Boozy McGuzzles

BOOZE TYPE: Gin
PRICE: $29.99 (750ml bottle) at Astor Center
RATING: A++++

I was not always a gin fan. I’m sure a large number of the works of writing about personal experiences with gin begin, “I was not always a gin fan.” Gin is an intimidating sort of alcohol; it’s got all kinds of confusing flavors, and bad gin tastes like something you’d use to sterilize a burn. I avoided gin and made fearful facial expressions at the substance until Thanksgiving of 2005, when I went to see Martha (of 2 Tasty Ladies) and Stephen in San Fransisco. Martha, you see, is a gin-soaked fiend. She loves gin, and has written about the topic quite in quite a lovely manner here and here. She was my Janie Ginnyseed, laying sprinkles of Bombay Sapphire in my heart to grow to a full-fledged love of this most rich, nuanced, complicated, interesting of heavy liquors.

I came home from that trip and started drinking gin and tonics and dirty martinis (and the topic of what should be in a damn martini is the subject for a post to come). Martha had sung the praises of Hendrick’s to me, and I sought it out, but sadly my previous liquor store of choice had what we experts refer to as a totally shit section when it came to gin. But Astor, blessed Astor, has all the fancy gins you could dream of.

To be poetic for a moment, Hendrick’s tastes like music. It is simply beautiful. It has the sharp, crisp scent of juniper, like any gin should, but on the tongue it opens up into this wonderful explosion of cucumbers and roses. This is a gin that is perfectly palatable, and perhaps even preferable (oy, alliteration) when consumed just on the rocks. Or as some might call it, a dry martini, but again, that’s a subject for anothe post. A gin and tonic mixed with Hendrick’s is a different experience from a G&T with any other gin. To start with, they recommend you put slices of cucumber in your drink instead of the usual lime, and I heartily agree with this recommendation. I don’t know if there’s anything more delicious than slices of cucumber that have been soaking in delicious gin and tonic.

Alone, Hendrick’s is a whirlwind on the tongue that makes you close your eyes and say, “Oh.” In a cocktail, it brings a certain unique character and interesting floral hints you wouldn’t find with another gin. I keep meaning to make myself try a different brand, but it’s just so hard.

The only bad thing I have to say about Hendrick’s? It’s bottled in dark glass apothecary-style bottles, and thus it is impossible to tell when you are almost out.

BUY IT AGAIN: Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

Here’s a new feature for the Boozy McGuzzles brand: cocktail recipes! Reviews of the stand-alone ingredients of this drink will be forthcoming, but until then, won’t you please allow me to introduce you to:

Angel’s Hope

Ingredients
1 part gin
1 part calvados
1 part orange liqueur

For this drink, I used Hendrick’s Gin, Christian Drouain Calvados, and Grand Marnier. In an earlier incarnation I also tried a cheaper triple sec, and found it somewhat cheapened the overall drink. It’s entirely true: quality components make for a quality cocktail.

In a shaker filled with ice, combine all ingredients. Shake well, then strain into a cocktail glass. Enjoy! This drink is a lovely balance of spicy and sweet, and with Hendrick’s in particular, has a wonderful floral undernote.

BOOZE TYPE: Liqueur
Price: $11.99 at Astor Center
Rating: A

I do not think I have ever, in my entire life, spelled the word “liqueur” right on the first try. So I warn for this entry: beware of falling q’s, u’s, and e’s.

Mathilde Poires Liqueur is a little too heavy and sweet for me to enjoy on its own, except for in the tiniest of sips. It’s thick and syrupy, but not quite cloying, and has a really true pear taste. What do I do with it? Well, going with the theme that I am not always the classiest of drinkers, I have, in the past, spent a couple of lost weekends with a box of chardonnay, sassing it up with sprinkles of Mathilde Poires, or Mathilde Framboise (and I think at least once I found a bottle of Mathilde Pêche). The combination turns mediocre wine into something a little more fun.

An even better combination is Mathilde Poires with something a little more bubbly. Recently I had another few bottles of the Reserva Ora Cavas Hill Blanc de Blancs Cava with the Poires mixed in, and that was a fine combination indeed. Since the bubbly itself had little in the way of sweetness, the resulting cocktail was very refreshing and perfectly sweet.

I could also envision Mathilde Poires mixed with something more neutral, like soda water, and of course, the classic indulgence: drizzled over ice cream. Mmmm.

BUY IT AGAIN: Yes, for a lovely sweet treat.

BOOZE TYPE: Wine
PRICE: $7.00 from FreshDirect
RATING: A

Discovering vinho verde was basically what kicked me over into being a serious wine drinker. Sometime last summer, I stumbled into the much-spoken-of Astor Center, and saw they had a display of Portuguese wines. Vinho Verde, they were called. “Green wine?!” I thought, and bought the one in a green glass bottle, with a vague hope the liquid inside would actually be green. It was not, but it was delicious.

Here is your required spiel behind vinho verde: it is called “green wine” because they are extremely young wines, aged only a year or less. The word “verde” is pronounced as only one syllable, because this is Portuguese, not Spanish.

I freaking love vinho verde wines. There is no better summer wine. They are across the board light, crisp, and delicious, perfect for a hot summer night. You have to seriously try to find one that costs more than $10. The average price on bottles I have had—bottles of wine that was seriously good— is about $6. Portuguese wines in particular seem to go for pretty cheap. I believe I have read that this is because Portuguese wines (other than port) don’t yet have the importing clout in America yet. So take advantage of this while you can, before people catch on to this fantastic secret.

