181 replies to this topic

[Almadjian]

Glor, forget the Redbull. Try one of the excellent fizzing vitamin packets by Alacer. Mix a packet in some regular,(why ruin the top-shelf stuff)Vodka and enjoy.

[J.C.D'Arc]

The J.C. D'Arc Signature Drink would have to be a shot of Auchentoshan, neat. No ice, no soda, no "branch water," no nothing. Just the Scotch.

In spite of my "frenchified" name, I'm not much for wines. I suppose the best-tasting wine I've ever had was Cristal champagne. That was pretty darned good.

I'm not much for beer, either. A few that I've found over the years that meet with my approval are:

--Asahi Super Dry. Long ago, Japanese beers were characterized by their skunkiness. No longer. This stuff is great. It seems to taste better out of the larger twelve-pack bottles than out of the smaller six-pack bottles, but the difference is very slight. Maybe so slight as to actually be "psychosomatic."

--St. Pauli. It's just a good beer. It doesn't get bitter or ashy and it's likeable all around.

--Heineken. What to order in a bar. (Where they don't have Asahi Super Dry or St. Pauli.) Good stuff. Smooth, light, likeable.

I don't much care for dark beers like Guiness Extra Stout. They taste fairly good for about three or four sips and then they start to get an overcooked car tire quality to them.

For mixed drinks, I like a vodka martini. I like mine medium (about 5-to-1 vodka to vermouth). Why bother putting any vermouth in at all if you're going to make it so dry that the vodka overpowers everything else? I like "pepar" vodka for these martinis, although I'd never turn my nose up at one made with plain vodka. I prefer them shaken so as to get them nice and cold. I also like them with three or four green olives stuffed with pimento in them, and I never take any care to ensure that no olive water gets into the drink. The olive water kind of mutes down any rubbing-alcohol overtones from the vodka (if any) and I've grown accustomed to (and actually enjoy) the little bit of brininess.

Edited by J.C.D'Arc, 02 April 2005 - 04:11 PM.

[AndyPandy88]

Vodka and Coke. Whenever I go to town and to the bars, a lot of the bartenders even know that it's my regular. I don't have to ask for it because they are already prepared to give it to me.

[Qwerty]

Welcome to CBn AndyPandy88!

[Blofeld's Cat]

I'm not a drinker anymore, but if I go out at night with company these days I usually order a lemon, lime & bitters to start with.

[Glor (009)]

Club soda and a lime is my "non drinking" night drink. Sometimes I get that as a spacer to slow the pace of drinking on a big night too.

[Qwerty]

Thought it might be fun to bump this one back up.

[MkB]

Fun indeed!

Usually, having a drink with friends, it's plain tonic for me.
Yeah, I know, disappointing

When it comes to "serious drinking", it depends on the mood of the day/night BUT I don't like Vodka (I know, really, really disapponting

[Kilroy6644]

I like a good gin & tonic. Plain and simple, and you can get it anywhere. Even those made with cheap gin are alright, and good gin makes it that much better. The only thing I don't care for is the garnish. Every one I've ever had has come with a wedge of lime on the rim of the glass. What am I supposed to do with that?

[darkpath]

In my early 20's, possessing the only truly reliable automobile in my circle of friends (therefore, always the designated driver) my signature drink was tonic with lime.

Later on, when I cease being a glorified bus driver, and I could ensure that I could stay put at an establishment long enough for my liver to completely break down the alcohol, Merlot became my primary drink (though if circumstances didn't allow that strategy, then the tonic and lime was the game of choice) with Asahi Super Dry being my preferred brew.

More recently, I've tried a number of different drinks, and while a deeply cold Vesper oft hits the spot, and the odd Glenlivet certainly doesn't hurt I'm still partial to a glass of Merlot. May Bryce forgive me!

[Double-0-7]

Depends on the mood. Gin and tonic or frozen margarita when I'm in a summer - festive mood. Vodka martini or Vesper (if served somewhere are 20 degrees) when I'm in a Bondian mood. Most Fridays I start the weekend with a nice single malt - anything from the Glen end of the spectrum all the way to the nice smoky L-end.

[MicroGlobeOne]

My signature? A Perfect whiskey Manhattan, on the rocks. Definitely.

