I realize that this is in danger of becoming a “Stupid Liquor Laws” blog, but that category really is a target-rich environment lately….

Today’s amusing-if-it-weren’t-alarming idiocy comes to us courtesy of the Liquor Control Board of Canada (via The Globe and Mail, via Ed Driscoll). The LCBO has seen fit to ban Crystal Head Vodka from stores in the increasingly benighted province.
Why?
Er, the bottle, as you can see above, is in the shape of an attractive crystal skull. And, um, That’s an image that’s commonly associated with death.
So?
Well, the concern du jour in prohibitionist government regulatory circles is [spins Wheel of Furrowed Brows] the possibility of binge drinking. And since binge drinking occasionally leads to alcohol poisoning, which occasionally leads to death, a skull bottle of vodka is apparently an inducement to, um, something. But whatever it is, it’s bad! Very Bad!
Oh, but bars and restaurants can still serve it in Ontario, and display this visual inducement to ethanol-induced suicide right there where the children, the children can see it. And you can buy it by the case as well. Because it is always better to sell binge-drinking products in bulk. You know, for safety.
The LCBO might consider that Crystal Head is not exactly in your average binge drinkers target price range. You’ll need to pony up fifty bucks (sixty if your cash has the Queen on it), to buy a bottle.

As it happens, I happen to have a bottle of this dangerous, banned product sitting on the display shelf of my Basement Bar. Dan Aykroyd sent it to me to try. Well, his minions sent it to me, but it is much cooler to use the Transitive Property of Liquor Fairys and claim he did. Why Dan? Because Crystal Head is Aykroyd’s company. He started the brand as a joke, and to ensure he had a ready supply of unique and fun gifts for the holidays. But the bottle is really cool looking, and the product it contains is good, so he has found himself with a profitable business.
And Aykroyd, who has more marketing acumen locked up in his own, personal skull than possessed by the collective rocket scientists at the LCBO, is unfazed by the ban. I like it, it kind of makes the product more appealing in my view, he told the Globe and Mail.
While Crystal Head may not be terribly inconvenienced, and perhaps may be helped, by this ban, the problem is that every ban like this that slides through makes the next, possibly more damaging one easier to put in place. If this stands (and it will) you may turn around in five years and hear the LCBO say that Creme de Violette is pretty, and has flowers in the name. And little girls like pretty things and flowers. So they are banning Creme de Violette because it might induce little girls to drink. (I have more realistic examples to offer, but I refuse to give the ninnys any ideas.)

If you are interested, I do like the vodka. As I demonstrated in my last post, I’m no anti-vodka cocktail snob. And I damn sure can tell the difference between brands. Crystal Head is every bit as good as most other premium vodkas, and better than some. But let’s face it, at this price point, you are buying it for the bottle, not the liquor. True to Aykroyd’s initial idea, it makes a cool, distinctive gift. Also, it is fun to pour from when you have guests over and you need a conversation starter. (Careful when you show off with this bottle, it is lovely, but not ergonomic.)

I’ll throw the Liquor Fairy disclaimer down below for disclosure’s sake. But I go the bottle a while ago, and chose not to write about it because everything I had wanted to say about it had already been said (with better photographs) by lots of other blogs. It’s very irritating when other bloggers write what you want to say before you can say it, leaving the choice of sounding like a copycat, or not writing about an interesting product. So I guess what I’m ending with is a thank you to the LCBO, whose cranio-rectal inversion gives me an excuse to finally write about Crystal Head.

The Liquor Fairy Was Here!
The following product, Crystal Head Vodka, was recently provided to me as promotional consideration to encourage me to discuss it.
For a complete disclosure of my policies regarding promotional items and all other financial interests, please click this link, or follow the Liquor Fairy link in the header of this page.

I’ve written before of the four bedrock drinks of cocktailia. Each based on one of the four foundation spirits of classic cocktailia, gin, bourbon, rum, and brandy, I refer to these cocktails as The Four Gospels. There are other great and/or popular spirits that people mix with, of course. And there is for most of them an emblematic cocktail as well. I’ll refer to these drinks as the Gnostic Gospels, since the spirits they use aren’t quite canonical for one reason or another.

