1946 The Stock Club Bar Book by Lucius Beebe

tentious than the classic vintages of Burgundy, and white Bordeaux or sauternes enjoy a certain vogue with the service of fish and lunch– eon dishes of a light nature. True Chablis, the aristocrat of white still wines, is so difficult to obtain as this is being written as to be inconsiderable in this brief footnote. Since discussions of the merits, qualities and service of even one of the classes of wine mentioned have over several centuries engaged the attentions of many learned men and have supplied the matter for innumerable and ponderous books, it will be seen that any detailed mention of them, let alone so chancy a subject as an estimate of current vintages, is impracticable in the extreme, as well as outside the province of this book. As has been the case with the vintages of the grape, it is not the purpose of this bar boo~ to trespass upon the provinces which are more properly those of a cellar book, and brandies in all their re– dactions, classifications and varieties of wonder are more properly the concerns of a sommelier than of a barkeep. With the exceptions of a few formulas, they are unsuited to use in mixed drinks, being an essence for the consideration of the mature palate and the discretion of experience. Brandy is the drink for heroes and it is also the drink for scholars. Even the brashest barkeep hesitates at the command of a patron for a pedigreed Cognac to be used in a stinger or rendered in highball form with soda water. Many and learned books have been devoted to Cognac and its allied or related eaux de vie and the Stork stocks a supply that is the wonder and pleasure of the knowing and the undoing of the un– j udicious, for a great Cognac has about it a pantherlike treachery in that its absorption seems quite devoid of dismaying results until next day or even next week. It possesses, too, the humorous attribute of deluding the consumer int9 the belief that he is entirely sober until he finds himself, like David Copperfield at his first wine dinner,

93: Night