored with respect, leads inevitably to Everclear-soaked watermelons, gin drunk from paper bags, and those little bottles of fireball whisky that one finds on the ground around bus stops because no one can ever be bothered to throw them away properly.
What about liqueurs? There is a place for the old ones, such as Benedictine and Chartreuse, because the monks who make them won’t give away the recipe. But none of the others are at all difficult to produce at home. Like buying tomatoes in the summer, buying a liqueur is the quintessence of going about it wrong. Only our modern, consumerist society would ever think of going to the trouble of purchasing something which is, in essence, vodka with flavors and sugar mixed in — perhaps the rising tide of makers will lead by example, and show us the way that is right?
Now, forget all this, and just drink whatever you want.
William Collen writes about the arts and the human experience at RUINS. Find him on Twitter @william_collen.
I find this hilarious. Thank you!!!!