評論
打印
Bourbon
波旁威士忌酒
When I headed to Osaka a few months ago, my friend Nick Coldicott, who lives in Tokyo, urged me to visit what he contends is the best bourbon bar in the world: Rogin’s Tavern. Knowing Nick’s command of the spirits universe, I take a commuter train out to Moriguchi, an obscure little town about half an hour from the center of Osaka. When I emerge from the station I can see a neon light spelling "Rogin's" in English. Inside it is dim, with a long wooden bar backed by hundreds of bottles. American jazz comes from an ancient-looking jukebox in the rear.
當我幾個月前往大阪時，我住在東京的朋友Nick Coldicott敦促我去參觀他認為是世界上最好的波旁威士忌酒吧：Rogin’s Tavern（羅金的酒館）。我知道Nick對酒精非常的了解，于是我乘坐了一列通勤列車前Moriguchi ，一個距離大阪市中心大約半小時車程的無名小鎮。當我達到車站時我可以看到一個霓虹燈拼寫的英文“Rogin’s”。里面很昏暗，里面有一個很長的吧臺，后面排列著幾百瓶酒。一個古老的點唱機里傳來了美國爵士樂。
Nearly every bottle is bourbon, though there is a smattering of rye and sour mash. I can see bottles from the 1800s next to obscure export bottlings of Jim Beam next to standard-issue Jack Daniel’s. Seiichiro Tatsumi, an older man dressed elegantly in bartender’s attire, emerges from the shadows and says hello in English. I tell him I am a friend of Nick’s, and he reaches for a bottle nestled behind the register. "You want to try a 1904?" he asks.
幾乎每瓶都是波旁，雖然有少數的黑麥和酸麥芽漿。我可以看到很多19世紀年份的酒瓶子，還有用于出口的占邊·波本威士忌，盡管瓶身略顯模糊，還有標準的杰克丹尼爾。（占邊波本威士忌：始于1795年，歷經占邊家族七代釀酒師，始終保持產品的最高品質并成為全世界和全美銷量第一的波本威士忌 。 杰克·丹尼 世界十大名酒之一 1866年誕生于美國田納西州蓮芝堡，單瓶銷量多年來高踞全球美國威士忌之首。是美國最古老的注冊酒廠） Seiichiro Tatsumi ，一個年長的穿著得體的酒保服裝男士，從陰影里浮現出來用英語說“hello”，我告訴他我是Nick的朋友，于是他拿了一瓶酒過來。“你想嘗試一下1904年的佳釀嗎”？他問道。
He tenderly unscrews the top and pours a shot for me and another for himself. I take a sip. It is a brand I’ve never heard of, once made, Tatsumi says, especially for a hotel in Kentucky. It is highly alcoholic but silky smooth. Unlike wine or vintage port, bourbon is not supposed to change much in the bottle over time. And so I think of this as a chance to taste the past and experience, almost exactly, what drinkers were sipping a hundred years ago.
他輕輕地旋開瓶蓋，他倒了一杯給我，給自己也倒了一杯。我小品一口，這個品牌的酒我從來沒有喝過，據他說之前這是為肯塔基州的一家飯店專門制作的。 度數很高但感覺爽滑。不像葡萄酒或者年份波特，波旁威士忌不會因時間的推移而產生太多變化。所以我覺得這是品味過去和歷史的大好機會，因為我現在所喝的和100年前人們所喝的沒啥兩樣啊！
"I tasted my first bourbon in the basement bar of the Rihga Royal Hotel, a famous old place in Osaka," Tatsumi says. "Then I spent years reading everything I could about bourbon at the American cultural center. I sent letters to Kentucky and Tennessee trying to set up visits to the distilleries. I even asked for help at the American consulate. And then I finally got to visit in 1984. I fell in love with America then. I’ve been back a hundred times since. I now own a house in Lexington, and I’ve even been named a colonel in Kentucky."
