December 9, 2019 Issue

I’ve always associated Anthony Lane’s sparkling prose with champagne. This is due no doubt to the dust jacket blurb that John Updike wrote for Lane’s essay collection Nobody’s Perfect, in which he says, “Each paragraph tickles the nose like a flute of champagne.” It’s a perfect description of Lane’s effervescent style. But it may have to be altered in light of Lane’s new piece, “Ginmania,” in this week’s issue. Here’s the opening paragraph:

The other day, I had a White Lady, followed by a Love Thrill and a Hanky Panky. They made a great team. All three were supplied to me by Federico, at the Savoy Hotel, in London. Enter the lobby, make a left, trot up the stairs, and you come to the American Bar, a longtime shrine at which many parched pilgrims have sought relief. The suave and bearded Federico is one of the high priests who, clad in white jackets, serve behind the bar, and I watched in reverence as he aerated the egg white that would soften the blow of my White Lady. I took a sip. It was like being kicked by a cloud. 

That last line made me smile. “Ginmania” brims with such delights. It’s an account of Lane’s exploration of the current craze for gin. It’s a drinker's dream assignment. My thirsty eyes couldn’t consume it fast enough. The drinks are fabulously named: Corpse Reviver No. 2, Electric Lover, Cathouse Pink, Iron Balls, Monkey 47. Of Monkey 47, Lane says,

In most gins, the number of botanicals tends to stay in the single figures, or to hover just above. Not in Monkey 47, though, whose name is a statistical boast. Add three more (bubble gum, manure, and Marlboro Lights, say), and you’d have a nice round number.

My favourite part of “Ginmania” is Lane’s visit to 58 Gin, a small London distillery that has a row of mini-stills, including one called “Tyler”:

Tyler is no taller than a coffeepot, with a temperature gauge the size of a wristwatch, and it was quietly thrilling to witness the procedure at work. The penultimate stage, in which the heat of the almost-gin is abated by running water as it glides through a copper coil, was enough to breed the illusion, if only for a few minutes, that I was in charge of my own private nuclear reactor.

“Ginmania” changed my image of Lane’s writing. Instead of a fizzy flute of champagne, I now think of it as an Iron Balls gin-and-tonic.