10 Of The Spirits, Cocktails & Bars That Made My Year in 2023

The Mischa Martini. I don’t drink much vodka and I don’t like carrots, so I don’t get why I like this cocktail so much. (Photo by me)

When it comes to booze, my liver is large, it contains multitudes. By which I don’t mean it’s enlarged, or that it’s spouting weird growths, or anything like that. What I’m trying to say, with my awkward paraphrasing of Walt Whitman’s famous line, is that I love to drink all sorts of things, from a bone-dry martini to a flaming tiki concoction, and from whiskeys that cost more than your average car to Malort, Chicago’s famously undrinkable mascot spirit (I finally tasted it a few months ago, and found it much less odious than its reputation would suggest). But what I write about is, mostly, whisky. Or whiskey. Or whisk(e)y. You get the point.

I write about whisky in part because I’m known as a guy who writes about whisky, so a lot of noteworthy bottles cross my path. It’s also partly because whisky is, you know, popular, so people want to read about it. But whatever the reason, I tend to give spirits that aren’t whisky, and cocktails and bars for that matter, lots of love on social media but not nearly as much in print for publications. This is an attempt to make up for that. It covers a small fraction of all the booze and all the boozy venues I enjoyed in 2023, but hey, something is better than nothing, right? You won’t find any whisky here, but you’ll find lots of delicious things to drink and places to go — and there’s even a non-alcoholic option, not that I’m a big fan of Dry January, but hey, everyone’s gotta not drink sometime, right?

Anyway, it’s my first article of 2024 and you can find it at Forbes! Link is -> HERE <-.