An Imbiber’s Whiskey Primer
Over the holiday weekend a friend dragged me to one of those trendy nightclubs where pastel-colored cocktails cost a small fortune and everyone on the staff looks like they were plucked from the cast of "The Hills." It's the sort of place where one might order bourbon and be served Jack Daniel's instead. In fact, that's exactly what happened to the Imbiber and, frankly, I was nearly as disappointed as I was when Heidi and Spencer broke up for the sixth time.

I mean, really, shouldn't the Pretty People have to pass some sort of quiz before they let them behind the bar? As a service to those of you who don't understand why Jack-for-bourbon is a major bartender-ial faux pas, presenting an easy-to-use guide to the most popular types of whiskies...

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The Greatest Name in Bourbon

(NOTE: I got to hang out with Fred Noe at the Beam Brands event in Manhattan. Fred is the great-grandson of Jim Beam himself and – like his dad, Booker – one hell of a storyteller. What follows is an excerpt from my book about the time I met Booker Noe)

America’s most celebrated whiskey, of course, is bourbon, and the best-selling brand worldwide is Jim Beam. Ten years ago while working at a newspaper in Phoenix I had the pleasure of spending a few hours in the company of Beam’s grandson, Booker Noe, who passed away in February 2004. When I met Booker he was nearly 70 years old and carried his considerable weight around with the assistance of a wooden cane, but in all the ways that mattered he was still the same bourbon-swilling Kentucky boy who began learning the family business back in 1950.

“Our first label was called Old Tub, established in 1882,” Booker told me. “My grandfather started that label. That first label had a picture of a black man mashing the bourbon in a tub, so they called it Old Tub.”

He continued, “A lot of the bourbons are named ‘old’ something. Old Grand Dad. Old Crow. Old Tub. Old Bardstown.” I wondered aloud why that was, and without missing a beat Booker said: “Because they’re old.”

In 1964 Congress declared bourbon a “distinctive product of the United States.” Today, 98 percent of all the bourbon in the world is produced within a 60-mile radius of Bardstown, Kentucky, the home of Jim Beam. The first bourbon labeled Jim Beam appeared after Prohibition.*[footnote: *From 1920 to 1933, the 18th Amendment made it illegal to manufacture, buy, sell, or transport liquor in the United States. It was thus a really shitty time to be a booze writer.] Beam-made bourbon, however, dates back to 1795, when Jacob Beam sold his first barrel of whiskey. The barrel, it must be noted, is the key to good bourbon. By law, whiskey cannot be labeled bourbon unless it has been aged for a minimum of two years in new, white oak barrels that can be used only once. These barrels define the whiskey, giving it its color and adding considerable complexity to the raw spirit in much the way barrel-aging impacts the character of wine.

Booker told me that the difference between a wine hangover and a bourbon hangover*[footnote: *The phrase “the hair of the dog that bit you” is widely believed to stem from an ancient Scottish superstition that called for treating dog bite wounds with actual hair from the offending mutts to stave off infection.] is that the histamines in wine make mornings after vino much, much worse. “Ohhh, yes,” he said. “I’ve had these terrible, terrible headaches on that wine when I get too much of it. My wife says it’s the histamines, so you got to take those antihistamines.”

He spoke of a night when he and the late Carl Beam were taste-testing a batch of two-year-old bourbon that wasn’t quite right. “We were sitting up in Carl’s office in this old beat-up wooden distillery,” Booker reminisced, “and we drank up all the whiskey that we had there. We were feeling pretty good then, so I says I got to go. I better go on in. But Carl goes over to this cabinet of his and pulls out a half pint, and we finished that off — one for the road, you know, which you can’t do no more, by the way.” When Carl called Booker the next day to see how he was doing, Booker groaned, “To tell you the damn truth, I got the bust-head.” The bust-head, he explained, is a hangover of such magnitude your head feels as if it might bust right open. I suspect that’s a fairly accurate description of the way many bourbon lovers felt the day ole Booker Noe called it a life and headed up to the Great Whiskey Bar in the Sky.

BOOZE AND LYRICS

— “The Gutterati?” by The Fratellis

Montecristo Ginger Mojito
1.5 oz Montecristo Spiced Rum
1.5 oz fresh lime juice
.5 oz ginger ale
6 mint leaves
3 slivers fresh ginger

Muddle mint, lime juice, and ginger in tall glass. Add rum and crushed ice, then shake. Top with ginger ale. Garnish with mint sprig and candied ginger slice.