I’ve been to many, many happy hours with Jason Wilson. And wine tastings. And cocktail conventions. Once my teacher, then a boss, but always a friend and mentor, the only thing unique about the following chat was that it took place on the day that Jason’s book, Boozehound, was released. And that certainly called for a beverage.
E: So, Congratulations. What are we drinking?
J: We’re having an Irish Whiskey/Ginger because it’s very hot, but we’re going to move onto Oktoberfest beer, ‘cause it’s 3 dollars. (laughs)
E: Now, if the happy hour special was well whiskey/ginger, would you still order it?
J: This is Tullamore Dew, they were out of Bushmills, so it’s pretty much well whiskey. It also should be noted that we’re at a campus bar. Eating French fries.
E: So, if you were a drink, would you be well whiskey?
J: I would definitely not be well whiskey, unless I was well whiskey in the hands of an attractive young woman. (laughs) No, what would I be? I’d be a Negroni I think… slightly foreign… slightly mysterious… but still a real drink.
E: Does the red color have anything to do with it?
J: Yes, the red. It’s like a warning sign.
E: And if you were a mixer?
J: What, like something non-alcoholic?
E: Yeah, do you generally go well with most things? Club soda?
J: I’d be… grapefruit juice, maybe?
E: From concentrate?
J: No! Fresh squeezed, always. But I don’t know why grapefruit juice. So we can’t delve into that.
E: What about a glass? Are you a solo cup? Can you be taken anywhere? Are you a crystal champagne flute? A shot glass?
J: I’d be glass… the correct type of glassware for the drink. Well, unless I didn’t have the correct glassware. Then I’d just pour my liquor in anything. Are we taking a personality test or is this an interview?
E: Yeah… trying to discover your Myers-Briggs classification.
We order our second round… Victory Fest Beer for Jason and a Flying Fish OktoberFish for myself.
E: So, you’d be a Negroni, but if, besides water, milk, or whatever, you’d only be able to drink one alcoholic drink for the rest of your life – in winter and in summer – what would it be?
J: One thing? Well it’d have to be some kind of whiskey… cause if you’d have to drink it all the time, it’d have to be versatile. Yeah, whiskey. Bourbon, specifically.
E: Speaking of whiskey, let’s test your knowledge on the fly. What’s the deal with the different whiskeys? What makes bourbon, bourbon?
J: Well, bourbon is an American spirit. It’s made from a mixture of at least 51% corn. It must be aged for 2 years in new oak barrels. It must be put in the barrel at a certain proof, and I believe that number is 125 proof.
E: And the spelling of whiskey?
J: Well it depends what whiskey you’re talking about. If it’s Scotch or Canadian whisky, there’s no e. All of the other whiskeys have e’s… American, Irish, Indian, Japanese…
E: Gotcha… So, vodka. Everyone loves to hate it –
J: Everyone hates it?! It’s the worlds most popular spirit!
E: Okay okay, the cocktail geeks hate it. Do you hate vodka?
J: Well I don’t hate vodka. Hate is such a strong word. There’s too much hate in the world. (laughs)
E: Do you ever order vodka?
J: Occasionally… if I’m at a vodka place with tasting flights of straight vodka, served with like pickles and beets or something… the Russian way to do it. When I drink vodka, I drink vodka. Not in a cocktail.
E: No vodka/tonic?
J: Vodka/tonic is terrible.
E: And how do you feel about Long Island Iced Teas?
J: There’s a time and a place for it. Maybe like, really late at night at the Jersey Shore.
E: When everyone else is way more fucked up than you are?
J: Are you self-reflecting? (laughs) Before you leave the bar with that certain someone and head down to the beach?
E: Oh God.
J: The problem with the Long Island Iced Tea is the use of the hated sour mix. A lot of cocktail geeks hate sour mix.
E: And are you a cocktail geek?
J: Most people consider me one. I may not be but I sit at the cocktail geek’s lunch table.
