Give me Liberty and Give me a Drink with Jarrett Dieterle

Any classic cocktail nerd will be familiar with the French 75 – that classic developed at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris. But you know what? This is a very American podcast episode, so let me read you the blurb paired with this recipe in Jarrett’s book.

The tradition of getting absolutely hammered is as old as civilization itself. Commercial breweries date back to ancient Mesopotamia, proving that alcohol is essential to human achievement. But where there’s good beer, there are always crappy beer laws. The Code of Hammurabi limited how much beer citizens could receive each day, and to this day, our right to crack open a cold one is subject to various restrictions. Until recently, Nebraska required brewers to physically hand off their beer to a distributor for a certain amount of time–known as an “at rest” law–and then essentially buy it back in order to sell it at their own taprooms. The law was mercifully reformed, but Nebraska still remains one of several states that completely prohibits breweries from directly sending their own beer to outside retail locations, even if they’re right down the street.

So, now that you’ve got yourself a cheeky classic cocktail riff and a small sample of the silly laws that inspired it, let’s turn our attention back to the interview.

Show Notes

Jarrett Dieterle is a resident senior fellow studying alcohol policy at the R Street Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C. His book, Give me Liberty and Give me a Drink, was published on September 15, 2020. It details the ironic, comical, and often extraneous booze-related laws enforced in the United States. Dieterle humorously assigns an inspired cocktail to each regulation, bringing an air of comedy to his writing as well as a clever way to expose the idiocies of these policies. His goal, as he states, is to give people bite-sized access to a wealth of information on the topic of alcohol policy which they may have previously taken for granted. He emphasizes that these idiosyncrasies are not bound to one state; they expand over the entirety of our country, rooted in Colonial times.

The one thing Dieterle hopes a reader will take away from Give me Liberty and Give me a Drink is that they begin to question their surroundings. Give me Liberty and Give me a Drink takes something which functions in the background of awareness and systematizes it, transforming it into a cohesive existence which prompts the question of why? Why do these laws exist? Why do we need them?

The age-old dichotomy between freedom and security is often brought up in the argument of alcohol regulation. The negative externalities are obvious. Jarrett is not trying to deny that drunk driving, alcohol abuse, and illicit alcohol are issues that need government supervision. However, it becomes nonsensical when we focus on Prohibition-era laws which have prevailed past the 21st century. For example, the Massachusetts “Blue Laws,” which prevent the purchase of alcohol on Sundays and require businesses to pay compensation if they wish to continue sales. There is no discernable pattern in their data that the Blue Laws have impacted drunk driving, and yet the regulations stay in place.

Some other rather infamous laws include:

Lightening Round

Favorite Cocktail

I love all the classics, but my favorite is one I included in my book: the Caipirinha, a Brazilian drink made with Cachaça. I combine it with ginger liquor and a ginger beer to make it a brighter, more refreshing drink.

If You Were a Cocktail Ingredient, What Would You Be?

I would probably pick bitters. I find them fascinating; they can change the complexity of a drink so quickly and dramatically with such little amount of liquid. They also have their roots very far back in history to the pre-Prohibition era and I love historical stuff.

Cocktail with Anyone, Past or Present

It would be very neat to be in the room when Churchill, FDR, and Stalin were originally meeting in World War II. They had a famous dinner party that involved many bloody marys and scotch, and it helped them forge an alliance.

Common or Traditional Cocktail Ingredient You’ve Never Tasted

I am not a dirty martini guy. I don’t like olive juice.

Controversial View You Hold in the Spirits/Cocktail Space

Recently, I’ve been interested in resuscitating the image of the alcohol space because I think it’s very special and often overlooked. Breweries are a great local hub which bring people together, and the industry as a whole has created an incredible amount of blue-collar manufacturing jobs.