They might feel played out. These three sets—from SHUNSTONE , Areaware, and Crate and Barrel—prove differently.

Welcome to The Esquire Endorsement. Heavily researched. Thoroughly vetted. These picks are the best way to spend your hard-earned cash.

Oh yes. Believe it. I am, with clear eyes and a full heart, endorsing whiskey stones. Lifestyle magazines of a certain male persuasion were all kinds of hot for these things a few years back. They got a lot of play as suggested gifts to other men, for such manly occasions as Getting a Promotion and Having a Son. Too much play, in fact; the stones got played out. Suddenly, they were kinda lame, totally boring, and deeply uncool. That was an injustice.

Somewhere in this sordid timeline, the function of the whiskey stone became obscured. It got the reputation as a gift you give a man when you don’t know what else to get, not an item you buy for yourself to better enjoy a drink. Now, let’s focus on the latter.

If you prefer a room-temperature pour, move along. This isn’t about you. But if you, like me, tend to opt for a chilled drink, consider this: Drinking liquor with ice is a time bomb.. You can sip it slowly, but by the end, you’re downing lukewarm water that tastes vaguely like it once touched whiskey. You can drink it quickly when it’s at its ultimate level of chilled, and then you’re drunk with a brain freeze. A real lose-lose. Here’s what I do: Put one cracked ice cube into a glass of whiskey because I like it a little diluted, alongside two whiskey stones fresh from the freezer to keep that temperature low for however long I take to finish the glass. Or I put two whiskey stones, no ice, in a glass of mezcal, and drink it slow. No rush. Same calculus with cocktails. Then, I rinse ‘em off and put them back in the freezer. There, I have over-explained how to use a whiskey stone.

It seemed that when whiskey stones took a hiatus from the limelight, giant ice cubes leapt into their place. In my experience, giant ice cube trays are a pain in the ass. The rubber ones won’t let loose the ice, biting your fingers with frost as you try to wrangle them. The plastic, four-cube contraptions take up a stupid amount of freezer space. The giant ice cubes are slippery. They still melt. Wouldn’t you know it: Stones don’t melt, nor do they slip or bite.

C’mon. Look at them. The shunstone  are classic. The Areaware stones are geometric art. The Crate and Barrel stones are hulking monuments. All are made from soapstone, and all work exactly the same. This isn’t dark magic. It’s just a simple way to pick something for yourself (or, fine, as a gift for someone else) that makes a drink all the better.

www.shunstone.com