Bubbles!

If you haven’t already, chances are good you will see a house-carbonated Negroni at your favorite cocktail joint in the next couple months. Like Newton and Leibniz discovering calculus at the same time, or whoever wrote all those asteroid movies like fifteen years ago, bartenders are simultaneously stumbling across the joys of self-carbonated cocktails.

The drinks aren’t “carbonated” in the traditional sense: In the past, bartenders added a splash of seltzer or Champagne to give their drinks some bubbles. But now, bartenders are adding CO₂ directly to drinks, meaning they get the bubbles without the added water that dilutes the drink. “I had no idea anybody else was playing around with it,” Theo Lieberman told me. Lieberman heads up the bar at Lantern’s Keep in midtown Manhattan. “I was in a Williams-Sonoma in the mall and saw one of those iSi Twist ‘n Sparkle things and I just thought it might be cool.”

It is cool — a combination of molecular mixology and simple summer-drink goodness. In fact, house-carbonated drinks first popped up at New York’s wd~50 a few years ago (and, more recently, Manhattan’s Booker & Dax, which opened last January and has an entire section of the house-carbonated drinks); and at Clyde Common in Portland, Oregon, as well as at Grant Achatz’s Aviary bar in Chicago, last year.

But as with a lot of cool things, I also wondered if it wasn’t just a little bit gimmicky, a way of making highfalutin Smirnoff Ice.

Unlike other cocktail fads (mescal a few years ago; Fernet Branca a few months ago; sherry a few days ago), carbonating a drink to order is straight up flashy. Basically bartenders make a drink in the traditional manner, then they put it in a plastic bottle and charge it with CO₂, either via a large industrial tank and special airtight bottle caps, or an at-home solution like the Twist ‘n Sparkle. If you’ve never used an iSi Twist ‘n Sparkle before, the experience is like lighting fireworks in a bottle — so much so that iSi recalled the Twist ‘n Sparkle in the U.S. over concerns that the bottles might explode.

The first time I personally saw a house-carbonated drink on a menu was at Harry Denton’s Starlight Room in San Francisco, with Joel Teitelbaum, the bar manager there. Teitelbaum serves a few house-carbonated drinks (and presents them in tiny soda bottles), including a Negroni, a mojito, and a gin and tonic. The gin and tonic seems like one drink that specifically does not need the carbonation treatment, but Teitelbaum does it anyway: He mixes homemade tonic syrup with gin and distilled lime juice and then fires the whole thing up with CO₂. “It does feel a little gimmicky on the surface,” he admitted, before adding, “The whole molecular mixology thing gets a bad rap because it can be used as a sideshow — covering up something inherently uninteresting instead of improving it.” It seemed to me that gussied-up mojitos and G&Ts were exactly that, needless recreations made simply to show off. But when I tried it, I realized I was wrong: The house-carbonated version was better integrated than other G&Ts I’d had. It was light and lime-y and it reminded me almost of a fresh-made daiquiri.

According to Teitelbaum, classic cocktails are the perfect drinks to carbonate because they take something familiar and skew them through the sensibility of a real-deal cocktail enthusiast and pro. Think of them as gateway drinks. Teitelbaum says classic cocktail culture’s rise to national awareness has paradoxically created a more intimidating scene for those who haven’t yet jumped in. Whereas a lay-drinker could once order a vodka soda or a Lemon Drop unapologetically, they have now gotten the message that they should know better. So they hem and haw because they don’t want to sound like that kid who brings up Green Day in a conversation about Fugazi, and they just go for a gin and tonic.

Teitelbaum’s staff gets curious looks when they hand over the pre-bottled gin and tonic. He says customers usually ask “if we order our gin and tonics premade from some dumb company like Club.” The reason the staff goes through all this trouble is because it forces the habitual gin-and-tonic drinker to think about what they’re drinking. “As bartenders, we want them to ask questions,” Teitelbaum says. Normally, “gin-and-tonic drinkers never ask questions.”

Of course, there are reasons to carbonate beyond education. When you make a gin and tonic in the normal way — pour tonic water on top of gin and ice — some science-y stuff happens that causes the drink to dilute pretty quickly, even if you have one of those huge ice cubes. That’s why gin and tonics always taste like watered down gin and tonics when you’re halfway through. By mixing the drink’s component parts and then carbonating the whole mix without ice, you can manage the dilution super-precisely. (Same goes for a Negroni, though you notice the dilution less because Campari is like the Andre the Giant of flavors.)

But more importantly, these drinks just straight up work. Carbonation makes seriously heavy drinks — like a Negroni, or even a Sazerac — more appropriate for poolside sipping. (Oh man, I love the idea of someone sipping a Sazerac by the pool.) “Carbonation is like the modern equivalent of egg white,” Teitelbaum told me. “It changes the texture without changing the base flavor.” Like Thurston Moore putting out a folk album, a carbonated Negroni is just as hardcore as ever, while simultaneously feeling slightly more graceful.

Matthew Latkiewicz writes about drinking and other subjects at You Will Not Believe. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s, Wired, Time.com, Boing Boing, and Gastronomica. Follow him on Twitter.

Earlier: How to Order a Proper Drink in Any Bar, Anywhere

Read more posts by Matthew Latkiewicz

Filed Under: sloshed, bars, nightlife

• 0 Comments

“I’m getting, like, jammy leather with a hint of cocoa.”

Wine bars are not like other bars. Bars are fun. Wine bars are not. Even the term “wine bar” is boring. Often, these places — the kind that are named the Cellar or A.O.C. — feel less like bars (places to meet people for a drink, good conversation) and more like tutoring rooms. Don’t get me wrong: I like drinking wine. I once ran a café where I peddled a small (but distinctive!) wine list. I even wrote a monthly column all about wine for McSweeney’s. But my goodness: Wine bars have got to get better.

There are exceptions: Terroir and Cavatappo in New York, for instance; the Barrel Room in San Francisco — places that are more like cafés than wine bars. But for every cool, non-pretentious exception, there are thousands of places trying to get their customers to care about tasting notes and proper swirling technique. So, what exactly makes wine bars so dreadful, and what can be done to improve them?

Problem 1: The vibe is usually awful.
In addition to whatever material things bars sell — wine, beer, cheese, whatever — they also peddle space and time in which to hang out. Owners of wine bars tend to clutter up that space with wine paraphernalia: barrels instead of tables, corks used as fork rests, and wine-inspired artwork lining the walls. Please, future wine-bar owners, don’t do this. You already serve basically only wine; your whole place will be covered with wine bottles and glasses by necessity. Leave it at that.

