wine

ASTROLIQUOR for June 22-28—What the stars say you should drink!

My Fellow Inebriates,

Here’s your booze horoscope:

Time to get your finances in order, Aries—lenders and your boss are looking at you favorably. You might get a raise or even a promotion, but you’ll need some energy to prove yourself. This calls for “flask modification”—switch out the vodka for a Red Bull/cognac combination. You’ll be up for any challenge, and the cognac will make you smell like money, which will attract money. You bet.

Taurus, an unexpected visitor will keep you busy this week. But don’t worry—this Virgo won’t try to turn you into his/her bitch; instead you’ll go on a breathless adventure involving all sorts of new liquor combinations. Have you ever tried a Smeghead? Doesn’t it sound yummy? Your friend will teach you how to make it.(Stock up on Jagermeister and Malibu.)

It’s okay to fall down, Gemini, and it’s absolutely inevitable given the amount of Captain Morgan in your system. Acting on impulse will pay off through most of August. Your memory won’t be the best, though! Make sure you write down all the zany ideas that occur to you while you’re lurching around.

You’ll have a sexy dream this week, Cancer, featuring someone you didn’t even realize was on your mind. Basking in this dream at work, you’ll screw up a whole bunch of accounts and find yourself on the ropes. Oh no! Rein your hormones in or you’ll be escorted out of the building with a cardboard box. I see you pounding Jack Daniels with a macro beer on the floor, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Leo, whether it’s Farmville, Ravenskye, or some other dumb Facebook game, it’s obsessing you these days. These games steal valuable time from you and leave you mentally drained without being edified. You need to switch the program—your program! Your assignment is to get a very large ice-filled container and pour 12 beers into it, a can of frozen lemonade, and half a 26er of gin. Okay, now polish it off. That should break the computer-game cycle.

You have to deal with some bureaucratic douchebaggery this week, Virgo, possibly involving insurance and your insurer’s unwillingness to cover a questionable incident. The stars are pessimistic about the outcome, and you may decide not to continue paying premiums for coverage that’s so readily denied. Use the money to buy brandy and interesting liqueurs like Benedictine. You know—the products that led to the questionable incident in the first place.

Libra, you’re hanging on to negative emotions long after friends had assumed you’d moved on. Try withdrawing from the social scene for a while so you can sort your head out. Sleep in; write your thoughts down; figure out what you need to say to others to free yourself from the negativity. When you’re ready, mix a pitcher of Hawaiian Punch spiked with Bacardi 151, Hypnotiq, and Malibu. Slam the whole thing, then have a confrontation.

You think you know yourself so well, Scorpio, but sometimes you’re mistaken. How much of your life has actually been according to plan? Have you chosen your friends carefully, or have they chosen you? Slow down this summer to reflect on big questions involving friends, career, and relationships. If you listen to the universe, a little impulse will come to you—go with it! It will feature mandarin liqueur, so you should trust where it takes you.

Sagittarius, you have some idiot colleagues who continually screw up and drag you into their mess. You’d think they were the ones who were drunk, but no—it’s you. How do you work competently when you start sipping 151-proof rum for breakfast? You must be very tough, or very lucky. Either way, don’t let your dumbass coworkers get to you. If you dwell on them, you’ll kill your buzz and start fixating on past grief or other negative crap. Add some rye to your rum to maintain your happy state.

Have you ever investigated your family history, Capricorn? Even though you probably don’t want to be like your parents, knowing your past might help you avoid what you consider to be their mistakes. Did they throw raspberry liqueur and amaretto all over their pancakes before work and call it “adventurous cuisine” rather than “drinking at breakfast”? Did they do the grocery shopping hammered on hard cider? You might be just like them, and you should find out. BTW, you’ll get lucky on Thursday when you fall down in the frozen foods aisle.

Aquarius, you may have more money these days, but you’re also spending more and having trouble pacing yourself. In fact, you might be one of those people who needs to be paid daily rather than bi-weekly, just because you’ll immediately blow the cash on Yukon Jack. I know, it’s unreasonable to ease off on the booze, but maybe you could sell your car. You never get to drive it anyway because you’re always pissed.

Pisces, friends are smarting from your criticism and describing you with words like “dick,” “tool,” and “asstard.” Try backing off when you get the impulse to express a negative opinion; give yourself a day to consider the best way to word it constructively. Try listening, letting the other person talk first, and agreeing to disagree. Even if they never taught you these skills in jail, give it a shot. If it’s too much for you, stay home with a blender and some Blue Curacao.

Calling all booze producers! Get valuable exposure for your brand!*

You can only review booze if there’s booze in the house. But certain realities at LBHQ have come to my attention:

  • My parents are not quite alcoholics. They prioritize other expenses over maintaining our hooch supply.
  • The human kids’ needs take precedence over ursine ones. If one of them needs shoes or lunch money, guess who gets shafted on the vodka.
  • LBHQ is moving this summer. This might divert funds to relocation expenses, although I see a case of beer in the future.
  • LBHQ has not yet succeeded (or even attempted) at monetizing—i.e., I haven’t given my parents the financial raison d’être they’d like.
  • Sourcing all the booze on my wish list could apparently bankrupt us. OMG, bankruptcy!

