Esquire Channel: Hard Drinking, but Light on Cocktails

The NYT's Alessandra Stanley's astute critique of the newly launched Esquire Network describes a televised universe of gonzo lads, extreme sports & travel, and constant power drinking. There is no mention in her review of any cocktailing however, despite shows about brewers and some sophisticated locales where craft cocktails are surely readily available. But the tendency to lad out and do shots trumps the possibly too metrosexual for the network's (if not the magazine's) target audience. Which is fairly ironic, given that the magazine is front loaded with drinks features, and has the cocktail world's most significant presence in the magazine world (and probably publishing in general) David Wondrich as a star writer. But the identity crisis that the magazine may suffer from (as Stanley puts it, "Playboy without the centerfolds, The New Yorker without the writers") seems to have evolved in its televison extension to celebrate volume drinking and post-frat bonhomie far more than any kind of civilized cocktailing or even an epicurean aspect to that power drinking. Sitting here in Portland in the midst of the high-end bacchanale that is Portland Cocktail Week I can attest to the fact that both can coexist, the rowdy post-game kind of drinking and proper cocktails.