Among the Bourbon Barons by Matt Labash.
A good bourbon is the ideal slow-and-steady pick-me-up. First, it bites you with its sweet burn. Then you learn to like it, when your tongue picks off the oaky vanillas and caramels, or perhaps the more subjective flavors of "cedars of Lebanon" or "new-mown grass," at which point, you know you're drunk. Bourbon is the spirit most likely to put you in an easy sipping rhythm with all its attendant benefits: the relaxation and conviviality, the brief waylay in that magically lucid state that resides somewhere between stone-cold sobriety and intoxication.Mark Twain, who harbored no such animus against Scotch (he liked his drinks one way: strong), took a simpler view of bourbon: "Too much is barely enough."
