eyes. “Yeah, yeah, same story, different verse. Continue.”
“Okay, tip your glass back into the horizontal position.” She did. “Now, put your nose right over the lip and sniff.”
She followed all my instructions attentively, even paying attention when I went through all the extra boring bullshit about how this technique engages one’s olfactory senses. How she should alternate nostrils when sniffing because they each sniff at different rates, and one might have a higher propensity to detect and convey certain aromatic molecules over the other. When her eyebrows climbed higher and higher up her forehead, I couldn’t tell if it was from what she was smelling or if she was actually impressed.
“Did you go to school for this?” she asked. “You said you went to Columbia, right?”
I inhaled deeply from my glass. That bottle came from a damn good barrel. “Yeah, but I got my business degree. I’ve learned all of this along the way. Real world experience, I guess you could say.”
“The student as well as the teacher,” she mused.
“We’re all students at some point. The ones who never become teachers of something never learned anything.”
Her lips parted. “That was pretty profound, Nico.”
I winked. “I’m a cornucopia of wisdom, legs. Take notes. There will be a test on this.”
When her face softened and her eyelids shuttered, I figured it was time to move on. “All right, it’s time to awaken the palate. Tiny sips are important. As much as you’ll want to chug this shit down because it’s so damn good, try to refrain in the beginning. Transfer it from the front, center, and back of your tongue to open up your taste buds and really experience all the flavors.”
I watched her reaction carefully as she took her first sip of my pride and joy whiskey. After holding it in her mouth for several seconds, she eventually swallowed.
Her eyes bugged out of her skull. “Holy shit.”
I flashed my teeth in a goofy ass smile. “Right?”
“I’m not just saying this…but that might be the best whiskey I’ve ever had.”
My chest swelled with pride. “William Faulkner once said there’s no such thing as bad whiskey. Some whiskey just happens to be better than others.”
“I’m getting the sense you don’t agree with that.”
I scowled. “Hell, no. That implies that there’s no standard. That anyone can just make a shitty mash and slap the name whiskey on it.”
“Well, I think it’s safe to say this is far from a shitty mash. And I’ve never been a huge fan of the smoky flavor. But this is really smooth.”
“This is the only label we make that uses a percentage of sherry casks in the ageing process,” I explained, sipping from my glass. “The smoky flavor comes out softer and slightly sweeter as a result.”
She took another, bigger sip. “I mean, wow. You could market this to women just as easily as you could to men, you know. Obviously, the demographics show that a majority of whiskey drinkers are men, but I think most women just have preconceived notions about it. Or they haven’t branched out and tasted enough.”
I scratched my chin, contemplating. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”
She pointed to her glass and adamantly stated, “I’m telling you, women would drink this. And if you mix it up in a good cocktail?” She snapped her fingers. “You’re golden. It’ll sell like pancakes.”
I pinched my lips together, fighting my smile. “Hotcakes, legs. It’ll sell like hotcakes.”
“Hotcakes, then.”
“You really think so?”
She nodded eagerly. “Absolutely. You just have to market it right. How about this… ‘Saluzzo Reserve: The whiskey for her and for him.’”
My mouth inched up in degrees until it consumed my entire face. “That’s pretty good. I hadn’t thought about marketing that specifically targets the female population.”
Her brilliant blue eyes lit up with excitement as she reached inside her purse and pulled out her phone. “Here, I’ll show you.”
She opened an app, picked up her glass, and spun around on her stool. I watched in fascination as she held the phone and glass up in front of her in selfie mode.
Then she peeked over her shoulder and smiled coyly. “You’re in my shot, pretty boy.”
Grin widening, I stepped to the left and out of her way. She snapped several pictures and did some more clicking on her phone. Finally, she handed the phone to me with a triumphant smile.
“There you go,” she said. “Apply some artsy-looking filters and the right hashtags and you’ve got a following.”
Curiosity piqued, I took the phone and was amazed at the image