Drink 189: Just Like Riding a Bicycle



If your urine looks like this
call your doctor immediately



Bonjour Mesdames et Messieurs. We are back with a new drink, the Moulin Rouge.  It is made from sloe gin, sweet vermouth, and bitters. This drink was fantastic if you like horrible cocktails.  It was extremely sweet and almost glue-like in consistency.  At least it had a healthy dose of awful sweet vermouth to counter the almost drinkable sloe gin. 

Mrs. Bottle really hated it and she practically did a spit take when she tried it. I, on the other hand, found it merely terribly unpleasant.  If I were trapped in a crevasse with my arm pinned by a boulder I could probably choke it down after a day or two.  Mrs. Bottle would rather drink her own pee. I have heard it is pretty good. 

You are probably expecting some tie-in to the movie Moulin Rouge or at the bare minimum some kind of send-up of Lady Marmalade. Unfortunately I haven’t seen the film and I would never criticize such a masterpiece of a song.  Also, I have lost my mojo. After not having written anything for a week I kind of forgot how to do it.  I mean I remember how to write words on a page as is evidenced by the thing you are reading.  What I have forgotten is how to bolg. Or is it blog? Either way, it doesn’t take long to get out of the groove.  Don’t fret, though, or bolg isn’t dead. I’m sure I’ll get my mojo back soon enough.  Until then, if we go too long between posts make sure to check you local crevasses and make sure I’m not stuck. I need both my arms.

"OoooooOOoooOOoo"

Overall Rating for the Moulin Rouge

Taste: 1.5

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 6 – 22% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Sloe Gin

0.75 oz Sweet Vermouth

1 dash Bitters

Christina Aguilera photo: By Julian from Germany (PC134194) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Drink 168: Sloe Ride

Several drinks in the Mr. Boston guide feature Sloe Gin, most famously the Alabama Slammer and the Sloe Gin Fizz.  We would like to try those drinks, but the problem is that it is tough to find authentic sloe gin.  Most of the sloe gin you see at the liquor store isn’t made using the traditional method of infusing gin with sloes.  Instead, they use grain alcohol.  I’m not sure why they are allowed to call that stuff sloe gin instead of sloeshine. 

I can't tell you the name of
this drink yet because we
haven't gotten to that
 part of the post

We conducted a multi-state search several months ago (true fact) and were unable to locate any real sloe gin.  That all changed recently when Mrs. Bottle finally located some Plymouth Traditional Sloe Gin.  I’m pretty sure she was supposed to be at work at the time, but priorities are priorities.  This was exciting news since it now allowed us a whole new spectrum of drinks.  I became a bit less excited when I saw that the bottle cost over $30.  Maybe sloeshine wouldn’t have been a bad choice after all.

We didn’t want to shoot our sloe wad by bringing one of the more famous sloe-based drinks right off the bat, so today we bring you the Sloeberry Cocktail, a mix of sloe gin and bitters.  The drink tasted a little strange yet somewhat familiar.  Mrs. Bottle thought it smelt of cough syrup, but there was something else there.  After several sips, I figured it out: The Sloeberry Cocktail tasted sort of like prune juice.  I floated this theory by Mrs. Bottle and she could neither confirm nor deny it since she claims to have never tasted prune juice. I actually haven’t had prune juice either, but I’ve been known to enjoy a prune dried plum now and then.

"Slow Barry" is what Robin and Maurice called their brother

We had to know more so we turned to our go-to source for information to learn about the sloe (Wikipedia, making TBIAW possible for over 300 years^TM).  It turns out that the sloe is the fruit of the Prunus spinosa species of bushes. I don’t know if you caught the name…Prunus spinosa. That’s right; the sloe is related to the prune. I am here to tell you that a hint of that pruney flavor is present in the Sloeberry Cocktail, too.  It wasn’t overwhelming, though.  Probably because it cost so much.

