ASTROLIQUOR for Jan. 23-29—What the stars say you should drink!

My Fellow Inebriates,

Here’s your booze horoscope:

People are trying to force you to be someone you’re not, Aries, but they are in for a fight. You’re not going to be cornered, nor are you going to be diplomatic. It’s not just because of all the alcohol in your system; it’s because you can be a real dick when your mind’s made up. If someone offers you a beer, you’ll insist on taking your own bizarre path. Might as well try this:

  • 3 oz banana schnapps
  • 5 oz strawberry schnapps
  • 3 oz half-and-half cream

Drink it all day just to make your point. Then barf on your tormentors.

Taurus, you have to pull yourself together! Go out and enjoy yourself—joke around, say hi to strangers, think about mating. You have tons of energy and imagination, and people are ready to listen to you. Since you’re in party mode, here’s a party drink:

  • 3 oz orange juice
  • 2 oz pineapple juice
  • 1 kiwi
  • 5 strawberries
  • 1/4 cup watermelon

Blend it all up with ice and pour it into a pina colada glass. Ahhh! Who says it’s too cold?

You’re feeling lonely, Gemini, and you’re worried about letting people down. Sometimes people with your star sign experience feelings of inferiority and hurt pride. But that’s what alcohol is for. You’ll find that if you make the effort to reach out, your friends will be ready to get loaded with you. How about setting some drinks on fire? Try igniting a mixture of Kahlua and sambuca, then throwing Bailey’s and Blue Curacao on top of it. That will make you feel special.

You need more sleep than you think, Cancer. Somehow passing out doesn’t count as proper rest, so you have to coordinate your drinking a bit better so you can sober up at work instead of wasting your nighttime sleep hours burning off alcohol. It’s tricky, but you’re smart enough. Drinking at work has another side benefit, too: you’ll be less inhibited with your coworkers, one of whom has a little crush on you. Needless to say, vodka is a nice odorless choice for the office, but I’d still add some Blue Curacao.

Leo, you’re in a romantic dreamland, unable to focus, drifting from art to music to drama. You can’t decide—to party or to be alone? To spend or to save? To hang inside or go streaking? All this vacillation stems from lack of energy. Grab a caffeinated energy drink and throw some raspberry vodka shots into it. Shake it up and pound it. That’ll get your head on straight.

This is a good week for gambling, Virgo, whether on the stock market or at the casino. You’re not bulletproof, though—you have a tendency to keep playing after your luck has run out. This is where alcohol comes in: As soon as you sense you’ve peaked, reallocate your wallet to the bar and buy yourself some vodka/grape juice martinis. But watch out for an obnoxious Sagittarius who doesn’t have an “indoor voice.” This person will be such a nuisance that others will offer to punch him/her out for you. Take them up on it.

Libra, you can’t change other people; you can only change yourself. But why change at all? You’re having a very social week and bumping into all sorts of new people who’ll dig you for you. Have you ever mixed bourbon with a whole bunch of fruit in the blender and tossed red currants into it? You should totally do that and share it with your new friends.

This is a time for regrouping, assessing, and committing to hard work, Scorpio. But it’s also a good time for downing a bottle of red wine. Sometimes you get very manic when you decide to revamp your life, and alcohol has a good tempering effect. You have plenty of time—nothing will change drastically until April (when you start putting away boxes of wine instead of bottles).

Sagittarius, the next few months promise spiritual discovery and profound intuition. You are more open-minded than you have been in weeks. But it’s not a good time to take on new projects at work. You are too messed up with vodka (the catalyst for your developing Third Eye). If the visions come on too strong, mix that vodka with something—how about some ice cream plus Kahlua and Bailey’s? As good as a meal.

This is a good week to boss people around, Capricorn. You’re a natural leader with so much charisma that people are chomping at the bit to follow you. When you’re this powerful, you can get away with anything, so fill up that flask. Not just with odorless vodka—add some apricot brandy, knowing that you are truly untouchable (at least for a while).

Wow, Aquarius, there are a whole bunch of constellations coinciding in your part of the sky, and that makes you feel superhuman. Don’t jump off the roof, though; keep at least a partial grip on reality. Try to calm down a bit with some nice boozy coffee:

  • 1 cup coffee
  • 1 oz vodka
  • 0.5 oz Kahlua
  • 0.5 oz amaretto
  • Whipped cream and sugar to taste

Practice making this drink because you’re going to meet someone in April who enjoys lovely, sensuous beverages.

