My introduction to alcohol was one of prohibition: Thou shalt not drink.
My parents, more than a little Protestant in them, decried the temptation of alcohol in stern terms even as they—wait for it!—imbibed themselves.
The nerve!
But this is less about their imposed teetotaling attitude—which was really not the worst mindset to have in high school and part of college, I guess—and more about what they didn’t give me: any understanding of alcohol and how people drink it.
For a college student it’s simple, of course: you drink first whatever you can get your hands on and then second whatever is cheap.
But while we may have fun living under these bacchanalian rules, we won’t enjoy alcohol much. It was years later—in my late 20s—when I finally started to consider and then appreciate alcohol.
It didn’t have to be this way, obviously. I didn’t have to wait until 29 to drink my first Negroni or 32 to savor my first amaro.
But, parents, an introduction would have been nice.
Taylor Coe 