Overall Rating for the Sloeberry Cocktail

Taste: 3
Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackouts: 5 – 26% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Sloe Gin

1 dash Bitters

Drink 160: Never Neverblog

Garnish with a faerie

Lately I have been having a little trouble coming up with topics for the blog.  You may have noticed that the frequency has dipped a little over the last two weeks. The quality, of course, is as sterling as ever. Hopefully I will rally soon and a fountain of fresh ideas will spring forward.  The first step is admitting I have a problem.  Now that we have that admission out of the way I am trying to determine the root cause for the idea deficit.  I think it is either concern over the debt ceiling or that I am over 18 hours behind in watching Harry Potter movies.

I’m pretty sure I’m not the first person to run into this problem.  In fact, while researching today’s drink the Peter Pan Cocktail, I ran into someone else who seemingly suffered a similar fate.  His name is Jerry and he has (had?) a blog called Drinking With Jerry that is pretty much the same concept as TBIAW (with the same inspiration).  His version of the Peter Pan Cocktail is the same as ours, too with gin, dry vermouth, orange juice, and bitters.  He thought it tasted like “shampoo” but we didn’t.  We didn’t love it, but it was decent even though it contained dry vermouth.  Mrs. Bottle pointed out that gin seems to have a better relationship with vermouth than other liquors do. I think it is because gin is so delicious it can make anything taste good.  In this case it allowed the drink to be more palatable than one might think.  The orange juice probably helped as well. We both felt that the Peter Pan Cocktail had potential to grow on you if you gave it enough time and if you leave your window open.

  

Not Jerry
img: http://pixyland.org/peterpan/



Speaking of time, it looks like Jerry’s blog was pretty time-consuming.  He clearly went to a lot of effort in his photography and I have to say that the design of his blog is nice.  The pictures are certainly more interesting than our “drink with a black background and occasionally a lame prop” motif.  He had initially been writing a few sentences with each drink but that ended after April 21 and on May 19 he stopped his blog for good.  Maybe the time commitment got to be too much.  Maybe the fact that no one was voting on his drinks made him frustrated. Perhaps his lack of Facebook fans frustrated him (the same as TBIAW!!).  I don’t know Jerry, but I don’t want to think that he just gave up.  Quitting is not cool.  I prefer to imagine that he is dead

Overall Rating for the Peter Pan Cocktail

Taste: 3

Presentation: 4 – It has a faerie!

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackouts: 7 – 19% Alcohol

Ingredients

.75 oz Gin

.75 oz Dry Vermouth

.75 oz Orange Juice

2 dashes Bitters

Drink 114: Sucks and the City 2

Still better than Sex and the City 2

Early on in TBIAW, Mrs. Bottle and I tried the Manhattan.  If you didn't just click that link (and I recommend you always click our links), here is the short version of our review: "The Manhattan consists of whiskey, sweet vermouth, and Angostura bitters. It tastes more like it is made out of ass."  Why am I bringing this up?  Because today we bring you the Manhattan (Dry) and here is the review: The Manhattan (Dry) consists of whiskey, dry vermouth, and Angostura bitters. It tastes more like it is made out of slightly less ass.

The only difference in the two Manhattans is the vermouth.  Luckily for us, this one used dry vermouth, which is slightly less gross than sweet vermouth.  We also used rye this time instead of bourbon. I'm not sure why we did that since both of us preferred bourbon to rye in our whiskey taste test.  Regardless it did seem slightly better than the Manhattan. We were also supposed to garnish with an olive, but Mrs. Bottle hates olives and doesn't allow them in the house so that was a non-starter.  She won't let me eat olives, either, so I don't even know if I like them.  I'm sure that the olive would have made this drink awesome, though.

