RedImperator wrote:If you change your mind about giving up on beer, I recommend Labat Blue. Not as pissy tasting as most American beers. THe only problem with it is that it costs $22 a case here. Yuengling is pretty good, especially considering its price (it's a local product, so it might be more expensive down your way). If I'm looking for cheap, eazy to guzzle beer, I prefer Miller Genuine Draft to Budweiser or Coors.
Wine I can't help you with, as most of the stuff I've ever had is homemade red wine. Good good with Italian food, lousy by itself.
Cairn O'Mohr (which you likely have more chance of meeting God in the supermarket than getting it outside scotland...) is an excellent range of fruit wines which do what the title promises....
Shiraz, a style of red wine with a nice spice to it is damn good with any sort of crisps (chips on your side of the pond I think).
Now, for booze:
Vodka is versatile, and when it's chilled, you can drink it straight up. I wouldn't recommend warm straight vodka. Then it goes down like paint thinner. You can mix vodka into just about anything, including, in an emergency, more vodka.
In my heavy drinking days....infact most of my days....vodka serves as a wonderful mixer, doing little to alter the taste but adding much needed burning sensations and alcohol content to any cocktail.
Gin: looks like vodka, tastes like radiator fluid. Gives you a hangover like a train wreck. Avoid at all costs unless mixed with something else.
I have to say I agree on the taste there....ugh....
Rum: another versatile drink. Good straight up with ice, or mixed with any kind of cola. Capt. Morgan's in generarlly considered the best widely available, and I concur, but if you're looking to make the hairs on your ass stand up, try Bacardi 151 (a 50-50 mix of this and Coke in a 24 ounce glass will make the world seem like a better place, and when it comes back up, it doesn't taste too bad, as far as vomit goes).
Not much of a fan of dark rum, you cannot go wrong with spiced rum and white rum is excellent as a general purpose cocktail ingredient.
Whiskey: Jack and Coke is a perennial favorite. They complement each other nicely. Good scotch, of course, should always be had straight up. This is sipping liquor, not recommended for a general booze-up where it won't be appreciated.
Uncle Jack....the first person I invite to any party or evening out.
Tequilla: A real man's drink. It tastes vile, yet it goes down relatively easily. Great for lamenting a failed relationship, getting fired, flunking a major exam, or the humiliating implosion on national television of the football team you've given your heart and soul to and the bitter, crushing realization that all your hopes for a grand parade and victory and a blighted city united in celebration and redemption for years of misery were for naught and this will be year 43 since the last time they won a championship and why did you ever get your hopes up because deep down inside, you knew, or you SHOULD have known, that they would break your heart again, because that's what they do and that's your lot in life is to be left broken hearted, defeat snatched from the jaws of victory, sweet triumph turned to the taste of ashes before your very eyes while a team of loud-mouthed, red-suited brigands from a glorified suburb in vacuous tropical wasteland of a state celebrate on your field and you want to cry and scream and hurt people but you can't so you curl up with a bottle of oily oblivion and hope when you wake up the next morning the pain in your head will make you forget the pain in your heart. Fucking Eagles. *sob*.................Ahem. Most people need salt or a lime wedge to enjoy tequilla. I laugh at them. Laugh I say.
Excellent stuff....best thing there is for drinking contest that I've found....
A note on Jack's Hard Cola, Mike's Hard Lemonade, Bacardi Silver, and other so-called "malt beveredges": Steer clear of them. Oh, they SEEM harmless, cloyingly sweet, slightly fizzy, seemingly the best of the soda and booze worlds. But in reality, they'll make your head feel like a major industrial accident, your mouth taste like the ballast tanks of the Exxon Valdez, and your entire GI tract feel like it's been boiled. Let's not discuss what they taste like on the way back up. Hydrochloric acid and fizzy girl drinks don't work at all.
Never been a fan of anything bordering on alcopopness......except for VS Blue....but only because it tastes of the rasberry slush puppies I used to drink when I was wee.
was going to comment on the Tequilla part, but....
