Give neat a try

Plainly put, I love whiskey. I love the fact that it has served, along with its other alcoholic cousins, to bring me closer to the large and disorienting party that is society. Whiskey holds a special place in my heart for it represents honor to me. It takes you on up front and head on. You know where it is coming from. There is no need to look over your shoulder. You can trust it to do what it intends to do. While a good Single Malt Scotch or Bourbon is always on the top of my list, I get by with whatever I can get. More than anything else, I love the fact that I am so far from alone in loving whiskey.

This brings me to the ways in which people enjoy their whiskey, especially in Nepal. While I am not a hardcore purist, when it comes to whiskey, I stick to having it neat. To me, as soon as you add ice, water or what-have-you, it starts to take away from the whiskey. Moreover, it is my contention (and perhaps a naïve one) that the majority of people out there like it neat as well. I’ve rarely, however, seen people in Nepal like it neat. Of course, this is a place where people can’t get beer down their throats without a little barbecued chicken or what-not. But then again, if we had freshly brewed beer flowing off the taps and did not have to rely on the bottled mediocrity, that wouldn’t be necessary.

Before I digress too far, let us get back to whiskey. How you drink is your personal choice – there is nothing wrong with having it the way you like it. Free will rocks. I just thought that “having it neat” needed an advocate at this point, for there is a large majority of people out here who don’t have it neat, simply because they’ve never had it neat. To those people, I would like to propose giving neat a try – or maybe a few tries. It will grow on you. What is there to lose, really?