At last, the recognition from a total stranger I’ve craved for so long.
As conversation has veered in part to non-alcoholic drinks:
Club soda with a dash of bitters has been my choice on occasion. (a) it looks like some serious drink, even kind of smells that way; (b) it’s got a kind of interesting taste to distract you from the fact it’s got no booze.
I like a glass of pineapple juice.
It’s mindbottling to me that people on this board can spend a hundred pages criticizing the minutiae of some bullshit movie but get all indignant when people have the same level of discussion about real-life stuff.
Lighten up Fenris. It’s not that serious a topic.
Because I actually am awesome.
Give me some of that Old Janx Spirit.
Mindbottling?
They had Mountain Dew in the early 60s? I guess they did (per wiki, they had it in the 40s) but somehow I associate Mountain Dew with sweaty guys at scifi conventions or for computer programmers before Red Bull came along. Not for the suave, pencil skirted set on Mad Avenue!
I’m kind of with people on the idea that no drink can convey credibility, simply because anyone can buy anything if they have the money. I’ve seen utter knobheads order Louis XIII in bars, because they want people to think they have taste (tasty but nowhere near tasty enough for that price).
But the counter isn’t true - what you drink can destroy credibility. Generally speaking, go with what you want. But sometimes a drink (and how you order it) will scream “no talent ass clown.” A bar I worked in had a very large range of Scotches. If someone came in and asked what scotches we had, I’d ask them what they liked, and make suggestions (we had 50 or 60 so I wasn’t going to list them). This one guy looks at me and simply says - “give me the most expensive.” I offer him a choice of three that were all the same price, and he waved me off, telling me just to pick one. He took them (with ice :rolleyes: ) back to his date (who probably cost more than the scotch per hour), and 5 minutes later came back and asked for coke in them both.
His choice of drink showed him to be an ass, and destroyed any credibility he might have had in my eyes. Nothing wrong with drinking whisky and coke, but if you specify a particular single malt and put coke in it, I am going to think you are a poseur. Asking for a white wine spritzer - no problem. Asking for a white wine spritzer with sprite not soda - no problem, your choice. Asking for a white wine spritzer with sprite and can you make it with the 2008 Brocade Chablis Grand Cru exposes you as an ass.
Yeah. You know, when things are so crazy it gets your thoughts all trapped, like in a bottle.
Yes, but it wasn’t your pants he was trying to get into. 
Given the girl he was with, the $60 for two drinks would have bought him at least 30 minutes of half and half anyway.
Agreed. What we are trying to do here is help people from looking like some sort of poseur douche or unsophisticated goon.
Walking up to a bar and asking for “your most expensive scotch” just makes you look like an idiot trying to impress people. I took a liking to scotch a few years back during a vacation in Scotland with my girlfriend. I’m hardly an expert on it, but I have to think you look like less of a jackass describing what sort of scotch you like as long as you aren’t like “uh…I’ll have a scotch on the rocks, please. Any scotch will do, as long as it’s not a blend, of course. single malt, Glen Livet, Glen Galley, perhaps, any glen.”
And who gets an expensive scotch and fills it full of ice? Just get a Dewars on the rocks if you want that “scotchy” tasting water flavor.
I drink my scotch neat, but if you want it with rocks, again, I have no problem. If you like Glenmorangie 18 year old with a glass full of ice, that says nothing about you other than my tastes differ from yours. However, if you are ordering Glenmorangie 18 despite not liking it, and put the ice in because it makes it more palatable (but still not enjoyable), you’re a knob.
The only thing I drink I actively dislike (and it is very rare) is tequila. And I only do it because it is literally the only way of shutting one friend up. I love you Jeff, but you are a freaking pain in the ass every time I tell you that I don’t like that crap.
A Dry Rob Roy or an Olde Fashioned.
Maybe you want to be with your friends but can’t drink or don’t want to.
I like sazeracs, but I’ll only order them in a bar that’s serious about its cocktails. They’re kind of obscure and a bit of a production to make, but they always seem to make the bartender take an interest. At a place in Boston called “Drink”, the bartender’s face immediately lit up and she said “That’s my favorite drink to make!” It’s often a conversation starter.
In most places, I’ll go for a Manhattan or maybe a sidecar if I’m in a cocktail mood.
Fine ingrediants make or break a dish - or a drink - as every chef knows. I’m sure that there is a discriminating palate out there that can tell if their white wine spritzer is made with Sprite and the 2008 Brocade Chablis Grand Cru or made with 7 up and the Jacques Bourguignon Chablis sold by Trader Joes for $10 a bottle - and yet still enjoyed the soda pop version of the white wine spritzer.
(Our house drink is Woodford Reserve and Coke - but it has to be Mexican coke with the sugar. Yeah, could just pour Jack, or Beam with Pepsi, but it isn’t the same drink. Besides, sometimes you want straight bourbon, and then you’d have this bottle of Beam.).
I used to date a wealthy guy a gazillion years ago - and he’d order $200 or $300 bottles of wine to impress me - who was 22 and had a wine palate sophisticated enough to enjoy a really good Lambrusco. Since I didn’t care, and he was doing it merely to impress me - he was drinking something else - he was sort of a tool.
(At the time I did drink single malt scotches enough to be able to know what I liked there, but since he didn’t, he couldn’t impress me with his knowledge of single malt scotches - so I never increased my knowledge on his dime on that topic. And he kept insisting on widening my wine palate in ways I never enjoyed. 20 years later and champagne is still too yeasty for me and I still prefer reds)
Personally, I don’t give a shit what scotch I should drink to make myself seem credible. Show me what you have on tap and I’ll have one of those and go about my business of having fun at a bar instead of trying to impress some one with my choice of Glenwhatevers … umbrella or no.
You have to order it in a grizzled Montalbanesque accent, though.
There was some discussion earlier about specifying liquor brands in mixed drinks, but no mention of the quality of mixers and garnishes. A mixed drink’s quality depends as much upon those, and yet many bars and drinkers put far more concern and expense into liquors.