Overall Rating for the Manhattan (Dry)

Taste: 2
Ease of Preparation: 4

Presentation: 3
Drinks until blackout: 4 – A little over 35% alcohol

Ingredients:

2 oz Whiskey

.5 oz Dry Vermouth

1 dash Angostura Bitters

Drink 99: Bad Cocktail Reason No. 1 (and 2 and 3 and 4)

East India Cocktail Pick No. 1

Mr. Bottle isn’t feeling it today so I offered to fill in (I'm Mrs. Bottle for those first time readers out there- all none of you). Today’s drink is the East India Cocktail No. 1 and it’s made from brandy, pineapple juice, triple sec, Jamaican rum, and the all important dash of bitters. Basically this drink sucks. There are many reasons so let me get on with the enumeration.

No. 1: There is only ½ tsp. each of the pineapple juice and triple sec and 1 tsp. of the rum. What the hell is the point of that? All you can taste is brandy, brandy, brandy. This is like getting a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup and there being a tiny pin-headed dot of peanut butter in the center. Might as well just have bought a Hershey’s bar. In this case, you would have poured yourself a shot of brandy.

No. 2: This whole idea that it’s ok to have a recipe with a tsp. or ½ tsp. of this stuff is absurd. It’s not easy to pour these amounts from a liter sized bottle. And you certainly won’t find those marks on your shot glass so have fun pouring into those tiny little spoons. So why put yourself through the pain for what No. 1 points out above. You can’t taste a ½ tsp. of anything.

This chart will help you see what I mean

No. 3: Brandy is not tasty. Not to get repetitive, but I cannot emphasize enough that as No. 1 points out, a ½ tsp. of a liquid is not going to impact the flavor of the drink. Sadly this resulted in a big swig of burning brandy down the gullet. I guess this point doesn’t apply if you like brandy but this is my list so it stays.

No. 4: The name of this drink is too long. And there’s no East India Cocktail No. 2 so I don’t get it.

Overall Rating for the East India Cocktail No. 1

Taste: 1 – Brandy, brandy, brandy
Presentation: 4
Ease of Preparation: 1 – Those teaspoons ruined it
Drinks Until Blackout: 3 – 37% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Brandy
1 tsp Jamaican rum
½ tsp Pineapple juice
½ tsp Triple sec
Dash of Bitters

Drink 92: Refund Denied

Possibly subject to AMT

We decided to have the Income Tax Cocktail for April 15th, the day that Federal taxes are due.  Of course when made that decision we didn't realize that  this year's due date was pushed out to April 18th even though April 15th is a Friday.  You are probably thinking, "Why is the due date the 18th?"  Even if you aren't thinking that, it is a convenient technique for telling you why anyway.  It is because April 16th is a holiday in Washington DC called Emancipation Day.  Since the 16th is on Saturday, the holiday is being observed on Friday, which pushes tax day to Monday.  That is almost as confusing as the tax code itself. Well it would be if I use 9,000,000+ more words to describe it.  You might also be wondering, "What is Emancipation Day?" I'm so glad you asked. Emancipation Day commemorates the day that Abraham Lincoln signed the law that freed the slaves in Washington DC.  I have lived in the south most of my life and for some reason people around here don't celebrate Emancipation Day.  I'll have to look into why that is.

Even though this is now 3 days early, we still bring you the Income Tax Cocktail, a mix of gin, sweet vermouth, dry vermouth, orange juice, and bitters.   I'm still not sold on vermouth, but Mrs. Bottle seems to have grown accustomed to it. Thus she liked the drink better than I did. I thought had an unusual taste which I attributed to the combination of vermouths and bitters.  The vermouth taste was slight enough that I still thought the drink was acceptable, though. On the flip side, leaving out the vermouth and bitters would have made for a better albeit less complex drink.  Now if we could only have a better and less complex tax code.  Like vermouth, it would still leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Overall Rating for the Income Tax Cocktail

Taste: 3

Presentation: 2 – This is about the 13th drink that looks exactly the same

Ease of Preparation: 4
Drinks Until Blackout: 5 – 28% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Gin
1.5 tsp Sweet Vermouth
1.5 tsp Dry Vermouth
1 dash Bitters
1 oz Orange Juice

Day 81: Making Betty Botter's Bitters Batter Better

Maybe the Fox River is murky?

