Drink 195: The 24 Days of Christmas

Greetings and welcome to the 2011 TBIAW Holiday Gift Guide!  Some poor misguided souls might think that mid-January 2012 is too late for a 2011 holiday gift guide.   Those people do not work for the US Postal Service.  Here in the cosmopolitan Charlotte Metroplex, home of such landmarks as the Bottle is a Wonderland Estate, South Carolina,  and the NASCAR Hall of Fame, people are still receiving mail from November.  This is why I always use FedEx to deliver transplant organs.

Sadly, Mrs. Bottle and I were victims of this horrible tragedy of delayed mail.  I did not receive my December 16^th issue of Forbes magazine until January 7^th.  This was an important one, too, for it contained the annual ForbesLife Gift Guide.  I rely on this each year to help me figure out what luxury items to purchase for Mrs. Bottle.  Had this issue arrived on time I would have known that the Burgundy Persian-lamb Wulling jacket by the Row ($12,000 – Barneys) should be under the tree.  Instead Mrs. Bottle received a White Chinese-polyester jacket by the Wal-Mart ($43.99 – Wal-Mart).  In fact, my issue was so late that Barneys no longer has the clearly superior jacket.  Maybe I can find a different one for next year.

The tree is made from bumble bones
image: Forbes.com

I don’t have time to cover everything.  It is January after all.  I have time to mention a few, though.  For men I was going to recommend the Halston Velvet slippers until I saw that they are “price upon request”.  Something tells me that they will be more than these superior ones.  Alternately you could get this $7,000 ping pong table.  It is actually a good deal because it doubles as a beer pong table dining room table so you are getting two pieces of furniture for the price of one.  Its 900 pounds of concrete could also be useful if you ever need to make sure a body never floats to the surface.  You are practically losing money by not owning one.

For the audiophile in your life they suggest the Basis Inspiration Turntable.  A turntable?  Seriously? People who insist on vinyl can be kind of annoying.  I’m guessing that people who insist on vinyl and own a $54,000 turntable are probably not an exception.  For the same price as that turntable you could buy  a USB turntable to convert your precious records to MP3 and 215 160GB iPods so you can listen to them.

Finally, for those of you with precious darling children, they bring you $1,200 ladybug earrings. I say go for it.  If you think you can't afford it go ahead and use the college fund money.  It will pay off.  When you have to get a doctor to remove thousands of dollars of jewelry from your little angel’s nose it will create a fun story for years to come.  College can’t teach you those kind of life experiences.

Vampire Eric really
wishes he had legs
so he could get a sip

In honor of these high-falutin’  gifts we decided to have the Grand Mimosa, a mix of Champagne,  Grand Marnier, and orange juice.  Since we just spent all that money on gifts, we used cava instead of champagne.  We are not made of money after all.  The drink was okay, but both Mrs. Bottle and I thought that it was not as good as a classic Mimosa which excludes the Grand Marnier.  Even better is plain cava, which excludes the orange juice as well.

Overall Rating for Grand Mimosa

Taste: 3

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 5

Drinks Until Blackout: ??? – The recipe did not give champagne proportions

Ingredients

0.5 oz Grand Marnier

1 oz Orange Juice

Champagne

Drink 183: Whoa, Did You Feel That?

Earthquake
damage!

In case you live under a rock, you probably heard about today’s earthquake.  Actually, if you live under a rock, you probably felt the earthquake more than most people did.  I hope your rock hole was undamaged!  We felt the earthquake here at the Bottle Wonderland Estate, too, but it was just a little shake.  It was like if a large truck was driving nearby or if someone had set off a sonic blaster but we were not forced to evacuate.  We also didn’t have to leave the house.

