TFW you are on a 90-day sober sprint, your SO is a Muslim, it is Ramzaan, and your Eid gift is half a dozen decanters. Like, duuuuude.
On a more serious note, I have long felt that offering an honoured guest a drink from a bottle screaming its brand in fluorescent typography is slightly infra dig. It offends something in me, something that, in Urdu, lands more precisely as “हमारी मेहमाननवाज़ी की शान में तौहीन”. There is a certain grace in removing the marketplace from the moment. A home is not a duty-free shop.
Secondly, and perhaps more honestly, I have grown weary of the theatre of connoisseurship. The raised eyebrow. The pre-sip interrogation. The delicate probing about vintage, region, cask, and whether the peat was smoked over ethically sourced driftwood blessed by Highland monks. The alcohol snob is a fascinating creature: deeply certain, loudly declarative, and rarely accurate after his second pour.
So yes, I have long wanted to de-label my liquor. To pour from anonymous crystal and let the liquid speak for itself. To say, without saying: this is my home, you are my guest, and I will serve you the best I can afford. When I invite you to enjoy my hospitality and you graciously accept, trust is implicit. You will simply have to trust me that it is good liquor, and focus on the lubrication it lends to conversation, rather than critiquing the label.
You may choose the species of your vice (whisky, vodka, white rum, dark rum, gin, or mohua). You may even specify neat, on the rocks, or with a dash of soda or water, if you must (or let me know your cocktail and I’ll make you one). But the brand is mine to decide. Trust is part of the drink.
In any case, nine out of ten drinkers cannot reliably tell the difference in a blind tasting, and ten out of ten certainly cannot after two. What they can tell is whether they were welcomed well.
So partake in my hospitality. Enjoy your poison. Leave the label at the door.
And yes, before anyone asks, I remain steadfast. I have promised myself that I will eschew alcohol until 26 April, my kid brother’s 52nd birth anniversary. These decanters do not tempt me. They make me look forward, with intention, to the drink I shall eventually pour and raise in his memory.
Note: Before any devout Muslim starts hyperventilating, let me clarify. The idea was entirely mine. Misbahji simply wanted me to have an Eid gift. I, with characteristic subtlety, had already filled the Amazon cart with options. If there was any emotional persuasion involved, it flowed in one direction, from me. But the tastefulness, the editing eye, the ability to select pieces that were elegant rather than merely ornate, that was entirely hers. I chose the category. She chose the class.