I'd have to concur with a couple of the recent posts, however, and admit to a certain fondness for the gin and tonic as well.

[[dark]]

Lemon, lime and bitters. No doubt.

When I'm drinking, it'll be a rum and coke.

[Nicolas Suszczyk]

Coke with a thin slice of lemon.

[draxingtonstanley]

Old Peculiar

Norman's Conquest

[Skudor]

Vodka and coke.... although it's been a while.

Otherwise (more common) a simple Vodka Martini. Still haven't tried a Vesper (even though there is a wholesaler for Lillet close to where I live).

[Professor Dent]

I've got two regulars that I switch off between depending on my mood & the watering hole I am at. The first is a Gin & Tonic (with Bombay Sapphire being my gin of choice) & the second is Captain Morgan & Ginger Ale. I like a lime garnished with both drinks.

[007Travis]

Champagne!

[Athena007]

Oh! This thread is back... I've been wanting to post this for a while now. Ok, so my drink that I order all the time (Cosmo-Martini w/ Vanilla Vodka) and people look at me weird when I order it... well, at some places I go they've started to name it...

[Nicolas Suszczyk]

"Open drink Athena007"? So you have your very own drink...

[Daddy Bond]

Ocean Spray Cran-Grape.

Yes, that's right.

[MissDalton99]

Kahlua and cream. I had my first one in Cancun, and now every time I have one, I keep thinking I'm back in Mexico!

[Kilroy6644]

Kahlua and cream. I had my first one in Cancun, and now every time I have one, I keep thinking I'm back in Mexico!

Oh, I love that! Used to be my favorite, until I tried my first g&t. It's a family tradition: we always drink Kahlua and cream while decorating the Christmas tree. It's a great holiday drink.

[JB007YH]

I love Jack Daniels, i get that all the time. There is nothin better! tastes so good when it hits my lips!!!! and feels nice all the way down.

[HawkEye007]

If I am out its probably a local brew. If I am making my own stuff at home its usually Cran-Grape Juice mixed with Rum. You can keep adding the rum and you can't tell how much is in there!

[RazorBlade]

Classic dry martini with Bombay Sapphire gin. 3 olives

[Red Barchetta]

Peach Ice Tea.


Or, if I'm out- 2 fingers of single malt scotch.

[rodiii]

I too tried starting with a regular vodka martini. I can drink them fine, but not my favorite.

I did recently buy the Lillet and make Vesper Martinis (well as close as you can these days), and they weren't too bad. With that mix, I had low expectations and was pleasantly surprised.

I also recently ordered one at a nice restaurant, and they actually nailed it. They even brought it in the champagne goblet. Of course, it cost an arm and a leg for that kind of perfection, but hey...all in good fun, right?



I have settled in on citron vodka. Either a citron and seven with a lemon, which always seems to get women asking and trying the drink before I talk to them...or a citron vodka martini with a twist. They're pretty good, and it's fun (and kind of Bond-ish) to say. And they're easy enough that even most amateur bartenders won't screw it up.

Red wine for one on one dates. Because I'm oh-so-charming after a few glasses of pinot noir. hahahahahah...

[Qwerty]

How does stirring martini debate shake out?

The making of a martini raises so many alluring questions: Does shaking spoil the taste of the martini? Does stirring get the drink cold enough? Should the bartender put on an exciting show, or should he mix with masterly nonchalance? (There's a delicious word for that quality: sprezzatura.)

For a century or more, the shake-or-stir debate has raged among martini drinkers. But lately it seems that the current is running strongly in the stirring direction.

In their cause, shakers do get to quote James Bond, who liked his martinis to be shaken "until ice-cold." Unfortunately, Bond is a dubious authority. In Casino Royale, he asked for his martini to be served "in a deep champagne goblet," instead of a martini glass, which makes him sound pretty much like a pretentious phony. advertisement

No offense, 007. I'm just saying.

Shaking has had its recent vogue. In the last several years, Tokyo has become a center for cutting-edge mixology. Tokyo bartenders have developed a style of mixing that involves shaking the cocktail very vigorously, back and forth as well as up and down. Many Americans have been impressed with the Japanese method. But some are coming around to stirring.