The Fix: Avoid any and all wine-themed decoration. In fact, pretend you are designing a living room (the Barrel Room pulls this off beautifully). Go with small comfy spaces rather than a long bar. Bars are for bartenders who are mixing drinks and tending to bar flies — they are not for pouring wine, which, let’s be honest, is not that exciting to watch.

Problem 2: The customers are just the worst.
The thing about wine bars is that they are full of wine people. And like a lot of collection-focused subcultures — car people, comic-book people — wine people are generally insufferable. They obsess over how this vintage is different than that vintage or whatever, and assume their obsession is shared by those around them.

A wine-first atmosphere attracts two camps: The eager student (”Oh, that’s interesting because I always thought Shiraz and Syrah were different!”) and the insufferable know-it-all (”The wine will get more oxygen if you really swirl it around”). A successful wine bar makes an effort to keep things casual enough that real wine snots won’t want to stop in.

The Fix: Put your staff in T-shirts, turn on some good music, and make an effort to talk to your customers about literally anything other than wine. A bar is an ecosystem, so make yours about more than just fermented grape juice.

Problem 3: You can’t talk about anything except wine.
Go to any wine bar — yes, even the cool ones — and you will overhear multiple conversations that sound ripped directly from Wine Spectator. “Now this one will be a bit funky at first,” the server will say. “But on the finish you should detect some dried fruits — apricots, persimmon maybe.” Then the customer will do as instructed and nod knowingly when they do taste that persimmon note.

Wine bars always threaten to create a sort of orbit where all conversation and experience circle back around to wine itself. What happens is that the wine is no longer there to aid the social experience; you are there to appreciate the wine. Drinking should enhance experiences and conversations in our actual lives; it should not enhance conversation about itself — that is weird and reflexive, like working out so you can work out better.

The Fix: Deal with problems 1 and 2, and this one will take care of itself.

Problem 4: Wine was not meant to be served by the glass.
The rule of selling wine in a bar or restaurant is this: charge for a glass what you paid for the bottle. It makes ordering wine by the glass unpleasantly expensive for customers. Think about it: Would you rather pay $13 for a glass of Valpolicella, poured from a bottle that costs $13 in its entirety? Or would you rather pay $13 for something like the Robert Johnson Swizzle at Death & Co.? There are, like, twenty ingredients in the swizzle, and it requires that someone actually do some swizzling in order to make it. That is worth $13.

I don’t blame the bars. It sucks to sell wine by the glass. You gamble every time you open a bottle because you have no idea if the whole bottle will sell. Spirits last basically forever and beer is optimized to be sold via kegs and individual bottles. Wine bottles, on the contrary, almost uniformly come in a size that is best for two people. This makes wine ideal for dinners, picnics, and reality-television-watching sessions on the sofa. It also makes it a good bet to buy when you’re at a bar, on a date. Yet wine bars continue to pride themselves on how many wines they sell by the glass.

There are new systems in place: Wine is increasingly coming in kegs, which is a good thought, but the selection is still really limited. And you have probably seen those rubber stoppers that allow you to vacuum-seal a bottle and, in theory, prevent spoilage. That is not a solution, it is a hack, a workaround. (Oh, and if you are running a wine bar and find yourself contemplating one of those plastic-card-based vending-machine things — you swipe a card and a machine from a dystopian future pours you a taste — just stop right now because nobody likes that shit.)

The Fix: Wine bars should just start serving mostly bottles, with a few keg selections thrown in. Everyone wins.

Problem 5: Wine doesn’t deserve all the fuss.
If we think of our alcoholic beverages as occupying a spectrum of variety, the variety spectrum of wine is super short. There are countless ways to mix a cocktail, and a wide array of recipes for beer, but wine is pretty much made and served in one way. Yes, that one way is cool and special and ancient, but it’s still just one thing, which means going out for wine is by default a less dynamic proposition than going out for any other kind of alcohol, because obsessing over the details and flavors and pairings isn’t a great way to spend a night out.

I realize that a Shiraz from the Barossa Valley will taste different than a Rioja Tempranillo. So what? Everything tastes different depending on where it was grown and made. That is not a trait unique to wine, it’s just how shit works. It’s silly for everyone to act like wine is uniquely complex and baffling. It is not.

Of course, beer and cocktail bars are also at risk of becoming shrines to the products they sell (and we all know about the advantages of single-serving businesses), but wine bars tend to reinforce lessons about wine that we really shouldn’t be learning: It’s mysterious, and ancient, and it requires crazy concentration and expertise to fully appreciate.

The Fix: Realize that the best wine bars are the ones that encourage people to drop the above ideals and just chill out.

Matthew Latkiewicz writes about drinking and other subjects at You Will Not Believe. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s, Wired, Time.com, Boing Boing, and Gastronomica. Follow him on Twitter.

Related: Maybe We Should Be Judging Wines by Their Labels

Read more posts by Matthew Latkiewicz

Filed Under: sloshed, oeno-file, wine

• 0 Comments

Whatever you do, avoid the Shamrock Shakes.

It’s unclear when, exactly, people decided the best way to honor Saint Patrick’s contributions to Irish culture was to binge-drink like an Arizona State frat brother, but that’s what happened. And so, it’s a holiday usually avoided by the gentleman drinker. This is a shame. There is a proper time and a place for everything, and Saint Patrick’s Day is as good a time as any to drink a shit ton of green beer and blended whiskey. The trick is knowing how to do it the right way.

If done properly, you’ll be able to hit the bars as soon as they open and maintain a steady buzz right up until last call. (Or at least until midnight.) Think of it like marathon drinking: You’ll be willing yourself to complete a task of endurance, and your body will protest the whole way through. But with the proper training, forethought, and mental toughness, you’ll be able to make it through in one piece. Here now, the official Sloshed Saint Patrick’s Day Drinking Schedule and Pacing Program.

First, ask yourself this question:

Will Your Body Be Able to Handle This?
• Have you been actively drinking for five-plus years? Like any endurance sport, the key to surviving is knowing how your body will react to the extended hardships it will be forced to undergo. Seasoned drinkers will know their bodies best.

• Is your calendar free for a couple of days after Saint Patrick’s Day? You sort of get a pass this year because Saint Paddy’s falls on a Saturday, but trust me when I say you’ll still be feeling it a little on Monday.

• Do you want it? We need your full commitment here. Things are going to get pretty bleak around hour eleven.

• Are you Irish? On second thought, forget this last one. Doesn’t matter.

Pre-Patrick Prep
This program is developed for people who have consumed alcohol nearly every day in the past two months, or who have at least had one drink before noon in that same time frame. If this doesn’t sound like you, better luck next year.

