When I was 15, I drank micro brews. Sure, if the only other beer around was Pabst or Milwaukee’s Best, I’d drink it, but not without a bit of pretentious grumblings.
I suppose it made me feel sophisticated to like well-crafted products. I had an Esquire subscription that Henry Goldman got me for my birthday, and I actually read it. I was far from wearing English-cut three-piece suits at that point. I wore jeans and a t-shirt, or sometimes my girlfriend’s pajamas. I wasn’t fashionable and I wouldn’t have been able to tell you the difference between a California Sauvignon Blanc and one from the Marlborough region of New Zealand . . . But I was a beer snob.