E: So, a lot of our readers may be at the age where they’re at bars-
J: Well I’d hope!
E: -taking shots. How do you feel about shots?
J: Shots are a wonderful thing. There’s a time and a place for them… whenever you feel the need to say “WOO-HOO!” (laughs) Right? What is the time and place?
E: I think it’s celebratory. It means, “we’re out tonight.”
J: “It’s going to be one of those nights.”
E: Exactly. And how often do you have those types of nights?
J: Well, Emily, I don’t know. Less than you, probably. (laughs)
E: How do you feel about bottle service? People paying $200 or $400 for a bottle of Grey Goose, served with orange juice, cranberry, red bull for mixing, glasses and a bucket of ice. Essentially, paying ten-times market value to look good in a club.
J: Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.
E: So, if you were given a $500-gift certificate at a bar that you had to use in one sitting, would you buy a bottle and show off?
J: Of course not. Why would I buy a bottle? I’d buy everyone what they wanted. I wouldn’t be forcing my drinking agenda on anyone.
E: Do you feel that you’re doing that in Boozehound or in your column?
J: Not at all. I’m just offering one man’s opinion. One based on much research and travel and –
E: Imbibing?
J: And imbibing. Wait here’s the waitress.
Jason thought his Victory FestBier was shitty. He orders a Paulaner bottle. I order a FestBier.
E: So, you know about more than just booze -
J: I do know my stuff in more than one category. But this is my first book – my first adult book…there was a Star Wars rip-off I wrote when I was eight…
E: Your first adult book?
J: It is a book for adults, not an adult book – there are no nude scenes. Well, there’s one partially nude scene, I think. (laughs)
E: Do you prefer, then, to write about booze or something else?
J: I’m assuming this is the part of the interview when you refer to when I was a food critic for Philadelphia Magazine. I mean, I didn’t do it for that long, maybe a little less than a year. It was a weird gig, I think, being a food critic. You dine out, you’re anonymous, you have this huge budget – my budget was like $1500 per month –
E: And how many restaurants were you reviewing with that budget?
J: I would do one or two, usually about a new restaurant that I’d visit like four times, or it’d be about two or three around a theme and I’d visit each one two or three times. I mean, you have to have some real stamina to be eating out like that all the time. And at Philly Mag, you’d always be eating at the new places, not necessarily the places you’d want to be eating. I don’t know, it gets to be a little weird.
It’s interesting. I probably reviewed 15 or 20 restaurants, and I think at one point, I saw that like 11 of them had gone out of business within 2 years of when I’d reviewed them. So you’re writing about other people’s livelihoods. There’s a lot of responsibility. It’s not like you’re covering a war, but to those who own the businesses, it’s their whole life.
E: Do you feel you’re able to be more blunt and honest when critiquing spirits? You know, people with billions of dollars put out a new vodka –
J: I think that there is something faceless about reviewing something from Bacardi or Diageo or some other huge company. Whereas if you’re reviewing a restaurant in the city, where the chef has put his life savings into it, it’s different. It’s different, but then again I don’t think you should be any less critical.
E: On the same level, when someone puts their kids college fund into a new gin –
J: I mean, with small brands, if it’s not very good, I’m probably just not going to write about it. If it’s a small brand, you probably won’t be able to find it, anyway. I can just ignore it. But it’s different than some rum that’s launched by a multi-billion dollar company, that’s got PR people who are reaching out to media and doing these gigantic events that I know you’ve been to that are –
E: Absurd?
J: Totally absurd, where there’s house music bumping, twenty-seven bartenders making drinks –
E: Women in bikinis with feathers –
J: Right. Women in bodysuits painted blue, serving drinks –
E: Speaking of PR, how many press releases are you getting per day?
J: No less than five per day – probably more on most days. And there are certain PR people in Philadelphia that still send me releases on restaurants.
E: From your days at Philly Mag?
J: I don’t know what they’re from because I never go to them. (laughs)
E: Well I know that with the (Washington) Post, you aren’t allowed to accept things.