Today’s drink also happens to be the Sonic Blaster but Mrs. Bottle can assure you I had nothing to do with making the earth move.  Instead, I daintily sipped its combination of vodka, rum, banana liqueur, pineapple juice, orange juice, and cranberry juice.  The name Sonic Blaster seems wildly inappropriate for a drink that is 2/3 juice and only 11% alcohol.  Something called Sonic Blaster should have a little more oomph. I’m thinking it definitely would have Red Bull instead of juice and it should probably have some kind of whiskey and/or sambuca.

That was quite a coincidence that the earthquake
 was centered right where that star was on the map

The name might not be great, but t least it wasn’t called the Sonic Banana Blaster.  I bring this up because prior to this we have had eight drinks featuring banana liqueur and five of them have had “banana” in the name (Banana Di Amore, Banana Foster, Top Banana, Banana Slip, Banana Bomber).  We have awarded the Sonic Blaster one point for creativity.  It is possible it does not have “banana” in the name because of the simple reason that you cannot taste any banana in the drink.  I guess it is overwhelmed by the other juices.  We could taste the rum but only ever so slightly.  All in all it was a tasty drink but nothing earth shattering.

Overall Rating for the Sonic Blaster

Taste: 4

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 10 – 11% Alcohol

Ingredients

0.5 oz Vodka

0.5 oz Light Rum

0.5 oz Crème de Banana

1 oz Pineapple Juice

1 oz Orange Juice

1 oz Cranberry Juice

Drink 182: I'm Your Lover, I'm Your Zero



We are not going to fall for
the "banana in the tailpipe" trick
but we did fall for the "banana in
the garnish" trick.



Today’s drink is the Banana Di Amore, which translates from Italian roughly to “Banana Love”.  I have a number of hilarious jokes to make about this name, but since this a family-friendly blog you will have to insert your own banana [joke] instead. The reason it is called the Banana Di Amore is because in addition to its crème de banana liqueur it is made with amaretto.  A popular brand of amaretto is Amaretto Di Amore.  Put them together and what do you get?  Banana love. We used a different brand of ameretto, though, so our drink would more rightly be called the Banana De Kuyper.  That translates from Italian to  "Banana Cheapskates".

In addition to the two liqueurs, this drink also contains orange juice, simple syrup, and lemon juice.  Since it is frozen, it also contains freeze-water, more commonly known as ice.  I’m not a huge fan of frozen drinks in general (except for Beergaritas) because you tend not to get much alcohol, and this one was no exception.   Between the juice, ice, and low octane liqueurs, it was only 3% alcohol.  Even if we had used 99 Bananas instead of regular crème de banana it would have only bumped it to 5%.  It hardly seems worth it for the amount of effort involved what with the blending and the fancy garnishes and the ice and all.

The drink did taste good at least, although it was a little sweet.  Despite the freeze-water, you could taste all of the ingredients and they complemented each other well.  The problem is really only the lack of alcohol.  Luckily there is a solution and that solution is to have 2.5 servings instead of one.  That will bump it from 3% alcohol to ∞%.  “Say what?” is what your inner monologue should be saying right now.  You may even whip out your calculator to try to prove me wrong.  If you have an Apple, it would probably look something like this (in video!!):

If you have a windows PC it will probably look something like this:

Oh silly reader, you clearly do not understood maths.  I have a math minor and a PhD in Diet Mountain Dew consumption.  Those things combine to let me prove that 2.5 servings of a beverage multiplies things in an unexpected way. Behold:


Do not drink if you are looking
for significant source of other nutrients.
"Other" nutrients?

See?  0 Calories per serving.  2.5 servings per container.  10 calories per bottle.  If that doesn’t prove the magic of 2.5 servings, I don’t know what will. Maybe a Coke Zero?

Overall Rating for the Banana Di Amore

Taste: 4

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 3

Drinks Until Blackout: 200 – 3% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Amaretto

1 oz Crème de Banana

2 oz Orange Juice

0.5 oz Simple Syrup

0.5 oz Lemon Juice

Drink 173: Frah-gee-lay?

