Like my dear, esteemed colleague Ted Asregadoo, I’m fond of liquor, particularly the hard stuff. Unlike Ted, I tend to approach my drinking with a “seasons” philosophy; although bourbon is my favorite drink, I only buy it in the fall and winter, when its punchy warmth feels right against the frost and harsh winds of six more months under the New Hampshire snow. When the ice melts and the landscape turns green again, I’m into tonic drinks and beer, dropping slices of lime in my vodka (and cucumber in my gin) as I swat away the bugs and count down the days until autumn.
I’m also something of a liquor loyalist — partly because I love the stuff, and partly because I “earned” a free bottle cradle during one of the brand’s anniversaries, I’m a Knob Creek man. I buy a big-ass bottle when fall sets in, drop it in the cradle on my kitchen counter, and refill as necessary. For this reason — and because I live in the land of state-run liquor stores, where BevMo is a distant, shining beacon of boozy choice — I wasn’t sure I’d be up for joining Ted on Bourbon Street this year. In the end, though, temptation won out, and even though I still have a couple inches of Knob Creek left in fall’s first bottle, I headed out to my local liquor outlet last week and took a gamble on a container of (rÄ«)1, a newish brand of rye whiskey.
You might be saying — as the niggling Ted did — that rye isn’t bourbon, and shouldn’t be allowed in a series called Bourbon Street, but as the sheriff of this little burg, I make the laws. And anyway, rye and bourbon are linked, both as close liquor cousins and by history — many of the classic bourbon drinks were made with rye before Prohibition, and though it’s not as popular as it used to be, rye is a distinctly Northeastern drink; since I live in a distinctly Northeastern area, I figured (rÄ«)1 would be just about perfect for my first trip down Bourbon(ish) Street. (more…)