"When I was in Tokyo, I liked the way Japanese bartenders would shake martinis," confesses David Myers, owner of Sona in Hollywood and Comme Ca in West Hollywood, Calif., "but Sammy (consulting bartender Sam Ross) has converted me. He says stirring blends the alcohols better - instead of a rapid shake, which emulsifies, there's just a delicate blending. You can see the alcohols come together."

The difference sounds a little obscure, and so does the conventional explanation that shaking "bruises the gin." It's hard to see how a liquid could be bruised, except emotionally. (Nobody seems to worry that vodka might get bruised. In any case, martini mavens insist that the vodka martini is an abomination - another error for which Bond has to take responsibility.)

Still, stir-ophiles clearly feel that shaking does some kind of harm to the drink. To some, it's that the liquor is diluted with ice water. Others may be thinking of the faintly cloudy look of a shaken martini. Perhaps they call it bruising because the cloudiness symbolizes whatever injury they find in the taste of the cocktail.

Why does shaking make a drink cloudy? Cocktail expert Gary Regan says in The Joy of Mixology that a shaken drink is colder, so some compounds in the vermouth may emerge from solution and form tiny droplets, a phenomenon known as chill haze. However, he says this would have been more noticeable in the 19th-century martini, which often was equal parts gin and vermouth, than in modern martinis, which can be as much as 9:1 gin. For the record, Regan thinks there is nothing wrong with a cloudy martini except for its appearance.

David Wondrich, author of the cocktail history Imbibe!, offers still another explanation: "Shaking introduces a plethora of tiny bubbles that disrupt the silken, thick texture that results from stirring." In effect, shaking aerates the martini and gives it a faint sting, like very fine carbonation.

Among bartenders it is a settled conclusion that shaking is the only way to mix cocktails containing ingredients that are hard to mix with liquor, such as eggs, dairy products and fruit juices. The question is whether shaking is wrong for other kinds of drinks, in particular the martini.

It's guaranteed to get the drink good and cold.

"Shaking makes a colder martini," says bartender Mark Sandstrom of Nic's Martini Lounge in Beverly Hills. "Most people want a martini to be cold, so we shake.

As it happens, Wondrich has a few more facts to throw into the mix. Although most modern bartenders believe in stirring, he says, this orthodoxy appears to have been established no earlier than the 1910s. Before that, there were plenty of martini recipes that called for shaking.

Wondrich adds, "It was not entirely a disinterested development on the bartenders' part, though -- it was the style, at the time, to make drinks with "sprezzatura", to appear to expend the minimum effort possible, and since proper stirring involves only the muscles of the wrist, this was the dominant technique."

At the Grill on the Alley in Beverly Hills, Calif., director of beverage Arthur Meola says, "Our house practice is to stir vigorously. We use the bar spoon appropriately, so that it gets a vertical as well as a circular motion."

Back in the '80s, there was a revival of flashy mixing techniques, but nearly 20 years have passed since the Tom Cruise movie Cocktail, and elegance seems to have made a comeback.

So maybe it's time to chill. The times, they apparently are a-stirring.

http://commanderbond...n...&item=44656 - Arizona Republic

[OHMSS Spion]

In their cause, shakers do get to quote James Bond, who liked his martinis to be shaken "until ice-cold." Unfortunately, Bond is a dubious authority. In Casino Royale, he asked for his martini to be served "in a deep champagne goblet," instead of a martini glass, which makes him sound pretty much like a pretentious phony. advertisement

No offense, 007. I'm just saying.

I was getting interested in this article, and then I hit that part... the only reason that Bond has it in a champagne goblet is because the martini glasses in those days were smaller and couldn't fit a whole Vesper in them. But of course, they don't know that.

As for my favorite drink, I like pretty much any kind of martini, apple martinis in particular (yes, I know I'm gonna get grief because they're not "real martinis.") My particular recipe for appletinis is as follows: 2 measures of vodka, 1 measure of apple schnapps, and 1/2 a measure of brandy. I had a vodka Martini on my birthday, and liked it a lot. I couldn't find Lillet to make a Vesper for a long time. It wasn't until I went on the Lillet website that they told me where I could find it in Ann Arbor. Vespers are a bit strong for me, but I'll have one every so often. I do quite enjoy Lillet by itself, though, on the rocks or with club soda.