Rarely have I seen a Christopher Hitchens TV interview in which the atheistic author of God is Not Great isn’t knocking back an ice-clinking glass of whiskey of some brand or another. Yet, I never knew Hitch’s hootch of choice was Johnny Walker Black Label until I read a first-person account posted on the brainstorms blog of an evening spent with the God-searing, well-oiled polemicist. It’s an entertaining read of what happens at a book signing party when “the Johnny Walker wisdom is running high” as crooner Leonard Cohen croaks in Closing Time. If you’re less interested in the bitch of Hitch and more interested in sorting through the differences of dram, there are lots of dedicated sites out there, ScotchHunter being one of them and ForScotchLovers being another. The Wall Street Journal beverage historian, Eric Felten, has a good articleon blended scotch whiskies and “what to down in a down market.” Myself, I’m not much of a blended scotch whiskey drinker but I might be easily persuaded to renounce the Almighty for a fifth of Talisker 18. Year Old.
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