No one ever teaches you how to drink. Ride a bike, throw a baseball, or treat others with respect? Yes. Drink? Not really. For the most part, we are raised to believe, at least in America, that alcohol is inherently evil (it’s not), causes trouble (it can), and leads to a life of dependence (in some cases, it certainly does). “Drink responsibly,” the beer ads implore us incessantly during football games, all while depicting a group of friends high-fiving, having the most epic time of their lives. What young person wouldn’t be the least bit curious? Who wouldn’t want to get their hands on a six-pack or a pitcher of margaritas and try to replicate that lifestyle? So when you are finally old enough to drink, you often do it in excess, recklessly, without even giving an iota of concern to how good or bad something actually tastes. How else do you explain the appeal of Long Island Iced Teas at college bars or high-proof grain alcohol–filled Hand Grenades sold on Bourbon Street? You drink to get drunk. That’s the entire point, isn’t it?
It’s not. Drinking is actually something you can do very well. You just have to work at it. I should know—it’s something I’ve quite literally spent my entire adult life working on.
Rule 1: Drink Like an Italian
The first time I realized there might be an art to drinking was in 1996, during my senior year abroad. I was sitting at a café in Siena, Italy’s Piazza del Campo with a bunch of my Birkenstock-wearing classmates. We pointed to the crimson-red drinks everyone was drinking—a pitcher of beer seemed badly out of place. “We’ll have two of those,” we told the bow-tied, white-jacket-wearing server. Soon a highball filled with ice and what we would later learn was Campari arrived. It was flanked by a mini bottle of club soda, a lemon wedge, and a half-moon slice of orange. We mixed the two liquids together and garnished it with the citrus. It was refreshing, pleasantly bitter, and mildly sweet. We ordered another.
Around us, none of the tables crowded with multigenerational friends and families were hooting and hollering or screaming at the top of their lungs about how hammered they were. There was no TV, no Golden Tee golf video game, no Red Hot Chili Peppers blaring from speakers. We talked about European soccer and life after college, drank Campari and soda highballs, and snacked on fat olives, olive-oil-fried potato chips, and plates of thinly sliced prosciutto and melon. For the first time in my life, drinking became an elevated experience, something refined and romantic—something intoxicating, but for altogether different reasons.
Rule 2: Back-to-School Special
As a 20-something junior editor at Bon Appétit in the early 2000s, I was out every night, eating at new restaurants, soaking up trends, and trying to make a mark in the food world. But I still hadn’t found my niche. Then, in 2005, a swanky bar called Pegu Club opened in New York’s Soho. To say that it changed my life might sound like hyperbole, but it’s true. You see, I wasn’t old enough to be a part of the American food revolution happening at places like Chez Panisse in the ’70s and ’80s. But the cocktail revolution? I had a front-row seat at Pegu Club’s long maple bar. Night after night, I discovered drinks both classic (Singapore Slings and 50/50 martinis) and new (Gin-Gin Mules and Old Cubans). I spent hours absorbing every detail about cocktail making and drinking. “What’s that green stuff in that serious-looking bottle?” I would ask. (It was Chartreuse, a crucial ingredient in the gin-based Last Word cocktail.) “Why do you stir some drinks and shake others?” (Generally, you shake drinks that have juice or egg in them; you stir liquor-only ones.) “What’s that tool called you use to measure out liquids?” (It’s a jigger, and the best ones are sold at cocktailkingdom.com.)
Inspired by my nights at Pegu, I started collecting old cocktail manuals by the likes of Jerry Thomas, Harry Craddock, and David Embury. And just as important, I met people who were willing to talk to me and teach me: cocktail illuminati like Audrey Saunders, owner of Pegu Club, and historian David Wondrich and former Rainbow Room guru Dale DeGroff, who were shaping the modern cocktail movement that I was experiencing firsthand. I was doing something more than just “going out for a drink.” Soon I enrolled in “cocktail college” at the Times Square Marriott Marquis, where DeGroff taught a bartending class. There he told me two things that shaped the way I drink to this day: Always use freshly squeezed juices in cocktails—it’s the easiest way to take a drink to the next level—and if a bar is using those eight-button soda guns, stick to bottled beer. If you’ve ever had a flat gin and tonic or lifeless whiskey and soda, you now know why.
All these years later, I realize that I went to Pegu Club for more than just camaraderie or a well-crafted cocktail or even a buzz. I kept going back because I kept learning. And in the process, I found my place in an industry that fascinated me. Drinking was not just mindless entertainment. It was about identity and community, about finding my tribe—one that just happened to know how to stir up an impeccable Sazerac over the most gorgeous ice you’ve ever seen.
Rule 3: Holy Matrimony
My wedding was a casual one—50 or so friends and family gathered at a farm along the Maine coast. Still, it took weeks of planning. There were the strings of lights that my soon-to-be wife, Christina, and I hung from the rafters of the old barn. There were the wildflowers we picked and arranged for each table. There were the mini lobster rolls and hot-smoked whole salmon and crackly porchetta on the menu that I’d spent weeks planning with chef Melissa Kelly from nearby Primo restaurant. And there were the five cases of Falanghina white wine and the A-ha–heavy playlist that I’d stressed over (to keep my Norwegian bride happy, of course). But after all that, it was the handle of Wild Turkey 101 whiskey that stole the show. And nobody, not even me, saw that coming.
