21

No I'm not talking about blackjack. Of course I am referring to the drinking age. I would like to introduce you to a friend of mine who turned twenty one this year, Thomas Hardy. Obviously I am not speaking of the writer, but rather a beer named after him, Thomas Hardy's Ale. My latest beer purchase is a 1988 bottle of the said ale, still dusty from a cellar in Ireland. So far the oldest beer I have had was 11 years, a J. W. Lees Harvest Ale. By the time Febrewary rolls around this bottle will be 22 and the first that I drink.