Cutbacks? Yes. Cheap Scotch? No Thanks.
ASKED by an interviewer for The Paris Review whether he favored Scotch or bourbon, William Faulkner replied, “Between Scotch and nothing, I’ll take Scotch.”
Ron Burgundy, the local news icon portrayed by Will Ferrell in “Anchorman,” was less grudging and more enthusiastic. For a long time I inclined toward the Faulknerian view, preferring bourbon, a cold beer or a dry martini to a lukewarm finger of pale amber whisky (as opposed to the Americanized whiskey). But nowadays, especially as autumn turns to winter, it’s Scotch or nothing.
And while I am happy to practice austerity in other matters — no lumps of coal if you’re bad this year, children; we’re cutting down on fossil fuels, which also means if you’re good you’ll get rechargeable batteries but no toys to put them in — nothing is not really an option.
And neither, frankly, is a blended jug with a bagpipe player on the cover. I want a single malt with a name I can’t pronounce and a creamy, austere label that tells a complicated story about ancient sherry casks and peat and heather and weird little islands full of taciturn Presbyterians. I want what is perhaps the only luxury product manufactured in a place notorious for thrift. I like to mix my vice with at least a vaporous pretense of virtue.
Sometimes I add water. Sometimes, heretically, an ice cube or even a handful. Snobbery is a requirement (maybe also a perquisite) of my job, so I refrain, since I never drink on duty, from flights of eloquence about the various notes and finishes and smoky nuances or honeyed implications of my drink.
I don’t necessarily seek out the most esoteric or expensive bottles. I am very happy with 12-year-old Macallan. Also with Lagavulin, or Laphroaig, or Dalwhinnie. Between Glenlivet and nothing, I’ll take Glenlivet. A while ago my friend Scott came down from Maine with something called Caol Ila that he picked up at the New Hampshire state liquor store. The tall, slim-shouldered bottle was lovely to behold and the name was agreeably preslurred, more pleasant to pronounce with each glass. It didn’t last long.
The bottle that Scott traditionally brings when he comes with his family for Thanksgiving is generally gone before the leftover turkey. But its passing — leaving a mild and pleasant hangover in its wake — inaugurates the season of holiday malt-gathering.
As Christmas approaches, I browse the shelves of the liquor stores and pick out a bottle to bring to my mother’s house and one or two to keep in my kitchen, nestled amid the coffee beans and clementines. I’m not much for parties or enforced conviviality, but in the right company, with a wee dram filming the bottom of an old jelly jar, an ordinary December evening takes on the coloring of a Robert Burns poem. Nothing could be better.
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