As noted in another thread, I am trying to find a low-alcohol drink I can have one glass (no more than one glass!) with dinner. I bought some cream sherry—and it tastes like battery acid. Now, it’s possible that all alcohol tastes like battery acid to me, as I don’t drink.
Is there anything I can mix with cream sherry to kill or at least improve the taste? Lemon? Tea? Soda? Juice? I can hear you all cringing, but I really know nothing about mixed drinks.
(I can, however, tell you all about what jewels, fabrics and colors do and don’t go together!)
I can’t help you with the sherry (the only thing I use it for is cooking, particularly cream-based soups and herb butters), but a good low-alcohol drink you might like would be a white wine spritzer. Take 3-4 oz. of white wine and add 3-4 oz. of either club soda or seltzer. If you want to try before you buy, just order one the next time you eat out.
I poked around a bit and most of the recipes I saw seemed to suggest orange juice.
There is also sherry milk punch, which is 2 oz of sherry, a cup of milk and powdered sugar to taste, with a sprinkle of nutmeg. Serve warm or cold, when you are entertaining Mr. Pickwick to dinner.
How about creamy amaretto instead of sherry? Talea is the brand name I’ve got here, 17% alcohol by volume. This stuff is seriously good - try it on the rocks. You can’t mix cream amaretto with orange juice because it will curdle, don’t know if that’s the case with sherry or not.
What kind of sherry is it? In what country was it produced? Sherries vary vastly in quality. Bad sherry is pretty bad. Really good sherry is a revelation. As far as cream sherries go, Harvey’s Bristol Cream is somewhere in the middle, but it’s very palatable. If you’re drinking Harvey’s and you really don’t like it, I’d suggest trying another variety. (A Cask of Amontillado, perhaps? Heh.) Or find another drink altogether.
A low-alcohol drink I invented for my husband is the Cosmonaut. He was envious of my girly pink cosmopolitan, but is too much of a lightweight to drink one. And so the Cosmonaut was born. (Those guys have to be at least a little drunk to go up in those Russian rockets!) It’s just a cosmopolitan with the vodka replaced with 7-Up.
There are a zillion cosmopolitan recipes out there. This is one I like:
1 part Rose’s lime juice
1 part triple-sec or Cointreau
2 parts Ocean Spray Cranberry juice*
2-3 parts vodka (or 7-up!)
Shake it with some ice in a cocktail shaker, and pour into a martini glass, and garnish with a generous twist of lemon.
*do not use one of those “all juice” cranberry juices and don’t use cheapo cranberry juice. The all juice ones just taste all wrong, and some of the cheapo ones are too weak to do the job. Go with old reliable Ocean Spray for this.
Sherry is a fortified alcoholic drink in which wine is allowed to ferment to a certain point and then neutral spritis (usually brandy) is added to stop the fermentation and raise the alcohol levels (normally to greater than 17%). Good Sherry (from Jerez in Spain) is not that expensive and can be found in a wide range of styles from dry to very sweet. The two brands that are most often seen in the US are Lustau and Sandeman.
If you are looking for low alchol then don’t be looking at Sherry - use a low alcohol wine like a German riesling (Kabinett) which runs in the 8-9% alcohol range.
When my parents last visited, my father and I had a small glass of my favorite brandy, Spirit of Solomon. I like it because it is very smooth, with a pleasant fruity flavor. It is nearly as smooth as my favority armagnac, at less than a quarter of the price. So mom asks what it tastes like. She seem us enjoying it and is curious. Dad hands her the snifter and she takes a sip and she reacted as if this nice brandy were battery acid. She looked at us as if we had betrayed her. I offered her some water and suggested a snack to clear the taste. She was sputtering for some time.
When she drinks, she drinks screw drivers. She says the orange juice hides the flavor of the alchohol. Good luck with the orange juice.
Eve, I really wouldn’t recommend sherry for a new drinker; I’m not at all surprised that you think it tastes nasty. You may be best off just dumping it or giving it away.
What you might want to try is picking up a copy of The Savoy Cocktail Book. I believe it’s currently in print, and it was first published in the 1930s. Turn past the cocktail section to find the sections that involve, well, more mixers. Then try playing around with some of those recipies, cutting down the amount of hard alcohol as you wish.
Green Bean, just as an FYI, this is the definitive version of the Cosmopolitan (IOW, it’s the recipe used by the guy who invented it):
5 parts lemon vodka
5 parts triple sec or Cointreau
4 parts fresh lime juice
Dash or two of cranberry juice
Note that it’s not a girly drink; the cranberry juice is only for color, and you really should use fresh lime juice to balance out the Cointreau.
If you want to get really anal, you’ll also note that it’s not actually a cocktail, since there’s no bitters in it.
Rieslings are delicious, sweet wines, perfect for people who typically hate the taste of alcohol (including other wines). The one I like the most comes in a blue bottle – I believe it is German, although I’ve had an Australian riesling too (not sure which if that was in the blue bottle or not). It’s not expensive, either.
German Rieslings run the gamut from dry (Kabinett) to extremely sweet (Auslese & TBA) and are generally low in alcohol (<10%) with prices being the lowest for the Kabinett (~$8-15) and astronomical for a TBA (>$200/375 ml).
Rieslings from Alsace tend to be bone dry except for the VT and SNG which are very sweet dessert wines. A good Alsatian riesling can be had for $10-17. An awesome domestic riesling is Chateau Ste. Michelle’s Eroica which also will set you back for $20. Most other rieslings tend to be pale imitations with much greater alcohol though cheaper.
I had another post with more detail on rieslings if you are interested - it’s on a thread about white wines. (don’t know how to link).
Like anything else you get what you pay for and that is often the case with wines though many good value wines can be found at reasonable prices.
