Judge Noah S. “Soggy” Sweat, Jr.,  law professor and Mississippi state representative, considering the difficult and divisive issue of regulating alcohol, worked for several years writing his “Whiskey Speech”. It lives-on as a nearly perfect example of political waffling:

If when you say “whiskey” you mean the devil’s brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean the evil drink that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, and despair, and shame and helplessness, and hopelessness, then certainly I am against it.

But, if when you say “whiskey” you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips, and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer; if you mean the stimulating drink that puts the spring in the old gentleman’s step on a frosty, crispy morning; if you mean the drink which enables a man to magnify his joy, and his happiness, and to forget, if only for a little while, life’s great tragedies, and heartaches, and sorrows; if you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars, which are used to provide tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitiful aged and infirm; to build highways and hospitals and schools, then certainly I am for it!

Repeal Day is December 5. How are you going to celebrate?

Wikipedia 

The good people at Jameson have put together a nice little piece of branded content showing how to experience their whiskey. From Pouring to Sipping: A Guide to Whiskey Tasting is an excellent primer featuring this accurate description of how people experience aroma:

 Often, recreational whiskey tasters describe the nose in terms of a memory or a metaphor: the hayloft in a barn, for example, or a summer night by a campfire…Part of the joy of participating in a whiskey tasting is finding creative new ways to describe what you’re experiencing, so it’s okay to let your inner creative writing major run wild.

While aroma is certainly evocative, and we all have those amazing moments when a combination of scents wafting out of a glass makes vivid a long-lost memory, poetics is not what we do.

Aroma Academy attaches specific vocabulary to distinct, individual aromas. Doing that doesn’t limit anyone ability to wax poetic. It just enables working drinks professionals to precisely identify and describe a fine beverage.

Poetry after that.

Three years ago the headline was a 4% drop in rum’s market share as brown spirits — particularly bourbon — gained in popularity.

Today, aged rum is gaining popularity as an alternative brown spirit. You heard it here…well, not first, exactly, but pretty early: sipping aged rums is going to be a major thing very soon.

Rum is enjoying the same craft distilling Renaissance that has revolutionized gin and revived mezcal. But more than that, the normalization of diplomatic relations with Cuba is going to open the United States to exotic (and highly marketable) rum brands previously unavailable. And if you think Cuban rum, in keeping with communism’s tendency to cut corners, is going to be industrial-grade swill, think again. Havana Club’s Maximo Extra Anejo currently sells for upwards of $1,500 a bottle, not including the cost of smuggling it into the U.S.

So yeah. Rum.