For everyone else, you’ll want to establish your pace before the big day. A couple days beforehand (today, for example), buy some Irish beer and a bottle of Irish whiskey — go for a blend; the nuances of single-malts will be lost after you drink, like, three of them — and get to work. Knock back a shot of whiskey, and chase it with a beer. Wait fifteen minutes. If you’re drunk, tap out now. If you’re happy and wanting to break into a jig, then your Saint Patrick’s Pace per Hour (SPP/H) is one drink. If you feel nothing, have another shot and another beer and wait another fifteen minutes. Repeat until you’re ready for that jig. Count how many drinks it takes, then divide that number by two. That’s your SPP/H.

Make a note to measure this accurately. Saint Patrick’s Day is a distance event, not a sprint. Don’t worry about how much you can drink. Focus instead on finishing the whole day under your own steam, with all your limbs intact. There is pride in crossing the finish line.

Your Saint Patrick’s Day Itinerary
Let’s do this.

6:00 a.m.: Get up, shower, brush your teeth. The bars will be open soon and you will be there. Eat a PowerBar and drink, like, a gallon of water. This is the most responsible thing you will do all day.

6:45 a.m.: Call your drinking buddy and check in. You did arrange to have a drinking buddy, right? You need friends now because your brain is probably telling you that being up this early just so you can start drinking is a dumb-ass idea, and like all dumb-ass ideas, you need your buddies for encouragement.

7:30 a.m.: You should be on a bar stool by now. Order a whiskey, Irish. Toast your competition and slug it down. Visualize outlasting them.

7:32 a.m.: Time for a beer back. Order a stout. Guinness is fine; Murphy’s is better. Consult your SPP/H while you can still see straight and drink accordingly for the next two hours.

9:30 a.m.: Breakfast! Find a diner, or a pub that serves food. Do not drink booze at breakfast. Others will mock you or say it is essential to winning this race. Ignore them. Focus on hydrating and eating protein. You are the tortoise. You are the tortoise.

11:00 a.m.: Pre-parade refueling. First: Duck into a bar and do a shot. Second: Find a liquor store and buy as big a bottle of whiskey as you need to fill your flask and your buddies’ flasks. (Having your own flask is mandatory.) Then figure out where you’re going to watch the parade. (Watching the parade is also mandatory.)

12:01 p.m. Congratulations! You’ve made it through the morning! Only twelve more hours to go! Take a celebratory nip from the flask.

1:00 p.m.: Parade whiskey-sipping for the next couple hours. Drink enough to keep yourself from giving up, but not so much that your body gives up on you. One technique is to focus on the parade itself — use the distraction to regulate your intake. Look! A marching band!

3:00 p.m.: I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have yelled about the marching band earlier. It’s all love, bro. Seriously. Hey, did you bring any snacks? You’re probably super-hungry. Find an out-of-the-way place and order as much food as you can handle. Drink one beer while you’re at it, but lay off the whiskey for a bit.

4:15 p.m.: Throw up.

4:17 p.m.: Feels so much better, right?

4:18 p.m.: Find a convenience store. Drink two Vitamin Waters and eat a banana. A breath mint wouldn’t kill you, either.

5:00 p.m.: Track down your friends. They will inevitably be at a bar called Paddy O’Kellerhan’s. This bar will be crowded.

5:30 p.m.: Time for another shot, followed by a black-and-tan. Drink that fast, and order a lager. Nurse that one.

6:00 p.m.: Keep an eye on your friends, especially the one over in the corner that’s wearing the green Dr. Seuss hat and pretending to be a leprechaun.

6:30 p.m.: Help break up the fight between your leprechaun friend and the real-deal Irish dude who told him to knock it off. Then find another bar, but put the leprechaun in a cab home. You don’t need that kind of trouble.

6:50 p.m.: At this point, there will be a strong temptation to drink something other than straight beer or whiskey, possibly something that begins with a car and ends with a bomb. DO NOT DO THIS. The addition of Baileys this late in the game will end you. Get a Guinness.

7:30 p.m.: Throw up again.

7:35 p.m.: Feels good every time, right? Re-commence drinking; try to remember what your SPP/H is. Feed off the energy of the other revelers. If you need a jolt, find a jukebox and play something good. “Welcome to the Jungle” is never a bad choice.

10:20 p.m.: Time for some more food. If the bar has it, great. If not, find a food stand or somewhere else quick. Anything longer than fifteen minutes and you’ll crash.

10:40 p.m.: Back at the bar. You’re in the home stretch now, so open the throttle. Get one bottle of whiskey and enough shot glasses for everyone who’s still standing. If you’re going down now, you’re all going down together.

11:00 p.m.: Sit in a circle and keep refilling those shot glasses. Sip, don’t shoot. Tell stories that start with, “This guy right here … lemme tell you about this guy right here … “

12:15 a.m.: Check out the watch. You made it. Finish whatever’s in front of you, nothing more. Stand up, leave under your own strength. Walk home if you can, cab it if you can’t.

12:45 a.m.: Drink as much water as you can handle before you go to bed. It won’t do too much good, but it won’t hurt, either. Glory and sleep will be your spoils tonight. Happy Saint Patrick’s Day, champion.

Read more posts by Matthew Latkiewicz

Filed Under: sloshed, saint patrick’s day

• 0 Comments

A dash here, a dash there….

Bartenders’ recent fascination with bitters — the mysterious potions sold in little apothecary bottles — has created a market for all sorts of variations. There are citrus bitters, maple bitters, cherry bitters, celery bitters, bitters aged in whiskey barrels, chocolate bitters, etc., etc. There are a lot, is what I’m saying. But do bitters — often added in doses so small that they verge on homeopathic — actually impart a discernible difference? I sat down and drank a lot of booze to figure it out.

Bitters are made by taking high-proof spirits and infusing the fuck out of them with concentrated herbs, fruits, roots, and spices. These potions were originally concocted in the early 1800s for medicinal purposes, and the list of ailments they supposedly cured is wonderfully long and charming: liver complaint, sick headache, biliousness, indigestion, jaundice, salt rheum, constipation, humors, fever sores, colic, and diseases caused by “an impure state of the blood.” The bottles themselves are delightful and old-timey in their own way, too. Angostura’s label famously doesn’t fit on the bottle; Peychaud’s boasts about an award it won in 1869.

At some point in the mid-nineteenth century, someone decided that a jar full of booze might help the medicine go down. And now, bitters have been mixed into drinks for so long that we take their supposed impact on faith. I am sure there are nerds out there who spend whole weekends licking various bitters off their hands, but it’s difficult to believe these people when they espouse the difference between blackstrap and cherry-bark vanilla bitters — they care too much not to be delusional. So I set up a taste test to find out once and for all if a normal person can tell if bitters make any difference. And to see if they’d help me shake this damn case of blood impurity that’s been troubling me so.