So that’s that. Booze producers, if you’re reading, we I need samples! At LBHQ no bottle goes unnoticed. Hell, if you’ve fermented something in your bathtub I’ll review that.

I like everything, but I like some things better than others.

Email liquorstore@gmail.com for a shipping address. I promise to review your booze within three months, and your brand will get exposure to my countless followers 😉

*LOL

GEKKEIKAN SAKE—A prescription for violent animals

My Fellow Inebriates,

After Sunday night’s humiliation by Miss P, my friend Scarybear—far from not being himself—has been even more of himself. Which is to say: preoccupied with annihilation while somehow giving off a stronger funk.

He wasn’t always this way. Scary came to the house two years before yours truly—before any of the other animals. He dominated for two years. He had attention; he had snacks; he had unlimited television. (Renting from a cruddy landlord back in 2005, my soon-to-be parents retaliated passive-agressively by running their plasma TV eighteen hours a day with only Scary in front of it.)

Alone watching the Space Channel, Scary became an expert on every iteration of Star Trek and Stargate, not to mention crap shows like Andromeda. And when Dad came home, Scary got to watch those shows again. He had things his way for a very, very long time. He was the bear.

In December 2005 everything changed. Who knew a small pink bundle could effect so sudden and absolute a coup? Home for maternity leave with P, my mum now controlled the TV, exposing Scary to reality shows, news, and, worst of all, dramas. She parked herself in front of the plasma, surfing randomly while baby P fed. If losing the Space Channel wasn’t dreadful enough for Scary, he had to witness Mum being milked and was often a baby-barf target.

All of which was compounded by an onslaught of new animals: ducks, elephants, frogs, and bears.

Everything had been perfect. And now it sucked.

It actually altered Scary’s mind. Who knows—maybe he was always an asshole and nobody knew it because he always got his way. But now that he wasn’t getting his way, he became angry. He became morose. In his head he reran episodes of sci-fi shows he’d seen enough times to memorize, obsessing about the hazards of space until those dangers seemed immediate enough to gobble him up.

Unable to get out of his obsessive rut, Scary couldn’t find another crutch. One time I suggested we join forces and open a bottle of GEKKEIKAN SAKE. He kicked my ass! After that he kicked my ass all the time, just for something to do.

Eventually the bottle did get opened, though, without Scary’s involvement. At 14.6% alcohol, it could have mellowed him out. GEKKEIKAN is one of three bottom-shelf sakes stocked at our neighborhood booze shop and distinct for being bottled in the U.S. rather than Japan. There its distinction ends.

At its comparatively low price point ($10.99 for 750mL), GEKKEIKAN is a likely offering at cheap sushi outlets where Japanese provenance is unimportant. It makes perfect sense for American producers to get in on the sake game, especially with a lackluster public appetite for beer. For many sushi aficionados, a meal without sake wouldn’t be a meal, and doubtless this mentality assists sake producers in keeping a market foothold. Whether people drink sake without sushi is another matter. If anything, sake’s tether to Japanese food is probably frustrating for North American marketers wishing to expand the product’s reach.

Sake divides neatly into two camps: cold and warm.

  • Higher-end sake—the type found in small, picturesque bottles—meant to be drunk cold so as to appreciate its character. It is, after all, a type of wine, albeit made from rice.
  • Lower-end sake—bottom-shelf offerings intended for copious consumption with Japanese cuisine and drunk warm to mask any disagreeable characteristics.

Along with HAKUTSURU and Takara, GEKKEIKAN falls into the latter category. Still, I thought I’d better try it both warm and cold because that way I’d get twice as much.

Now, I am freaking terrified of the stove. I had to rely on my mother to get the sake to its optimal temperature. Child’s play, you might think, but she needs to be watched; previously she’s forgotten a saucepan of sake on the burner and allowed the precious alcohol to evaporate.

When the sake is warm-to-hot without boiling, smooth grainy flavors waft generously from the glass. On the tongue it warms and expands with medium body and hints of fruit and herbs. Much of this charm is carried in warm vapors; the heat is pleasant and alluring. Once you let GEKKEIKAN sit and cool, however, the charm is reduced.

Now that’s more like it. Eighteen liters.

This is the problem with cheap sake. Optimal temperature forgives a lot in a cheap sake; imperfections hide behind a warming sensation. Dropping to room temperature exposes both its off-notes and its simplicity.

Naturally the solution is to pound it before it cools. Keeping GEKKEIKAN at optimal temperature is an exercise in chasing the dragon. You don’t want it to disappoint you, but its sweet spot is narrow. Not that sub-ideal temperatures render it undrinkable. GEKKEIKAN is mostly harmless, although it will wreck you if you pound it for the sake of maintaining that ideal. Of course, if you’ve let it cool and can’t reheat it, you might pound it just to be done with it. It’s not offensive enough to push away because the temperature isn’t right.

Either way, it’s a recipe for getting drunk quickly.

In just the way heat masks flaws in sake, sake (I’ve often thought) could mask flaws in Scarybear. Except he’d probably be an angry drunk.