We shall discuss today the (Gnostic) Gospel of Vodka: The Cosmopolitan.

The Cosmo is the new kid on the block among the power cocktails, which among other reasons means it gets less respect than it should. I’ll get to those reasons in a bit, but I’ll lead with why the Cosmopolitan deserves to be considered one of the Gospels.

Firstly, the drink is very popular. I challenge you to find a bartender in America (biker bars probably excluded) who isn’t called on to make them often. While it is no longer so omnipresent as it was a few years ago, that is actually a testament to its importance and influence. So many people who were attracted to the Cosmo learned that there was a world of cocktails to explore beyond it.

And influential the Cosmo is, like all the Gospels. The Manhattan was the first gospel, the Martini defines cocktails as elegance, the Daiquiri and its progeny kept hope alive down in Cuba during Prohibition, and the Sidecar is the iconic Europeans contribution.
The Cosmo was the light that brought classic cocktails back out of the wilderness.

Aaaah!

Zut alors!

Aack!

Kaaahn!

Yes, it did, oh snooty drink purists. Please remember the state of cocktails when the Cosmo was born. The drinking world was a vast wasteland of shots, and slushies, and sour mix. (Oh My!) Even the mighty Martini had devolved into a glass of cold vodka, drunk only by old men and paleo-hipsters.

Then the Cosmopolitan burst onto the bar scene. The cocktail glass became cool again, as did drinks in it. Because most bars had become places that had neither the inventory nor staff to produce drinks like a decent Cosmo, fashionable patrons sought out Martini Bars, where they could get one without a fuss. Over time, you could once again find measurable numbers of bartenders who stood out because of their mixing skills, instead of just their sympathetic ear or appearance (or cleavage). I’m not saying that the Cosmo sparked the craft bar renascence of today, but I’m sure it provided several critical items of support.

• It provided cash flow for a (still to this day) niche market.
• It spiked demand in the mainstream for Martini-style mixology.
• It convinced a hell of a lot of young women to put down the wine bottle and pick up the cocktail glass.

To be a Gospel, a cocktail must also be the perfect vessel for its base spirit. I contend that the Cosmo is the perfect embodiment of what you can do well with vodka. Vodka provides no distinctive character of its own to a drink, nor
color, or aroma. Instead it provides a simple, smooth kick. When you mix with vodka, your drink has cocktail potency, but you can decide on whatever flavors you need, without having to subjugate them to a dominant spirit. The delicious, well-balanced mixture of flavors from the the other ingredients in a Cosmo won’t work without the vodka. I’ve tried. Interestingly, it is the addition of a large amount of 80 proof liquor that actually makes the drink smooth and drinkable.

Of course, the mere use of vodka is why many in the Church of the Cocktail would relegate this gospel to gnostic or “also ran” status. Vodka has a very short history in cocktails, and not a particularly distinguished one. Most of its oeuvre consists of either simply dull concoctions, or dumbed down versions of superior gin drinks.
The Cosmo is different in that when made well with good ingredients, it is an interesting, balanced cocktail. Further, the ground is littered with the bodies of cocktailians who tried to turn the Cosmopolitan into a decent gin cocktail. The fabled Metropolitan heresy has wasted more good gin on bad results than you can imagine. (For the record, my attempt can be found here. I cheated and it is still only OK.)

There is more to be said about the history and culture of the Cosmo, but I’ve gone too far into the post already without giving a recipe. Here is Dale DeGroff’s Rainbow Room recipe:

For the record, I actually think Dale’s recipe is too sweet. (Ducks head to check for lightning) My preferred recipe is this, the Dry Cosmopolitan, if you will.

