Thursday was Tiki Thursday, so I had a Mai Tai. But like @swampbear, I love gin, so I have a martini on Wednesdays, and a gin&tonic on Saturday afternoons after work.
I have some Laird’s Applejack in the pantry, but I use it for cooking. I never really thought about drinking it!
(There used to be a restaurant downtown that had a dish called Applejack Chicken that my wife really liked. Several years after the restaurant closed, one of the former owners published a cookbook with the restaurant’s recipes. I bought a copy and sometimes I make my wife her Applejack Chicken for her birthday or our anniversary.)
That’s quality husbanding right there! I mostly use Laird’s for mixing with hot drinks and sometimes with deserts where using Calvados might get pricey, though better results IMHO. My wife likes it from time to time as a Caramel Apple (mixed with Butterscotch schnaps). If you like mulled-style beverages, you can easily heat a cup of Lairds in a small non-reactive pot with a quality spiced apple tea for example - just to get it hot through but not even a simmer, and it’s tasty on cold days.
As a British person who is devoted to Rye and Bourbon, you have hit upon a problem for me. Does any of the good stuff (that I’m likely to see over here) come from non-red states?
I also see decent Canadian representation here and I’m willing to give it a go. I know I can get Canadian Cub and Bearface - that might be it. Thoughts?
So: to tonight. I’m not a huge drinker, but I rarely miss a night. Last night I did, but you’re not supposed to mix strong drink with general anesthetics, so I stuck to water. Stressed and annoyingly sober, I was kept awake by our local owls shouting their heads off. I love our owls, but c’mon guys!
So tonight I’ll have a weak beer or two and some of my Brave Boy present to myself, a bottle of 12 year old Bowmore. Time to reacquaint with Scotch, I guess.
j
I have no idea about what might make it over the pond, so I don’t think I can give good suggestions, but I’d agree the vast majority of the hard stuff is red-state. I know quite a few beers and hard ciders come from blue, or at least blueish state. Here in Colorado we have quite a few delectable micro (or not so micro anymore) options, including Left Hand Brewing and New Belgium Brewing has a Ft Collins Brewery. I also drink a couple of hard ciders by Schilling Cider which are located in the Pacific Northwest.
I suspect cost of shipping (and plenty of good ales, stouts and ciders locally of course!) means you can do better locally.
So right now for me, it’s lots of the above cider, and a good bit of Plantery Rum.
Pretty much all US hard booze production by macro distilleries is hard red state too.
Scots Irish settled those areas and fought a Whiskey rebellion to keep their difficult cultural personality. Which today manifests as MAGA.
There are effete blue state micro distilleries. Whether they can get the licensing to sell overseas is beyond my expertise.
As I said earlier, my participation in this thread is necessarily limited, though it’s not because of limited alcohol consumption. My alcohol budget is kinda like the US military budget – proportionately enormous. And probably similar in absolute terms, too! 
But it’s boring. Consists mostly of Caesars, vodka martinis, and rum later at night.
The removal of all US liquor has affected me not at all. I did, in fact, favour Bacardi Gold as my standard rum, but I’ve now found that Cuban Havana Club is actually a superior product, and frankly in the current political climate I’d rather give my money to Cuba than to the US. And contrary to my earlier recollection, the regular stuff is about the same price as Bacardi, though there are variants that are more expensive.
So, like some other posters, I’ve been trying to find alcohols that don’t support red states for my casual drinking. Not a big problem, because I use a lot of rum, but there are concerns about some of those providers as well.
Recently I bought a bottle of Khor Platinum vodka as it’s from the Ukraine, allowing me to kill multiple birds with one thrown booze bottle, and made a tasty vodka sunrise. Of course, I’m not a fan of all the -stuff- that is in most grenadine syrups, so made my own by making a syrup out of 100% pomegranate juice and cane sugar. Quite tasty, and the syrup should last quite a while with the sugar content being what it is as long as it’s in the fridge.
I have my own thoughts now. Well, kinda.
Canadian Club. Man, I do not know what to make of this. I mean, it’s not unpleasant, but it has an upfront taste of sweet biscuits (cookies?) that you might have with a cup of tea. I could be one-bottle-and-done on that one.
Bearface - this I tried after CC, and I like it much better. It still has that peculiar biscuity flavor*, but much less assertive, and it has a pleasing richness about it. This I can see myself sticking with, but I sorely miss bourbon.
Still, needs must.
j
* - anybody able to say, is this something common to all Canadian whiskies?
So, I have a birthday coming up next month, but my wife and I are going to be really busy around then as well as other reasons, so we aren’t planning on doing anything around the actual date. Instead, she had a “bonus” day off this week, and we spent a day heading up to a long-planned trip to Boulder, some extra shopping in Denver, and picked up a birthday bottle of booze on the way home at a local meadery.
I give you “Old Gorm”, a limited edition bochet, which is a mead made with wine that’s been cooked down to a caramel like consistency. It’s less sweet than many meads, much darker of course, and has strong caramel notes (duh), as well as spices. My wife, who is normally a tart/tangy wine drinker, was quite happy with it as well, and even at $40 per bottle is considering getting a few spares to set aside since it’s a limited edition.
I usually don’t like pre-mixed drinks, except for Caesars, because they tend to be too sweet or otherwise just taste off. But I was in the liquor store last week to get my usual, but feeling thirsty, I checked out the pre-mixed drinks coolers looking for something thirst-quenching, and picked up two cans of Triple Bogey Orange Transfusion: orange juice, ginger ale, and vodka. The can says it’s a classic country club drink. I wouldn’t know since I’ve never belonged to a country club.
But it’s exactly what I’d hoped it would be – a perfectly balanced alcoholic orange drink, not sweet, not bitter, and wonderfully thirst-quenching. I got a whole bunch more today – it’s great over ice on a hot day! (I haven’t tried any of the other flavours.)
Oh, that sounds dangerous. A bit of acidic tang, the fizziness of the ginger ale (as you say, already a less sweet option) and vodka. I suspect I could drink faaaaaaaaar too many of those. My wife also agrees. Thankfully, there don’t seem to be any retailers carrying it in Colorado, but nothing stops me from buying good quality OJ to mix with our supply of good ginger ale/brew and vodka.
Currently midafternoon, and I’m working on a bottle of Fresca. There will probably be a Dark & Stormy after supper, though.