First, my Wine Allergic Girlfriend and I added a few drops of each type of bitters we’d be testing — Angostura, Fee Brothers Orange, and Peychaud’s — into soda water. The colors were dramatically different. Angostura was the prettiest, a pale gold. Peychaud’s was rose pink, and Fee’s orange bitters were straight-up clear.

Bitters, in water, from left to right: Angostura, Peychaud’s, Fee Brothers orange.

In addition to admiring the pretty colors, W.A.G. and I also tasted each of the bitters-enhanced soda waters, and they did indeed taste different. Tasting notes are boring, so quickly: Angostura tastes kind of like Coca-Cola; Fee’s Orange actually tastes like orange; Peychaud’s was pretty solidly cinnamon to me, and W.A.G. swears it is a ringer for a particular brand of hippie cherry licorice she ate as a kid. Bottom line: We can agree that bitters taste different. Which, okay, so that’s our baseline. Score one for bitters nerds.

The idea was that W.A.G. would make three versions of three cocktails (a rye old-fashioned, an improved gin cocktail, and a vieux carré), each with a different bitter. I’d taste them all blindly and see if I could tell the difference.

Old-Fashioned
“The color is a dead giveaway,” said W.A.G. after making the three drinks. Because we didn’t want any reddish tints tipping me off, it was decided I’d drink all the drinks with my eyes closed.

The same bitters, mixed into bourbon.

“This one is the Fee’s,” I said about old-fashioned number one, after drinking all three. I didn’t really taste orange, per se, but I somehow felt the orange, at least compared to the other two drinks. The second old-fashioned I picked out as Peychaud’s, and the remaining one I put down as Angostura. They did indeed taste different to me, but that difference was jumbled up in my pre-sip expectations about how they’d taste, as well as some good, old multiple-choice test-taking strategy (”W.A.G. probably wouldn’t start with Angostura because it’s the most basic, so that’s out for the first one,” etc.).

“You got them all wrong,” W.A.G. said.

Improved Gin Cocktail
The improved gin cocktail (a wonderful concoction of Genever gin, Maraschino, simple syrup, and bitters) apparently showed the color of the bitters even more than the old-fashioned, and so W.A.G. told me I really had to close my eyes for this one. I did my best to close my eyes harder.

Primed, I easily picked out the one made with orange bitters. But I mixed the other two up. Better, but still not very good. Perhaps because I was searching for differences in my improved gin cocktails, I did sense differences. But like something I was catching out of the corner of my eye, those differences disappeared when I looked directly at them. If I thought too much about it, I started to doubt my senses, and all the drinks started to taste the same.

All of which is to say: I was drunk, so we decided W.A.G. would taste the next cocktail.

Vieux Carré
This was the most complicated recipe we tried: rye whiskey, brandy, sweet vermouth, bitters, and Benedictine. Those ingredients are all heavy hitters, flavor-wise. Naturally, I assumed the bitters would have less of an impact in a drink with this many ingredients. It’s like someone playing the triangle amid an entire orchestra of kettle drums, trombones, and violins.

For the purposes of the taste test, I made each V.C. with only one type of bitters, though the traditional recipe calls for two. W.A.G.’s palette trumps mine, and she nailed the orange, like, immediately. She mixed up Peychaud’s and Angostura, as I had with the improved gin cocktail, but like me, she says she felt a difference in the drinks.

I made one more V.C., this one with the traditional dose of two kinds of bitters. It takes a decisive flick to get a good dash of bitters; it comes with practice and something akin to confidence. Some bitters nowadays come in little eyedropper bottles and these, too, are a joy to use. For the V.C., picking up two small old-looking bottles and dashing each pleased me even more than just adding one.

That’s when I realized the major difference that bitters can make. It’s not really about the flavor that bitters impart on a drink; it’s about the mystique.

My taste-test was hardly exhaustive, but it’s still clear that bitters are pretty darn subtle when compared to the big-flavored ingredients like gin, whiskey, sugar, or lime juice, if only because we add the bitters in such a relatively minor amount.

What bitters actually do is add another layer of ceremony to the process of mixing a drink. There’s a reason why bartenders always add the bitters at the end, too: It’s a signaling mechanism. Not only that the drink is now “complete,” but that the person making the drink cares enough to put real thought into what, precisely, is going into the drink — down to the very last dash. Bitters are fundamentally old-timey and strange, and they give drinks a sort of magic-potion feel. The actual flavor they impart is in the taste bud of the beholder.

Matthew Latkiewicz writes about drinking and other subjects at You Will Not Believe. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s, Wired, Time.com, Boing Boing, and Gastronomica. Follow him on Twitter.

Earlier: Sloshed: How to Order a Proper Drink in Any Bar, Anywhere

Read more posts by Matthew Latkiewicz

Filed Under: sloshed, booze news, nightlife

• 0 Comments

Step 1: Spike the milkshake.

Everyone chooses sides on Valentine’s Day: You’re pro or con. You go out or you stay in. You love it or you hate it. But no matter where you fall in any of these debates, you’ve got to drink something. And contrary to what Pretty Woman might tell you, there’s nothing inherently romantic about sparkling wine. (You do know that the real Dom Pérignon was an old, celibate monk, right?) In fact, choosing the right Valentine’s drink is a little trickier than just going to the liquor store and buying the best bottle of bubbly you can afford.

There will be a lot of suggestions in the media this week and next about how to get Valentine’s Day “just right” for that special someone. There will be talk of candles and chocolate, but also, of course, your drinking choices: “The Perfect Drink for your Sweetheart,” “Romantic Cocktails for a Truly Romantic Night,” “Three Sparkling Wines Just as Love-ly as Champagne!” Some people will advise you to make drinks with supposed aphrodisiacs like jasmine and almond; others will tell you to combine cranberry juice, grenadine, strawberries, and vodka into some ungodly thing called Love Potion #9 or whatever.

Do not heed that advice.

No self-respecting adult should drink anything called a love potion, and there is something very unsexy about anyone who uses the word ‘aphrodisiac.’ Plus, there’s no reason to drink anything on Valentine’s Day that you wouldn’t drink any other day of the year. Instead, VDay is all about trying to craft an evening culled from bits of fairy tales and movie scenes. In other words, image is everything, so you might as well just choose a drink that makes you look cool and reminds your date of a romantic movie.

I’ll leave the pro/con debate re: the merits of Valentine’s Day up to you, and I’ll assume if you’re anti-Valentine’s Day, you’re also anti-drinking-something-specific-on-Valentine’s-Day. But, for people who are planning something — anything — here is the official Sloshed guide to drinking during Valentine’s Day.

