Max Silvestri gets studious at the Brandy Library
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A thing about me is that I often make alcohol purchases based solely on bottle shape and decoration. It's not that I am particularly shallow, though I am. It's just I am bad at remembering how booze tastes once I've had a lot of it. When pressed to cite a preference sober, which is how I often enter liquor stores, things get a little hazy. For example, if someone were to put a gun to my head right now and ask me to name my favorite wine, I'd say Goats Do Roam, because it's got a funny name and an animal on the label.
My whiskey taste is also simple. I might pretend to turn my nose up at Jack Daniels, but really the reason I occasionally splurge on Bulleit or Woodford Reserve is because the bottles are in dynamic shapes. But hey, I am willing to learn. I'd love to have more things to waste money on. It's almost like I have too much money, you know? What I am saying is that my diamond shoes are almost uncomfortably tight, to paraphrase the Bard, a.k.a. Chandler Bing.
There are few better places to learn about whiskeys than at the Brandy Library (25 N. Moore St, 212-226-5545), a comically swank lounge in Tribeca. Think of the richest friend you have, add "the Third" to the end of his name, and then picture what the study on his uncle's yacht might look like. Oh, and what that uncle studies is fancy brown booze. My host at the Brandy Library was Heather Greene, a New York-based singer/songwriter who also happens to know an absurd amount about scotch. It turns out she's kind of a major scotch-head, so much so that Glenfiddich, a name I mispronounced literally dozens of times the other night because my brain kept thinking it rhymed with a game Harry Potter plays, decided to start paying her to tell people how great scotch is. Um, me too, please? Heather is onto something, and I am now all about subsidizing my art by promoting things I am really into. If you are involved on the publicity side of any of the following industries, please get in touch: tacos, sparkling water, Indian-food delivery, breakfast sausage, green chiles, replacement heads for my electric toothbrush, rent money, and hot and sour soup. These are all products I enjoy having. Just saying.
Over lambs in a blanket and gougères, Heather taught me lots about single-malt scotch. Like about it being aged it for 15, 18, or 21 years, or putting drops of water in it, or something about barrels. I tried to keep up. When she handed me a dropper (for the water), I thought it was a pen and am glad she did not hear me say "thank you for the free pen." When she told me a well-balanced scotch hits all five taste centers on the tongue, I lit up and told her that reminded me of what a friend and I call the ultimate cocktail party fact: that Heinz ketchup perfectly satisfies all five taste types. An entire generation of young men learned that from a Malcolm Gladwell article in The New Yorker and proceeded to use it on first dates. She looked at me like she was mildly disappointed in the comparison, but I think it is flattering. Who doesn't love ketchup? Also, Glenfiddich might want to take a page from Heinz and start putting their scotch in an easily grippable plastic squeeze bottle. They'd sell a lot more, because it would put children in control of how much they got to have with their fish sticks.