I use a lime wheel because I seldom have oranges around, and I’m tired of burning my fingers learning how to flame the peels anyway.
When you are learning to mix your own Cosmopolitans, the cranberry you use will dramatically affect the final product. The omnipresent brand in America is Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice Cocktail. That is what my ratios are designed for. Other brands vary in sweetness. You can also find pure cranberry juice, but please be aware that it is seriously tart. You’ll need to add simple, more Cointreau, or less cranberry to make the drink work. Frankly I see no benefit.
Ocean Spray isn’t really a juice in cocktail mixer terms, but a cordial, like Rose’s Lime. Use accordingly.

Another issue worth discussing with Cosmos is the Cointreau. Use it. Any decent vodka will do fine in a Cosmopolitan, but if you skimp and use cheap triple sec, the quality will suffer. And using most other orange liqueurs is a heresy, as the darker color will throw off the pristine pink shade of the cocktail.

The Cosmo, at its Miami nativity, used citrus-infused vodka. You can experiment with this if you like, but employing such vodka so you can omit the lime is a heresy. And using Rose’s in your Gospel of Vodka will surely as the Sun shall rise bring a visit from these guys…

I’ll wind things up with some discussion of the history and cultural impact of the Cosmopolitan. While DeGroff is widely and persistently credited with inventing the Cosmo, to his credit he has just as persistently refused to take credit. Cheryl Cook, a South Beach bartender, first made a “Cranberry Kamikaze” with this famous moniker. DeGroff adopted and improved the recipe as a signature drink for the rebooted Rainbow Room in New York.
The Cosmo’s first big splash with the general public came when Madonna visited the Rainbow Room after the Grammys in the early 1990′s. A NewYorker photographer snapped a picture of her enjoying a Cosmopolitan and it created a sensation around New York’s bar scene.

Then Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda made the Cosmo their cup of communion on HBO’s Sex and the City, and the cranberries really hit the fan.

The show never suited my taste, so I watched only a few episodes. But it’s clear to anyone why it sparked such a sensation in the cocktail world. The four fabulous women of SatC led thrilling lives, attend fabulous Manhattan events, wear incredible (and incredibly over the top) outfits, have wild, varied sex, and drink exotic Cosmopolitans. The largely female audience which made the show popular wanted that life. But they mostly didn’t live in Manhattan, didn’t have the money for designer clothes, and wanted that sex to be with men other than those available.
All that and six bucks would get you a Cosmopolitan. See the effects on the cocktail world, as postulated above.

With the arrival of the latest installment of the Sex and the City saga in theaters, expect another run on this drink, as well as other means of spicing up marriages. Carrie and Big are apparently getting bored with each other, and such dodges as wearing identical men’s tuxedos out for a night on the town don’t seem to work. The ladies therefore take the only logical step, which is to jet off to a Muslim nation to ogle men and drink heavily. (?!?!) To paraphrase the movie’s trailer, It’s like Aladdin? Yes, but with Cosmopolitans.


Thus endeth Cosmopolitan, The Book of Vodka.
Here are the posts detailing the Four True Gospels of the Cocktail:
The Daiquiri, The Book of Rum
The Sidecar, The Book of Brandy
The Manhattan, The Book of Whiskey
The Martini, The Book of Gin

Everybody has a Bloody Mary recipe. And everyone thinks that theirs is the best one on Earth.
Everybody also has an assho….

Hey!
Let’s not insult the readers, shall we? Not in the first line, anyway. Besides, what you say is not true. I do not have a Blood Mary recipe.

…!

Among the (many) holes in my cocktail repertoire, perhaps the largest is the Bloody Mary. I always avoided it due to its resemblance to the hated V8 Juice, and thus I find myself with no experience here at all. During a momentary need for escape from Tiki monomania last February, I ordered my first Bloody Mary in a bar and found it darned intriguing. I resolved to undertake the task of developing my own Bloody Mary recipe this Summer. That quest begins here.