辰巳說：“我在大阪的一家馳名老店--麗嘉皇家酒店的地下酒莊里第一次嘗到了波旁威士忌，然后我花了幾年時間在美國文化中心里學習有關波旁威士忌的所有知識。我寄信往肯塔基州和田納西州希望能去拜訪那里的（波旁）造酒廠，我甚至求助于美國領事館。結果如我所愿我在1984年得到了邀請，從此我就愛上了美國。那之后我來回日本美國之間已有上百次，我現在在列克星敦有一處房產，甚至被任命為肯塔基州的一名上校。”
I ask him how he found all these old bottles of bourbon. "I drive across America, only on the back roads and especially at night, when you can see the lit-up liquor-store signs in the distance," he says. “I stop at every place I pass, and I don’t just look on the shelves: I ask the clerk to comb the cellar and check the storeroom for anything old. I can’t tell you how many cases of ancient bottles I’ve found that way. I’ll try any bourbon once, and if I like it I buy more."
我向他請教如何收集到這么多的陳年波旁酒，他回答說：“我曾經駕車穿越了美國，都是通過鄉間小路而且挑的都是晚上，因為那時候你能看到遠處的酒館小店的招牌在發光。我在每處小店都會停留一下而且我不只是看貨架，我會請求店員清查地窖并找出所有存著的舊貨，我無法向你形容用這種方法我找到了多少波旁陳釀，每一種波旁我都會品嘗一下，只要我喜歡我就買下來。”
The next day I visit another bourbon bar in Osaka, Tonen (meaning "decade"), in a downtown neighborhood where salarymen go drinking. This is the bar of the bourbon master from whom Tatsumi originally learned. A pack of businesspeople parade into the place and one asks for one of the most expensive and rare contemporary bourbons around, Pappy Van Winkle, a bottle of which can cost more than $1,000. The bartender makes a big show of pouring this cultish favorite, laying the snifter down horizontally and swirling the bourbon inside it before presenting it to the man who ordered it, obviously the boss of the group. Then he comes over and we talk about his old bottles, and I see a glint in his eye. For someone in Kentucky or Tennessee it might be called nostalgia, but can you be nostalgic for a time and place you never knew? These two Japanese bourbon temples represent a bold act of imagination.
第二天我來到大阪的另一家位于下城區的工薪階層光顧的波旁酒館，托恩（意思是十年）酒館。該酒館是Tatsumi最早開始知道的一家波旁專業酒館。當天一群商務人士涌入這個地方，有人點了一杯最為昂貴并且少見的現代波旁酒——派比 范溫克威士忌，一瓶1000多美金。服務員在倒這種令人癡迷的酒時，展示了精湛技藝，他水平地擺好酒杯，令波旁酒在杯中不斷打轉，然后展示在客人面前。很明顯，這個人是這一群人的老板。隨后他走過來，我們聊到他買的這瓶老酒，我看到他目光一閃，仿佛某些肯塔基或田納西人懷有的思鄉病一般。但是你會對一個你并不了解的時代和地點產生鄉愁的情緒嗎？這兩個日本波旁酒館呈現出了大膽的想象。
Back in the States I phone up bourbon bars from Manhattan to Louisville, and their responses are all the same: We have old-style bourbons, but not anything old. And then I call Keith Biesack, the beverage director at what may be New York City’s best bourbon bar, Char No. 4, and I ask why no one in America stocks anything really old. "Until very recently people didn’t think they wanted to drink anything but newly bottled bourbon," he says. “The idea that this was a drink whose past you’d want to discover through old bottles, that’s a very new idea."
回到美國，從曼哈頓到路易斯維爾我給很多波旁酒吧都打了電話，他們的回應都相同：我們有老式的波旁酒，但都不久遠。隨后，我又給畢塞科打了電話，他是紐約市可能最好的波旁酒吧——查理四號的酒類銷售總監。我問到他為何美國酒吧中都沒有真正的老酒。他說：“因為一直以來人們都想喝新裝的酒，而通過喝酒來探索過去的歷史，這樣的想法才剛剛出現而已。”
Not in Japan, I think, and I imagine Tatsumi 25 years ago roaring across the small roads of the American South and discovering bottles that only he knew to treasure.
但日本可不這樣，而且我能夠想象25年前Tatsumi 呼嘯著穿過美國南部的小路，只為發現值得珍藏的陳年老酒時的樣子。