It is hard to keep coming up with ways to introduce the daily drink and list its ingredients.  Invariably it ends up being a variation on “today’s drink is the XYZ, a mixture of some alcohol and some other ingredients.”  Every once in a while we might get creative and/or bust out the thesaurus, but even that only gives us so many options.  The first step towards solving any problem is recognizing that you have a problem, though, so I think we are well on our ways towards finding a solution. Don’t think for one minute that a boring sentence or two or three or four means that we are mailing it in.  Care and thoughtfulness are put into every wird in this blog.

Today’s drink is the Fox River Cocktail, a mixture of bourbon (or rye) whiskey, brown crème de cacao, and bitters (oops, we did it again). Even with two ounces of bourbon, the Fox River Cocktail was not the worst drink we’ve ever had.  It actually was almost good despite the fact that it was extremely strong, coming in at over 37% alcohol.  It is one of those drinks that makes your stomach and throat warm when you take a sip.  That is the feeling of protective lining rotting away, so it might even be an effective weight loss measure. The primary flavor was of course the bourbon, but the crème de cacao did manage to take a little of the edge off and the bitters was definitely noticeable. This drink had four dashes of bitters, which is four more than most drinks have, and three more than most drinks with bitters have.

Bitters is alcohol infused with aromatic herbs.  The Angostura Bitters that we used is 44.7% alcohol.  Even though it is typically very strong, you can buy it in the grocery store and as far as I know you don’t get carded when buying bitters.  I am not advocating that our underage readers go load up on bitters, though.  Vanilla extract is a tastier option.  If you’ve ever had Jägermeister then you know what bitters tastes like: cough syrup.  I happen to love cough syrup, so I find the bitters flavor quite pleasant.  Bitters isn’t always bitter, though, it can also be bittersweet. That makes “bitters” a terrible name not only because it ends in “s” making subject-verb agreement confusing, but also because it is a bit misleading.

The giant label does not hide the bitterness
(Img: © Chriusha (Хрюша) / CC-BY-SA-3.0)

If you do happen to find bitters too bitter there is new hope.  Researchers have recently discovered a chemical that blocks the taste buds that are receptors for bitterness.  The chemical is called GIV3616.  The people who named it couldn’t even get over the incredibly low bar for naming that “bitters” established.  At any rate, I am looking forward to the day GIV3616 becomes commercially available. On that day I will make a drink that has both bitters and GIV3616 and let them fight to the death.  It will be glorious. I will also liberally use GIV3616 to cut down on the bitterness of vegetables.  It will probably be a better option than my current bitter blocker of cheese sauce.


Overall Rating for the Fox River Cocktail

Taste: 2 – Just missed a 3
Presentation: 4
Ease of Preparation: 4
Drinks Until Blackout: 3 – 37% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Whiskey (Bourbon or Rye)
1 tbsp Crème de Cocoa (Brown)
4 dashes Bitters

Day 51: You Like Me, You Really Like Me



A Star Cocktail is Born

Mrs. Bottle here to cover today’s exciting events. In honor of the Oscars this evening, we guzzled down the contents that make up the Star Cocktail. Luckily for all eight of our followers, it will not take as long to read today’s blog as it will to watch tonight’s show. Reading it will be like jumping immediately to see the winners of the only awards anyone cares about: best picture, actor, actress, and supporting folk. Sadly, the content might be more akin to Best Sound Mixing because, again, there are only eight people interested.

The Star Cocktail consists of apple brandy, sweet vermouth, and bitters and is garnished with a twist of lemon. The apple brandy we used was the lower end Applejack by Laird’s which technically might not be a real apple brandy. However, I refused to pay $40 for a bottle of Calvados (fancy apple brandy) when I knew they would both taste like burning yuk. Surprisingly, Mr. Bottle and I both enjoyed the Star. It’s definitely strong – an all alcohol cocktail rolls like that. But I felt that the sweet vermouth and bitters helped smooth the flavors. Except maybe at the very end when the alcohol smacks you around.

