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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