Tastes In Alcohol Are Acquired For A Reason
By: Luca Johnson, Staff Writer
I sometimes find myself sitting in on conversations about alcohol among friends. As they list off their favorite beers, I make mental notes of the names with the intention of adopting their opinions as my own. I’ve learned almost everything I know about alcohol from my friends, and from the wines my mom likes. For example, I’ve decided I like Pilsners. Do I know exactly what a Pilsner tastes like? No. As for my peers though, I wonder, how did everyone get such “refined” tastes in alcohol by the time they’re in college? After all, doesn’t having a refined taste in alcohol just mean you’ve had a wide variety of drinks over a relatively long period of time?
Turning 21, about a year ago, was the first time I (and most other young Americans) had unmitigated access to alcohol and bar culture. Going to bars as a 21 year old felt like such a major shift, because all of a sudden I was thrust into these spaces where I was the youngest person, and I was desperate to order a drink that didn’t make me look inexperienced. Bartenders understandably want absolutely nothing to do with their patrons’ decision. After all, how could they know what you like?
I’m not sure I even know the full catalog of drinks one can expect to find at any given bar. I’ve found a few drinks that I know I can safely order at a bar without getting bemused looks from the bartender – usually a gin and tonic or a whisky sour. However, this means I’m not very willing to branch out and try new things. At this point in my life, there are so many drinks I haven’t tried. The only espresso martini I’ve had was a makeshift one made by a friend – a lukewarm keurig espresso shot with loose cane sugar and vodka. I took one sip, and it was quite possibly the most vile thing I’ve ever tasted. When I was studying abroad in Rome, I found myself ordering Long Island iced teas out of habit, in keeping with the tradition of Long Island nights at the Feve.
Because I haven’t taken a particular interest in alcohol, I feel like I’m missing some sort of important cultural knowledge about what’s “cool” to drink, or what one’s drink of choice says about them. I’m aware that sweeter, fruitier drinks are considered less refined, likely because our culture tends to associate things enjoyed by women as having less merit. Stronger drinks like an old fashioned, which I personally find very unpleasant, are seen as more sophisticated and “manly.” Having an understanding of alcohol as one of the “finer things in life” is a class signifier in American society. Knowing about wine or beer can be used as a sort of social and cultural capital to impress certain, often upper class, people. Many workplaces have social events with alcohol involved, and one’s behavior towards alcohol can bleed into their professional life.
One factor stopping me and others from attaining this knowledge is price. As college students, many of us have financial limitations on what we choose to drink. If I’m looking at a drink menu at an upscale bar, I’ll automatically limit my options to the lowest price point. Sure, maybe I’d prefer a passionfruit mojito, but it’s hard to justify spending an extra 5 bucks on the same buzz. I’m sure if I was given an expensive French wine beside a cheaper wine from Mickey Mart, I would vastly prefer the expensive one. At this point in my life, though, this difference isn’t relevant to me, because I’m not willing to spend even 3 dollars more than necessary on a bottle of wine.
As college students, especially seniors on the precipice of adulthood, I can feel a new, more adult mentality towards drinking creeping into our alcohol consumption. Adult drinking culture is more about sipping and savoring, rather than chasing the experience of drunkenness. Sometimes I wonder if as some get older, they feel increasingly uncomfortable about drinking alcohol for the sake of getting drunk, so they dress up their desire for a buzz in a passion for the flavor and uniqueness of their choice drinks.
The “sip and savor” mentality is hugely different from the attitude most young drinkers start out with. The culture of underage drinking is characterized by secrecy and rebelliousness. Before turning 21, many adopt a sort of “take what you can get” mentality towards drinking. Sometimes it would be packaged in a crumpled up Poland Spring plastic water bottle, with an unknown and pungent mixture of ingredients. Finding alcohol is often difficult for underage drinkers, and one doesn’t necessarily have a say in the drinks they are given, or scrounge together in the aforementioned water bottles.
Young drinkers are obsessed with the novelty of being drunk, and care much less about the flavor of their drinks. Alcohol begins, at least for many American teens, as something to be choked down as quickly as possible, sometimes in the form of a shot, and washed down with the sugariest, most mouth coating chaser one can find. To many new drinkers, being able to taste the alcohol in a mixed drink is seen as an unequivocally bad thing. There are drinks like Fireball Cinnamon Whisky, or Malibu Coconut Rum that are notoriously attractive to new drinkers for their sweetness, but people often “age out” of enjoying these drinks as they get older. I can’t count the number of people who have told me that they had one bad night with Fireball and could never drink it again.
We seem to have an understanding of the progression of new drinkers’ tastes in alcohol. We understand these “canon events” that unseasoned drinkers go through as they develop their taste. However, the timeline seems to get fuzzier as we transition into adulthood. We need to remember that we have plenty of time to try more drinks and figure out what we like. Life’s too short to force feed yourself whisky on the rocks in hopes that you’ll acquire the taste for it eventually.