The problem is that it is a daunting task. Recipes are highly individualized, and since I have drunk perhaps five Bloody Marys in total, I don’t have a lot of experience to give me leads. I began with the basic recipe, at least as given in the BarSmarts Wired course, which matches up pretty well with a number of my books. It gave me the basic elements of a Bloody Mary: Tomatoes, Vodka, citrus, and spices.
But what kind of cocktailian would I be if I didn’t want to go beyond, to concoct my own twist on this most personalized of classics?

Inspiration struck last week in the form of a date night with Maggi, down to M at Miranova to see Columbus’ best bartender, Cris Dehlavi. (No really, she was just voted Columbus’ Best Batender) With all the mutterings around the web about Aviation variations, I wanted to try her new Violet Sour, an Aviation made with lavender-infused Plymouth Gin.
However, the other new offering I tried was her take on the Bloody Mary, which she calls the Heirloom. The key feature with the Heirloom is that it uses tomato water instead of juice. This makes for a less in your face appearance and a smoother texture that really appeals to me. Cris also garnishes it in a way that is beyond my resources right now, but I’ll work on gilding the lily when I have a lily worth gilding. If you are in Columbus, go try her Heirloom.

Or you can stick with me and give my experiment a try to see if you like it. I think you will.

The easy but time-consuming part is to make some tomato water. There are all sorts of recipes out there on the web, with varying degrees of complexity. I chose to eschew any peppers or other produce for this first run, simply choosing six or seven of the best looking tomatoes I could find and quartering them. I put them in my Blendtec (the new larger carafe makes this work a lot better) and hit the smoothie button. Have I mentioned before how awesome this blender is? It takes about four seconds to go from this…

to this…

Lay your largest strainer over a glass bowl and line it with several layers of cheesecloth. Carefully pour your pureé into the cloth and let drip overnight.

The next morning, you can discard the pulp and you have a lightly cloudy, pale red, very fragrant liquid. The amount it yields will vary on the size and quality of your tomatoes, but you may get more than you were expecting the first time.
Rick Stutz tried this last fall, and recommends refrigerating during the draining, but I chose not to. Cold can do things to tomato flavors and textures that I like to avoid if possible. Cover overnight and live dangerously.
Interestingly, I could not find a commercial source of tomato water anywhere. If anyone knows of a brand of commercial stuff I could keep on standby for when I want a drink now, instead of tomorrow, I’d love to hear about it.

At last, I was ready to make my first shot at a decent, somewhat unique Bloody Mary. Here’s what I came up with, after a few iterations:

Just a quick note here.
Protect your basil from any errant May frosts, or those two measly leaves in the picture will be all you have left that aren’t ruined!

The result is a mildly spicy deliciousness. The texture is far lighter than with traditional Bloody Marys, but it still possesses a definite comforting richness in your mouth and gullet that would be helpful with a delicate constitution. That said, the transient nature of the tomato water means I’ll be looking for a juice version to have on stand by if I ever get around to having my first hangover….

Stick around over the Summer, and help me figure out how to say, Well, my damn Bloody Mary recipe is the best there is! Or you can post your own version in the comments and I’ll steal from it shamelessly down the road if it is any good at all.

It was recently brought to my attention that in the event of a post-apocalyptic scenario, Paul Clarke will likely be king, or at least Prince of Puget.

Wait, what?
Paul Clarke? And what Apocalypse?

Yes, Paul Clarke. And just name your favorite end of civilization.

Uh huh.
And why, pray tell, do you think this?

Yesterday, I ran across a post on a liquor blog I had not previously seen called Liquor Locusts (thanks, Insty!). Entitled The Whiskey Standard, it tells the tale of the blogger’s grandmother, who always had three full cases of Old Crow bourbon under the stairs of her home. Now Grandma was not some sad old alcoholic. Nor was the whiskey some treasured collection of rare potables laid down for investment purposes. (Obviously) It turns out that this stash was not connected to her personal drinking habits at all, it was emergency supplies.

One impression (of Depression and Prohibition survivors) was that you could count on whiskey. It did not go bad. If you wanted, you could drink it. But more importantly you could always spend it. In some ways, it was better than money. It was inflation proof. It did not suffer from devaluation or inflation. There were always people who would trade you for whiskey. They would fix your car, paint your house, doctors would look at your kids, people would sell you food, all for that wonderful commodity-whiskey.

