The other nice thing about sherries and ports is that they last. Most wines, once opened, will go bad before you finish them at the rate of one drink a night. That’s alcohol abuse.
The downside is that sherries are a little higher in alcohol than you’re looking for – not like liquor, but 14 to 18%. If you can live with that, here’s what you do.
True sherries come from Spain. As it happens, there’s a place called “Wines from Spain” on Lex between 42nd and 43rd. Go visit those guys and tell them the whole story – don’t drink, doctor suggested, avoid bitter, etc. and ask them for some suggestions. They should steer you toward Finos and Manzanillas, which are lower in alcohol.
Bad sherry is… Well, I’ve had paint thinner that tasted better.
Have you thought about a Belgian lembac beer. They tend to be light and sometimes fruity.
How about a vodka gimlet (vodka and sweetened lime juice, on the rocks or straight up.) Nice, light drink and if taken slowly and over rocks the ice will melt and dilute it.
OTOH, if you are allergic (I’m assuming you mean you have a histimine reaction) then it’s probably best not to drink at all, health benefits of moderate alcohol consumption aside. I’m surprised the doc would recommend it in that light.
If you were just looking to be social and convivial, I’d just siddle up to the bar and get a club soda and lime, which is what I often do when I want to be in a bar but don’t feel like a drink.
Well, if you like coffee, I think you’d be best to start with Kaluha drinks. Their website has a plethora of recipes. The staple being the White and Black Russian.
White Russian:
Ounce of decent Vodka
Ounce of Kaluha
3+ Ounces of Milk, Half/Half or Cream depending on preference.
Black Russian:
Same as above but substitue club soda for the milky stuff.
Given your needs, I would reconsider red wine for its healthful benefits. Wines vary greatly in sweetness, acidity, etc., so you really ought to be able to find something you like.
Lambic’s a fascinating choice. Don’t be thrown by the fact that it’s called a beer: it’s got the same relationship to beer that hot apple cider has to coffee. The lambics I’ve had are not the least bit bitter; they taste more than anything like Cheerwine made from fresh fruit-juice.
If you think of them as beer, you’ll be appalled. If you think of them as alcoholic fruit juice–well, you still may be appalled, but they’re tastier that way.
I had to learn to like beer, but I’m very glad I did: once I got accustomed to the bitterness, I discovered a world of lovely new flavors. It was Widmer’s Hefeweizen (not a traditional wheat beer, but more of a fizzy light thing) that finally won me over.
How do you know the limit is 12% ? (Or did I miss that?) .
Many mixed drinks are quite quite easy to make.
Get a shot glass. Fill it with liquor of your choice. Pour said shot into large/tall glass, sometimes with ice. Top off with mixer. There, barely anything to measure.
Do it a couple of times, and you’ll be able to guesstimate the amount in the bottom of the glass that will make a shot. As a previous poster said, you can easily get the alcohol % below 12% if you don’t start off with huge numbers to begin with. A 90 proof liquor is 45% alcohol by volume. Mix that with 4 ounces mix (for 5 ounces total, 9% alcohol by volume, if my math is right)
I don’t drink sherry. But I would think it would be easier to order a mixed drink when/if socializing than it would be to ask for and expect a sherry.
I’m a fan of whiskey sours, myself. Back in the dawn of time, when I was supposed to be in college, many of the ladies then seemed to enjoy sloe gin fizzes. It’s a fruity gin mixed with 7-up or sprite.
Repeating what other posters here have said, if you want to keep your alcohol content down to below 12%, you’re limited to beer, cider, or unfortified wine (sherry and port are fortified wines, which means that brandy has been added to them to increase their alcohol content). Someone mentioned Chambord above, which is very good, but which has an alcohol content of about 15%
That being said, there are a lot of wines and beers you can try that are very good. There are wines and beers out there that are sweet and not at all bitter.
Just a correction here: sloe gin is not “fruity gin”, or indeed, any kind of gin at all (i.e. made from fermented juniper berries) but is made instead from sloeberries. It also has the consistancy and taste of cough syrup. How anyone can drink that stuff I’ll never understand. And if you spill it, it’ll stick to everything. The girlies do like their sloe gin fizzes though.
Some vodkas are flavored with sloeberries, but I’ve never seen a proper sloe-flavored gin.
And now having read that, I see that even the most cursory of searches indicates that sloe gin is actually made by steeping sloeberries in gin, so…mea culpa.