A cocktail article in Thursday's Wall Street Journal got me thinking about what I value in my beverage-consuming experience. First and foremost, I'm focused on what happens when I receive the beverage. Does it stir my nose? Is the glass cold or warm against my lips? Does the liquor bite the end of my tongue or does it coat and tingle? What flavors am I tasting--herbs? Fruits? Woods? What's the effervescent experience as it passes my throat and enters my digestive tract?
But apparently there's also a place for the bartending performance in my psyche. To charge me $14 and serve me a beverage that's been produced en masse irrationally infuriates me. I have been robbed of an experience--a bonding between the alcohol artisan and myself. I freeze spiked punches for myself, but I expect more when I dine out.
Again, I acknowledge the irrationationality of this! I don't seek out the soup master and demand that my vichyssoise be borne of potatoes unique from another's. I often don't see more than a glimpse of the shaker that holds my beverage. Yet somehow I've become entitled to a labor-intensive experience as a contract of my happy hour purchase.
How do you feel about your bar experience? Do you pin a thought on the dispensary of your drink?