Pro tip: A Buddha cup will make a first date less awkward.Photo: Universal Studios

The Mood: New Couple, Low-key Valentine’s Day
This is my favorite couple out on Valentine’s Day — the people who just started dating like two weeks ago. It adds pressure to a situation already fraught with peril. Do you go all-in with your new partner? No, you do not. You go lowercase romantic and look forward to getting lucky as the night wears on.
What You’re Drinking: Part of me wants this couple to be forced into ordering Champagne and chocolate-dipped strawberries, just so they have to squirm through the night. In reality, stick to something innocuous and classy: A sidecar would be a good cocktail choice. Follow it up with some middle-of-the-road bubbly — better than standard-issue Prosecco, not as fancy as high-end Champagne — for wine.

The Mood: Let’s Get it On.
What You’re Drinking: Why are you wasting your time drinking? Get in that bedroom and get those clothes off.

The Mood: Single dude out on the town.
Inevitably there are some single people out there who swear it’s the best night to score just meet someone and strike up a conversation. Fair enough.
What You’re Drinking: The trick here is to seem charming, not creepy. Regardless of whether you’re looking for a guy or a girl, best to think George Clooney or Ryan Gosling, and drink appropriately. That means old-fashioneds and sazeracs are in. Tequila shots are out.

Look like this if you want to sleep with anyone in the bar.Photo: BEN GLASS/ Warner Bros.

The Mood: Single lady out on the town.
It’s basically the female version of the single dude. Whatever your actual intentions are, the goal is to project the image of just wanting to drop into a nice bar for a drink and some small talk.
What You’re Drinking: Here’s where you take a page from the Some Like it Hot playbook. Get a rye Manhattan (go for a twist instead of a cherry) or a Martini. Or even better, go off-menu and have a bartender make you some sort of bespoke drink.

The Mood: Fuck Valentine’s Day
For some, Valentine’s Day is an invitation to hate Valentine’s Day, for any number of reasons. Sure, defining yourself by your enemies doesn’t seem like the best strategy for a fun evening, but someone has to wage war against those greeting-card companies, I suppose.
What You’re Drinking: Whatever you want, but the strong play is nursing a 40 of Olde English while you ceremoniously dump a bottle of Champagne down the drain. Play some Joy Division while you do it.

Not in the mood for Valentine’s.Photo: New World Pictures

The Mood: Just Broke Up
This could go a lot of different ways. Are you sad? Angry? The dumper? The dumpee? Whatever, doesn’t matter: Let’s torch this fucker.
What You’re Drinking: Drive to your nearest college town and order the shot most likely to make you blush when saying its name out loud. This is a night when you can justifiably order “another Wyoming Legspreader,” so take advantage.

Milk is a bad choice, post-breakup.Photo: DreamWorks Pictures

The Mood: Your Partner Really Loves Valentine’s Day
It doesn’t matter how you feel about Valentine’s Day. If you find yourself with a mate who is really, really into the holiday, you owe it to him or her to go all in.
What You’re Drinking:Get two crystal flutes, fill halfway with assorted berries, top with Champagne, and garnish with an entire bouquet of roses. I don’t know how you are going to fit the whole bouquet in the glass, but your efforts to do so will not go unrewarded.

The Mood: Actually Not Caring About Valentine’s Day at All
Say you’ve been in a years- or decades-long relationship, and at this point you know this is the person you’ll be with until the day you die — and you don’t need February 14 or some $75 prix fixe to remind one another about it.
What You’re Drinking: You get to enjoy the benefits of a long-term relationship. Which are these: Get into your pajamas, fire up whatever show everyone loves that you haven’t gotten around to watching yet (Friday Night Lights, that show about the British maids), and give a little tip of the hat to VDay by opening a bottle of red wine. Each.

Whiskey would probably be appropriate here.Photo: Paramount Pictures

The Mood: Reigniting the Flame
Of course, not all long-term relationships have the luxury of not caring about lost passion. We all go through those patches where it seems important to rekindle some early relationship energy.
What You’re Drinking:So, fine, Champagne here. But be careful. There’s nothing worse than drinking great Champagne with someone you aren’t also talking to. I’d suggest a rosé Champagne here. It will feel romantic and special — it’s pink! — but still a little casual.

The Mood: The Sweet Spot
Yes, there are those couples to whom the Valentine’s Day script actually applies; they are couples still new enough to do mushy things like give each other stuffed animals or mix tapes, but not so new that they worry about coming on too strong with a misplaced “I love you” or a change of Facebook relationship status.
What You’re Drinking: If you’ve got all the real emotional stuff, you shouldn’t get carried away with the fake holiday stuff. A Champagne cocktail would be perfect here — with a little cognac like Dave Wondrich advises — but so would an evening of bowling and Miller High Life. Your Valentine’s Day drinks should reflect you and your actual role within this yearly ritual — not everyone is in a satin-and-bubble-bath relationship.

Just two incredibly good-looking people, keepin’ it low-key.Photo: Screen Gems

Matthew Latkiewicz writes about drinking and other subjects at You Will Not Believe. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s, Wired, Time.com, Boing Boing, and Gastronomica. Follow him on Twitter.

Earlier: How to Order a Proper Drink in Any Bar, Anywhere

Read more posts by Matthew Latkiewicz

Filed Under: sloshed, valentine’s day

• 0 Comments

“Barkeep! One vodka–Red Bull, please!”

The explosion of bars that specialize in complicated, labor-intensive, ingredient-driven cocktails has truly been a wondrous thing for those of us who enjoy drinking. It has also made the act of actually ordering drinks in bars more complicated than it once was. (And not just because it means you are now expected to know the proper pronunciation of Cynar.) There are a zillion different kinds of bars that specialize in a zillion different ways to drink — you’ve got your pre-Prohibition places, your tiki places, your high-end science-y places, your ironic pseudo-dive bars, your non-ironic actual-dive bars, your hotel bars, your bar-bars that have been around forever, etc. And while you can always order something from a drink menu, there comes a time in every drinker’s life when he or she needs to place a drink order unchaperoned. Here’s how to do it correctly.

Ordering a drink that isn’t listed on a bar’s drink menu — if the bar even has a menu — is less a question of etiquette and more one of metaphysics. It’s not rude to order the wrong drink at a bar, but you’ll still look like an asshole. Most bartenders are willing to accommodate whatever the customer orders, but as Jackson Cannon, bar manager at Eastern Standard in Boston, told me, “it may be a disaster.”

