Excuse the crude Photoshop, but there are literally no photos from the manufacturer of this product that I can use, even on this blog.
I think.
We’ll see.

It will come as no surprise to any sentient adult that makers of alcoholic beverages have used sex from time to time to sell their product. Rule 5 is more often employed with selling booze (especially beer) than even in in blogging. Sexually charged images of attractive people draw attention. I guess I should be surprised it has taken this long for the industry to strap on water skis and jump that shark, but jump it it has. I’ve thought it had done so before, with Cabana cachaça, then again with Ron de Jeremy, but I was wrong.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you G Spirit rum, whisky, and vodka. That link goes to the website, but be warned it is not remotely safe for work.

What distinguishes G Spirit spirits, beside naked pictures of topless women showing off the, ahem, product? Well, below is a picture from the company. Understand, this photo depicts the production process!
And yeah, I cropped hell out of it. Click for a bigger, but still cropped version. If you visit the G Spirit website, you will not be able to avoid seeing it uncropped.

Yup, the thing about G Spirit is, every drop was poured over the naked body of the master distiller you see above before bottling. Actually, just the rum is poured over Miss Amina Malakona there. There are equally, um, qualified young ladies who sluice off the whisky and the vodka. And yes, each bottle comes with a photograph to authenticate the process!

I have no chance to see what any of these spirits taste like personally, as they are not yet available in the US. I can tell you that, for instance, G Whisky No. 1 boasts that its “versatile flavours range from roasted almonds, dried fruit, and toffee, to honey, vanilla, baked apples and cinnamon”, as well as the breasts of 2012 Hungarian Playmate of the Year, Alexa Varga. Part of her prize for winning that honor was to be immediately flown to Germany to have 5000 bottles of scotch poured over her boobies.

I confess that even if I had access to a bottle of this stuff, I could probably pick out and confirm the vanilla, apples, and cinnamon flavors, but I could not vouch for Miss Varga’s breasts. Well, I’ve been to their website, so I can sure vouch for them, but I mean I could not vouch for the taste of…
Oh God, never mind.

The rum is an 11 year blend, the whisky a 12 year single malt, and the vodka is a sextuple(har!)-distilled barley distillate. I managed with great effort to discover that there are words on the website as well as all the pictures, and those words are all the right ones to use to describe these types of spirits. Caveat emptor.

I would usually embed G Spirit’s product video here at the end, but it is every bit as Not. Safe. For. Work. as the rest of their website. Here is the link should you wish to research the unique details of their actual production process. The apparatus includes a big hose and a glass basin, and it can be seen after the 4:10 mark, if you want to skip all the tedious footage of the photoshoots with the models…. I suspect there were fist-fights at the Heath Department over which inspector got assigned to supervise the production.

I gotta ask, have any of my European readers tried this yet?

UK government agency officially declares Madonna unappealing to young people, so she’s got that going for her…. It does mean that Smirnoff can continue to run their new ad campaign featuring her.

Blogging Rule 5, the (in)judicious use of sexy images to draw attention is considered by most to be a staple of booze advertising as well. “Sex Sells” after all, right?

This new ad from Sauza Blue Tequila, a Rule 5 treat for the female readers, illustrates perfectly an important corollary of Rule 5 for advertisers, and because it does, it is well worth watching for the guys, too.

See? Now that is funny folks. And that is what an overtly sexually-tinged booze ad has to be.

I think there are a couple of reasons for this phenomenon. First and foremost, both men and women buy hooch, and if you just do a straight appeal to below-the-gut, you will usually end up appealing to only one sex or the other. Worse, you may well end up turning off the gender not targeted. Make those folks at least laugh, and everyone feels OK.

Second, humor engages the brain, which I imagine is important to an advertiser. Effective sexual imagery kinda shuts it down, no?

Well,
the big brain at least!

If the mind is too focused on “desire”, there is little room for assessing the product on offer, which is why a lot of very sexy ads ultimately fail. Humor breaks up the focus, letting the mind wander over and ponder the ad, if only briefly. But that broadening is likely what your mind needs to remember that there is even a tequila bottle in this ad to begin with.

