"Whiskey"

Just caught an interesting episode on History or Discovery or one of those nerd channels I love so much! The subject? Whiskey.

According to this episode, whiskey distilleries are now in a trend like microbreweries of the last two decades. Think of it, prior to 1990, microbrews were virtually unheard of. Now, it's pretty common for a restaurant to have their own brew created on site. Will the same happen for hard alcohol?

This question was answered by the head brewmaster at the Flying Dog Brewery in Colorado. Flying Dog has turned out some of the highest quality microbrews the country has to offer... but do they just naturally make the leap to distilling whiskey? Apparently so.

Turns out Flying Dog is creating their own whiskey. Whiskey, bourbons from Kentucky and Tennessee, scotch from (duh) Scotland and a wide variety of Canadian whiskies have long adorned the shelves of private liquor cabinets. But the Rocky Mountains aren't known for their whiskies. Until now... I guess this kinda makes sense. After all, water is the largest component of whiskey. And we've long been told the crystal clear streams of the Rockies are flowing with the cleanest water on earth. So, maybe Lynchburg, Tennessee won't have the corner on the market much longer.

What I thought was most profound about this episode was the last 20 seconds. In that time, an expert discussed how whiskies have always been considered an after dinner drink. But no longer... now, you can have an aperitif of whiskey, some milder whiskies for the afternoon and (if I'm lyin' I'm dyin'), he suggested some "mid to late morning whiskies."

Not sure about you, but if hard liquor was any part of my day, the rest of that day would be shot. When we start pouring out a snort of Uncle Barleycorn into our morning coffee, we can pretty much kiss the work day good-bye.

And yet? The idea of a mid-morning whiskey seemed as normal as anything to the speaker. He didn't -seem- like the W.C. Fields sort of drunk, and he obviously knows the ins and outs of booze more than I, but do we really want to encourage people to start drinking hard liquor in the mornings? This simply is just a bad idea.