Winner: Best Button During Academy Awards

Let me take a second to pull out my notes I scribbled on the way to the laptop to thank everyone for my lemon twist award. This garnish is stunning, just like Harry Winston diamonds on Sandra Bullock’s neck. Luckily for the twist, it is not married to a tattooed crazy person whose cheating ways will steal its lemonlight three days after the big win. And like the Oscar attendees I’d like to pat myself on the back for how awesome I am at making the twist. I’m sure that my excellent performance will bring awareness to the importance of twisting lemon peels everywhere. 

Ed. Note: Notice that Mrs. Bottle did not thank Mr. Bottle for making the twist possible

Did you know that you can pay $4.99 to get the “full Oscar experience”? Instead of experiencing the Oscars like never before, I recommend settling down with a tasty Star Cocktail and soon you won’t care that the song from Country Strong didn’t win Best Original Song (something from this movie is nominated?? Seriously?).

Overall Rating for the Star Cocktail

Taste: 3
Presentation: 5 – It was wearing a Bombay Sapphire glass with a stunning twist of lemon
Ease of Preparation: 3 – That garnish is hard- takes a TON of talent
Drinks Until Blackout: 5 – 29% Alcohol

 

Ingredients

1 oz Apple Brandy

1 oz Sweet Vermouth

1 dash Bitters

Day 45: Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kodos

You can see the Federalism plain as day

Happy Presidents Day Washington’s Birthday! We were all set for a special Presidents Day edition of The Bottle Is A Wonderland.  We chose the El Presidente Cocktail #2 as our drink and we planned to have a Hail to the Chief midi-file play in a continuous loop with no mute button. Then we learned that the official name of the Federal holiday is actually Washington’s Birthday and all our plans flew out the window.  If only we hadn’t already had the El Presidente Cocktail #1 we could have honored America’s first Presidente properly.   Now that we have had the EPC#2, we won’t have anything special for John Adams Day, either.  It is like a double rainbow, only the exact opposite.  What does it mean?

The El Presidente Cocktail #2 is a mix of light rum, dry vermouth, and bitters.  Since all of these ingredients contain alcohol, the drink is quite strong.  Earlier in our journey we might have found the strength of the drink off-putting, but we have become more accustomed to these powerful drinks as we’ve progressed.  Either that or our taste buds have been totally decimated by our vodka taste test.  We may not have found the strength alone reason enough to dislike the drink, but the flavor of it certainly did the trick.  The bitter dry vermouth and the bitter bitters lead to a bitter drink.   It perfectly represents Adams’ feelings over Mercy Warren’s perceived mischaracterizations of his revolutionary bona fides.

They would find a way
(Image via Shirtoid)

We have some strong opinions on both Mr. Adams and Ms Warren, but here at TBIAW we keep our political views private.  Enjoying an adult beverage should really be a bi-partisan activity.  If you want to read political views, stick to the Daily Kos, Townhall.com, or our political spin-off blog, The [redacted] Party is Filled With Mouth Breathing Imbeciles Who Care More About Their Own Power Than They Do About The Welfare of the Country.  I’m sure most of you can figure out who to whom we are referring.  If you guessed “the other side” then you are correct.

Overall Rating for the El Presidente Cocktail #2

Taste: 2

Presentation: 2

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 4 – 32% alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Light Rum

.75 oz Dry Vermouth

1 dash bitters

Day 43: Swan vs. Swan

Brown Feather would not
sound as appetizing

Last night I had to make a rare trip away from the Bottle Wonderland Estate.  When I returned Mrs. Bottle was waiting to make our next drink.  I had already looked at the ingredients and wasn’t hopeful about how it would taste.  “Tonight’s drink is going to be bad” I speculated.  “I don’t care” replied Mrs. Bottle, “I’m going to drink it all anyway.”   I guess she had a bad day.  If we ever talked I would probably have more details to share.

