Rex Curator

Every man should be able to drink and appreciate whisk(e)y.  It’s a gruff elixir that has inspired as much poetry as it has destroyed the poets themselves.  Winston Churchill drank it for breakfast.  Don Draper probably drinks it on the shitter.  Medics in the civil war used it as their only anesthetic during some field surgery amputations (when the chloroform napkins ran dry).

We can all agree it belongs in the Manhood Bible.

But our country wasn’t founded on whisky.  George Washington’s drink of choice was not whisky.  The Manifest Destiny settlers of the western frontier with all it’s bloodshed and typhoid fever (thanks Oregon Trail!) were not killing buffalo while jacked on whisky.

They were drinking applejack.  And so should you.

This was George Washington’s steeze.  A daily ration of it was supplied to troops in the Revolutionary War.  Abraham Lincoln served Applejack in his Springfield, Illinois tavern.  It purportedly swayed Wig rallies during the presidential election of William Henry Harrison.

Applejack is a 300-year-old whisky-strength (80 proof, 35% brandy base) “cyder spirit” made from your doctor’s favorite fruit.  Actually, it’s traditionally made from uneatable crab apples which are pressed and fermented in a similar triple distillation process as whisky.  

Let me back up for a second.  Last year, I read Michael Pollen’s Botany of Desire, an artful presentation of human beings co-evolution with four “domesticated” plants: apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes.  If you don’t read, it was made into a PBS documentary and is streaming on Netflix.

Pollen gives a reinterpretation of american folklore with Johnny Appleseed as a bible-beating, fire and brimstone preacher floating down the virgin Ohio River with a canoe full of apple seeds.  Back then, all apples were sour crab apples (heterozygous bastards), so planting seeds to grow uneatable fruit seems absurd.  Unless you’re fermenting the harvest into a delicious, esophagus-stripping liquor aka colonial crunk juice.

Which paints Johnny Appleseed as his own worst demon, a spreader of drunk sinning, meanwhile futilely combating frontiersmen morality with evangelical fervor that would make Jonathan Swift look like Christopher Hitchens (RIP).

Early colonists drank applejack because they thought water to carry disease. (Side note: The same trend happened during the bubonic plague outbreak where beer was safer to imbibe than water.  Perhaps it’s worth renaming the Dark Ages to the Blackout Ages.)

Manifest your drunk destiny today.  I buy mine from Laird’s of New Jersey which is the oldest family of American distillers since 1698.  A 750ml bottle of Laird’s Blended Applejack contains six pounds of apples.  No yeast or starters or additives, perfect for a night cap on your raw food diet.  You can find it at BevMo or online.

Drinking whisky to reenact a culturally resonant coolness (the Don Draper effect) pales when compared to sinking your gullet into the last remaining dregs of the American frontier.