“Dissolving life into books, or dissolving alcohol into life,
These were really soft”

This is the second book of the series, 『The Night is Soft, Drink』, published two years ago under the same title.
Two years of stories have piled up again.
The world is overflowing with drinks to drink, foods to eat, books to read, and movies to watch.
On nights when you crave a drink, author Han Eun-hyung, who tells stories that satisfy all five senses no matter which page you open, personally demonstrates that if we don't lose interest and curiosity about the world, there are plenty of things around us that can entertain us.
This is a story that started with alcohol, but it is also a story that flows somewhere with alcohol.
It could be a pub full of books, the wilderness of Wuthering Heights, or a winery in New Zealand.

When it comes to atmosphere, this is the movie.
So this movie calls for beer.
It's strange.
I don't really like beer, but there are times when beer is irreplaceable.
A moment of 'absolute beer' that rivals 'absolute solitude'.
The film is clearly aware of that moment.
Yes, that's right.
"Chungking Express" is a movie that makes you want to drink beer.
Instead of fancy snacks like fried cuttlefish with lemon or cold tofu, I want to drink beer with street food like French fries dipped in ketchup.
I'm talking about fries that are a little oily, not the kind of French fries you eat with steak.
So, I thought I absolutely had to have a beer on my way to the 'Chungking Forest Restaurant'.
--- p.25 From "Absolute Beer is Better Than Absolute Solitude"

I think alcohol should be drunk with a book.
I say this as someone who chooses and drinks alcohol from a wine rack, just as I choose books to read.
Not long ago, I was reading a book and drinking alcohol.
I'm going to tell that story.
I had read it before, but I thought about it while reading the newly translated version of Wuthering Heights recently.
Ah, the main character of this novel is not Catherine or Heathcliff, but the moor or Heath.
The natural environment, not people, is the main character, and Catherine and Heathcliff are even thought of as human forms of the wilderness and heath.
Then I couldn't stand it anymore and wanted to drink alcohol with heather honey in it.
I, who was swaying with the hiss of the wilderness, had no choice but to do so.
A colony of heather is called a heath, and heath grows in moors.
The honey from the wilderness is heather honey.
I know of a few heather honey flavored drinks.

--- pp.63-64 From "Drinking the Storm and the Hill"

I dream of a bar like the one in Paterson.
I'm talking about a bar where the owner is someone who knows something.
Adam Driver's regular bar owner is no pushover.
Guests with unusual senses and responsiveness come to visit, so you can hear interesting conversations every night.
For someone like me, this couldn't be more of an ideal environment.
Am I the only one? Isn't this the bar that people who drink alone dream of?
Having a regular bar like this within walking distance is a dream I have in this lifetime.
When I think of New Orleans, dogs, and alcohol, the first thing that comes to mind when I think of New Orleans is the Bloody Mary.
Just as dogs come to mind when you think of Paterson, Bloody Marys come to mind when you think of New Orleans.
Although it is known as the birthplace of the cocktail Sazerac, somehow it became ingrained as 'New Orleans is the Bloody Mary'.
This is where the world's most extravagant Bloody Marys compete all day long.
In New Orleans, people drink Bloody Marys from the morning, and they don't just drink them in the morning, so they say "all day long."
--- pp.144-145 from "Surprise Bloody Mary"

The homemade spumoni I made wasn't much different from the one I had at the bar a few days ago.
It's even better with the addition of grapefruit slices.
Spumoni is beautiful and delicious.
The taste is as elegant as its name.
Light but not frivolous, refreshing but not weightless.
The weight of three peacock feathers.
The best part is the bitter layer.
The bitterness of grapefruit is added to the mature bitterness of Campari, enriching the range of bitterness.
What a perfect taste this is.
It's smoother than a Negroni, more elegant than a Campari soda, more delicate than a Garibaldi, and more mature than an Aperol Spritz.
Ah, this is the smile of an adult who smiles without showing his teeth.
A light laugh that may be more subtle, but doesn't necessarily reveal that you're such a complex person.
Spumoni had that grapefruit-colored smile.

--- p.254 From “A Liquor That Resembles the Smile of Adults”

I don't know what to call it, but I have a disease.
The drinks and dishes you see in books are must-try.
If I don't eat, I'll groan. It's not to the extent that I'll groan, but it keeps flashing before my eyes, so it's better to find a way to solve it.
The books I am talking about here are novels or collections of essays written by novelists.
After the food story comes up, the recipe either appears briefly or doesn't appear at all, so you can fill in the blanks as you like, which is actually better.
Pairing it with alcohol is my extended reading.
I once read an essay by Banana Yoshimoto about Ryu Murakami appearing on a Japanese cooking show and introducing a mango curry recipe, and I followed along.
All Yoshimoto Banana said was that Murakami Ryu told him to cut the mango into toe-sized pieces.
I couldn't help but do it (I don't think I would have done it if they had told me to cut it into finger-sized pieces).
Also, after seeing the scene in Lu Xun's short story "Kongyiji" where he drinks seasoned beans and Shaoxing wine, he cooked beans in the "Hangzhou style" and drank it with Shaoxing wine.
Of course, the Hangzhou style was a variation of the Hangzhou style based on the impressions I got of Hangzhou from books.

--- pp.272-273 From "Beautiful and Cheerful Muscat"

What's ruined may not be ruined.
When I hear stories about wine, I sometimes think like that.
Stories of how one difficult vintage turned out to be the best ever, or how grapes thought to have failed due to freezing turned out to be high-sugar ice wine, or how grapes infected with mold amplified their sweetness and produced the best sweet wine ever.
When I hear stories like this, my heart starts to flutter.
I'm more inclined to pessimism than optimism, but sometimes I try to lean towards hope.
I don't know if there's a way for someone who isn't even a grape to rot preciously, but I know a way to rot less painfully.
It's about letting precious, rotten wine age and spending time immersed in something, whether it's 20 or 30 years.
First, let's buy some wine to let it rot.
And may it rot preciously.
--- p.293 From "May You Rot Nobly"

I really like this substance called alcohol.
This is material but immaterial, liquid but not liquid.
“The tension of a piano string is on average 73 kilograms per string.
In other words, if all the strings are combined, one piano can support a weight of 20 tons.” Last night, while reading Guo Qiangcheng’s novel “The Piano Tuner” (translated by Moon Hyun-seon, Minumsa, 2024), I thought about the relationship between piano tuners and alcohol.
Phenomenologically, a piano tuner can be likened to alcohol, as he tunes the piano's notes but physically makes it capable of supporting the weight of a person.
Alcohol may seem to regulate a person's mood, but it actually supports the person's weight.
This tremendous realization! And this light liquid, this light bottle of alcohol, how many people can it support?
I don't know if some alcohols become writing and some don't, but here was a alcohol that became writing.
Thank you for drinking with me.
Good night too tonight.

--- pp.343-344 From “To You Who Drank ‘Written Wine’ Together”