It might be considered that reading guidebooks about extremely potent beverages suggests a propensity to incoherent thought and vacant dribble. Au contraire. It focuses ones attention on the things that we hope to be delightful in accordance with prior experience, therefore saving hours of trawling through headache inducing experimentation. That is not to say that you might be missing out on magical elixirs that you hadn’t previously considered but it allows you to leave such things to chance encounters whilst concentrating on the personally titillating. Is that too poetic? Maybe but I have been drinking an Irish.