For instance, I once ordered a martini at an Irish bar — as in, a bar in Ireland, not McSmithy’s Pub in Omaha or wherever — and after much hemming and hawing from the bartender, ended up with a Collins glass full of ice, two ounces of gin, and like five ounces of vermouth. Alternatively, Todd Maul, bar manager at Clio in Boston, told me about a customer who approached his bar and ordered three Heinekens. Upon hearing that the bar didn’t carry that beer, the customer switched his order to three raspberry Stolis, and when Maul told him that the bar didn’t carry that, either, the guy asked, “What kind of bar is this?”

Which is precisely the question everyone should ask themselves before figuring out what they want to drink. Just as a martini order won’t fly in Ireland, Stoli-and-soda isn’t your best bet at a serious-minded cocktail joint. You wouldn’t go to Paris just to eat a Big Mac, right? Similarly, don’t just go for some knee-jerk drink order. Survey the landscape and make a quick plan.

Remember this: Even though your bartender is there to accommodate you, you will go far in life if you also accommodate your bartender.

Note: We aren’t talking about beer and wine here — almost all bars offer those to at least some degree, and they tend to stock products commensurate in quality with the bar’s. We’re talking about mixed drinks, since that category can vary so wildly. To help you navigate, the team here at Sloshed HQ has come up with some guidelines to fit any bar: These are the five circles of appropriate drinking. (Think of it like Google Plus, but with the possibility of liver damage.) When considering your drink order, you need to think about the bar’s vibe; evaluate the available ingredients on the back bar; assess how common your drink order is as well as how difficult the drink is to actually make (for example, do not order a Ramos Gin Fizz just anywhere). Once you’ve considered these variables, you can pick the drink you want from the prescribed list of acceptable cocktails.

The Basics
Drinks at this level are like the lingua franca of most bars in this country. There is little confusion about what you are ordering and no worry that the bar won’t carry the necessary ingredients.

Where to Order: Pubs, real dive bars, any place that advertises its season-long NFL Sunday Ticket subscription or lights up its vodka bottles.

What to Order: This is the most barren of all drink circles, and you’ll want to get no more ambitious than various combos of booze and ice, or drinks that require one spirit and one mixer: gin and tonic, Jack ‘n’ Coke, Scotch and soda — you get the idea.

Foolproof Classics
These are the drinks that everyone should know how to make. If you get a blank stare when you order from this circle, that’s the bartender’s fault, not yours. And if that does happen, you can also explain the drink’s recipe knowing the bar will almost certainly stock the necessary ingredients. Shoot low here: You may think everyone should know how to make a Sidecar, but that’s just a sign that you are spoiled. Avoid citrus drinks or anything that would require fresh ingredients.

Where to Order: Ironic dive bars and places that stock one bottle of bitters and no more than three kinds of vodka. Also, there might be a TV playing sports, but that sport is baseball.

What to Order: Martinis, Manhattans, and old-fashioneds are good go-tos (provided you’re confident the bar doesn’t put stuff like orange wedges in any of the those drinks), but be wary of any drink order that requires precision. Jackson Cannon actually suggests going with a Negroni here, and his reasoning is solid: The drink is simple and the proportions are as easy as they come. Campari, gin, and sweet vermouth in equal measure. And it’s served on the rocks, which means it’s supposed to be a little watered-down.

The Jigger Set
Here we ascend from the material to the sympathetic. Drinks at this level are composed of simple, standard ingredients, but can be unpleasant if made poorly.

Where to Order: Places that stock at least a couple of bottles of rye, simple syrup, more than one type of bitters, and give their house cocktails names like “Dante’s Inferno” or “Mama’s Little Helper” or whatever. In other words, places that are trying to be Death & Co. but aren’t quite operating at that high level.

What to Order: Any drinks from the foolproof classics will be made far better here, but you can also get into more interesting cocktail territory. Sazeracs, Aviations, and French 75s are all good. Just stay away from anything that requires more than basic juices and standard ingredients.

Advanced Techniques
Now we’re getting into it. These are the kinds of drinks that tempt people to use the word “mixologist” when talking about the bartenders.

Where to Order: Places that purchase specialized equipment expressly made for concocting drinks. High-power blenders, sieves, those little apothecary bottles that hold things like homemade syrups, bitters, or homeopathic medicine.

What to Order: Go bold with your order. If a bartender calls himself a mixologist, you might as well make him work for the title. You can feel safe ordering drinks that require egg whites, multiple types of the same kind of spirit, or fire, but probably not all three in tandem. Here is also where you’ll find the collection of nouveau tiki bars that have opened in the last couple of years. If you end up in one of these places — and you will know it when you do — order a Mai Tai or Piña Colada; it will change your opinion of how good those drinks can be.

The Double Black Diamonds
This is the upper echelon. Here, you can order pretty much anything your nerdy cocktail brain can imagine. In fact, you don’t even have to have a specific drink order in mind: Just list off the kind of stuff you like — “I’ve been doing a lot with applejack lately, but was in the mood for something that is basically a crusta.” — and you’ll have it.

Where to Order: Is the bar called PDT or Mr. Lew’s Win-Win Bar or the Hawthorne or Clio? If you know those bars, I trust your judgement.

What to Order: This is graduate-level drinking, and as is the case in actual graduate school, vaguely free-forming your thoughts is the best option. That said, a few otherwise unavailable classic drinks show up in this circle, too: the Vieux Carre, Widow’s Kiss, and any kind of Corpse Reviver should be reserved for this kind of drinking.

As always, these are guidelines, not hard-and-fast rules. If you find yourself in a sports bar, but the bartender has a handlebar mustache and you spy a copy of Dr. Cocktail’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails tucked behind the bar, by all means adjust your order accordingly. And if you’re a big tipper, order whatever the hell you want because money immediately renders every drink order less lousy.

Matthew Latkiewicz writes about drinking and other subjects at You Will Not Believe. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s, Wired, Time.com, Boing Boing, and Gastronomica. Follow him on Twitter.

Earlier: Sloshed: The Real Guide to Appropriate Drinking Ages

Read more posts by Matthew Latkiewicz

Filed Under: sloshed, booze you can use

• 0 Comments

“I shouldn’t have had that last bottle of Tequiza … “

Let’s just get this out of the way: There is no actual cure for the hangover you will have on New Year’s Day. Sorry. Hangovers follow an immutable law of the universe: For every action, there is an equal and horrifyingly light-sensitive reaction. (And also, possibly, some throw-up.) Even though we all know this, many of us will still start the New Year in desperate need of a way of dealing with the pain that invariably follows Champagne and pretending to know all the words to Auld Lang Syne. So, in honor of New Year’s Day — or as I call it: “Dear God, never again, I promise to be better, just make the room stop spinning” Day — let’s look at the various hangover potions out there and see what they say about us.

