drinking

CHAIRMAN’S RESERVE—the spiced rum for hedonists

My Fellow Inebriates,

This morning’s drink recommendation comes from Taylor, who writes:

Husband and I recently visited St. Lucia, and quickly fell in love with their home brew, Chairman’s Reserve Spiced Rum. The normal Chairman’s Reserve Rum has a vague taste of whiskey to it, but the Spiced is this amazing blend that is tasty enough to drink straight.  It is made with nutmeg, cloves, vanilla, cinnamon, and richeria grandis…which is perfect to mix with eggnog.

I had some minor hesitation about circulating this information, principally because I don’t go in much for husbands. A husband takes Taylor out of the running for LB-style stalking, not because of any well-defined boundaries I have but because I am totally chicken-shit.

Still, this rave review is impossible to ignore. CHAIRMAN’S RESERVE Spiced Rum is by its own admission hedonistic, and egg nog’s seasonality electrifies pleasure seekers with a mad urgency to combine it with any and all varieties of hooch before it exits the market.

I get the sense that Taylor went all-out with her egg nog adventures. One of my favorite things about the Internet is that it prompts sharing:

All I did was pour 1 part rum, 4 parts nog, and shaved fresh nutmeg on top. The result is an orgasm-worthy performance of flavors in your mouth. 

I hope Taylor will forgive me, because when I first read this I had just ingested a skullfull of vodka, and things were a bit blurry on the page…er, screen. So I just saw RUM NOG SHAVED FRESH ORGASM-WORTHY PERFORMANCE FLAVORS MOUTH.

Whoa!

Obviously I have to get myself some CHAIRMAN’S RESERVE.

I’m really grateful to Taylor for peppering her booze review with keywords that will probably generate a decent spike in readership for me. I hope you’ll all visit her site as well—it’s lots of fun.

Okay, now what word can pull me back from the gutter? Let me think. Oh yeah—husband. That takes me back to booze, and the rest of Taylor’s recommendation:

Chairman’s Reserve Spiced is also amazing with ginger or root beer. My favorite combo (outside of the eggnog, of course) is Barq’s root beer. The bite of Barq’s against the spicy-sweet taste of Chairman’s is just an exhilarating combination. I’ve already converted a plethora of friends who only swear by beer to convert to the dark side.

These are awesome ideas for rum! So when you’re shopping for egg nog, pick up some Barq’s as well—that way you won’t have to mourn the departure of egg nog at season’s end. Maybe you too will be a convert just like Taylor’s friends (and I’m not surprised she has a plethora, are you?).

Why alcohol is so good for us

My Fellow Inebriates,

As always I welcome friends’ tasting notes. I’m catching up on a bunch of especially adventurous ones, including this from my friend Shannon:

I must say, I REALLY like rum. My rum of choice is Sailor Jerry. In fact, Sailor Jerry is so choice that as a sign of respect, I dressed up as a total slutted-out sailor for Hallowe’en and called myself Jerry. I carried around a mickey of Jerry in a little sparkly red clutch purse all night. I drank Jerry for 12 hours straight that night and the only challenge I had was trying not to fall off of my platform boots. I think Jerry brings out the best in people. I know I am a better person when I have Sailor Jerry in my life. 🙂

My favorite thing about Shannon is her continuous pursuit of excellence. She obviously knows the importance of high aspirations, and moreover she’s made the critical realization that alcohol makes us all better people. And there are plenty of reasons:

  • Alcohol causes euphoria. Whee! What better way to go back to one’s best, most idealized state—a condition of irresponsible immaturity, characterized by dress-up and relentless pestering of other people?
  • Alcohol induces lethargy. We live in an age of information overload. Slowing the brain down is a great way to avoid absorbing any data. You know the kind—what you said to your boss at the Christmas party, who took you home, why your underwear are on your head.
  • Alcohol creates confusion. Drink enough and all your senses will get mixed up. Next thing you know, that toothache is no longer bothering you, wearing platform boots becomes challenging, you can’t remember why boundaries are important, and you use adjectives like “choice.”
  • Alcohol leads to stupor. This is a great way to get that elusive nap. Not only that, but if you get to this stage you’ll probably toss your cookies too, and that makes everyone laugh.

    You have your San Francisco treat, I'll have mine.

 

No chardonnay for you, zombies!!

My Fellow Inebriates,

No matter what we like to think, the little people run the show around here. This makes my days much more wholesome than I’d prefer. It also means a lot of random and scary things happen to me. You never know—I could get sealed up in a fluffy pink purse for days, freaking out, and no one would help me.

It’s all about imagination, though. For four- and five-year-old girls it’s a pink and purple world, all unicorns and birthday parties and singing ponies. They love to make wishes. In fact, they’ll wish on anything: dandelion seeds, birthday candles, the moon—and lately the bay leaf in the soup. These monkeys will fight to get that bay leaf, because they believe it has magical powers. It’s a damn good thing no one’s grooming them to be albino hunters, because they have enough savagery to be good at it.

So last night the five-year-old emerged from the evening scrap with the coveted bay leaf. With 24 days to go until Santa comes, I figured she’d wish for presents or a big Christmas tree or maybe a trip to Walmart to buy some giant blow-up snowman or something. But she didn’t. Instead little Cindy-Lou Who said: “My wish is for Granny to come back so she can be here for Christmas.”

OMG. See, here’s the thing. Granny is dead. She died almost a month ago. So if Granny did come back she’d be, well, a zombie. My parents should really have explained that to their well-meaning little girl, don’t you think? They should have said, “Hey now, don’t go wishing for Granny to come back from the dead. We have to keep the dead dead. Otherwise they become the undead. The only way Granny can come back is as a zombie, and you don’t want that. Do you, kiddo?”

Just that simple! A five-year-old could totally understand that! But instead my parents just kept letting her make that scary wish on the bay leaf. I’m a tiny bit embarrassed to tell you…I’m actually terrified it will come true.

And I am freaking scared of zombies!!

Don’t get me wrong, I liked Granny. She was a person who understood bears, and she would sometimes split a bottle of chardonnay with me, although if we’re being honest she usually got most of it. It’s comforting to think she’s at some wine bar in the sky, but my fervent little human friends have seeded a more sinister idea now—that Granny will come lurching back from the dead looking for us. OMG!

The first order of business, then, is to eliminate the white wine, because ZG (Zombie Granny) would come looking for that first. Luckily (in this case at least) we don’t carry much inventory at LB HQ, but we do have one gorgeous bottle of California Cult Classics chardonnay tucked away. OMG, chardonnay! That would be ZG’s absolute favorite. So we obviously have to drink it so it’s not here, tempting the undead.