Pisces, you’re back to work again—congratulations! But keep a low profile; nobody really knows you yet and it’s probably best to keep it that way. If you’re planning to embezzle money, for example, you certainly don’t want any higher-ups to know who you are. You’ll find you have access to many beautiful and expensive things. Be careful! When you’re staggering around on a blackberry schnapps bender it’s all too easy to break the crystal.

MORSE CODE PADTHAWAY SHIRAZ (2009)

My Fellow Inebriates,

If only I could catch up on reviewing the wines we tasted over the holidays without becoming morose about the lack of wine in the house now. It’s tragic not to have any wine in the house—unreasonable really and a general travesty.

I can’t dwell on the superlative festive wines we drank last month or I’ll end up in tears. Instead let’s talk about MORSE CODE PADTHAWAY SHIRAZ (2009), a reasonably decent Australian offering ($13.99) with a healthy alcohol content (14.7%), a nice-looking label and a catchy name. Reviewing MORSE CODE won’t plunge me into desperation, simply because it wasn’t extraordinary. It was pretty good and certainly inoffensive, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to have it again, unless you were sitting beside me bogarting it or perhaps playing keepaway with it to hurt my feelings and impress on me how short I am and how much of a loser.

To wit: MORSE CODE is pretty good. I want to tell you that it’s fruit-driven but just saying that reminds me of this recipe for Chemical Apple Pie, described by its originator as “an old chemistry lab experiment to teach the limits of human senses.” The pie has no apples, if you follow me—but it apparently tastes like it’s made with ‘em.

So if I tell you a wine is fruit-driven or fruit-forward or fruity, well, I’m not trying to differentiate the wine from a UVIN chemical experiment in which fruit was not used. I’m just saying it’s a fruity-tasting Shiraz, meaning you can pick up on various berry and currant notes, plus the grapes that reviewers usually don’t think to mention.

MORSE CODE isn’t even the most fruity Shiraz—not by miles. But its product literature emphasizes that aspect of it, perhaps because the all the other flavors in MORSE CODE comprise an imperfect orchestra.

There’s a bunch of them: berries, currants, licorice, tannins, eucalyptus and—almost intrusively—tobacco. The whole thing is sort of tight, as though some of these flavors would like to knock the tobacco out but they’re too nervous to get a posse together.

We probably should have decanted this wine, and more importantly we probably shouldn’t have drunk it second to a better merlot that spoiled our palates. So I would give MORSE CODE another chance if somebody (the vintner maybe) sent me another bottle. I would decant it and let it open up for a good 45 minutes. I wouldn’t have any other wine before it; I would simply wait, twitching with DTs. Then I would knock it all back and dance on the table, wiggling my bum.

The resulting review would probably be more positive than this one, but unfortunately the experience I did have with MORSE CODE (sedate family dinner, better vino first) is all I’ve got. It tastes pretty good, and it would really appeal to fans of mouth-drying tannic and tobacco notes. The good news is it’s definitely made from grapes.

So would my mum ever make a Chemical Apple Pie? Holy crap, I hope not. Although if she did it would probably indicate a lowering of standards that might allow her to get out the debit card at the local UVIN and cook up 200 bottles of abysmal plonk for the dark days when I just need to pollute myself.

BROKER’S GIN—Part 6!

My Fellow Inebriates,

I suspect Julia Gale of Broker’s Gin likes me quite a bit.

I know, I know, that’s not very modest, but she’s sent me some very lovely messages lately. True, they’re mostly reassurances that I’m not forgotten—*sniff*—even though Martin Dawson and Andy Dawson couldn’t fit me into their Vancouver business trip.

The important thing is that they accomplish their mission: reestablishing Broker’s Gin on the BCLS shelves.

Whether or not they succeed, I feel that Julia and I have definitely established a solid friendship. And whatever they are paying her at Broker’s Gin…they should double it. No, triple it.

Just look at some of our conversation snippets:

“refined and distinguished”

“recovering from the compliments”

“sausage fest”

“small handcuffs”

“bed and/or sofa-ridden”

“cavity searching in my absence”

“bear fetish”

“unnatural acts”

“herding eels”

“safe word”

“between Barry White and a pornstar”

“slippery with velvet paw pads”

“mouth-breather”

“yours ever”

“Toodlepip!”

All right, so I might have said a lot of those things…but I still think Julia gets me somehow.

I think she genuinely wants me to drink gin.