Very often the grains are malted before fermentation, just to mess with their heads. When they think they're going to promulgate, they get roasted along with their hopes and dreams.

A great many whiskys come from a single plant in Indiana. This may be disheartening to craft whisky fans, but it's very heartening to those of us looking to buy whisky by the barrel.

Whisky in general

Whiskey -- or whisky if you're nasty -- means "water of life" in Irish ("uisce beatha"), which says a whole lot about the micks and even more about the quality of their well water. Corrupted through years of Anglican misuse (much like the Irish themselves), the phrase came to be known as simply whiskey, which you're clever enough to recognize as "Water." How are you going to mature and flourish without water? You'd be dead in a week. Therefore whiskey is life.

In America and Ireland the e spelling is used. Everywhere else is wrong. Interestingly, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms disagrees. But what do they know? They can't even break up a hippie commune correctly.

Scotch

Scotch refers specifically to whisky from Scotland made under these conditions. Scotch is a word so old it doesn't even describe Scottish things anymore, because whisky is so great it displaced an entire country from its own descriptor. This language isn't big enough for both the Scottish people and all the drinking they intend to do.

Scotch is usually a smooth drink and one that has fond associations for me of when the English sent my Scottish ancestors to Ireland to breed out the Irish.

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You're not a man until you've pondered how to make genocide more humane.

Rye

Hoo boy, this is one of the ongoing tragedies of Prohibition. Rye used to be the predominant American whisky until a bunch of do-gooders decided to ruin everything everywhere for everyone forever.

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A lesson we have since learned we must never repeat.

In the 1920s, rye production shifted to Canada, where men were Mounties and women were in love with those men's horses. The only problem is Canada is a lawless place that doesn't even require its rye to be made with 51% rye like we do.

... or at all.

Canada, there's a lot great about you but calling a drink "rye" when it lacks any rye ingredient is as messed up as Southerners who call all soft drinks Coke. You don't want to be the South of the north, do you? That is a game with no winner.

Bourbon

Whereas rye must be distilled using 51% or more of its grains from rye in these sane United States, bourbon must be 51% corn, "aged in new, charred oak barrels," and sipped while fondly recollecting last summer. It's a strange requirement, I agree, but a fitting one.

Many brands of bourbon are distilled in Kentucky, but none in Bourbon County. Happy hour special: free irony with your drink!

Tennessee whisky

I went to a wedding this summer where the bride's family was from Tennessee. They were lovely people, and not one of them called a ginger ale "Coke." That's salt of the earth. The only thing strange about them was they filtered all their whisky through charcoal because their government commanded it be so.

Moonshine

Quite popular among people who intend to go blind in the next few years.

"This is called whisky," said John. "It's what a man drinks and it's what I drink and it's what you're going to drink because I can't watch you sip any more candy."

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There's a reason we stop crybabies by rubbing whisky on their gums.

From then on, I was a whisky man, whereas before I'd been a glucose gal. And don't think you won't experience your own version of that moment just because your coworkers aren't sailors. Anyone can enjoy the dulcet kiss of the highland drink. In fact becoming a whisky man is as inevitable as puberty.

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But far less awkward

When giving thanks to your savior, only a bottle of whisky will do.

Mark of taste

Whisky also makes an excellent housewarming gift when meeting your girlfriend's parents for the first time. A mellow, smoky whisky says to these people, "You may relax in the knowledge that someone thoughtful and competent is fucking your daughter."

Eliciting poetry from the elderly

I asked my old man why he drinks whisky. He said, "When you've been out walking all day it feels good in your joints and bones. It's better on the rocks. Always better in front of a fire." That's about as concise a thesis for this article as I can find.

*If you are one of the latter, I recommend attending one of Robert Brockway's book readings. Robert possesses the rare YYY configuration where even his cells' nuclei have little tiny beards. You may get to see him turn water into whisky, and if you touch the hem of his cloak, you instantly gain the ability to fix a car.

No, the definition of masculinity is more elusive. Imagine if centaurs were real, but some were more horse than man and vice versa. You might even come across a regular-looking horse who, nevertheless, spoke fluent centaur and had a good smithy business going. You wouldn't tell him he "wasn't centaur enough." That'd be a dick move. If you bought him a whisky instead you'd end up focusing on what you have in common instead. Perhaps you both shoot arrows at things or abduct naiads? If the latter, turn yourself into the ancient Greek police immediately.

My advice to you is to worry about yourself and not the other centaurs. Gender taxonomy is too broad to define in a single article. You'd have to ponder it over whisky for, like...at least ten minutes, so we'll have the answer for you at the end of this column.

Similar to your centaur conundrum, drinking whisky doesn't make you manly; not caring what makes you manly does. And that is the common attitude of whisky-drinkers. Nobody lasts long drinking whisky to impress others--

GQ -- Ha! No, fear real though, it's Esquire
Unless you're drinking to impress noted whisky lover Christina Hendricks, obviously.

--because A) nobody else cares what you drink unless it's gasoline. That would be impressive, and B) you either have enough gumption to stomach whisky or you're the kind of person who only cares about image.

If it's the latter, you won't enjoy it, and also you are weak and should be culled from this earth because people like you make reality TV possible. If it's the former, hooray! You've discovered that the manliest virtues are also the most attractive feminine ones: self-confidence, self-awareness, self-sufficiency. You have transcended your binary socialization! Have a whisky.

Lesson learned: it's not what you drink, but how you hoist it. Funny you had to drink whisky to learn that.