By Victor Greto
Just saying it, slowly and with feeling, makes you feel like a private eye in a 1940s movie: Bourbon.
Other drinks might be smoother, and other whiskeys may be trendier.
But they’ll never be as essential to the “official” Kentucky Derby drink, the mint julep.
Nor should you make Manhattans, Old Fashioneds, Billionaires or even Whiskey Sours without the quintessential Southern American whiskey.
The rest of the crass whiskey crowd will order the too-sweet Jack Daniels because they just don’t get it.
Bourbon is a drink you have to understand.
Unlike the writer of the original 1950s blues song that John Lee Hooker croaked so powerfully the following decade and George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers made popular in 1977 – the latter two artists put the Kentucky concoction first in order to dive head-first into a discolored pool of forgetfulness: One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer.
Woody Allen, trying to be as cool as his character’s hero Humphrey Bogart in 1972’s Play It Again, Sam, claimed he drank a quart of it a day. “Oh,” said Sharon, the girl he’s trying to impress, “a bourbon man!”
Yes, ma’am, a bourbon man.
“It’s incredible,” says Jonathan Tilton, a 29-year-old bartender at the Columbus Inn who seems to know about more drinks than anyone twice his age.
“It’s not just the mouth-feel or how it tingles,” he says. “The notes of the flavor spectrum pop. With bourbon you have a broad spectrum – vanilla, some cherry, perhaps raisin and peach, it really depends. Like wine.”
It’s those lingering flavors that stay with you as you stare at yourself in the clouded mirror and in between the bottles of half-emptied whiskey lined up behind the bar.
Some bourbon costs up to $200 a bottle, so be careful what you order.
Patrick Costello, a bartender at Tutto Fresco on Philadelphia Pike in Wilmington, can relate, despite the fact that Irish whiskey is his first choice.
“I’m a fan of Blanton’s straight,” Costello says of his bourbon brand choice, “because it’s got a nice full body but it’s not too biting and harsh like some other whiskeys. Smoothness means it’s been sitting in barrels a while.”
Good drinking – wine, beer, liquor – is all about knowing where it comes from, how it’s distilled, how long it sits, in barrels or elsewhere.
“I think of bourbon as in between Irish whiskey and scotch,” Costello says. “Bourbon is what the Scotch and Irish made with what’s available in Kentucky with local grain.”
It’s as American as moonshine.
Yes, bourbons have to be made in Kentucky, with at least 51 percent of it corn, aged in charred-oak barrels – a minimum of four years, but the best sit in darkness for as long as 25 years – that can be distilled to no more than 80 percent (160 proof) alcohol.
They distill it with high limestone content in the water, Tilton says: “It makes the water harder and gives a specific flavor.”
Costello rarely sees requests for the iconic mint julep, but Tilton won’t let you make fun of the classic Southern drink.
Mint, soda water and simple syrup (super-saturated sugar water). “Ice is important,” Tilton says. “We have this special ice – an inch and quarter by an inch and a quarter – perfectly square,” that he serves with it.
Costello says he serves it with finely crushed ice.
Tilton mixes bourbon with pomegranate syrup, lemon juice and an absinthe float to make a billionaire.
The World War II generation’s favorite after-work drink, the Whiskey Sour, should be made with bourbon, he says.
“The sweetness of the bourbon works well with the acidity of the sour mix – it doesn’t just mask it.”
If you know enough to order an Old Fashioned, get your taste buds ready for the mix of a couple of ounces of bourbon, superfine sugar, brandy cherries, an orange slice and soda water.
“The sweet citrus flavor of the orange matched with the brandied cherries and the beautiful bourbon cut with the soda water is the quintessential drink for spring,” Tilton says. “It’s very refreshing, and you still get a good whiskey flavor.”
But, please, next time you’re at the Columbus Inn, ask Tilton for a Manhattan.
With no irony, he’ll respond, “Pre-Prohibition or post-Prohibition style?”
Be ready. Pre-Prohibition uses rye whiskey; it’s the post-stuff that uses bourbon.
Bourbon became the Manhattan whiskey of choice thanks to bootlegging moonshiners, so when Prohibition ended in 1933, it was used after that.
“Manhattan, post-Prohibition,” you’ll murmur, “with bourbon, bitters and sweet vermouth,” staring past the barkeep at your wavering image behind the bar.
Enough said.