The Year of Drinking Adventurously

Jeff Cioletti

Description

A long-time beverage editor, writer, and expert guides readers through fifty-two weeks of drinking and discovery to ultimately demystify the liquor aisle.

You want a little adventure in your life. And why not? With thousands of breweries and distilleries in the United States, there are more choices than ever on tap and behind the bar. So many, that you’re a little bit intimidated.

But throughout the course of a year you can learn to impress your friends by becoming a pub savant with The Year of Drinking Adventurously, a guide to getting out of your beverage comfort zone once a week for a year. Each of the fifty-two chapters features the story behind a unique beer, spirit, cocktail or wine, designed to broaden your drinking horizons. Some correspond with specific seasons or holidays, encouraging you to forget the million-dollar marketing-supported “conventional wisdom” and drink against the grain. It’s Cinco de Mayo? There’s much more to the celebration than lime-enhanced lager and shots of rotgut tequila. St. Patrick’s Day? Do you really want to be the 700th person of the evening to order a green-tinted brew and a shot of cheap whiskey?

The Year of Drinking Adventurously takes the social imbiber on a journey into the exciting and unknown—one week at a time.

Sujets

• Cuisine
• Cuisine par ingrédients
• Alcoholic Beverages
• Beverages
• Cooking

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 24 novembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781630267599
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE
YEAR OF DRINKING ADVENTUROUSLY

52 WAYS TO GET OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE
By
JEFF CIOLETTI
T URNER P UBLISHING
Turner Publishing Company
424 Church Street Suite 2240 Nashville, Tennessee 37219
445 Park Avenue 9th Floor New York, New York 10022
www.turnerpublishing.com
Copyright 2015 by Jeff Cioletti. All rights reserved.
The Year of Drinking Adventurously
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone]. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to Turner Publishing Company, 424 Church Street, Suite 2240, Nashville, Tennessee, [phone], fax [phone], E-mail: [e-mail].
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and the author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
Cover design: Maddie Cothren Book design: Nathalie Ouederni
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cioletti, Jeff.
The year of drinking adventurously : 52 weeks, 52 ways to get out of your comfort zone / by Jeff Cioletti.
pages cm
1. Alcoholic beverages--History. 2. Drinking of alcoholic beverages. I. Title.
TP520.C56 2015
641.2 1--dc23
2015009483
[[9781630267582]]
Printed in the United States of America
15 16 17 18 19 20 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my wife, Craige
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
WEEKS 1-52
WEEK 1 FROM THE HIGHLANDS TO THE ISLANDS-THE SEARCH FOR SCOTCH
WEEK 2 CAPTURING THE AMERICAN SPIRIT: BOURBON (WITH A SPLASH OF RYE)
WEEK 3 NORTHERN EXPOSURE-CANADIAN WHISKY
WEEK 4 LAND OF RISING PROMINENCE-JAPANESE WHISKY
WEEK 5 THE WORLD S MOST POPULAR SPIRIT NO ONE S EVER HEARD OF-BAIJIU
WEEK 6 THE LIGHTER SIDE OF CHINESE IMBIBING-HUANGJIU
WEEK 7 VALENTINE S DAY JUST GOT HOTTER WITH CHILI PEPPER BEER
WEEK 8 BEER RYE-VOLUTION
WEEK 9 STARING DOWN THE BARREL
WEEK 10 BELLE EPOQUE REDUX-TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY ABSINTHE
WEEK 11 EIRE WE GO AGAIN-IRISH WHISKEY
WEEK 12 KEEPING IT REAL: CASK-CONDITIONED ALES
WEEK 13 SAK IN SPRING
WEEK 14 IT S SHO(CHU) TIME
WEEK 15 A BRIEF SOJU SOJOURN
WEEK 16 PRUNO GETS PAROLE
WEEK 17 GETTING A GRIP ON GRAPPA
WEEK 18 BEYOND CINCO DE MAYO: SAVORING TEQUILA AND MEZCAL
WEEK 19 BEFORE THERE WAS BEER, THERE WAS PULQUE
WEEK 20 WHY SO BITTER?
WEEK 21 THE FORCE OF FERNET
WEEK 22 RESPECT YOUR ELDERFLOWER
WEEK 23 THE SHINING-MOONSHINE GOES LEGIT
WEEK 24 GIN UP (AND TOSS THE TONIC)
WEEK 25 OH, SHERRY
WEEK 26 PONDERING PORT
WEEK 27 MAD ABOUT MADEIRA
WEEK 28 CRACKING THE COGNAC CONNOISSEUR CODE
WEEK 29 PUCKER UP-THE SOUR SIDE OF BEER
WEEK 30 AND SO IT GUEUZE
WEEK 31 ALL THE TRAPPIST TRAPPINGS
WEEK 32 MAKE A BEE-LINE FOR MODERN MEAD
WEEK 33 THE WINE TASTER S BLUES
WEEK 34 ANDEAN ALCOHOL-PISCO
WEEK 35 PULP NOVEL-SOLBESO
WEEK 36 CHICAGO IS . . . MAL RT S KIND OF TOWN
WEEK 37 CACHA A-RUM S BRAZILIAN COUSIN
WEEK 38 CERVEZAS Y MAS: CHAVELAS AND MICHELADAS
WEEK 39 NO FILTER-COFFEE BEER
WEEK 40 HOW BOUT THESE APPLES SPANISH CIDER
WEEK 41 FROZEN FRUIT-ICE CIDER
WEEK 42 WORLDS COLLIDE-HOPPED CIDER AND WHISKEY
WEEK 43 REVITALIZING VODKA
WEEK 44 THERE WILL BE BLOOD-REINVENTING MARY
WEEK 45 THE WALL COMES DOWN FOR BERLINER WEISSE
WEEK 46 BRING ON THE BRINE-ENTER THE PICKLEBACK
WEEK 47 PASS THE SWEET POTATOES
WEEK 48 PUTTING THE BEER BACK IN GINGER BEER
WEEK 49 AQUAVIT-SCANDINAVIA S WATER OF LIFE
WEEK 50 TIS THE SEASON FOR GL HWEIN (AND GL GG)
WEEK 51 TIMELESS TIKI
WEEK 52 RINGING IN THE NEW-ALSATION STYLE
EPILOGUE
COCKTAILING ADVENTUROUSLY
ABSINTHE
AQUAVIT
BAIJIU
BITTERS
BLOODY MARY
CACHACA
GIN
MOONSHINE
PISCO
SOLBESO
TIKI
NOTES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
INTRODUCTION
CHEERS TO THE YEAR