The first thing to note is that there are two hangover-management camps: People who attempt to preemptively neutralize their forthcoming hangovers (Hangover Prevention, or H.P.), and those who throw caution to the wind and hope to successfully mitigate their hangovers after the fact (Hangover Redemption; H.R.). Chances are, at some point, you’ve tried both.

H.P.: Ways to Deal With a Hangover Ahead of Time
• Drinking in moderation
Oh, good for you. Look at you all awake and chipper and happy. Now, would you stop acting so smug and let the rest of us wallow in our shame?

• Lots of water between drinks
This system combines the excessive drinking of people too young to ever get all that hung-over — ah, to be 19 again — with the problem-solving skills of a real grown-up. As the Internet will tell you, drinking a glass of water in between each alcoholic drink you have does two things: (1) combats the dehydrating effects of booze, and (2) slows down your actual drinking.

The main thing to consider with this H.P strategy is that those who employ it have been down this road before, but they still refuse to actually just drink less. So, they drink a bunch of water while they get hammered. In this way, they have managed to cultivate a sober, reasoned voice within their drunken brain.

• Eating a big meal (or slurping olive oil) before drinking
This is basically the same mentality as the water method above: You know shit’s going to get bad, but you’re gonna go for it anyway, so you might as well do what you can ahead of time. That being said, if you really are taking a spoonful of olive oil before you head out in hopes that it will help you (something people actually do), please do so while looking at yourself in the mirror: You need to own up to what’s happening.

• Taking vitamins or some crazy pills named, like, Shooter or Chaser
This H.P. method is my personal favorite because people who employ it have decided to rid themselves of sobriety and reason, and have instead put their faith in something they probably saw advertised on Adult Swim. While wonderfully optimistic, those who rely on this strategy are only doing themselves a disservice because, thinking they have successfully curbed the next-morning after-effects of drinking, they’ll go overboard and just make things worse. And yet: Everyone deserves to fly too close to the sun at least once, so if you’re considering this, you might as well go for it.

H.R.: Ways to Cure a Hangover After the Fact
• Drinking lots of water (or Gatorade) to replenish your electrolytes
Every single hung-over person on the planet does this. In fact, it’s less a hangover “cure” than it is a hangover “symptom.” Some people swear by sports drinks like Gatorade or Power Juice or whatever. That’s fine, but everyone will know what’s really going on if they catch you drinking a Revive-flavored Vitaminwater before 10 a.m.

• Drinking lots of coffee
Similar to the above H.R. method, in that basically everyone does this. It’s not really going to make you feel any better, but coffee is great, so go for it.

• Hair of the dog
Eventually, on every hero’s journey, he or she realizes the only way out of something is to go through that something; you can’t slay the dragon by simply replenishing your electrolytes.

And so, this H.R. method has been around as long as cocktails have. In fact, some people think the first cocktails — booze mixed with sugar, bitters, a splash of water, maybe a little fruit — were invented to deal with the crushing hangovers that developed after drinking straight booze the night before (I have no idea if this is actually true, but when you think about cocktails as morning-specific drinks, the rooster-derived name — cock-tail — makes some sense, right?). To that end, many of our most enduring cocktails — the Bloody Mary, the Zombie, the Corpse Reviver, anything with the word “fizz” in its name — are still only really consumed in the morning.

It’s a gutsy move, getting drunk again as a method of dealing with the fallout from getting drunk the first time, and as such, is only really employed by three kinds of people: Pro-level drinkers (i.e., people who work in bars and solve lots of problems with ‘more alcohol’), college kids who love the idea of cracking open a beer at 10 a.m., and reasonable people who are having their worst-ever hangover and holy hell just give me anything to get rid of this headache.

All you’re really doing here is postponing the inevitable (”the inevitable” being either another hangover or chronic alcoholism), but it sure is a fun way to go about it.

• Exercise
Evidently, this is a thing people swear by. This is an H.R. method that’s clearly for people who don’t drink to excess all that often. The science behind it is that your body releases pain-easing endorphins as you work out, but my sense is this is also a way for drinkers to prove to themselves that they are not that person from last night. No, no, they are a person who goes for runs and has good abs!

• Showers (hot or cold)
This is literally the least you could do, and it’s something you should do anyway, so don’t act like this is “curing” anything other than filth.

• Pain relievers
This is the old standby, and the H.R. method most often adopted by all our weekday drinkers. But note: Pain pills will not work if you are hung-over in a deep and fundamental way, so this system is best for people who say peppy things about their hangover like, “I’m actually a little hung-over this morning!” or “Whew, I had quite a night last night!”

• Greasy food
Apparently there is something in eggs that helps deal with the poison in your body, though I am sure there are other non-breakfast foods that would do the job even better. Let’s be honest: People choose this H.R. technique not for the chemical composition of eggs, but because it’s fun to go to brunch. All good nights deserve a good morning, which is why this is best for groups of hung-over people. After all, what’s almost as fun as drinking Champagne with your friends? Drinking Champagne and eating huevos rancheros with your friends at two in the afternoon.

(Sub-note: I am told some people advocate eating burnt toast. I am fine with this, but refer to the spoonful of olive oil above and ask yourself if it’s worth it.)

• Sleeping it off on the sofa
Most H.R. strategies are about distracting yourself, or your body, from how crappy you feel. This one indulges in it. In a way, it is the opposite of the exercise H.R. method, with an added touch of shame. The exerciser proves to him- or herself that they are not as debauched as they behaved last night; the moaner/sleeper, on the other hand, just asks themselves over and over, “Why?”

• Burying yourself in sand up to your head, or huffing smoke from a fire
These are, apparently, actual, documented hangover cures. All I can say is that it would take a lot of work to bury yourself in the sand, or even to build a fire, while hung-over. So whoever would actually do this is pretty industrious, probably.

Of course, the only thing you can really do this New Year’s Day is wait out whatever miserable headache you have and promise yourself that this year you’re going to be more responsible. I promise, this is really the last year for this.

Matthew Latkiewicz writes about drinking and other subjects at You Will Not Believe. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s, Wired, Time.com, Boing Boing, and Gastronomica. Follow him on Twitter.

Related: The Bashes-to-Brunches New Year’s Guide
Earlier: Sloshed: How Drunk Can You Get at Your Office Christmas Party?

Read more posts by Matthew Latkiewicz

Filed Under: sloshed, booze news, hair of the dog, hangovers, new years

• 0 Comments

The guy in the Santa costume always has the most fun.

