Chapter 28 Favorite Bourbon Whiskey

"My friend and I rented a house in a building on the ramp from Shibuya to the south platform, and opened an office for translation. The fund was provided by the friend's father, but it is not easy to say. It’s not a staggering amount of money, except for the house deposit, three steel desks, a dozen dictionaries, a telephone, and a half-dozen of bourbon.” This is the scene described by Haruki Murakami in the novel, and the background of the time is the spring of 1972. Looking back at the "Zuo Zhuan" written in 400 BC, the words left by our ancestors all said that "the blue thread on the difficult road will enlighten the mountains and forests", but Murakami put half a dozen bourbon whiskeys on the table, and let the story The "I" started a business leisurely.What is closer to heaven is yet to come. The time scale in this office is marked by the flow of alcohol. Every time "I" completes a job, "I drink a whiskey the width of a finger."No need to push wood carts, no need to wear rags, this is the utopia that the self-motivated drunkard yearns for.

In the novel, bourbon whiskey created office utopia in 1972; in the United States, a priest named Elijah Craig in Kentucky invented bourbon whiskey in 1789. The essence of this wine is that corn is used as the main raw material, and it is stored and fermented in slightly charred oak barrels. The distilled wine after that has a unique aroma, which is different from whiskey made from pure malt. These winemakers are probably as hardworking as our ancestors. They originally opened a winery in Pennsylvania. Later, because the new government imposed excessive alcohol taxes, they launched the "Whiskey Riot" in 1794 in an attempt to overthrow the government by force.The riots were later suppressed by government forces, and it is said that more troops were mobilized than during the War of Independence.

The riots ended in capitulation, and distilleries moved to Kentucky's up-and-coming Bourbon region to avoid heavy liquor taxes.Unfortunately, the wheat harvest was in short supply again, and these wineries had to switch to Bourbon's corn as raw materials. Unexpectedly, the blended wine was more popular.Since then, whiskey named after "Bourbon" has almost become synonymous with American whiskey, and various brewing standards have gradually taken shape. Whiskey" (corn whiskey). In 1964, an act of the U.S. Congress even stipulated that bourbon whiskey was a native spirit unique to the United States (Native Spirit).

"That night, Rat didn't drink a drop of beer. It wasn't a good sign, instead, he drank five Jim Beams on the rocks in a row." Yes, this Jim Beam is also a very Native American spirit of bourbon.This is another scene from the 1970s in "Listening to the Wind".There is no doubt that Haruki Murakami loves America, and his protagonists love bourbon.