Magisterium Felix
January 17, 2009, 7:23 pm
Posted by Cathleen Kaveny
I asked some friends what the difference between “bourbon” and “whiskey” is –and we looked it up.
The Roman Catholic Magisterium looks, well, lax when compared to the Kentucky bourbon magisterium.
There is, it seems, a website that is the functional equivalent of a bourbon catechism (in q. and a. form). Who’d have thought it?
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There are strict laws governing just what a Bourbon must be to be labeled as such. For example, at least 51 percent of the grain used in making the whiskey must be corn (most distillers use 65 to 75 percent corn). Bourbon must be aged for a minimum of two years in new, white oak barrels that have been charred. Nothing can be added at bottling to enhance flavor, add sweetness or alter color.
- Download the BATF regulations governing bourbon here.
And I imagine that unlike the Catechism of the Catholic Church all the doctrines in the Bourbon catechism are de fide and irreversible. Perhaps I should try Bourbon. But I think I will stick to the remarkable gin produced at the Blackfriars Distillery in Plymouth, England.
I suspect Rome would prefer the Bourbons to the Scotches, but I indulge i single-malt Scotch snobbery, and notice many Curialists do the same. Well, even red-label will do.
Like a Walker Percy code-hero, I long for “the hot bosky bite of bourbon whiskey.” And if dogma’s what it takes to get it right, bring on the dogma.
I had no idea of the difference–I usually drink red wine. But I do see the point of bourbon. A glass of red wine doesn’t cut it after after helping to getting a car unstuck from the snow in -5 degree weather.
My grandpa always had a fifth of some kind of rotgut whiskey in an old tire nailed to the back wall of the garage as a bumper. As long as the bottle was out of the house and hidden in the garage, it preserved the fiction for my tee-totalling grandmother that no drinking was going on in her house.
ANYway, I was about 8 or 9 out there playing with the fishing lures one afternoon while Grandpa and Dad were sneaking a snort. My dad was extolling the qualities of bourbon, it was smoother, lighter, less prone to giving you hangovers, blah blah.
Grandpa cut him off by saying that bourbon was for people who wanted to brag about how much it cost them to get oiled up and did Dad want to brag or get drunk.
Makes me wonder if this has somehow affected my views about the route to salvation …
Ahem, I offer the following site:
http://www.bourbontrail.com
which includes a link to http://www.monks.org
(Bourbon-laced fruitcake and candy are good for a Catholic palate:)
“But I do see the point of bourbon. A glass of red wine doesn’t cut it after after helping to getting a car unstuck from the snow in -5 degree weather.”
Cathleen, have you ever had the occasion to read Wodehouse? There is a Bertie and Jeeves story in which Bertie experiences car difficulties somewhat similar to your predicament, and the prospect of hot scotch-and-water with a spot of lemon is what sustains him.
Bertie also once received an unsettling piece of news, which “left him white and shaken, like a dry martini.”
Graham Greene thought that Wodehouse was one of the finest writers of the 20th century.
(Total digression: Greene is one of Obama’s favorite authors.)
Only slightly relevant factoid: in Gaelic “whiskey” is spelled “uisge”. Lovely word for a poem.
I wonder who invented the stuff.