On his drive up from New York City, my friend and frequent drinking partner, Adam Sachs, had stopped at a New Hampshire state-run liquor store. I’m not sure if it was because he’s a Kentucky boy or simply one of the world’s great enablers, but he had the wisdom to fork out $35 for a bottle. As the night unfolded, we passed the handle from person to person, from grandparents to aunts and uncles to best friends, and back around again. Norwegians and Southerners alike bonded over that single bottle. It was the life of the party. At one point I saw my bride, resplendent in her wedding dress, take a swig (yes, I got a picture of that indelible moment). Even my new in-laws commended the powerful effects of the “American brandy,” as they sipped Wild Turkey from porcelain teacups. At around 3:30 a.m., my wife and I, sitting on the rocky shore, took the last sips from the bottle as guests wandered off to bed.
Think about the most memorable moments of your life—your wedding, 40th birthdays, impromptu summer backyard BBQs that go late into the night. Alcohol consecrates these times like nothing else can. The happiest snapshots of my life have been defined by it—a magnum of Billecart-Salmon Brut Rosé Champagne, an ice-cold Narragansett tall boy (or three), and of course, a 1.75-liter handle of whiskey purchased at a state liquor store. What people often get wrong is that they drink to forget. I like to drink to remember.
Rule 4: One Is Not the Loneliest Number
My favorite places to enjoy a cocktail, in no particular order, are: airplanes, hotel bars, Prime Meats restaurant in Brooklyn, and leaning against my kitchen counter after I get home from work. Not coincidentally, those are the places I do my best thinking, too. After a few sips of, say, Japanese whisky, ideally poured into a heavy-bottomed crystal tumbler over a big chunk of ice, ideas seem to flow more easily. I’ve got a bookshelf full of Moleskine and composition notebooks filled with all kinds of scribblings to prove it—from thoughts on last night’s Detroit-style pizza to a screed on kiwifruit. Thinking and drinking, at least for me, go hand in hand.
And why is that? Because drinking also happens to be the best—and cheapest—form of therapy that I know. It’s the one time of day I can stop being a colleague, a father to two daughters, and a husband—if only for a few minutes. While I’m stirring that 50/50 martini in a mixing glass until frost forms on the outside (or watching someone else do it for me), there are no emails to answer, no deadlines to meet, no phone calls to return. Those are the quiet, cellphone-free moments that have become all too rare for me these days.
Up until a few months ago, I believed that these meditative breaks had something to do with the fact that I was drinking alone. But then I had a realization—at 30,000 feet. I was on a flight to San Francisco to check out restaurants for this year’s Hot 10 list when I did what I always do on a plane—I ordered the ingredients for my MacGyver-esque old-fashioned: two mini bottles of Woodford Reserve bourbon (that’s the brand that Delta, my airline, carries), two plastic cups (one filled with ice), a packet of sugar, and a slice of orange or whatever citrus I can get my hands on. I already had a teeny one-eighth-ounce bottle of Angostura orange bitters on hand because, well, who doesn’t travel with bitters in their carry-on? As I was adding a few drops of those bitters to the half packet of sugar I’d dumped into the empty glass, I could feel the stare of my fellow passengers. I was used to it. Who the hell mixes his own cocktail on a plane? I added the bourbon, stirred it the best I could with my finger, and added a few ice cubes. Next thing I know I’m handing out mini bottles of bitters and showing my seatmates how to make an old-fashioned midair. Even the flight attendant started asking questions. No, I wasn’t drinking alone. Because whether you’re on a plane or at a bar, or even at your kitchen counter, you’re never really drinking alone.
Rule 5: Make No Mistake About It
We’ve all done stupid things while drinking. Some are funny, and most are ultimately harmless—like belting out “Living on a Prayer” at karaoke or trying to break-dance at your cousin’s wedding. But some are just straight-up stupid. You learn from those errors. I was a few years out of college, working at my first publishing job, when my boss invited everyone over to his house for a summer cookout. I couldn’t have been more excited. Would it be like the crazy office-party scene in Billy Wilder’s The Apartment? It wasn’t, but the wine was going down easy. And then I noticed the pool. “Let’s go swimming!” I thought I heard someone say. Without hesitation, I jumped in—clothes, shoes, all. When I surfaced, everyone was staring at me. Just me. Things got worse from there (I’ll spare you the details). Let’s just say that after that night, I haven’t gotten drunk at an office party since.
At the Bon Appétit holiday party last year at the legendary El Quijote restaurant in New York’s Chelsea Hotel, I was the old guy sipping sparkling water with lime. When the youngsters begged me to do a shot of tequila, I told them next time. And when my editor in chief gave me a hard time for being one of the first to leave, I shrugged my shoulders and hopped on my bike home.
I’m a 43-year-old father of two now, one who is more likely to ask a younger colleague what “OTOH” means in an email (it’s “on the other hand,” if you’re wondering) than challenge him to shotgun a beer. I drink as much water as whiskey when I’m at the bar (or at least I try to). I drink less, but I drink better. And it’s because I’ve learned to respect drinking, the craft of it, the camaraderie of it, and the importance of it in my life. I don’t want to screw up that relationship. Drinking is one of life’s great pleasures when done with thought and care. I want to do it for as long as I can. After all, it’s made me who I am.