I met Mike when I moved back to River City after completing medical training. He sold medical equipment–everything one needed to set up practice. A quintessential salesman, loquacious and voluble to a fault, he always had a story to tell. Very soon we discovered our mutual love for quail hunting, and that fast became the core of most of our conversations. By season’s end, we were constant bird-hunting companions.

That is why it came as such a surprise the week before opening day when Mike announced he invited his preacher to go with us.

American whiskey is going through a growth spurt right now resulting in lawsuits, investors giving founders the boot, and debates starting over fanciful terminology. At the center of all this is the meaning of the word “craft” and who should use it.

Earlier this year, Diageo, the world’s largest spirits company, started emphasizing its so-called craft whiskey portfolio a little more than usual. This brought up the interesting debate of whether a conglomerate should use the term typically associated with small producers who use 50-pound bags of corn versus trailer truckloads of grain. Craft whiskey was a phrase typically reserved for the little guy.

The dog dropped on point somewhere in the wheat, leaving a void in the place he had been. A moment before, there had been a wind-blown Belton setter there, a brushstroke of blue roan from nose to tail-tip, his flanks awash in green stems. He’d had scent in his nose and it had absorbed him entirely, tugging him closer to the genesis of all good things–in the mind of a pointing dog, that is. All of a sudden he flattened into the stubble in an old-world allegory of the hunt made real. Just then something tore loose in the frame: clattering wings and a smudge of brown darting left, and then a pop and a tumbling descent. The blue Belton setter became central once more, with a bird limp in his mouth. He dropped the little body into Agustin’s hand, and received the praise he was due.