The aforementioned drink is the Black Feather, a mix of brandy, dry vermouth, triple sec, and angostura bitters.  I wouldn’t call this drink my favorite, but it wasn’t altogether unpleasant. The brandy flavor shines through with just a hint of sweetness thanks to the triple sec.  It is the type of drink where if I had it on a regular basis I would probably start to really enjoy it.  We only have  about 1,460 more drinks to try before we can start thinking about adding a new drink to the standard rotation, so I will be sure to stock up on brandy and vermouth in early 2015.  Based on history, we will probably have some of our current supply left so that won't be necessary.

The name Black Feather reminds me of the scene in Black Swan where Nina (Natalie Portman), who is embracing her role as the sensual Black Swan, begins to sprout black feathers from her back.  In a panic, she goes to see her understudy Lily (Mila Kunis).  Nina and Lily have a complex relationship since they are bitter rivals yet find themselves strangely attracted to one another.  When Lily unlocks herself from Nina's sultry gaze, she plucks a feather from Nina's back.  Much to Lily's surprise, the feather is actually a bomb that explodes and instantly kills her.  Needless to say, this was shocking to see.

My memory isn't what is used to be, so I may have some of that last bit conflated with a Spy vs. Spy episode. 

Black Swan Poster

Overall Rating for the Black Feather

Taste: 3

Presentation: 4 – Classy with a lemon twist

Ease of Preparation: 3 – Making a lemon twist is tricky

Drinks Until Blackout: 4 –25% alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Brandy

1 oz Dry Vermouth

.5 oz Triple Sec

1 dash Angostura Bitters

Day 28: Azul y naranja

Smurfy

Today's drink the Pacific Sunshine is tequila, blue Curaçao, simple syrup, lemon juice, and bitters.  One of the first things we do when making a drink is choose which of our many liquors to use. We have quite a few tequilas so our choice was fraught with risk. We decided to use Tres Generaciones Plata tequila, one of our favorites.  According to their website it is “smooth and light with a clean tingle”.  I’ve been learning Spanish so I know that Tres Generaciones Plata translates to “Three Generator Plates”.  I’m not sure what generator plates have to do with tequila, but I do know that three generators will create a heck of a tingle.

The Pacific Sunshine is our first drink with blue Curaçao. Curaçao's main flavor component is orange. That isn't quite true as it is actually flavored with the peel of the laraha, which is a cousin of the orange.  Its secondary flavor is blue food coloring and it is finished off with a touch of cedilla.  As best as we can tell, the main reason to use blue Curaçao is to make your drink blue since there are plenty of other orange flavored liqueurs from which to choose.  Logic would dictate that normally you wouldn’t purposely make a drink that looks like Ty-D-Bol, but in some cases it makes sense.  The Pacific Sunshine is one of those cases.



Also confused by drink names



As you can tell from the picture, the drink looks just like the sun over the Pacific Ocean, which really is a lucky break considering the name.  I pointed this out to Mrs. Bottle and she congratulated me for discovering the obvious.  Sometimes her words hurt. I got over the bitter sting of Mrs. Bottle's reply and we focused on the drink. In addition to looking great, this drink tasted great.  It was slightly sweet and let you taste just a touch of the tequila with orange overtones.   The salt-rimmed glass was a nice touch, too, and the salt went well with the sweet drink. The only real flaw was that it didn’t fill the glass to the brim. It was so good that we added it to our (very short so far) best drinks list.

We haven't had that much luck with tequila drinks so far, but maybe this is a good sign.  Now if I can just figure out why a Tequila Sunrise is named what it is.

