what:
American whiskey
Kentucky, USA
where:
Kneeland
4201 Versailles Road
Lexington, Kentucky
when:
derby season
character:
Bourbon is a broken-in white oxford; its top-button perpetually undone,
its sleeves perpetually rolled to elbows. One may dress it up—tuck
it into a pair of suit pants, throw a coat over it, twist a tie loosely
around its neck—or down. One may as easily wear it to the church,
as to the track; starch and press it, or grab it straight out of the bottom
drawer; spend a mint on a fine new one, or turn to the same reliable old
shirt from university. Yet no matter how fine the material, no matter how
stiff the press, no matter how one adorns it, there will come a time at
the end of the day when the coat and tie come off, the top button switches
off, sleeves are rolled to elbow, and Bourbon does what this gift from the
Old South does best: slow the day down, settle comfortably into late-afternoon,
and breath easy.
tastes like:
Your
grandfather’s best World War II story.
pairs nicely with:
2:04 pm on Sunday afternoon, the (capital-O) Old (capital-S) South, in all
its sweetly-sad charming glory; pretty much anything recorded by Louis Armstrong
prior to 1942, rolled up white sleeves and a loosened tie; 2:28 pm on that
same Sunday afternoon; betting heavy on longshots, betting heavy on longshots
that have irresistible names involving either foreign language puns or obscure
jazz references, and freshly shredded betting slips; 3:04 on that same Sunday
afternoon; a silver-plated hip flask with one’s initials engraved
on one side and the date of one’s 21st birthday on the other, a semi-decent
vintage hip flask with an unspecified ‘Class of ‘34’ engraved
across one side, and a rather dingy old flask with nothing but several rather
large dents on one side; a soft lazy sunset coming down over the last race
and your last drink on that same Sunday afternoon, a nice vintage cigar,
that dull lingering ache over the one that got away, and ice.