Throwing a sequester shindig this weekend? Of course you are! But if you want to be the host or hostess with the mostest, be sure your guests are able to drown their frustration in our democracy with these tasty drinks. It’ll make for a night you can’t ever remember (not that you would really want to).

Gin Fizzle

3 ounces gin
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon lime juice
club soda

Pour club soda into a cocktail shaker and leave it out on the counter for a few hours before your party begins, allowing its optimistic bubbles plenty of time to encounter bureaucratic inertia and lose all their energy as final hour draws ever nearer. Once the deadline has passed the party begins, add the remaining ingredients to your flat soda and shake vigorously. It won’t jolt any life back into the drink, but at least the gin will go down easier.

Shouts & Murmurs - Click-through to see Caitlin Kelly’s four other recipes for sequester-watching cocktails: http://nyr.kr/13tBV87

(Source: newyorker.com)

Last week in the magazine, Kelefa Sanneh wrote about the Bruichladdich distillery, on the Scottish island of Islay, and a former wine dealer’s mission to reinvent the local Scotch business. For those of us whose taste for whisky could benefit from a little education, here’s a slide show of the varieties of Bruichladdich Scotch, photographed by Grant Cornett, with captions by Sanneh.

Click-through to see the slideshow: http://nyr.kr/XpxT9L

In this week’s issue, Kelefa Sanneh explains how Mark Reynier, a third-generation wine dealer from London, decided to buy Bruichladdich, an almost defunct whisky distillery on the Scottish island of Islay, and ended up changing the Scotch industry. 

When Reynier bought the distillery, in 2000, he had a problem: the standard minimum age for fine Scottish whisky is ten years; their new spirits would need time to mature.

Bruichladdich’s ten-year problem was partly a marketing problem: malt drinkers have come to view age as a proxy for quality, and the industry has played along, using age statements to justify high prices.  In Reynier’s view, this constrains distillers and misleads consumers.

Reynier and Jim McEwan, the company’s master distiller, launched a young, non-aged whisky called Bruichladdich Rocks; Laddie Classic, a mid-priced introductory Scotch; and Black Art, a mysterious and expensive multi-vintage release, as well as other new lines. McEwan tells Sanneh: 

People said, ‘Ah, Bruichladdich are doing so many different things.’ Yeah, well, we had to! If we didn’t, we’d have been sitting there starving—the company would never, ever have got off the ground…

Click-through to read (subscription required): http://nyr.kr/11duqCg

In this photo: Twenty-one-year-old whisky, aged in Oloroso sherry casks. Most Scottish distilleries age their spirit in bourbon casks, but Bruichladdich often supplements these with wine casks, which are meant to impart flavor, color, and cachet.

A Sunday morning cartoon by Frank Cotham. For more from this issue: http://nyr.kr/SXlOLL

We all know Newsweek loves to drink, so maybe they’ll enjoy Philip Gourevitch’s most recent post: Ten American Whiskeys that Made the World News in 2010 a Bit Less Unbearable.

Fine, in the spirit of the holidays, we’ll give it away:

1. Four Roses, Single Barrel
2. Noah’s Mill
3. Rowan’s Creek
4. Russell’s Reserve
5. Pappy Van Winkle, 15 year
6. Michter’s Rye
7. Blanton’s
8. Baker’s
9. Sazerac Rye

O.K.—so that’s nine, but it feels like ten…