An acquired taste.
I met a man at a party a while back who took a lot of pride in the way he ordered a martini. They say everybody has a special way to make one of those. But he told me that he had to acquire a taste for the olives. Now, I'd heard that before, and I never stop wondering why if you don't like something in the beginning, you go to all the trouble to acquire a taste for it. Anyway he asked me if it was the same way with Bourbon whiskey. Did you have to acquire a taste for it? Not me, I said. I was born with a taste for Bourbon whiskey. That just happens to you naturally when your father is a master distiller. And your grandpa, too.

Some people have to work a little harder.
I got to thinking about a friend of mine who is a dyed-in-the-wool fan of fine Single Barrel Bourbon. Evan Williams Single Barrel Vintage, to be specific. He told me once that he started out drinking Bourbon back when he was in college and the guys would kick in for a pint of some cheap stuff and mix it with all kinds of things-soda pop, fruit juice and all that sweet stuff. That way he never really did taste the Bourbon, of course. (Probably a good thing, too.) When he got married and moved into his own little place with his new bride he went out to buy his first real bottle of Bourbon. Kind of a rite of passage he called it. So he went to the neighborhood spirits store and picked out a fifth of Bourbon whiskey. (That was back before the metric thing happened. Now it's all liters and point this and point that.)

Labels and taste. No connection.
He said he stood there for the longest time studying all the names and labels trying to find something that really looked like serious Bourbon. He finally settled on one that showed a picture of a still. He bought that one and for a year or so that was "his" brand. But then he got some doubts. The label on "his" brand said it was sour mash Bourbon. And he began noticing other labels that said things like "sweet mash" or "mellow mash" so he began to wonder if maybe those "other kinds" of mashes wouldn't taste better. He didn't know they were all sour mash, because that's what Bourbon is. He kind of describes those sampling years as sipping through the wilderness. And as he grew older, he found that good whiskey didn't need to be mixed with soda pop and other stuff. He actually started to enjoy the unique taste of Bourbon. Now he's an old coot and he prefers relaxing with a Bourbon and branch-just a splash of clear water over ice to open up the taste of his Evan Williams Single Barrel Vintage Bourbon. Might even sneak a cigar with it now and then if the Missus isn't around. So I guess to make a long story short, maybe he actually did acquire a taste for fine Bourbon. One thing for sure, reading all those labels didn't help him do it.

Parker Beam,
Master Distiller

P. S. Regarding "The Iconoclastic Cocktail", this feller is obviously not about to do anything that $%#@& silly to his Evan Williams Single Barrel Vintage Bourbon. I don't know why we ran that story. I'm going to have to talk to the editor.