This woman was smart. No matter the situation, so long as people are alive, there will be trade. While the classic emergency currency is gold, whiskey has much to recommend it as an alternative.
As Grandma understood, booze has uses of its own, unlike gold. And if the greater world finds you have a stash of gold, many out there in it may be moved to take it from you instead of trading goods and services for it. A stash of whiskey in hard times is more likely to win you friends….
But Old Crow?
This too, makes sense. It’s perfectly good stuff, but cheap enough to make laying in a stash affordable. And it is not so exotic or esoteric that the average person would look on it with uncertainty. You want people to see it and feel reassured as to its universality.
And why bourbon? This too is understandable, since bourbon is America’s great spirit. Perhaps vodka would work as well. Everybody drinks it nowadays, and it’s more generally useful for not drinking applications. In really hard times though, I see a dark liquor as more comforting and valuable.
But are three cases of Old Crow really the best asset for your post-apocalypse bank? I used Paul Clarke for my poster boy on this post because his liquor collection would leave him in high clover for a long time, and because his head looks less ridiculous on Mel Gibson’s body than Rumdood’s. (Hell, my head looks less ridiculous on Mel Gibson’s body than Matt’s….) But would a bottle of Old Potrero Single Malt Straight Rye Whiskey 19th Century Style really be any more valuable to a shade-tree mechanic (who you want to mount a machine gun on your dune buggy for you) than a bottle of Early Times?

Probably NOT a Corpse Reviver aficionado….

Help me out here, folks. What would you (what will you) lay in down in the cellar for an (acid) rainy day?
Here’s what I think I’m going to add to my emergency preparedness locker in the basement, alongside my water, filters, medical supplies, and indestructible foodstuffs: three cases of Jack Daniel’s and one of generic American vodka. (I’m a cocktail nut, I can’t even talk of a zombie-ruled wasteland without focusing on ratios!)

Would you bother with gin, rum or brandy? I would think they might be less valuable in hard times, but you tell me. And if you live outside the United States, what would you want to have in your wallet?

It’s Official: Vodka Makers Have Given Up On Everything But Packaging. The makers of Medea now expect you to drop 40 bucks for vodka with a programmable LED marquee label. Er… for the right occasion….

I am a fan of Three Olives. They make a good basic vodka that is right in the price/quality saddle for vodkas. They also produce about the widest selection of flavored vodkas you can find. But this last has led them into a bit of a dicey situation.

When you have so many flavors, you need to keep coming up with new names for them. Their latest is a blend of orange and tangerine. It was therefore not a bad lexicographical blending to call the product RangTang….

Except there should be a full load class in all marketing schools that consists solely of the instructor walking around the room, bopping every student on the head with a foam bat, and screaming, Don’t forget to Google it before you release the product! This should be repeated three days a week for the semester.

By now you should be fairly curious what else RangTang might mean beyond yummy flavored vodka. You will not find that additional, prior meaning in this blog. Just click on this to do a Google search for RangTang. But before you do, be advised that you don’t need to. Really. You will anyway, but I want to be on record first, saying that concepts considered cannot be unconsidered.

I’d like to thank blame the John Rutherford of Observational Gastrophysics for getting me to consider the concept in the first place.

All us cocktailians like to create something special for holidays or special gatherings. Even me.
Mine this year is actually worth sharing.
Happy Holidays, Y’all!