Ouro Verde is my favorite of all of the many, many vinho verdes I have had, and it makes me sad that I can only find it through the delivery service that brings me my groceries (news flash: living in New York City is incredibly awesome). It is bright and crisp on the tongue, with very clear citrus notes, and just enough sweetness to make me happy. This wine is just slightly effervescent… not enough to be called a true sparkling wine, but with enough bubbles to feel fantastic when going across your tongue. Vinho verdes are lower alcohol wines, this one in particular being only 9.5% alcohol, so you can comfortably drink it and get a pleasing buzz, instead of totally knackered.

It’s not summer weather yet here in NYC at all, and thank God for that, but when it is, I will go back to drinking nothing but these perfections of white, the vinho verdes.

BUY IT AGAIN: Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

BOOZE TYPE: Wine
PRICE: $7.99 at Astor Center
RATING: B

I’ve actually bought this wine twice, but only been able to drink it once. For, you see, tragedy struck. When I was home visiting family in Nashville last November, my mom and I swung by her favorite liquor store (where, once, when we were buying several bottles of wine, the clerk said, “Now, y’all want a bag for that or you just wanna drink that here?”) so that I could use my budding wine snobbery to buy a couple of nice things for my family. (My family are more often beer and booze-soaked than wine-drenched, and have taught me respect for cruising the half-off bin and the value of quality box wine.)

I have been working on developing a thing for Spain, so I picked out a mid-priced red (though hell if I can remember the name of it now, which is exactly the reason I started this blog), and also the Gran Feudo Rosado 2005, because it was just so darn pretty. We went home. I put the paper bag with the two bottles in it on the kitchen counter. I turned my back. I heard the crash. Alas, but I had placed the bag down unevenly, and it had toppled over, shattering both bottles on my mother’s very hard kitchen floor. It was a very sad day for wine. We returned to the liquor store and I re-purchased the red.

Gran Feudo got its second chance last week, and this time I did not drop it on the floor. I drank it! As the second bottle of the evening, the memories of it are, uh, not quite so sharp, but it had a nice tart, fruity acidity that went quite well with a vodka sauce pizza. I always expect rosés to be sweet, because, well, they’re just so pretty in pink, but this was fairly sharp and dry.

BUY IT AGAIN: Possibly! A very good under $10 rosé.

BOOZE TYPE: Wine (sparkling!)
PRICE: $6.99 at Astor Center
RATING: B

My best friend and boozing companion, Arielle, was not feeling too chipper, and had wanted to drink Sofia Coppola Champagne, with a straw, out of a little metal can. Because, as you might agree, this is a perfect recipe for making yourself feel better. But alas, that day Astor Center was sold out of the canned version of Sofia, and only had the bottle, which is just so not even nearly as fun. So it was a dejected roam through other sparkly things for us, looking for an intersection of cheap and bubbly. I won’t lie to you, if they sold Cold Duck there, we probably would have bought three bottles.

We ended up peering at the cava section, which I believe was new. I was intrigued, because I thought that word meant some kind of rodent or maybe was Spanish for “rabbit”. I realize now I was thinking of “cavy”, which is another word for guinea pig, and is far less sparkling, and usually not corked (guinea pigs are most often sealed with screw caps.) We had been dawdling in the store for a while, so I pointed at a bottle that hit the center of that Venn diagram that decides most of my alcohol purchases:

This non-guinea pig sparkling wine had little impact on first taste. Arielle and I both took a drink, looked at each other, then said, “Huh.” It was mostly mouthfeel, and little flavor on first blush. Further sips proved it to be nicely dry and crisp, the sort of bubbly that you’d want to drink outside on the Fourth of July while watching fireworks. It gave me a very nostalgic feel for exactly that sort of thing. It had little character or complexity, but I enjoyed it nonetheless, and suspect I will use it as a variation on an old trick I used to do: mixing cheap box chardonnay with nice pear liqueur or framboise. I think this will make a good medium for bubbling up a sweeter, thicker liqueur.

BUY IT AGAIN: Yes!

BOOZE TYPE: Wine (debatably)
PRICE: $5.99 at Astor Center
RATING: B (for bees!)

I have no shame in saying that I like a sweet drink now and then, and quite enjoy meads and honey wines. For a while I was really enjoying tej, the Ethiopian answer to honey wine, which I found less cloying-sweet and more true to the flavor of honey than some other meads I had tried.

But the last time I went looking for tej, I found none. Astor Center was out of it, and it has not returned. In its place was Herr Dürer’s gluüweins, available in both weiss and, uh, whatever is german for red. The giant liter bottle is decorated with a lot of German words, and a picture of a scenic snow-covered German village. It was also only $6. I bought it on a goof. I bought it in December on a goof.

It sat on the liquor shelf for months. I kept threatening that I would drink it. I think this sort of beverage is often consumed hot, so I kept saying I would simmer me up a pot come the first snow, which came very late this year. But I didn’t. And I didn’t drink it, and didn’t drink it, and didn’t drink it, until a few nights ago, when I threatened that I would for REALZ this time, and put it in the fridge. And then later, put it in the freezer. I was expecting ill humors, indeed, and the colder the better.

The smell is powerfully sweet, almost exactly like getting a fat snootful of honey. My first reaction on taking a sip was “This tastes like bee pee! Or diabetic fairy urine! It’s just what I expected!” But as I kept drinking it (of course I kept drinking it!) it revealed itself to not be quite as terrible as I thought. Yes, it is very sweet. But it has a strong, true taste of honey, and a bit of nice spice to it, too. …It’s still an utterly ridiculous bottle of alcohol, but not one I should have been afraid of for three and a half months.

BUY IT AGAIN: Geez, probably, I’m prone to fits of madness and fugue states like that.