The other day we received a Facebook “like” from Fragoli Liqueur. This was exciting for a number of reasons.  First, we always are happy to get a “like” since it boosts our self-esteem and helps us gain on Lady Gaga.  Secondly, Fragoli is the first company to publicly proclaim their fondness for TBIAW.  It is one thing to have your friend do it, but a company is another level.  I wonder if the Fragoli board of directors unanimously approved the "like" or if there was some dissent? Did they battle it out like in Twelve Angry Men?



Perfection, thy
name is Fragoli



Hmm, I guess there were only two reasons it was exciting, but two is a number, too.  One thing I’m sure of is that we received their coveted “like” because of the blog’s outstanding content. There was no way it was simply because they have some automated bot that spotted the word “Fragoli” in our Economic Stimulus sidebar and just gave us the “like” in the hopes that we would like them back and possibly link to them in our blog.  We frown on that kind of self-promotion. We would never expect them to link back to a post of ours just because it mentioned their product repeatedly and glowingly.

 I also hope that Fragoli doesn’t think that we will compromise our editorial integrity when reviewing their product just because they “like”d us.  We cannot be bought that easily.  Please note that we can be bought.  Just not that easily.  I implore you to keep that in mind as we talk for a moment about Fragoli, an Italian strawberry liqueur. It is a must to discuss since it is an ingredient in our latest drink the Strawberry Sunrise. 

Since we have never had Fragoli before, we tried some straight before putting it in the drink.  I can say without bias that Fragoli is the best tasting thing I have ever tried.  It was the perfect combination of sweetness, strawberry flavor, and alcohol bite.  It was like a strawberry patch exploded into my mouth and I used alcohol nectar to extinguish the flames. Fragoli even has these cute whole wild strawberries in the bottle.  Can you imagine anything more perfect?  I surely can’t. 

We combined the Fragoli with grenadine and orange juice in our Strawberry Sunrise even though we aren’t quite sure Fragoli was the proper ingredient.  You see, the recipe called for strawberry schnapps, not fine delicious Italian strawberry liqueur. Since schnapps is just sweetened flavored liqueur, we decided to use Fragoli since it meets the criteria. Really, you’d have to be crazy to use plain old schnapps when Fragoli is available. We are a lot of things but we are not crazy.

It is sad that you can
barely make out the
Fragoli in this picture

Unlike the L.A Sunrise, the Strawberry Sunrise actually looked like a sunrise with a nice separation of the orange juice from the red ingredients.  Separate, though not equal.  As far as flavor, the drink was quite good.  It was almost like a cocktail version of a strawberry and orange Julius. If there were any complaints, it was a little too sweet.  This was undoubtedly due to the ½ ounce of grenadine and not the Fragoli.  The Fragoli’s sweetness was perfect and it remains blameless in any of the drink’s shortcomings.  The Strawberry Sunrise  also was a bit weak, coming in at just over 7% alcohol.  In this case the recipe takes the blame, since it called for a lot of OJ and not enough Fragoli. 

To conclude, Fragoli.

Overall Rating for the Strawberry Sunrise

Taste: 4

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 5

Drinks Until Blackouts: 12 – 7% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Strawberry Schnapps – We highly recommend Fragoli

0.5 oz Grenadine

Orange Juice

Drink 164: Hot in the City

Captions require
effort

Oftentimes when I look at a drink recipe I think, “Whoever created this drink gave it very little effort.”   Sometimes that can work.  Other times you end up with the Sun Kiss, a mix of amaretto and orange juice.  You don’t even put it in a shaker.  You just pour into an ice- filled glass.  The lime wedge only gives the façade of effort.  The drink was unremarkable in every way.  It looked okay and it tasted okay.  It pretty much I suppose if you love amaretto you would probably like the Sun Kiss a bit more than we did. 