Plus, kittens!

Midcentury exotica didn’t just cater to suburban fantasies of work-free islands and guilt-free sex. There was also the call of adventure, epitomized by these classic “dangerous” drinks: if the sharks didn’t eat you, the cannibals would.
—Beachbum Berry Beachbum Berry Remixed, Pg. 86

I told you that quote would be back.

When I previously used that to introduce the Sidewinder’s Fang, Tiki Month participant DJ Hawaiianshirt replied in the comments, “I didn’t know the tiki/exotica fantasy involved guilt-free sex; that’s news to me.” That gives me a perfect opportunity to do this post, which I will tuck beneath the fold on the main page, because, well…. Rule 5, and lots of it. And one little NSFW example.
(more…)

I’ve been in a bit of a blogging funk of late, with all sorts of posts piled up in the draft folder and none ready to post. So I thought I’d put up this little palate-cleanser to make folks smile and perhaps be a bit of a slump-buster….

Beer ads have for a long time been sort of the pinnacle in advertising, booze or otherwise, of the Sex Sells meme. Whenever a latter day Don Draper comes up with a ridiculously over the top sexy idea, his agency just puts beers in the participants’ hands and pitches it to Budweiser or Miller. Every once in a while the result is pure, trashy genius. Most of the time, it is pretty much trashy hackery.

Of course, sometimes, Don’s descendants’ imaginations get a little carried away. The following Guinness advertisement is a case in point. Once conceived, it had to be made. But it was never gonna air. I should advise you that this is very likely not safe for work. (But if you are at work, is this or any other cocktail blog all that safe a site to be surfing in the first place?)

Frankly, I’m not sure where to categorize this one. It is definitely trashy, but it is also pretty clever in how it forces speculation on the part of the viewer. The mind is engaged on this. But I’m thinking it wouldn’t move that much Guinness, because while you are perhaps supposed to focus on the bottle and why it doesn’t fall over, that is not what most people are going to be furiously trying to work out in their heads. What do you think?

A tip of the hat to the the good folks at Cracked for this one. Their article has six other ads that similarly were way beyond the pale. I recommend the post, but for the love of God, do not play or even read about Number 5!

Vote for Matt Robold (Rumdood) to be Tommy Bahama’s first Rumologist™. Once a day will make you feel great.
{Pictured above: NOT Matt Robold}

I am a reasonable man. Perhaps a little OCD, but I try to hide it when out in the real world.

Which is why I am torn.

You see, I recently stopped in for some food and drinks at a new pub nearby in Columbus called the Tilted Kilt. I was bit bemused upon entry to find it was not what I was expecting. Not upset, but bemused. It was after we ordered that I had to decide whether to become upset. And it took some deciding.
You see, like any normal, foolish, middle-aged man, I have a very hard time becoming upset with a young bartender when she is wearing a short plaid skirt, knee socks, and a top that can’t decide if it wants to expose more midriff or cleavage….

Not our bartender, but a good representation.
(source)

You see, everybody at Tilted Kilt wears this outfit. (Well, the guys wear kilts too, but thankfully not these kilts.)
I happen to think that this is a brilliant marketing scheme…

Oh yeah?
I’ll bet you do!

Um, yeah. The fifty TVs in the place could all suddenly go to SEARCHING FOR SATELLITE SIGNAL and most of the clientele wouldn’t leave. And as I said, it must really cut down on customer complaints.

But.

In addition to being a foolish, middle-aged man, I am also a Certified Cocktail Curmudgeon™. It looms large in my legend. And here is what set off my “moral” dilemma:
I sensed pretty quickly that this was not a place to try to spread the Pegu Gospel on a Friday night. So I elected instead for some basic single-malt and ordered, “a Glenlivet, neat, please.”
I was duly informed that the bartender did not know what “neat” meant!
This should have sent my warning alert to DefCon2, but…

“These aren’t the droids you’re looking for, Mr. Customer.”
(source)

“Wha?” I stammered. “Er, neat…. You know,” I continued, then made the mistake of using the most meaningless and ambiguous phrase in all drinkdom, “straight up.”
What was presented to me was a cocktail glass, filled to the brim with Glenlivet, shaken within an inch of its life, with a floe of ice shards coating the surface!

