Personal preferences are
odd. Or, as the saying explains,
“One man’s meat is another man’s poison.” For example, I’ve never understood
why people like to drink wine. Wine, red or white, tastes like vinegar to me.
In fact, I’d rather drink cider vinegar, especially sweetened with honey and
diluted with water.
Oh, I used to drink wine
and sometimes still do to be sociable, but I never really cared about it. That
changed when we moved to Kentucky in 2000. Prior to moving, we visited Lexington to look at houses and
stayed in a small hotel near downtown. We had arrived late, so we checked in,
took our luggage to our room, and came back to the small restaurant for an
evening meal. All the tables – there weren’t many – were taken so we sat at the
bar to wait our turn.
The bartender engaged us in
conversation and when he learned that we were moving to Kentucky, he began to
sing the praise of bourbon. When said I’d never cared for it, the barkeep
poured a finger of bourbon into a glass for me to try. “Well, now, I didn’t know that bourbon could taste
that good,” I said. He replied “You’ve just never tasted real bourbon, Kentucky bourbon,” and poured a different sample for me to
taste.
We waited quite a while for
a table, long enough for me to have been transformed into a Kentucky bourbon
lover. I had tasted, and loved, bourbons from several Kentucky distilleries.
Each bourbon had a distinctive flavor, but they all shared the clean, bright
taste and pleasant tingling afterglow that mark good bourbon. (Wine lovers might
claim that drinking bourbon is akin to drinking mouthwash.) My teacher told me
that it’s the limestone-filtered water that makes Kentucky bourbon the best.
From then on, Kentucky
bourbon has been my drink of choice. In fact, I believe I’ll have one right
now. Here’s to you!
What is bourbon?
The importance of
limestone-filtered water to bourbon-making:
Copyright
2014 by Shirley Domer
2 comments:
I'm with on this one, Shirley. Sometimes, an ale is what tastes good, but most often it is bourbon. We will just have to wait to discover why that is. Something about living in the Midwest I'm guessing.
Here's hoping that is doesn't have anything to do with Mitch McConnell. Go Grimes!
Just hope the affluent Chinese don't drive the price up any further!
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