Since the drink’s creator gave the drink such little effort, I am going to make up for it by giving this entry very little effort as well.  It is for the best as we here at the Bottle Wonderland Estate are not immune from the heat wave that is both captivating and destroying our great nation.  I never knew it got so hot in the summer.  I don’t want us to expend too much energy and end up with some heat-related malady.  It is supposed to be 98° today with a heat index of 105°.  If the heat index was only 98° you would be nearing the beginning of the third paragraph.  Instead you are nearing the end of today’s post. That extra 7 degrees of perceived heat makes all the difference. 

Overall Rating for the Sun Kiss

Taste: 3

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 5

Drinks Until Blackouts: 11 – 9% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Amaretto

4 oz Orange Juice

Drink 162: Too Much Ado

You probably remember when the main road to the Bottle Wonderland Estate was closed earlier this year because of a downed power line.  It was all over the national news.  It caused logistics issues not seen since Hurricane Katrina.  Wait, you don’t remember?  Oh yeah, that’s right, it actually was no big deal.  That’s because every person on the planet who doesn’t live in Los Angeles can deal with a temporary road closure without it being major news for a week.  That said, I was glad to see that Laker Girl tryouts were unaffected.  

Local news coverage

No sunrise and no smog

In honor of the so-called Carmageddon we bring you the L.A. Sunrise, a mix of vodka, crème de banana, rum, orange juice, and pineapple juice.  We aren’t sure why it is called the L.A. Sunrise since the drink doesn’t have a “sunrise effect” like the Tequila Sunrise or its grosser cousin the Hairy Sunrise. It isn’t even covered with a thick haze of smog. Maybe if we had used dark rum instead of the called-for “rum” it would have tinted everything brown and had a more realistic appearance.

The drink ultimately left Mrs. Bottle unsatisfied (insert too-easy joke here (and here)).  She felt the drink too weak and somewhat pointless (also too easy).  I thought it tasted pretty good with a nice pineapple-orange juice flavor.  She noted that she couldn’t even taste the alcohol and said that she might as well just drink some pineapple-orange juice.  To her it is hardly worth writing about, but it is still more newsworthy than a road closure thousands of miles away.

Overall Rating for the L.A. Sunrise

Taste: 4

Presentation: 2

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackouts: 10 – 10% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Vodka

.5 oz Crème de Banana

.25 oz Rum

2 oz Orange Juice

2 oz Pineapple Juice

Drink 161: Three Minutes to Wapner

If you look closely
you can catch a glimpse
of the mysterious Mr. Bottle

Before we get to today’s drink the Rain Man we must make some corrections to our last post.  First, and this is embarrassing, we inadvertently called the Drink with Jerry blog Drinking with Jerry.  That is a horrible mistake and we apologize sincerely.  I hope Jerry didn’t kill himself because he made the same error.  The second correction is that Jerry is not dead.  He was nice enough to comment on yesterday’s post and we hope he resumes his blog soon.  Technically this isn’t a correction since we did not say he was dead, just that we like to imagine that he was dead.  In fairness, I often like to imagine certain people are dead. It is a fun way to pass the time.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s get back to the Rain Man, a mix of 151-proof rum, melon liqueur, and orange juice.  The drink was not bad as long as you can deal with melon liqueur.  That ingredient constituted only 1/8 the volume of the drink but 7/8 of the flavor.  The orange and rum combined to level the melon out enough that Mrs. Bottle and I both liked it even though she isn’t a melon liqueur fan.  We didn’t even allow its putrid presentation to put us off.  The only thing that slowed us down was concern about the 151 rum.

This is to remind you of the 151 warnings.
We in no way used this picture again because
we were too lazy to come up with something else

We have already covered the dangers of 151 rum but there is one warning they left off the label: overstating drink power.  Upon tasting the Rain Man Mrs. Bottle repeatedly mentioned that she could feel a tingle in her nose due to the powerful 151.  She must have said it 10 or 20* times.  What she didn’t realize is that the overall strength of the drink was the same as our previous drink, 19% alcohol.  She didn’t comment about how the Peter Pan burned her nose, though.  Clearly the 151 triggered some kind of psychological response.  When Mrs. Bottle reads this I suspect it will also trigger a psychological response.  I can’t help that, I must report the truth.