This comes under the category of Bad Ideas From Science We Really Could Have Done Without, like weaponized anthrax, human cloning, and those little microphone headsets that let Madonna and Britney Spears perform. Russian scientists (who else?) have allegedly perfected a method for turning alcohol into a powder.
No. Just, no.
I just can’t stop thinking of ways for this product to be used for ill, and I haven’t really come up with a good use for it yet. Simply put, speed is the enemy of responsible alcohol use. Yes, the world already has shots, chugging, and the simple directive that “a cocktail should be drunk quickly, while it is still laughing”. But the idea that you could pop a couple of gelcaps and get drunk does not bear thinking on.
Now, be of good cheer. I don’t think that this is real.
First off, it comes from The Times of India (where I’ve encountered other less than credible articles), in an piece so badly written that I about pulled a muscle restraining myself from red-penning my own computer screen. The second and third paragraphs both have one or more sentences that repeat themselves verbatim.
Second, their source is “a web portal”, presumably from Russia. An unnamed Russian web portal? Dan Rather has higher standards of proof than that! Have you seen what passes for web journalism in Russia these days?
I unleashed my Google-fu on this. Why? Because I could.

You are drunk-blogging,
aren’t you?

No I am not.
Anyway, there is a St. Petersburg State Polytechnical University. On-line search function returns no faculty named Moskalev. There is a guy named Evgeny Moskalev from Russia who is on Facebook, who looks like the sort of joker who would perpetrate this sort of thing on the the poor Times of India, though.
For now, I’m going to file this threat to civilization under the heading of “Hoax”. Good on you Evgeny, if it is a hoax. and what the Hell have you done, if it isn’t.
By the way, I got this story from the HotAir Headlines, where AP finds this stuff for me, so I don’t have to, so that I can find it for you, so you don’t have to…

I’ve gotten a few good comments already, so more thoughts (and a layout-breaking video) below the fold… (more…)

Recently, the Liquor Fairy appeared at my door with a box containing three bottles of liquor from Piedmont Distillers. I was at first puzzled that he was driving a black 1940 Ford, and more puzzled still when he hopped back in and departed at a pretty ridiculous clip, pursued by the local sheriff…. All became quite clear, when I opened the box to find the three bottles nestled within.

Piedmont Distillers, Inc. makes moonshine, folks. And they have sent me a bottle of each of their products: Midnight Moon Carolina Moonshine, Midnight Moon Lightning Lemonade, and Catdaddy Carolina Moonshine.
Moonshine in general and Piedmont Distillers in particular both have fascinating stories, and their products are both interesting and fun to play with. I’m going to do three posts in all, one for each bottle. This first will be the longest, and focus on the base brand, Midnight Moon, and the history of moonshine.
Most Americans know of moonshine, but not much about it, beyond what we learned from a certain 1980′s documentary series, and my foreign readers may not have heard of it at all. The important thing to understand is that moonshine has both a political and a manufacturing identity.
The most important factor in the history of moonshine is that for various reasons and various times, the Federal government did not want you making it. The name itself comes from the idea that making it is an activity which is safest to carry out by the light of the moon. Moonshine enjoyed its first major wave of expansion due to Prohibition. Since moonshine operations were difficult for the government to find and stop, moonshine became a popular fuel for the era’s drinkers. After Prohibition ended, the Feds shifted to wanting to tax liquor. The moonshiners, however, had an operation already well-suited to avoiding government involvement. These considerate folk continued as before to go to great lengths to not trouble the poor, over-worked staff at the IRS with any inconvenient paperwork or payments.
It took about fifty years for industrial progress to make the production of other liquors efficient enough to make moonshining not worth the risk as a commercial concern.
From a manufacturing standpoint, classic moonshine was a high-proof corn liquor, run in small (easily hidden) stills, and unaged. It was too risky to distill moonshine repeatedly, so it was pretty raw stuff. I imagine that is the origin of its other name: White Lighting. Old time moonshine was harsh, crude, illegal, and occasionally dangerous. It’s not a wonder it essentially died in a commercial sense.
All this brings us to Piedmont Distillers, who had the radical idea of paying taxes, and seeing what kind of liquor they could produce when they could work in the open with modern methods and equipment. Mixing heritage, lore, and marketing in the manner at which southerners excel, they teamed with this guy:

