It’s happening more and more. Bartenders choosing not to drink in order to live a more healthy lifestyle. It makes sense. I mean, if you look at us a certain way we’re drug dealers. It’s just that our drug of choice is readily available pretty much everywhere, socially acceptable, and dressed up quite nicely for any occasion. Alcohol has a very interesting history, it may have saved us at certain times when water supplies were less palatable, and, unlike lab manufactured pharmaceuticals, it occurs in nature. But the fact remains that it is a drug, a very potent drug. One that in moderation can be helpful but becomes very dangerous when used to excess.

Nonetheless, it’s an interesting conversation.

There’s two sides of me on this subject. Devil and angel. One on each shoulder. The angel telling me, “Yes, bartending is a profession like any other. Just because you serve ice cream for a living doesn’t necessarily mean you eat ice cream all day.” But, the devil chimes in, “I think you need to know what it’s made out of and what it tastes like.” So true. When I hear of a bartender who doesn’t drink I think to myself, “How do they taste their new cocktails?” To me, it’s a bit like a chef not tasting their own food. I’ll be honest, I don’t like it.

The evil side of me (much larger than the angelic) wants nothing to do with a dry bartender, and I scoff at the idea. The entire notion is absurd. We want our heroes to never change, to be living cliches. We want our chefs fat and angry, our bartenders drunk.

I once worked with this amazing chef. I was young and he was experienced and just had his shit together in so many ways. I looked up to him. His flavor combinations were insane, he just had it all dialed in. Then, one night, we all left work. He and I happened to be walking the same way toward our cars and he said goodbye, veered off and went into a McDonald’s. Goddam, I remember being so heartbroken at that moment. It really stuck with me. How could this guy be so mighty but put that crap in his body? I said something to a good friend who was also a chef. My friend just shrugged his shoulders and said, “It doesn’t mean anything. Maybe he was just hungry.”

Did I expect this guy to go home at midnight and cook himself a five course meal? There’s a divide between expectation and reality, my friends. We see this more and more as we get older and hopefully, wiser.

Being a living cliche is tough. Luckily I’ve never been that guy at the dive bar slurring his words while popping the tops off beer bottles and lining up shots of Jame-o for the frat boy crowd. The road to hell is paved with people’s ideas of what you are. Hemingway struggled with this. A legend who went out into the world and had people all over him, buying him drinks. At some point he began to embody the persona everyone created for him.

The grim reality is that when you get older you just can’t keep up. Your body begins to fail you, and there’s also this fact: Alcohol just isn’t good for you. Yeesh. We all know the quarterback mantra: Enjoy the first, sip the second, refuse the third. Each one of us process the stuff differently. Some people can have five drinks and fully function the next day and live until they’re 95 while others, well, they get hooked on the very first one and their lives become total trainwrecks. We’ve all seen both.

I’ve always been an imbiber who was keenly aware of how much was going down my gullet. I had some wild times in my twenties but for the most part always remained present. Lucky I guess. As time went on I drank less and less, not because I disliked it, but because the hangovers started getting too brutal. I’ve always enjoyed drinking. It’s fun as hell, but when you’re over 40 you just can’t do it like you used to. I’m also at the age where I’ve seen quite a few of my drinking buddies either quit entirely or push up daisies. That’s a big eye opener. When pieces of your old crowd go dry or die on their shield, the wheels start turning. Which one do you want?

In my old age I follow the healthier route, I taste my new stuff but never go awol. During service we sample only. On my days off it’s usually a Negroni or something similar just to take the edge off of parenting a small demon, a glass of red wine with dinner, maybe a Cynar. On occasion, I’ll throw down in Vegas with my old buddies and drink lots of beer or have a few at a wedding or ball game to ease the boredom.

And so, maybe that’s all it has to be. After some rumination, I don’t believe a bartender should fully dry out. Sort of how an old boxer still retains their knockout power, a bartender should have a few in the chamber when he’s needed. Plus, how fun can it be to work around a substance you’re trying to rid your life of? Sounds awful.

I don’t want a sloppy drunk serving me but I don’t want a teetotaler either. No extreme is fun to be around. Here’s the point, there is room for moderation, or at least some avenue right below it but not driving fully down lame-o boulevard? Maybe instead of this new trend of dry bartender we can establish something less extreme? The one sip bartender? The line below moderate bartender? In the science world there’s only five main types of climates. The one right above dry is called temperate and described as “Environments with moderate rainfall spread across the year, or portion of the year, with sporadic drought, mild to warm summers and cool to cold winters.” Yeah, I like that, but temperate sounds lame as shit as it can also mean sober. Prudent sounds too much like prude, so let’s go with this moniker: Judicious.