Ramblings of an old fool

As an old(-ish) fool, I feel it is well within my rights to complain about how things are done – whether it be politics, sports (though really I couldn’t care much less), business or pretty much anything else – and that’s exactly what I am about to do. Fear not, I will return to reviewing whisky shortly and I will keep this brief, but there’s something that has really started to annoy me lately.

Martin! – I hear you shout in eager anticipation – What is it that annoys you? The answer is that many things do, but lately I’ve been browsing quite a few distillery websites (to check up on history, news and what not) and it bugs the living heck out of me how you always have to tell them your age before you’re allowed to enter the site. I realize that this is to keep those who are not of legal age to drink from viewing the website, but I fail to see what the point in doing so is? First of all, they are quite capable of putting any old date in and access it anyway, and second, what damage could it possibly do?

I very much doubt that a 15 year old browsing a whisky website is more likely to go out and drink alcohol than one who does not. Further, we would probably be better off if we encouraged our young to take an interest in the finer qualities of alcohol – such as the tremendous variation and complexity of whisky – rather than simply sticking to Bacardi Breezer or Hooch, which they will invariably drink with the sole purpose of (presumably with some difficult, as I can only imagine they both taste vile) getting drunk and acting like morons.

So far as I am concerned, we should let them read as much as they want about whisky – it’s not like reading will get them drunk, now is it? Plus, the content of your average whisky website would probably be considered terribly dry by your average youth, which unfortunately means they will probably browse on quite quickly.