MALIBU

My Fellow Inebriates,

There’s been a lot of buzz about Malibu lately and some controversy about how it pairs with various other liquids. One visitor took me to task for my assertion that there’s nothing Malibu doesn’t go with.

This bewildered me.

Malibu is a tropical coconut-infused rum, made in my native country Canada, containing rum, water, glucose-fructose, natural and artificial coconut flavour, soldium citrate and citric acid.

WHAT WOULDN’T THAT GO WITH?

A mickey-sized bottle of MALIBU has languished at the back of our cabinet for the last decade, begging to be combined with coffee, tea, root beer, hot chocolate…you name it. With its lack of complexity and bubble-gum notes, it lends itself admirably to any sort of combination you might put in a travel coffee mug if, say, you had to go to Chuck E. Cheese for a two-hour birthday party and didn’t think you could endure it sober.

MALIBU is at its finest when you hollow out a pineapple or a coconut and drink it straight-up therefrom. It’s only 21% alcohol so you can do the whole bottle from your hammock with minimal hallucinations. I like the way, when I spill it on myself, I enjoy the aroma of suntan oil for days after, even if my sometime girlfriend Dolly says that coconutty smelly is buried underneath mange and angst and some other odors she attributes exclusively to me.

I really love MALIBU and hope Stevie OB in particular will try drinking it out of a big hollowed-out fruit, even if such a thing costs 10 pounds in Wales right now.

It’s noon somewhere

Hey, it’s almost noon at my longitude and I’m finally thinking about what to drink. Let’s get something going:

  • 2 oz Goldschlager cinnamon schnapps – YEAH!!! It has gold flakes in it.
  • Coke to taste (I’m going to use “none”)
  • Ice

Put it in a highball glass and slam it! Come back for another on your next break.

MARTINI & ROSSI Extra Dry Vermouth

My Fellow Inebriates,

I promised you the skinny on vermouth, and now that my head’s clear I can tackle it.

Vermouth is one of those sometimes mystifying products that figures in a truckload of high-falutin’ drinks without necessarily being any great shakes on its own. Or at least that’s what my drinking buddy Blackie Bear tells me.

Blackie says there’s no big mystery—it comes in dry or sweet varieties, and a good drink-mixing recipe book will tell you which one you need.

Try this mix for instance:

  • 2 oz dry vermouth
  • ½ oz white curacao
  • 2 oz club soda (if you insist on dilution)

Serve over ice with a twist.

I don’t know what would happen if you used sweet vermouth in this, but Blackie says he’d probably end up handing it over to me to finish off, which would be fine because I would.

My local booze store, like yours probably, carries only a handful of vermouths, and Martini & Rossi is the only one I’ve tried, although I plan to have a party tasting at my house the next time my parents go away. They scoffed when I originally said “vertical tasting,” as vermouth is non-vintage, standardized stuff that doesn’t change from year to year or batch to batch. What can I say? My alcoholic journey is only just beginning.

Vermouth is classified as a fortified wine, running at about 18% alcohol typically, as in the case of Martini & Rossi Extra Dry. At $12 for a one-litre bottle, it’s a steal, and drinking it all in one go won’t trash your pocketbook—just you.

Regardless of where they’re made, dry and sweet vermouths are referred to by heavy vermouth users as “French” and “Italian” respectively. This is because people who are really messed up on vermouth are often humping someone and need a separate vocabulary that doesn’t include words like “sweet” and “dry” that they might be employing otherwise.

And then there are “wet” versus “dry” martinis. The more vermouth a martini has, the wetter it is. Predictably, I favor a dry martini as I like to keep my alcohol levels pretty jacked. Blackie Bear says this is one of the things that makes me similar to Winston Churchill.

You do need to keep your vermouth in the fridge if you’re not planning to pound it all at once, as it will oxidize within three months or so. My mother kept her bottle of Martini & Rossi in the cooking cupboard for over two years, tightly capped to thwart my thumbless efforts. Picture me mocking her saying, “It was just fine for making lemon-caper chicken.”

 

I RECOMMEND trying all the vermouths your liquor store stocks, starting with this awesome product.