An ode to the White Russian

The White Russian is my favorite cocktail. To me, it represents grace and simplicity. It seems like an extremely easy cocktail to make, but making a perfect White Russian takes skill — a fact I have been testament to from trying really, really badly made White Russians all over Kathmandu. Some simply don’t have the right coffee liqueur, some have stuff that only has the label “kahlua” but does not resemble anything like it. Most of the time, however, they just don’t get the proportions right. Sometimes there’s too much vodka, and sometimes there’s not enough. I once even had a White Russian that was shaken so vigorously that the cream and the kahlua mixed completely with one another to make what ended up looking like your plain milk-tea. As far as Kathmandu is concerned, I guess the best White Russian I have had has been in Maya Cocktails (Thamel) and 1905 (Jamal). Those and a few other places are where I have had the chance to have White Russians that actually looked, tasted and felt like what a White Russian is supposed to look, taste and feel like.

You have a “pseudo-hobby” (a term I just coined two minutes ago) when you think that you would really like to do something, but you never seem to get the energy to get around to doing it. It is a common trait for procrastinators like me. Mixing drinks, then, is a pseudo-hobby of mine. In an attempt to turn it into a proper hobby, I have been thinking that the White Russian is the perfect place to start — since it is supposedly a relatively simple cocktail to make. I’ve actually tried it a few times but to no avail. It is only when you actually try to do something that you earn new-found respect for people who do it every single day and make it look so mundane. Respect, therefore, to all the bartenders out there.

Anyway, the White Russian has been a good friend to me. Let this text, then, serve as homage to the drink, to whoever made it for the first time, and, once again, to all the hard-working bartenders out there that make it every day of their lives.

For those of you who want to know more about the White Russian, here it is in a nutshell:

Ingredients:
5 parts Vodka (preferably Smirnoff)
2 parts Kahlua
3 parts Fresh cream (or milk)

Preparation:
Pour kahlua and vodka directly into glass filled with ice. Float cream on the top and stir in slowly.

For more details, check out White Russian @ Wikipedia.

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?