Who’s he? One of the better stories you’ll ever hear, that’s who.
An integral part of moonshining was distribution. The young sons of the shiners would deliver the liquor in the trunks of their souped up cars. If the Law were to show up along the way, they had better be able to out-drive them. One of the best at getting product to the customers and keeping it out of the hands of the revenuers was this man, Junior Johnson.
Johnson is actually better known for his hobby than his job. When he wasn’t out-running the police with a trunk full of product, he liked to keep his skills sharp with a little racing. He was one of the early icons of NASCAR, and an inaugural member of the sport’s Hall of Fame. As a driver, he never won a Cup. Why? Because despite being the best driver of his day, he couldn’t enter enough races. Why? Because he was still making more money at his day (night?) job, running moonshine. The guy is a trip, folks. Check out some of the videos they have on the website to get a feel for the stones you needed to live this guy’s life.
UPDATE: How about this: One of the readers of this here bog is the son of one of the rare revenuers who actually laid a set of cuff on Junior! Sounds like quite a feat….
Midnight Moon is Piedmont’s take on classic moonshine. It is a clear, un-aged spirit, made from corn. To start with, I tried it neat. It is quite smooth and light, with a faint sweetness about it. If you expect to take a swig from this vaguely jug-shaped bottle and gasp in cross-eyed fashion like a hillbilly in old movies, you will be disappointed. Or not disappointed. This is, before anything else, a well manufactured product. Since the product is so similar in many ways to vodka, I next tried a standard Vodka Moonshine Martini, with about a 4 to one ratio of Midnight Moon to vermouth. Interestingly, here the slightly different taste profile of the moonshine suffers. I don’t think the herbal qualities of the vermouth mesh as well with the Midnight Moon as I’d like. If you like Mongtomerys, with little or no vermouth, instead of a proper Martini, the Midnight Moon works like a charm, delivering the smooth, clean jolt most Vodka Martini lovers are looking for.
I had a chance to ask Joe Michalek, the president of Piedmont, a few questions about his products. Since Midnight Moon is made of corn, rather than rye or potatoes like vodkas, I asked if it was more akin to a good, young whiskey, before it went into the barrel. “You are correct in that Midnight Moon could be described as a very good whiskey prior to aging,” he replied “In fact, moonshiners in the region usually refer to their spirits as ‘whiskey.’”
In a nod to the realities of modern marketing, Piedmont positions themselves in the premium vodka market. “In most of our communications, we tend to compare Midnight Moon to ultra-premium vodkas,” he told me, as “most people are familiar with them and are unfamiliar with how an un-aged whiskey would taste.”
Joe added that they are considering taking a shot at aging their moonshine in the future, since they feel they have the makings of a fine whiskey. I’d be fascinated by this. I’d love to be able to try a company’s new and aged liquors side-by-side and be able to taste, as a consumer, the differences. Heck, I’d love it if Makers Mark would do the same thing.
But for now, we have no aged Midnight Moon, only the pure moonshine. While I found it a poor fit with the aromatic vermouth, I suspected it would do better in some of my other vodka favorites. When matched up in sweeter or fruitier drinks, the Midnight Moon does very well. I’ve got a favorite out of the bunch, both from the way the Midnight Moon makes a slight improvement, and from a means to ending this review with some fun.

Yes, it’s a Cosmopolitan made with moonshine. But just as the slightly different flavor wasn’t working for me with vermouth, I think it works very well, here and in other drinks, with ingredients like Cointreau and juices. And besides, if you are a bar manager looking for a new hook, or a cocktailian looking for some conversation, moonshine is a lot more interesting ingredient than leventy-six varieties of vodka.
Finally, the Arcadia wins on the poster girl front.
Guys, who would you rather be hang out with? And women, who’d you really rather be? (characters here, not the actresses)
Carrie Bradshaw: The Cosmo girl; shopoholic, neurotic, fashion victim, who spends her life being walked on by Big…

Or Daisy Duke: Unofficial poster girl for The Acadian; good-time, simple, tough, bohemian who would have shot a couple of well-deserved arrows holding dynamite into Big’s car years ago.

