RECIPE:

1. When the whiskey is good but it isn't fine, pour into sipping glass.
2. Add one cube of ice.
3. Let sit for two minutes, then gently swirl the glass.

*If you can't hear the clink of the ice, you're not swirling; you're procrastinating.
*If you see any residue near the brim, you're not swirling; you're washing your glass.

4. Take one steady sip to taste. Drinking whiskey on ice is a process of tasting to make sure your drink is ready, until your drink is gone.
5. Refill with new whiskey, new cube of ice.

The strangest part of drinking whiskey on ice is the progressive loss of experience. You have whiskey. You have ice. You are drinking the same quantity of whiskey that you would without the ice. And at the same time, the whiskey cannot taste the same. So, you expect the ice to change the whiskey's flavor. You expect the ice to change the whiskey's temperature.

But it doesn't. If you have left the ice cube in your whiskey long enough for either whiskey change to occur, you haven't done it right. What you need to do is change the ice, not the whiskey.

When you taste your whiskey on ice, there is nothing but sadness. The whiskey is there, underneath, as pure and dangerous and potent as ever. But at the edges, and over the uncertain, invisible surface, you can taste the ice. The whiskey is like a submerged bubble that you cannot grasp without bursting. When tasted correctly, the drink is about the warming of what has been frozen, and remembering that there was true whiskey to be sipped, before you added ice; it is not about the whiskey, but about the remembering of the ice that prevents you from tasting the whiskey.

Sometimes adding ice is the only way to drink your whiskey. Nevertheless, it is a terrible drink.

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