I got Sips
It's not entirely official, but this weekend I was given the Sips column in Go Triad. Sips is a weekly column that details a drink and a bar that serves it, previously written by Joe Killian (and a few people before him, I believe). Joe's columns are logged at The Sips Blog. I'm going to sidebar for a minute and tell you what you should expect from Joe's columns, which I insist you read.
The night of my 21st birthday a few of us go out drinking. At one point in the night Joe and I go to the bar to get a couple glasses of bourbon. Joe orders a glass of something good, Knob Creek I think, when the customer sitting in front of us asks the bartender, what is bourbon?
The correct answer, of course, is that it's an originally American liquor, distilled from at least 51% corn, aged at least 2 years in an unused white oak barrel. The bartender's answer?
"It's brewed in Bourbon county."
Ouch. Swing and a miss. Bourbon is named after bourbon county, but that's where the county's invovlement stops. That's kind of bad for any guy to think all of the world's bourbon is made in one county in the US, but for a bartender it's inexcuseable. Joe stepped up the the bar and explained to the bartender, in detail and in front of the customer, why he was wrong and what the correct answer was.
To top it off, Joe ended with this: "And you want to know how I know that?" He held up his glass. "The guy who makes this told me that." I'm now assuming he was referring to a whiskey tasting he did a story on earlier in the year, but at the time I was trying not to laugh long enough to order my drink. My order?
"I'll have what he's having."
Now, back to me and my new column. Sips is weekly, and my first one will run July 13th. It'll start in the same issue as my other column, Cheap Eats, but that one runs every other week.
It goes without saying that I'm incredibly pumped to have another column, not to mention one that's about drinking, but this entire entry has one point, and that point is this.
I am now paid by Go Triad to eat junk food and drink alcohol.
The night of my 21st birthday a few of us go out drinking. At one point in the night Joe and I go to the bar to get a couple glasses of bourbon. Joe orders a glass of something good, Knob Creek I think, when the customer sitting in front of us asks the bartender, what is bourbon?
The correct answer, of course, is that it's an originally American liquor, distilled from at least 51% corn, aged at least 2 years in an unused white oak barrel. The bartender's answer?
"It's brewed in Bourbon county."
Ouch. Swing and a miss. Bourbon is named after bourbon county, but that's where the county's invovlement stops. That's kind of bad for any guy to think all of the world's bourbon is made in one county in the US, but for a bartender it's inexcuseable. Joe stepped up the the bar and explained to the bartender, in detail and in front of the customer, why he was wrong and what the correct answer was.
To top it off, Joe ended with this: "And you want to know how I know that?" He held up his glass. "The guy who makes this told me that." I'm now assuming he was referring to a whiskey tasting he did a story on earlier in the year, but at the time I was trying not to laugh long enough to order my drink. My order?
"I'll have what he's having."
Now, back to me and my new column. Sips is weekly, and my first one will run July 13th. It'll start in the same issue as my other column, Cheap Eats, but that one runs every other week.
It goes without saying that I'm incredibly pumped to have another column, not to mention one that's about drinking, but this entire entry has one point, and that point is this.
I am now paid by Go Triad to eat junk food and drink alcohol.
posted by Luke McIntyre at 6/27/2006 07:53:00 PM
3 Comments:
Congratulations!
If there's anything on Earth better than being paid to write it has to be being paid to write about food and booze.
When they get a taste of your stuff you're going to be indispensible at Go Triad.
PS. I did feel bad, retroactively, for calling the bartender on his misstep in front of the customer. But only a little. You can be right and you can be nice - but you can't always be both.
I think his folly more than outweighed your response. He's a bartender for Christ's sake. I work at a deli, and if someone asks me what's in the chicken salad they expect a correct response. I'd expect nothing less from someone else working in the food service industry.
I hope to god he's not telling people that vodka is just made in Russia.
Congrats! They definitely got the right guy to do Sips.
Thanks to your Jamaican bong water comment, I still can't see a Red Stripe bottle or commercial without giggling a little bit.
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