Jack Daniels. What’s that?

I remember when Robin Williams was making transition from stand-up to filmic comedy, he was finishing up giving performances in the medium-sized theatres. In one of his last televised shows, he had a joke about booze that I will never forget. In his animated and psychotic facial and bodily gesticulations way, he grinned and said, “If alcohol is a crutch, Jack Daniels is a wheelchair!” Now why is that? I wonder.

Jack Daniels has been my drink of choice for over twenty-five years (though in a number of those years I was using the crutches of an antithetical kind—attending 12-step programs and abstaining altogether). Yes, I’m talking about alcoholics anonymous meetings. That international fellowship which support each other in a bid to be released from the bondage of self indulgence. So what is it that makes a drinker of Jack Daniels stick with only it, swear by only it, and swear at only it (sometimes)?

First of all, it’s the burn. Jack Daniels has a distinctive throat-enflaming, gut-provoking, visceral burn that announces itself with the smell, even before you take a sip: when you smell it, you can appreciate the essence, the flora ledgium of distilled sour mash whiskey grains. Jack Daniels connoisseurs, likely salivate, and then experience that warming feeling right where it matters!

The high of Jack Daniels hits hard but smoothly, if that makes sense, and it is intensely powerful. Lightweights who overdo our friend Jack will find themselves in the bathroom before the first CD is changed on the stereo as their throat gives birth to stomach mucus. But Jack Daniels, to those who know and love it, is a “sippin’ whiskey”: you take sips over hours and stay heated but coherent, though on another (inebriated) plane, of course.

And while Jack Daniels is a hard-ass drink, often mixed, I always drink it on the rocks with a water back…so as to bastardize it as little as possible (and to avoid the sugar hangover the next day). I devotedly drank that stuff in every bar, restaurant, special event, and at every party or get-together.

Then my friend brought me a present. A couple of months ago, he brought me a four-pack of Jack Daniels Lynchburg Lemonade. When I saw it I was disappointed, really, thinking that not only would whiskey and lemonade destroy the purist’s senses but would taste like rot. But man, was I wrong. The Lynchburg Lemonade is DELICIOUS! I of course drank all four in an hour or so, as they have very low concentrations of Jack Daniels sour mash whiskey in them, but YUMMMY!

Hmmm. Jack Daniel’s Lynchburg Lemonade: a wheelchair with a remote?

If you haven’t tried ole Jack Daniels yet, treat yourself to a tipple one night soon, but hey, don’t make any grandiose plans for the following day. Cheers!