On Drinking Alone

I write frequently about sharing. Indulgence is meant to be shared, the evening improves with company, and so on. I stand by all of it.

I also drink alone, and I intend to defend the practice.

There is a particular attention available to a person by themselves that no dinner party permits. No conversation to attend to, no glass to refill but your own, no obligation to be interesting. Just the thing in the glass and however long you wish to spend with it. Most of what I know about whiskey I learned in exactly that condition.

The distinction that matters is not solitude versus company. It is attention versus absence. A dram considered alone at the end of a day is a fine thing. A dram drunk without noticing, in front of a screen, because the hour arrived, is not really a dram at all, and I say that with sympathy rather than judgment.

Pour deliberately. Sit down with it. Notice what it does over twenty minutes. Then, some other evening, do the same thing with someone whose company you enjoy, and observe that it is a different pleasure and not a superior one.