Ode to Bourbon

credit: photograph by Michael Sean, Nonstock, courtesy of Jupiterimages

Walker percy’s 1975 classic essay on bourbon praises the aesthetic of swilling that “little explosion of Kentucky U.S.A. sunshine … and the hot bosky bite of Tennessee summertime.” Per Percy, “Bourbon does for me what that piece of cake did for Proust.” It would be a challenge to find a Southerner without a good bourbon story. If it’s not your libation of choice, your father drank it, or your mother cooked with it, simply calling it whiskey, or your grandfather had a secret eggnog recipe calling for bourbon poured with a heavy hand. With this in mind, and drawing inspiration from Percy, G&G asked four writers to meditate on the matter and lend their voices to four modern-day odes to bourbon. Beloved humorist Roy Blount, Jr., raised in Georgia, author of the recently published Long Time Leaving: Dispatches from Up South, is a regular on National Public Radio’s “A Prairie Home Companion” and “Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me!” Acclaimed novelist Donna Tartt is a Mississippi native, now at work on her third novel from the quiet of rural Virginia. John T. Edge, dubbed the “Faulkner of Southern food” by the Miami Herald, is director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, an institution of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. Chef John Currence is owner of the Oxford, Mississippi, restaurant and bar City Grocery, and is a frequent contributor to G&G, writing about hunting and culinary arts. For these writers, as well as the majority of Southerners, dating to the earliest settlers, this homegrown beverage has the ability to transcend the liquor cabinet into the spirit of the South.

TENNESSEE SIPPING WHISKEY
Getting to the bottom of a good bottle
by Roy Blount, Jr.

You should never drink whiskey alone, unless there’s nobody else around and you have research to do involving drinking whiskey —in this case, trying to get to the bottom of why I like whiskey so much. But not to the bottom of any of the three bottles involved in this research. If I were to reach bottle bottom and enlightenment simultaneously, or concurrently, I might not feel the same way about my conclusions, or even remember them, in the morning.

My research so far: a sip of Jack Daniel’s, a sip of Wild Turkey, and a sip of Bulleit Bourbon, which is new to me. They are all good. Plenty good enough. I like those single-malt scotches and special reserve bourbons, but unless somebody else is serving them, they cost too much for me to enjoy.

One thing about whiskey is, it has so many great names. Old Overholt, the Famous Grouse, Black Bush, Heaven Hill, Tullamore Dew. And let’s face it, it’s what they drink in cowboy movies. You don’t see white hats or black hats tossing back shots of vodka or rum or taking a bottle of Pinot Grigio to the table.

Usually, when I drink whiskey it’s Jack Daniel’s, Tennessee sipping whiskey. I just had a sip from the bottle, and it was good. But you know what Jack Daniel’s doesn’t have that Wild Turkey and this Bulleit Bourbon do? A cork. A cork is a great thing in a whiskey bottle for the pleasure of pulling it out. Let’s see if I can spell the sound: f-toong. That’s if you pull it straight out. If you give it a little twist as you pull it, there’s a squeak — no, a chirp, a tweet even — that drowns out the f and even the t. Interesting. That never really registered with me before. Sort of squeeoong.

A good thing about whiskey is that you can drink more of it than you can martinis. “Razor-blade soup” is what somebody once called a good dry martini, and I enjoy one (not flavored with chocolate or whatever — bleh!), but two of them is about a half of one too much for me. I can’t remember ever doing anything rousing or having any very interesting conversation after two martinis. On the other hand, I can have two or three whiskeys, occasionally (never more than six or seven nights a week), and get relaxed rather than poleaxed. I can even write. See? Drive, no, but there’s no way you can run over anybody while writing.

Maybe I should work up something to say when I take a sip, or, okay, a slug, of whiskey. In Easy Rider, Jack Nicholson says this: “NICK...NICK...NICK, ff ff, INDIANS!” That’s a little too elaborate for me. Not to mention ethnically insensitive. Here’s to everybody! Whoops! Or, no, this is more cowboy: Whoopee!

I like Wild Turkey, and this Bulleit isn’t at all bad, and, by the way, the Bulleit comes in a flask-shaped bottle that is pretty cool. Jack Daniel’s, however, is just eighty proof, whereas the Bulleit is ninety, and this Wild Turkey I have is — whoa — 101. So you can drink more of the Jack Daniel’s. How much more? Well, I never said I could drink and do percentages.

Love those corks, though. Too much. I’ve pulled them so many times now tonight, trying to decide which one has the better tone, that they’ve lost their music. Kinda sad. I’ve worn them down. They’re not tight anymore.

I am, though. Just to the point where I’m feeling sorry for corks and have forgotten what exactly I was researching. But I enjoyed it. Do I live near here?