* All figures approximate

Overall Rating for the Rain Man

Taste: 4

Presentation: 2

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackouts: 7 – 19% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.25 oz 151-proof Rum

.75 oz Melon Liqueur

4 oz Orange Juice

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 157: Buck Wild

Also tasted slightly
out of focus

Today’s drink is the New Orleans Buck which is comprised of light rum, orange and lemon juices and then some ginger ale. And yes, it is me, Mrs. Bottle, here to update everyone on all I’ve learned about this wondrous concoction. But first let me just get down to it and provide the critique because I know all thirteen readers out there (readership is on the rise!) are waiting in serious anticipation.

Mr. Bottle and I both had high expectations for this beverage because what’s not to like? All parts are tasty so they must be good when combined, right? Let me break it down in three languages: No (English), Non (French), and No (Spanish). Actually, that’s harsh because it wasn’t too bad. It was just a little watery tasting, probably due to the fact that the recipe didn’t specify the amount of ginger ale. It just instructed me to fill the glass and stir. Maybe if it had said to “fill to taste” I would have been more precise and ended up with a tastier drink. Like the mouthwatering Dragon Street Cobra Tamer No. 1. But we’ll never know now because unless the drink scores above a 3 on our scientific rating scale, it’s unlikely to be made again.

Let’s get back to my research. I initially followed a red herring and focused on the New Orleans part of the drink name. It seemed obvious that this drink originated in New Orleans but all I could really find was info about New Orleans Buck Jumping. What, pray tell, is this activity you might ask. After more digging, I discovered that it’s another name for second line dancing in New Orleans brass band parades. I would latch on to those folks who watch HBO’s “Treme” because I know second line dancing would be familiar to you, but I believe there might be fewer “Treme” viewers than readers of our blog.

Scene from HBO's  Treme.  By seeing a scene
from Treme you are part of a very exclusive club
img: hbo.com

So after an exhaustive eight minutes focusing on the New Orleans aspect, I happened upon a link discussing the New Orleans Buck’s ample history as it belongs to the Buck family of drinks. Excitedly, my mind started reeling with the possibilities of a whole line of alcohol by this Buck family and a new alcohol website to ridicule investigate. Alas, it turns out that the Buck drinks are beverages that include any alcohol, lemon or lime juice, a piece of citrus fruit (maybe), and ginger beer or ginger ale. I was going to explain more here but Mr. Bottle read what I’d written so far and said “Wait- we already wrote about the Buck drinks. Don’t you remember?” To which I replied, “Oh, am I supposed to be reading your posts?”

Overall Rating for the New Orleans Buck

Taste: 3

Presentation: 5 – Looks mighty refreshing

Ease of Preparation: 5

Drinks Until Blackout: 10 – 9% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Light Rum

1 oz Orange Juice

0.5 oz Lemon Juice

Ginger Ale

Those Who Can't Do, Blog

This certainly looks like the
next big thing to me

Over the past few months we have reviewed scores of drinks, critiqued liquors, rated beers, and even made the occasional restaurant review (what happened to that feature?).  Even though we have been reliably informative, hilarious, and touching, TBIAW still hasn’t caught fire with the masses.  We need something to set us apart from other blogs about drinking, and that something is a signature cocktail of our own.

That’s right, you read correctly, we are going to come up with our own original drink.  Once we perfect it we fully expect it to become the next big thing.  The current big thing is planking.  If something as dumb as that can become popular then I think we have a real chance.  Of course we are hurting ourselves by unveiling our first attempt on a holiday weekend when most people will be outside doing something fun instead of avoiding work by reading our blog.