Get off your high horses, people! And give regular life a little try. The same goes for Grey Goose Aficionados. You might find Midnight Moon is a lot of fun.

The Liquor Fairy Was Here!
The following product, Midnight Moon Carolina Moonshine, was recently provided to me as promotional consideration to encourage me to discuss it.
For a complete disclosure of my policies regarding promotional items and all other financial interests, please click this link, or follow the Liquor Fairy link in the header of this page.

So, what are we to do with this?
“This” is Devotion Vodka. It is the world’s first protein-infused vodka.

…!

Really.

Oh come on!
Pull the other one.

I wish I was kidding you.
I found this via Kevin at Cocktail Enthusiast, who does a great job giving the Joe Friday about this product, for which I applaud him. He also has a better joke than any I’ve come up with on the subject, which makes me irritated.
But a blogger soldiers on when called, and I’ll see what I can add.
Devotion could not more completely crystallize the problems facing the vodka industry if it tried. In theory, unlike all other spirits, the better a vodka gets, the more indistinguishable it should become from its premium competitors. (In practice, this isn’t the case, but I’ll leave that be). Thus, vodkas differentiate themselves first and foremost by packaging. The problem is that apparently, very few vodka bottle designers understand this whole “differentiation” idea. You don’t separate yourself by using the same basic bottle (upright, frosted, with a stopper) and paint a different picture on it.

Seriously, Grey Goose and Belvedere did it first, did it best, and you just accentuate the homogeneity you are trying to avoid by aping the same style.

The next thing the vodka industry is doing is “infusing” or “flavoring” the product with wilder and wilder ingredients. When you flavor a product that is supposed to the be definition of flavorless, it has always struck me as akin to marketing crotchless chastity belts. Your blackberry-infused vodka is not vodka. It’s a blackberry liquor. Give it its own name and maybe it’ll last as a product, if it’s any good.
Devotion at least has an idea that doesn’t actually change the flavor profile (or lack thereof) of the vodka. They claim that if it does anything, it smooths out the burn a bit.

I still have no idea what the heck they think they are accomplishing with putting a muscle-recovery protein product in a vodka.
It’s the last stuff you want to drink after a workout.

The last thing that vodka companies try to do to differentiate themselves is employ hyperbole that spirals ever upward to more and more ridiculous heights. Kevin has some of the more incoherent or illogical quotes from Devotion in his post, so I’ll just go with the straight-up, over-the-top-Tommy things on their website:

The protein used in the Devotion Vodka blend is PeptoPro® and casein, PeptoPro® , which was developed (as) a recovery ingredient for fast muscle refueling. … PeptoPro® officially tested free and free of doping substances….

So there you have it. You can hammer back the Devotion and still be eligible for the Tour de France! Drink up, boys.

By entering the market at a similar price as Grey Goose, the brand will immediately position itself as an ultra-premium vodka at a premium price.

So let me get this straight: Just price your product at the same level as the leading competitor and the market will straightaway accept you as being on a par with said competitor? If only Yugo had priced their car at the same cost as a Mercedes 300SE, they could have been a luxury car maker.

Established in 2008, Devotion Spirits is the first company in the world to offer a completely new category in ultra-premium spirits, and marketed under a single brand. (Really? No one has ever offered a new category of spirit before?) The Company was dreamed up by entrepreneur Drew Adelman, a nightlife and dining aficionado and fitness buff who was searching for a way to marry his two passions. (If you marry two passions, the bigamy police will come for you, dude) The result was Devotion Vodka, the first ever protein-infused spirit. The spirit boasts 80 proof, triple distilled vodka (made from the finest corn) (vodka is very seldom made from corn), flawlessly infused with PeptoPro® casein, packaged in a sexy bottle.

Got it. Reasonably pure vodka, check. Infused with something that does not belong in it, check. Bottled in a “sexy” bottle, check. Yup. Real ground-breaking stuff here.
At the least, once Devotion actually goes into production, you will be able to go up to a woman in a bar and say, “How’d you like a sip of my protein beverage?” and not get slapped. Maybe.