liquor

ASTROLIQUOR for October 28-November 3

My Fellow Inebriates,

Here’s your booze horoscope:

Here’s something to keep you busy today, Aries:

Mix equal parts of Jack Daniel’s and Jim Beam, then chase with Labatt Blue. Have…say… seven, and don’t pick any fights.

You need something sweet and fun today, Taurus, so break into the Hallowe’en stash a little early and throw some Pop Rocks into a shot glass of melon liqueur. Knock it back, then do five more. Now you’re ready for anything.


You’re a drinker with a split personality, Gemini, so let’s pit your two sides against each other and see what emerges. Pour equal parts Goldschlager and Sambuca into a shot glass and savor. Can you do six?

Intuitive and sentimental, Cancers need pretty, happy drinks to keep their mood out of the toilet, so how about a Tequila Sunrise?  You just need ice in a tall glass with two shots of tequila, a drizzle of grenadine and some orange juice.

Leos love sunny, tropical flavors, so throw some banana liqueur into a tall glass of Sprite and you’re ready to start running around naked.


Where would a Virgo be without measured shot glasses? Your OCD approach to bartending guarantees that not a drop gets wasted—nor will you often get drunk without intending it. This should keep you happy:

  • 1 1/2 oz Absolut® Mandrin vodka
  • 1/2 oz Cointreau® orange liqueur
  • 2 – 3 oz cranberry juice
  • 2 – 3 oz orange juice

Stir it up in a tall glass with ice.

Since you’re so good at holding your liquor, Libra, this Bear Dozer recipe should test your mettle: equal parts Jack Daniel’s, tequila, and cherry whiskey. Pour into shot glasses and pound several.

Calm your demons with a raspberry martini today, Scorpio, preferably before work or going online. In a cocktail shaker, mix vodka and Chambord in a 2:1 ratio, then add a tablespoon of lime juice. That should keep you from being a dink.

Sagittarius folk are the travelers of the drinking world, and they range far and wide in search of novelty. Your assignment today is to take one of your craft beers and throw two shots of Bacardi 151 into it, set it on fire and pound it. YEAH!


Here’s something dignified for Capricorn, the most conservative sign:

  • 1.5 oz bourbon whiskey
  • 0.5 oz sweet sherry
  • 1 teaspoon bitters
  • 3 oz orange juice
  • 3 oz lemonade

Shake the first four ingredients with ice, then pour the lemonade over it. At first this will look elegant; later not so much when it comes back up.

No messing around today, Aquarius, you need some energy, so grab a Red Bull and add two shots of vodka to it. Now you can be productive.

Jails are full of Pisces, so here’s something to keep you busy. Stay indoors mixing/drinking this:

  • 2 oz lemon vodka
  • 1 oz Grand Marnier
  • 0.5 oz cranberry puree
  • 3 splashes lemon juice
  • 2.5 oz lemonade
  • 1 oz orange juice

Drink repeatedly all day and don’t venture outside.

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.

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.