This is a fad, really?
Img: whataplanker.com

Creating a signature cocktail isn’t as easy as it sounds.  The most difficult part is coming up with something original in light of the thousands upon thousands of recipes available online.  The easiest way to develop something unique is to invent your own liqueur.  Then any drink you make with it will be new.  You can put the brand of the liqueur in the name of every recipe to further strengthen your message.  To publicize it sufficiently it is also a must to create a web site with an annoying splash page with music and slowly developing graphics.  A cool logo and weird bottle don't hurt either.

Alas, I searched the entire grounds of the Bottle Wonderland Estate and I could not find a distillery or a cadre of web developers so we will have to use ingredients that have already been invented. For our first attempt we decided to use science to determine the right ingredients.  And by science, I mean an Excel spreadsheet.  We chose to use Excel 2003, widely agreed upon by the top spreadsheetologists in the country to be the version installed on our laptop.

Notice the sophistication, precision, and cell formatting

We took our spreadsheet and created a model to determine which ingredients were most likely to lead to a tasty beverage.  The model was quite sophisticated and used formulas such as SUM and COUNTIF.  The laptop smoked and sputtered and caused an area brownout but eventually it spit out a list of vodka, orange juice, lime juice, and lemon juice as the top four.  After determining that this was a unique set of ingredients we used a variation on the Hodge conjecture to optimize the proportions. 

Naming the drink was quite easy.  With the selected ingredients the only logical choice was to call it the Dragon Street Cobra Tamer.  With that settled, Mrs. Bottle carefully measured and mixed the inaugural Dragon Street Cobra Tamer (3 shakes over purified ice in a metallic shaker)  and poured it into our fanciest chilled cocktail glass.  It was good but a little too tart.  Recognizing that mixology is both art and science, we decided to add a little simple syrup to balance it out.  This was really a genius touch because by adding “simple syrup to taste” to the recipe it is on you if you think it is too sour or too sweet and we remain blameless.

Nailed the logo!

We ultimately felt that the drink was not a perfect five, but it was a solid four.  There is nothing wrong with a four and that gives us the opportunity to create additional drinks. Mrs. Bottle began planning out the ingredients of our next drink before we had even finished this one (sneak preview: there will be coffee liqueur).  The only downside is that we had to change the name of our drink to the Dragon Street Cobra Tamer No. 1 so we have room to grow.

Overall Rating for the Dragon Street Cobra Tamer No. 1

Taste: 4

Presentation: 4

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 5 – 26% Alcohol

Ingredients

1.5 oz Vodka

0.5 oz Orange Juice

0.25 oz Lime Juice

0.25 oz Lemon Juice

Simple Syrup to taste

Logo images: 1upgamers.com, howstuffworks.com,streetsigngenerator.com

Drink 150: Sesquicentbibial

Today is our one hundred fiftieth drink so we have something very ordinary planned.  That’s because TBIAW feels that celebrating the 150^th post is like celebrating your two week anniversary.  That is, if you are older than 13 and/or you are not Drew Barrymore, you should probably wait for a bigger accomplishment before marking the occasion.  Let’s try to stay focused on the big picture, people. This also applies to parents who insist on telling me their kid’s age in months once the little cookie-cruncher can walk.  For the record, I don’t really care if your kid is 38 months old. I was just being polite when I asked his age and I’d prefer not to have to do math in my head to figure out he is four.

The garnish is supposed to be a tangerine.
We don't feel bad about it since the
drink isn't exactly Ruby Red either.

 Now back to the topic at hand, the Ruby Red, a mix of grapefruit-flavored vodka, triple sec, grapefruit juice, and orange juice.  Grapefruit-flavored vodka is one of those extremely specific ingredients that would usually send us to the liquor store and leave me grumbling about having an entire bottle of something that we will never use again. Fortunately we happened to have a bottle of Absolut Ruby Red in our bar.  We have it because Mrs. Bottle bought it a few years ago and made one drink with it, leaving me grumbling about having an entire bottle of something that we never used again. Until today, our one hundred and fiftieth drink!

