"What did you drink during the Great Blackout, Daddy?" It’s just too bad I don’t have kids! If I did, they’d ask this crucial question around the age of 6, when their dawning awareness of history’s imperative met their equally fresh-awakened interest in their father’s love of a dwinkie. Maybe it’s just as well I’m childless. In any event, Hurricane Sandy is beginning to fade into the mists of the past, but your intrepid columnist is still musing on Sandy’s effect on his cocktail hour. Hours. Days. Whatever.

As you may recall, Dan and I spent the night the hurricane slammed ashore without electricity drinking Kirs Royale while fondly remembering the superb casting of the old sitcom The Mothers-in-Law, with two inimitable gay demi-icons – Kaye Ballard and Eve Arden – playing the title roles. We could enjoy the Kirs Royale only because the lights went out after we’d opened the champagne; our first round was thus properly chilled. By the time we’d polished off the bubbly, we no longer cared that it was nearing room temperature.

The ensuing four nights and days without power would have been hell on earth were it not for the fact that certain types of liquor can, and sometimes should, be consumed at 70 to 75 degrees. While others were scurrying around Manhattan buying superfluous items like batteries and bottled water, I concentrated my emergency preparations on procuring enough booze to see us through the storm and its aftermath. That’s just a joke. Although Dan makes fun of the Spam I keep on hand, the truth is that I’ve kept our apartment stocked with batteries, water, canned goods, and candles and the equally mandatory liquor ever since 9/11. Only on Day 2 of Sandy did I realize that our ice supply had melted. Quelle horreur! Also: Duh!

What doesn’t require ice? Well, Scotch and whiskey for starters. We had more than enough on hand to keep us toasted and toasty after the sun went down. The apartment was a little chilly without our usual central heating, but after we each had a hefty dram of The Glenlivet, we warmed up just fine.

Some Scotch connoisseurs insist that the best way to enjoy the classic whiskey is not, in fact, neat – at room temperature without the addition of a mixer – but with a single ice cube. This delivery method is said to open the Scotch’s bouquet. I think they may be right, but there’s something to be said for the pleasant kick to the nose and tongue offered by plain, unadulterated Scotch. It grabs your full attention in a way that a one-ice-cubed drink does not. It’s like smelling salts, only pleasant. For this reason, I like to serve Scotch neat in a big-bowled wine glass or brandy snifter.

Try it. Pour a healthy jigger of your favorite Scotch into such a glass. Hold it between your third and fourth fingers with your palm cupping the bowl so the heat of your hand warms the contents slightly. Then shove your nose into the glass and inhale. Ahhhhh! That’ll wake you up!

Snob that I am, I prefer single malt Scotch to blends; I like the raw, individualistic character single malts present to the mouth. The Glenlivet, Aberlour, Talisker, Oban, Longmore, Strathisla, Redbreast.... They’re all quite delicious and run the range from peaty to smoky.

These single malts tend to be pricier than blends. The exception is Chivas Regal, the best blend insofar as easy drinkability is concerned. (Then again there’s the rare Royal Salute, a scrumptious blend that’s been aged for 25 years; I’ve seen it offered on the Internet for as much as $179.99. It’s not surprising to learn that Royal Salute is made by the bonnie folks who produce Chivas.) So next time you find yourself in the path of a hurricane, make sure you’ve stocked some Scotch. Ye can tell your wee bairn that – och! – ye was prepared for the blackout, an’ it dinna faze ye at all.

When last we left our fearful columnist, he was attempting to transliterate his wretched Harry Beaton imitation into print. Harry, of course, is the character from the musical Brigadoon who threatens to leave the quaint, out-of-time village in Scotland and therefore bring ruin to all who inhabit it. The subject, perhaps needless to say, was Scotch – the whiskey, not the people of Scotland – and its ability to be enjoyed without that critical electricity-dependent product known as ice. The scars left by Hurricane Sandy include billions of dollars in reconstruction costs and this writer’s inability to get beyond cocktails best served neat. I was traumatized, dammit! Cut me some slack!

Scotch served my husband, Dan, and me well for the second and third nights of Sandy-induced powerlessness. But by Evening Four, we’d both grown a little tired of even my favorite single malt, Talisker. I’d been careful to stock the bar in the days before Sandy swept in, and in retrospect, I think I’d been steered to the Scotch department unconsciously by the name "Sandy": "Now all of ye come to Sandy here/ Come over to Sandy’s booth!/ I’m sellin’ the sweetest candy here/ That ever shook loose a tooth!" (Guess that musical! I’m sorry. I can’t help it.) So we turned westward to the Emerald Isle.

No, I don’t mean the National Rental Car desk at our nearest airport. I mean Ireland, people! Leprechauns! The Stone of Scone! Joyce, Yeats, and Peter O’Toole! (As the great John Waters once observed: Peter O’Toole? That’s as bad as Muffy O’Clit.)

Moving right along ... Dan grunted unpleasantly when I suggested another Talisker at cocktail hour on the fourth evening of our forced confinement. We were down to eating unheated canned soup and tuna salad without the celery or mayonnaise. (OK, call it what it was: tuna straight from the can.) Our meal was grim, but cocktail hour was saved by the bottle of Jameson just waiting for an occasion to be opened. How I love the Irish!

Scotch, Canadian and Irish whiskey are all distilled from fermented grain mash; grains include barley, rye, wheat and corn, some of which are malted. (Malting involves halting the germination process by drying the grain with hot air.) Each nation’s whiskey has its own particular taste, though, not only because the grain tastes different depending on the soil and climate of the country, but also because of differences in each liquor’s aging as well as the type of grain itself. Typically (though not necessarily), Scottish whiskey crafters use peat smoke to dry the malt; characteristically – though again not necessarily – Canadian whiskey is brewed from corn. Irish whiskey, of which Jameson is the exemplar, is generally distilled from unpeated malt and has a faintly sweet aroma and taste. It’s not as sweet as bourbon, but it’s distinctly sweeter than Scotch.

Jameson, like any good whiskey, can be enjoyed on the rocks or neat. Dan and I had ours neat by necessity, there being no ice. There being no running water either, I might add, the two of us had begun to – how shall I put it? – stink. Given alcohol’s marvelous ability to kill germs, perhaps we should have swabbed ourselves with Jameson, but that would have been reckless. So we each gave ourselves a "French whore’s bath," meaning a quick wipe-down with a washcloth dipped in the bathtub we’d filled with water as a precaution before the storm hit. Later, we got into a little – um, well – rank piggy action under the influence of the whiskey. My, my, my! Who said smelly old dogs couldn’t learn new tricks?