We Women Love Our Whiskey

From the archive: first published October 12, 2011.

There is a particular look a woman gets when she orders whiskey — neat, say, at a bar where the men are having beer. It is a mixture of surprise and recalibration, as though she has wandered into the wrong section of the menu.

But whiskey was never actually a men's drink. It merely had a men's marketing budget. For a century, the advertising sold it with cowboys, boardrooms, and father-son bonding, while women who enjoyed it were treated as curiosities. The liquid in the glass never cared.

That is changing. In India, where whisky (spelled without the "e") is the spirit of choice for generations of drinkers, a growing number of women order it confidently — at weddings, at office parties, at home after the kids are asleep. Not to make a statement, necessarily; simply because they like it. The peat, the oak, the slow warmth: none of it is gendered.

There is something quietly subversive about a woman who knows what she likes and orders it without apology. She isn't performing for the table. She isn't waiting for permission. She is just having a good drink.

So to the women who love their whiskey: cheers. And to the ones still being handed the wine list by default — the whiskey list is yours too.

Editor's note: this article was rewritten during our editorial review. The original 2011 body was unrelated placeholder text about relationships; the essay above is original.