liquor

RAVENSWOOD Belloni Zinfandel 2009

My Fellow Inebriates,

Last night, ever so secretly, my parents opened a bottle of wine without me. As I lay innocently sleeping off a Malibu bender, they violated what I consider a tacit agreement to share all alcoholic beverages with the resident alcoholic bear, who has proven himself by starting his own blog and filling it with 30 articles demonstrating boozer status and general authority on liquor.

But the bastards got out the corkscrew and guzzled down a bottle of RAVENSWOOD Belloni Zinfandel (2009). Without me. Did I mention…without me???

So I rely upon their tasting notes. This apparently was a big, succulent zinfandel redolent of berries, nice tannins and almost as long a finish as my selfish parents would have liked. The wine developed in the glass as it sat, starting pleasantly and ending superbly.

The dregs were lovely, I must say. The few molecules I managed to scavenge of this lovely zin hinted at black cherry, raspberry and mocha.

My mum had an itching fit immediately after drinking it, but that’s her problem. I highly RECOMMEND securing a bottle of this soon as it was a limited run of 600 bottles.

JAMESON IRISH WHISKEY

The last time we had this in the house it was earmarked for—get this—an Irish cream cheesecake, i.e., another profligate waste of decent booze. For all my mother’s claims to Irish heritage, she doesn’t have the first clue what Irish liquor is actually for, so instead of drinking it she chucks it into cakes that spend an hour burning off their alcohol content in the oven.

This is very frustrating.

Nevertheless I did get a chance to taste the dregs of the aforementioned airline-sized bottle before it was sacrificed to gluttony rather than drunkenness.

For $33, JAMESON IRISH WHISKEY, in sufficient quantities, would totally get the job done. It’s a little rough and unfocused—fruity, nutty, a touch metallic even—but there’s nothing disturbing or offensive about it. With a moderate burn and a short finish, it suggests itself for Irish coffee and hints at the flavors in Bailey’s, so at least my mum picked the right booze for her greedy project.

I’d be perfectly content to sip JAMESON straight up, and I advise the same for my mother, the expansion of whose ass is a threat to smallish animals like myself who tend to get left under couch cushions, etc. Then she could say: “I’ve gone on a whiskey diet. I’ve lost three days already!” instead of needing to visit Walmart for fat pants and ending up on the internet in one of those people-of-Walmart photos.

I highly RECOMMEND not monkeying around with this awesome triple-distilled blended whiskey, and drinking it.

 

 

 

POLAR ICE Vodka

My Fellow Inebriates,

I was attracted to POLAR ICE for obvious reasons. With a bear on the label, you can’t go wrong. With its reasonable price and plastic mickey, POLAR ICE struck me as unpretentious and safely shatterproof—not to mention as bear-friendly as a vodka can get without devising some sort of opening mechanism for thumbless bears who lack grip strength.

So my first order of business this week was to procure a bottle of POLAR ICE and reel around with it.

For twelve bucks ($24 for 750 mL) I expected something on the rough side, and so my first taste of POLAR ICE was a shock, albeit a clean, refreshing one. This is a smooth, smooth vodka, quadruple-distilled from rye, and the sort of spirit that easily disappears into a mixer. This is exactly the sort of vodka that gets bears into trouble.

And so I plied my friend Glen Bear with some POLAR ICE. Now, Glen is a genuine polar bear; he’s big and brawny and goes around on all fours. Permanently infantile and for IQ purposes pushing the high 20s, Glen is as dumb an animal as you can find. But I thought it fitting to share my vodka with a lovable polar bear, and Glen was hanging around, drooling slightly.

Glen loved it. If I’d had any doubts about embracing this cheap(ish) vodka, they were vanquished watching Glen lumber drunkenly around the house after lapping POLAR ICE out of a bowl.

You have to be careful with polar bears, I realize now. I should have remembered my mum has this friend whose dad was in the armed forces up north, and one time he saw a polar bear trying to take down a helicopter while holding a seal under its arm. They are powerful creatures and you really don’t want to get them too f#cked up. So I had to comfort Glen a little, and spoon with him until he got himself under control.

All in all, another good adventure, and good reason to RECOMMEND this product.