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Growing
up in New England, gin and tonic is the classic summer drink. It’s
bracing, fresh, cool, and not overly potent. The joke was that they
tasted like after-shave lotion, but to be honest, most after-shave
lotions smell pretty good. Often they’re scented with lime or something
mentholated, at least they did when I was a kid and smelled them at the
barber shop. That makes the taste of gin and tonic a Proustian
memory for me.
Another
memory that I have that’s less pleasant was the first time I tried
alcohol. I was perhaps eight years old and saw a bottle of whiskey that
my parents had on hand. And since they, and their friends, drank it, I
thought I would give it a try too. I unscrewed the top and took a big
swig of the brown liquid. Within about three seconds, my mouth was on
fire and my throat was assaulted by an unfamiliar, and unwelcome,
burn. Once I had recovered, I couldn’t imagine drinking alcohol ever
again.
 Now
that I’m an adult, and above the legal drinking age, I don’t chug liquor
like I used to (thank goodness!), but nothing tastes as good to me now as
a cold gin and tonic on a warm summer night, when a regular, overly boozy
cocktail would knock me out cold. I had lunch with a good friend that I
used to work with the other day and she was saying that she doesn’t like
all those cocktails will all sorts of different things going on in them.
She just wants a regular, straight-up cocktail. I agreed (and perhaps
pulling out my age card), thought aloud that maybe when you get older,
you stop being impressed by all those tricks and twists in food and
drinks and just want to go back to the original. Which is why the
classics endure.
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