The Scot in me wanted to rise up, paint my face blue, and shout, “Ye can take our land. Ye can e’en take our freedom! But this is no way to treat a wee, puir, dram o’ whisky!”
But.

The PeguWife sat there, trying not to laugh out loud as I tried to process the “drink” before me. She doesn’t often get to see me struck dumb like that, and I’m pretty sure she enjoyed the phenomenon more than a loyal and supportive wife ought to have.
But the food was good, I drank the “drink” (and, I’m embarrassed to say, enjoyed it), and we left before I could fully work my way out of the decision loop.
So I just came home and wrote this post—as therapy. And to warn you, dear cocktail-loving reader, that when you visit the Tilted Kilt near you, be ready with a pre-made decision on how you will react if this happens the next time.

Above the Post Update: I’m in the finals! You can vote for me here, or you can just Tweet the following: I want @dawinship’s #9 to win the @AskMen_com & @Liquordotcom #CocktailWar

AskMen, the “men’s lifestyle” portal, is running a contest right now, in conjunction with Liquor.com that’s worth a mention.

Hey, Doug!
What’s a “men’s lifestyle portal”?

It’s an online magazine where they have pictures of almost famous pretty women and talk about cars, pretty women, health issues, the health issues of meeting pretty women, clothes, clothes almost on pretty women, cocktails, and pretty women drinking cocktails. They also do lots of product reviews and promotions.

Oh, I see.
In other words, your dream job.

Exactly. And will you two butt out? This was supposed to to be a quick hit post… a glorified SideBlog.

Nothing is brief when we get involved, Doug!

Nothing is brief when YOU get involved, Doug!

Shut up.

Anyway, I find the contest interesting in that it is one of those hybrid contest/buzz creator thingies that use Twitter. The basic idea is for you to tweet your favorite cocktail recipe, and they will choose the top ten. (Here’s my tweet. Betcha can’t guess what drink I suggested!) Then the buzz thing goes on as they watch Twitter and the comments to see who gets the most buzz. The winner will receive the handsome $150 basket of mixological goodies you see above. The process is a bit more involved than that (of course) and you can read how to enter here.

I’ll conclude, with a nod to Rule 5, by noting a lovely convergence of the AskMen subject matter upon the Pegu world. I’m sure your eye will be drawn, as is mine, to the lovely bottles of Cointreau, that essential ingredient in the world’s best cocktail. While the cocktail Miss Dita Von Teese is holding seems a bit red for a Pegu, I’m sure that’s just a color-balance issue….

On the Ninth Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

Nine Buddies Boozing,
Eight Barmaids Serving,
Seven Blues a Blazing,
Six Glasses Gleaming,
Five… Golden… Rums!
Four Cocktail Books,
Three French 75s,
Two Jars of Olives,
And a Shaker Full of Martinis!

Attention! After yesterday’s Rule 5 Barmaid Cleavage-stravaganza, I have forced Doug to include equal time for the ladies. See below for your Ninth Day, drinking-themed beefcake!

[UPDATE: Welcome to those dispatched here by Smitty! The ladies got their piece of the action on the Ninth Day....]

On the Eighth Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

Eight Barmaids Serving,
Seven Blues a Blazing,
Six Glasses Gleaming,
Five… Golden… Rums!
Four Cocktail Books,
Three French 75s,
Two Jars of Olives,
And a Shaker Full of Martinis!

Hey Folks!
Un-Merry Christmas!
In important, Rule 5, barmaid-related news, check out this article from the EU and England. It chillingly illustrates (with cleavage) the truth of Jean-Francois Revel’s observation that “Fascism is forever descending on America, yet always landing on Europe.”