Also tastes like grapefruit
img

The primary flavor was grapefruit (who woulda thunk it?) with a slight orange note.  You could definitely taste the vodka as well.  Some vodkas may have been hidden by the juice and triple sec but the Absolut shines through. I think this is because it is made in Åhus, Sweden and distilled an infinite number of times (according to their web site).  I am fairly sure that infinite distillation is impossible, but maybe the Swedes know something we don’t.  Maybe that little ^o above the A in Åhus gives them special powers.  I thought that ^o was going to have a name like an umlaut or a cedilla, but it is actually part of the letter.  As far as I know the letter doesn’t have a name, either.  Since Åhus looks pretty close to Ånus, I propose that Å should be from this point forward known as a “gooch”.

Overall Rating for the Ruby Red

Taste: 4.2342

Presentation: 3

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 6 – 22% Alcohol

Ingredients

2 oz Grapefruit-flavored Vodka

1.5 oz Triple Sec

1.5 oz Grapefruit Juice

1 splash Orange Juice

Drink 137: Worst. Post. Evar.

Oooh, Johnny

The Johnny on the Beach is a mix of vodka, melon liqueur, black raspberry liqueur, pineapple juice, orange juice, grapefruit juice, and cranberry juice.  It is the same as the Sex on the Beach with the addition of the orange and grapefruit juices.  The taste was pretty much the same as the SotB as well:  A melon-dominated fruit bomb.  It is late and I have already had two margaritas so here endeth the post. 

Overall Rating for the Johnny on the Beach

Taste: 3

Presentation: 1

Ease of Preparation: 1

Drinks Until Blackout: 7 – 18% Alcohol

Ingredients

¾ oz Vodka

½ oz Melon Liqueur

½ oz Black Raspberry Liqueur

¼ oz Pineapple Juice

¼ oz Orange Juice

¼ oz Grapefruit Juice

¼ oz Cranberry Juice

Drink 135: Stay Gold, Ponyboy

There is a scene in The Outsiders where Ponyboy is hanging out at the playground and gets into an insult contest with some Socs.  Bob the Soc says, “You guys know what Greasers are? White trash with long, greasy hair.”  Then Ponyboy retorts,  “You know what a Soc is? White trash with Mustangs and matches.”   When I first saw that scene I had some concerns.  The first was that those guys need to work on their insults if they want to intimidate people.  The related second concern was that I didn’t understand what was the big deal about having matches. Were the Greasers anti-smoking? Did they rock Zippo lighters?  Maybe saying someone had matches was a real burn in 1965.  Matches = burn. Get it?  I slay me.

Mustang Owner
img: Ralph Lauren

It wasn’t until much later that I found out that I had the quote all wrong.  What Ponyboy really said was “Mustangs and madras.”  Oooooh!  That makes a lot more sense than matches.  It still isn’t much of an insult though.   I would think the Socs would take it as a complement.  “Why yes, isn’t this plaid jacket the bee’s knees?” Although these days a Soc wouldn’t be caught dead in a Mustang and would surely have his collar flipped up.

Mexican Matches

I don’t personally own any madras, but I have tried the Mexican Madras, a mixture of tequila, cranberry juice, orange juice, and lime juice.  I can only guess it is called a Mexican Madras because the orange, red, and green fruits evoke the colorful plaid madras fabric.  It has “Mexican” in the name because almost any drink with tequila gets called “Mexican”.  It is a clear case of liquor profiling.  Anyway, the drink was a little sweet, but very tasty.  The proportions of each ingredient were such that you could taste each one individually, but none overwhelmed.  All in all, it certainly would be something Socs and Greasers would agree is delicious, just like Cherry Valance.

Overall Rating for the Mexican Madras

Taste: 4

Presentation: 5

Ease of Preparation: 4

Drinks Until Blackout: 11 –  9% Alcohol

Ingredients

1 oz Gold Tequila

3 oz Cranberry Juice

0.5 oz Orange Juice

Dash Lime Juice