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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.
当我几个月前往大阪时，我住在东京的朋友Nick Coldicott敦促我去参观他认为是世界上最好的波旁威士忌酒吧：Rogin’s Tavern（罗金的酒馆）。我知道Nick对酒精非常的了解，于是我乘坐了一列通勤列车前Moriguchi ，一个距离大阪市中心大约半小时车程的无名小镇。当我达到车站时我可以看到一个霓虹灯拼写的英文“Rogin’s”。里面很昏暗，里面有一个很长的吧台，后面排列着几百瓶酒。一个古老的点唱机里传来了美国爵士乐。
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.
几乎每瓶都是波旁，虽然有少数的黑麦和酸麦芽浆。我可以看到很多19世纪年份的酒瓶子，还有用于出口的占边·波本威士忌，尽管瓶身略显模糊，还有标准的杰克丹尼尔。（占边波本威士忌：始于1795年，历经占边家族七代酿酒师，始终保持产品的最高品质并成为全世界和全美销量第一的波本威士忌 。 杰克·丹尼 世界十大名酒之一 1866年诞生于美国田纳西州莲芝堡，单瓶销量多年来高踞全球美国威士忌之首。是美国最古老的注册酒厂） Seiichiro Tatsumi ，一个年长的穿着得体的酒保服装男士，从阴影里浮现出来用英语说“hello”，我告诉他我是Nick的朋友，于是他拿了一瓶酒过来。“你想尝试一下1904年的佳酿吗”？他问道。
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.
他轻轻地旋开瓶盖，他倒了一杯给我，给自己也倒了一杯。我小品一口，这个品牌的酒我从来没有喝过，据他说之前这是为肯塔基州的一家饭店专门制作的。 度数很高但感觉爽滑。不像葡萄酒或者年份波特，波旁威士忌不会因时间的推移而产生太多变化。所以我觉得这是品味过去和历史的大好机会，因为我现在所喝的和100年前人们所喝的没啥两样啊！
"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."
辰巳说：“我在大阪的一家驰名老店--丽嘉皇家酒店的地下酒庄里第一次尝到了波旁威士忌，然后我花了几年时间在美国文化中心里学习有关波旁威士忌的所有知识。我寄信往肯塔基州和田纳西州希望能去拜访那里的（波旁）造酒厂，我甚至求助于美国领事馆。结果如我所愿我在1984年得到了邀请，从此我就爱上了美国。那之后我来回日本美国之间已有上百次，我现在在列克星敦有一处房产，甚至被任命为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."
我向他请教如何收集到这么多的陈年波旁酒，他回答说：“我曾经驾车穿越了美国，都是通过乡间小路而且挑的都是晚上，因为那时候你能看到远处的酒馆小店的招牌在发光。我在每处小店都会停留一下而且我不只是看货架，我会请求店员清查地窖并找出所有存着的旧货，我无法向你形容用这种方法我找到了多少波旁陈酿，每一种波旁我都会品尝一下，只要我喜欢我就买下来。”
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.
第二天我来到大阪的另一家位于下城区的工薪阶层光顾的波旁酒馆，托恩（意思是十年）酒馆。该酒馆是Tatsumi最早开始知道的一家波旁专业酒馆。当天一群商务人士涌入这个地方，有人点了一杯最为昂贵并且少见的现代波旁酒——派比 范温克威士忌，一瓶1000多美金。服务员在倒这种令人痴迷的酒时，展示了精湛技艺，他水平地摆好酒杯，令波旁酒在杯中不断打转，然后展示在客人面前。很明显，这个人是这一群人的老板。随后他走过来，我们聊到他买的这瓶老酒，我看到他目光一闪，仿佛某些肯塔基或田纳西人怀有的思乡病一般。但是你会对一个你并不了解的时代和地点产生乡愁的情绪吗？这两个日本波旁酒馆呈现出了大胆的想象。
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."
回到美国，从曼哈顿到路易斯维尔我给很多波旁酒吧都打了电话，他们的回应都相同：我们有老式的波旁酒，但都不久远。随后，我又给毕塞科打了电话，他是纽约市可能最好的波旁酒吧——查理四号的酒类销售总监。我问到他为何美国酒吧中都没有真正的老酒。他说：“因为一直以来人们都想喝新装的酒，而通过喝酒来探索过去的历史，这样的想法才刚刚出现而已。”
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.
但日本可不这样，而且我能够想象25年前Tatsumi 呼啸着穿过美国南部的小路，只为发现值得珍藏的陈年老酒时的样子。
