Cheers to Whiskey, the ‘Oil of Conversation’

Join in the celebration today – World Whisky Day – by grabbing a bottle and some friends or check out the WWD map to find local events and tastings.  

Whiskey culture is characteristically welcoming, with whiskey makers and aficionados ever eager to share a dram and a story. World Whisky Day is your invitation to sample something new or pour your old favorite with friends.

When the Mississippi legislature was debating legalization in 1952, Rep. Noah “Soggy” Sweat delivered an eloquent defense of whiskey and its countless contributions—from the relationships it builds to what its profits afford:  

If when you say whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips, and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer; if you mean the stimulating drink that puts the spring in the old gentleman’s step on a frosty, crispy morning; if you mean the drink which enables a man to magnify his joy, and his happiness, and to forget, if only for a little while, life’s great tragedies, and heartaches, and sorrows; if you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars, which are used to provide tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitiful aged and infirm; to build highways and hospitals and schools, then certainly I am for it.

This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.

For World Whisky Day, let’s raise a glass to Soggy Sweat, whiskey, and the freedom to imbibe with friends! As CEI founder Fred Smith magnificently declares in I, Whiskey: The Human Spirit: “Spirits allow us to be a bit more spiritual. They give us a certain feeling of the sacred in our own lives. They raise it up. They make us more human—or so I think.”