J: Well this is what I’m allowed to accept – nothing. I mean, I taste samples of new spirits, but I’m not allowed to accept travel. And in the spirits business, there are a lot of freelancers who accept travel, and go on these amazing trips like every other week, be it Barbados to have some rum, or over to Ireland to have some Irish whiskey or somewhere else extravagant. But I can never do that.
I mean I travel a lot, so don’t cry for me, but it’s all either funded by a book advance, or funding by the Post, or out of my own expense account, basically.
E: Would you consider booze your greatest hobby? Is there anything you do besides drink? Anything?
J: (laughs) What a question.
E: You have kids. Are you conditioning them to drink yet?
J: Come on; they’re eight and five.
E: How will you feel when they’re fifteen, and suddenly your $300 bottle is empty?
J: No, those will be whisked off the property and put in an undisclosed location because I can just picture my $600 bottle of Calvados in my trashcan. Or, see, we live across the street from a big park with a wooded area, and kids drink down there. So there’s a joke that eventually, when our kids are of that age, we’ll just whistle out the door, and our kids will know when to come home.
But yeah, that’s a recurring nightmare. So they’ll be locked away.
E: What age will that be? When was your first run-in with alcohol?
J: Run-in? You make it sound so negative.
E: Well the first ones often are. I’m not talking a sip of your Dad’s Hot Toddy –
J: For the record, my father never drank a Hot Toddy in his life. (laughs)
E: Your first experience with liquor, though.
J: Well, it’s the Sambuca story, you know that.
E: Speaking of keg parties. There are beers that you can drink all night. But how do you drink liquor all night? What’s a session liquor?
J: I’d say it’s important to stick to one liquor –
E: So it’s true what they say?
J: Absolutely. Absolutely. I went to a seminar one time on “The Hangover.” No, actually, I didn’t make it, because I was hungover, but you shouldn’t mix. There are all sorts of myths about hangovers, that you should drink vodka or something light instead of whiskey. But the thing is, and I’m sure a food scientist at Drexel can tell you more about this, but each liquor’s got its own type of chemical that needs to be processed. So if you drink five different kinds, it’s harder on your body.
E: And crappy liquor?
J: Oh yeah, that’s bad. If you drink Mixto tequila, which means that just 51% of it is agave-based tequila, and 49% of it is who knows what – additives, sugar. That’s the stuff that’ll give you that bad, Jose Cuervo Gold hangover that scares everyone away from tequila. But 100% pure agave tequila –
E: Which I think is confusing for a lot of people.
J: Yeah, you see “Gold” and you’re like, “Oh my god, it’s gotta be great,” but Jose Cuervo Gold is like your worst friend. He is not a man that you want to have around. But there are Jose Cuervo tequilas that are 100% -
E: And that’s what you want to look for, that 100% on the label, because otherwise, you’re gonna hurt.
J: Exactly.
E: Speaking of sugar – it also a lot to do with hangovers.
J: Yeah, yeah. If you drink one of these ridiculous, gigantic, girly cocktails that are full of high-fructose corn syrup or these day-glo margarita mixers, yeah, that’s like hangover city. Definitely.
E: And what’s your hangover cure?
J: Well, hair of the dog is scientifically proven.
E: The hair of the same dog?
J: Yeah.
E: But aren’t you just postponing it?
J: Yeah. Or maybe just spending the day hanging out with the people you got drunk with the night before – having a laugh, maybe getting some breakfast. It’s good for a Sunday. Or if you’re a writer, it may be your Monday. (laughs)
Order Jason's book, Boozehound, on Amazon.com.
Emily Callaghan is managing editor of Table Matters and a graduate of Drexel University. Her work has appeared in Philadelpia Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer and TheSmartSet.com.
Article photos from Jason Wilson, "Booze" photograph by Lynn Brownlie and Mike Bucher, "Bottle" photograph from istockphoto.com.