Overall Rating for the Pacific Sunshine

Taste: 5
Ease of Preparation: 2 - Slicing a lemon and salt rimming the glass? That is a lot of effort!
Presentation: 5
Drinks until blackout: 6 – 22% alcohol

Ingredients:

1.5 oz. Tequila
1.5 oz Blue Curaçao
.75 oz. Lemon Juice
.75 oz. Simple Syrup
1 dash Bitters

Day 26: Help me, Tom Cruise

Maybe the cherry is the angel?

26 days in and today we confront the Fallen Angel, which is made of gin, lime juice, crème de menthe, and bitters.  I am a gin man through and through but this drink made me nervous.  It seemed like gin, lime, and mint were a recipe for disaster.  Mrs. Bottle was even more apprehensive since she isn’t a gin woman.  We each said a small prayer and proceeded with caution.

To prepare ourselves, we first tried the crème de menthe by itself.  Unsurprisingly, it tasted like mint.  Mrs. Bottle thought it tasted exactly like Scope.  I prefer Listerine so I wouldn’t know.  It was definitely syrupier than any mouthwash I’ve had.  Suitably prepared, we made the drink.  Once again our taste buds were hit by the unmistakable sourness of the green plastic lime juice.  This time it was a little different, though, because there was just a hint of mint to cut the acidity.

Mrs. Bottle immediately proclaimed “yuck”.  She thought her taste buds may have been fouled by our taco dinner so she ate a cracker to cleanse her palate.  “No, it just tastes weird” was her conclusion, but I wasn’t so sure.  I had sip after sip and still couldn’t decide if I liked it.  I ate a cracker and sipped some more. I couldn’t fully describe what I was tasting.  The mixture of lime juice, mint, and gin defied rational thought.  Even after I finished the whole thing I was on the fence as to whether I actually liked it or if it was just tolerable. It was the Eyes Wide Shut of  drinks.  Except with way less nudity.  I really cannot emphasize that enough.

That is too bad, because some nudity would have helped.

Even we don't know if we liked this movie

 

Overall Rating for the Fallen Angel

 

Taste: 3 – Completely on the fence

Ease of Preparation: 4

Presentation: 3

Drinks until blackout: 5 – 26% alcohol but a minty aftertaste

Ingredients:

1.5 oz. Gin

1 oz. Lime Juice

1 tsp. Crème de Menthe

1 dash bitters

Day 16: Sucks and the City

Cherry Bomb

Neither Mrs. Bottle nor I had heard of most of the drinks we have tried so far, so for today’s drink we decided to go with something classic, the Manhattan.  The Manhattan consists of whiskey, sweet vermouth, and Angostura bitters. It tastes more like it is made out of ass.

Okay, that may be a bit harsh (just like this drink…rim shot!).  We suspect that we didn’t like the Manhattan because we don’t like whiskey.  We both thought the drink mostly tasted and smelled like straight bourbon.  In order to test this, we poured a little Wild Turkey into a glass and tried it straight.  It turns out that the Manhattan is much better than straight bourbon, similar to the way a punch in the stomach is better than a punch in the junk.

I wondered how this drink became a classic so I did some research and it turns out the Manhattan was invented some time in the mid to late 1800’s.  Then it became clear to me: The people of the late 1800’s had no idea how to have fun.  A popular leisure activity of the time was hoop and stick.  Wee! No wonder this drink became popular.  It bested the current champion, Gin and Soot.

Time for a Game of Hoop and Stick

We still hope that we can develop a palate for whiskey.  Obviously a lot of people like it so it must be possible to enjoy it.   Until that happens, it will be tough for any of the whiskey drinks to earn a high score.

Luckily for us, there are at least two more variations on the Manhattan left for us to try.  We can hardly wait.

Overall Rating:

Taste: 2 – Only because we are giving the benefit of the doubt to whiskey fans.

Ease of Preparation: 4

Presentation: 4 – It has a cherry!

Drinks until blackout: 4 – A little over 35% alcohol

Ingredients:

2 oz Whiskey

.5 oz Sweet Vermouth

1 dash Angostura Bitters