Few words in the English language are as loaded as the word comfort. We seek it in our relationships, our jobs, and, in a more literal sense, our furniture, our vehicles, and the seats we choose on a plane. That s all, undeniably, important and positive stuff. But there s also a dark side to striving for comfort. It may be cozy like a warm blanket, but it s also the refuge of the intimidated-those who fear the unknown. I m not judging or pointing fingers; it s a notion that exists in all of us to a certain extent, and it manifests in some more than others.
Who hasn t, on at least a few occasions, been told to get out of their comfort zone by a professor, a parent, a partner, a boss, or an annoying platitude hanging on the wall of the boss s office?
Eye-roll-inducing motivational posters notwithstanding, getting a little helpful nudge beyond the realm of the familiar once in a while is a critical catalyst for personal growth and one of the keys to living a healthy and fulfilling life.
Injecting a little adventure into your existence doesn t have to mean jumping off a bridge with an elastic harness strapped to your leg or tumbling out of a plane with nothing between you and the cold, hard ground eight thousand feet below. While bungee jumpers and skydivers are fully deserving of our utmost respect and admiration, most of us will live out our days perfectly content having never experienced the physical free fall. It s the tiny, individual components of our everyday routines that offer the best untapped opportunities for our own adventurous leaps-the films we watch, the books we read, the roads we drive, the food we eat and, of course, the beverages we drink.
If you haven t figured it out already, the next few hundred pages will be making a case for that last one. Otherwise, my friend, you ve probably picked up the wrong book. Thanks for stopping by!
Let s face it, going to a bar or browsing the aisles at a liquor store can be an overwhelming experience. There are more beverage options today than there were at any other point in the history of alcohol consumption and settling on one is the very definition of daunting. The great twentieth-century philosophers collectively known as Devo once said something about us really wanting freedom from choice.
How many times have you or someone you know sat on a stool, stared blankly at the magnificent array of artfully designed glass containers or tap handles on the bar and then, when pressed to make a decision, sheepishly uttered something like vodka tonic?
There s nothing inherently shameful in that. We all retreat behind what we know. And if you ve got a regular go-to drink that you love, by all means keep on loving it. But also ask yourself why you love it. Is it because (a) You ve tried everything else there is to try and, yep, it s the best; (b) You don t put much thought into something that, for you, is nothing more than an alcohol delivery system; or (c) It s just easier to default to the approachably familiar.
If you answered A, there s a 99.99 percent chance that you re lying. If you d tried everything under the sun, you wouldn t be reading this because the human liver couldn t handle it and corpses can t read. If you answered B, you also wouldn t be reading this right now because a person indifferent about what and how one drinks wouldn t have picked up a book about imbibing adventurously in the first place. I would wager that most of you fall into the C category.
The reason I m betting on approachable familiarity is that a dozen or so years ago, that would have been my response. I d even admit to having been a B in those days as well.
It wasn t until I joined the editorial staff of a beverage magazine in early 2003 that I had even an inkling of what to order beyond what social convention had conditioned me to consume. In college, it was whatever the cheapest beer was-$2 a pitcher at a bar or $8.99 for a case of twenty-four at a retail store. Beer was something that was not meant to taste good, and for nearly the first decade of my legal adult drinking, I believed that.
Around the same time I discovered, on a spring break trip to London, what we call hard cider. The moment I got home, I didn t hesitate to integrate it into my admittedly limited drinking repertoire. The sweeter it was, the better. And that was a good thing, because in the 1990s, that was pretty much all one could get on this side of the pond-cloyingly sugary offerings that may or may not have been fermented from actual, harvested-from-the-tree apples. This was, I must point out, a good fifteen years before the start of the true cider revolution in North America (which you ll read a bit about on some of the pages that follow). That meant that even this iteration of oppressively sweet alcoholic sugar water was relegated to inauthentic Irish and English pubs. Once I left my college town and those places proved fewer and farther between, it was time to adopt a new drink to order in grown-up bars. Hello, gin and tonic. Don t get me wrong; gin is an absolutely wonderful spirit, as you ll read in week twenty-eight. But when you re a broke twenty-five-year-old scrounging enough pennies for a