One of the things that makes office holiday parties both wonderful and awful is how often they devolve into total drunken shitshows. Several years ago, after a particularly debauched evening, I had to write an e-mail to a former boss apologizing for “that whole shirtless ABBA thing.” His response: “I don’t remember anything from last night.” This is the conundrum of holiday parties: You need a drink because it softens the awkwardness of mixing work relationships with holiday merriment, but drink too much and you’ll end up in a situation that’s far more awkward in the sobering fluorescent light of Monday morning. Ideally you want to locate yourself right on the boundary of personal embarrassment. I’m here to help you find that line, and retain your dignity.

Obviously, staying sober is one way to avoid morning-after embarrassment, but let’s just work on the theory that this method is bunk. In the same way nobody wants to be the office drunk, nobody wants to be the office prude.

Here, then, is a handy guide to getting just drunk enough at your company’s holiday party:

Know your company and know your role.Illustration: Jen Cotton

The above chart is of course a much-simplified guide to all of the various factors and intricacies that will dictate just how drunk you can comfortably get among your officemates. It’s a good benchmark, but there are several key things to consider beforehand.

Know Your Corporate Environment
The first thing you need to figure out is: How cool is your company? On the surface, this should be an easy one. Cool companies let you show up wearing Chucks, and the office looks like a college dorm room. Uncool companies require that their workers know the intricacies of Microsoft Office. But the truth is that plenty of bosses who are buttoned up by day not only love to party, but love to encourage their co-workers to do the same. By that same token, sandal-wearing start-up CEOs aren’t always as chill about drinking as they are about open-toed footwear.

The real distinction to make is how closely your company allows your Work Identity (W.I.) to acknowledge your Party Identity (P.I.). Does a professional demeanor at your office come at the expense of hiding who you are when you’re not at work? Or are shenanigans accepted as long as you get your work done (or even if you don’t)? The more comfortable you feel talking about your P.I. while at work, the cooler your company is.

If you’re unsure, consult this handy checklist:

Some signs you probably work for a cool company:
• You have been hung-over at work and acknowledged it to your immediate supervisor, only to have her/him respond with empathy.
• There is a pool table at the office.
• You have been skydiving/surfing/to a shooting range with at least some of your co-workers.
• Unique facial hair choices are not discouraged.
• Your holiday party is held at a loft, and people who don’t work for your company try to crash it.
• You often see beer in the office fridge and/or cocaine in the office bathroom, or vice versa.

Some signs you probably don’t work for a cool company:
• You had to take a drug test before you were hired.
• The company has a dress code, which is written down.
• The dress code is so antiquated that it still contains a “casual Friday” section.
• The holiday party is held in the office conference room, in the afternoon, and people try to leave early to beat traffic.
• Your co-workers label their cartons of milk in the office fridge.
• Not one single person has a Mad Men-style minibar in his or her office.

Obviously, the cooler the company is, the more likely it is that one of your co-workers will end up wearing his tie like a headband at some point during the party, meaning it won’t look so bad when you get up on the bar and start signing “Dancing Queen” alongside him.

How Much Embarrassment Can Your Career Handle?
Once you establish what kind of company you work for, it’s time to take a look at yourself. What you specifically want to know is, How much do you care about potentially making a fool of yourself in front of co-workers? Again, you’ll want to examine a variety of different factors: Your skill level at work, any lingering personal eccentricity, your desires for career advancement, and, most important, your role at the company.

Of course, every situation is different, but here at Sloshed HQ, we’ve come up with some handy guidelines that should serve as good jumping-off points for most people.

Intern
If you even got invited to the company holiday party, good job. Your goal now is to not look like a n00b while you’re there.
Cool company: How old are you, anyway? Grab a drink or two if you’re legal. (Add one additional drink for every time a company employee asks you if you’ve got any weed.)
Uncool company: You get no drinks, unless an employee foists them on you. And even then, keep it classy.

Entry-Level
Tread lightly: You probably actually do still go out and get wasted with some regularity, so it won’t feel too strange throwing back a lot of (probably free) drinks. And yet, this is a good time to rein it in. We know that open bar is tempting.
Cool company: Stay two drinks behind whoever your boss is.
Uncool company: Ibid.

Plateaued Cog in the Machine
If you self-identify as a P.C.i.t.M. — i.e., you have come to terms with the fact that being an acquisitions editor sucks just as much as any other desk job, and you also don’t care about moving up the ladder because it sucks just as bad up there — it’s time to drown your sorrows. Because fuck it, right?
Cool company: However many it takes to get you where you need to be. The goal is to be a fun drunk, so your soon-to-be-ex-co-workers will at least have an epic story to tell about you after the fact.
Uncool company: Let’s say six or seven drinks? Just don’t throw up on anyone you might want a recommendation from in the future.

Middle Management
People report to you, you report to people. That is your whole job. That means you can’t look like an asshole to anyone.
Cool company: Your goal is to buck the “middle management” stereotype. Have two cocktails, then chase them with a beer.
Uncool company: Your goal is to reinforce the “middle management” stereotype. Stay away from the spirits and stick to a glass or two of wine. (Red or white — your choice.) You want to stay clear-headed if you’re going to get that big promotion, after all.

Skilled Labor
You have some special skill that the suits can’t easily replace, which makes you indispensable to a certain degree. Use this to your advantage (but remember there are other people who know how to program iPad apps, or whatever it is you do).
Cool company: Four drinks, all cocktails, each one something different.
Uncool company: Almost the same as above, but because your skills are probably making more money for the uncool company, add a fifth drink.

Senior Management
You’re basically responsible for keeping the company running (even if the boss steals all of your ideas as his own).
Cool company: Have a couple drinks to show the underlings that you’re not a total square.
Uncool company: It’s going to fall on you to keep yourself, and your boss, in check. Order one drink at the party, but make it last the whole night. Have a nice single malt or two when you get home.

The Boss
You set the tone — just remember you have to keep the shareholders happy and maintain some semblance of authority in the minds of your employees.
Cool company: Your company may be cool, but you’re not a rock star just yet; cool companies become decidedly less so when their boss is a public drunk. Stick to three cocktails.
Uncool company: This is when working at an uncool company allows you to drink as much as you want, since you are, no doubt, a major power player. Do whatever you want, but don’t let it turn into a scandal.

Some Important Exceptions
As I said, the above are starting points, but are not necessarily where your final drink tally will end up. Below are some situations that will have you adjusting your intake accordingly.

• Your immediate boss is drunk enough to be slurring his or her speech. +1 drink
• There is no real food at the party. -2 drinks
• You have a meeting the next morning before 10 a.m. -1 drink
• There are shareholders at the party. -1 drink for each one you’ll have to meet
• You have a crush on someone at the office, and either they, or you, is married. Have zero drinks — trust me
• You have a crush on someone at the office and you are both single. +1 drink, and make sure you don’t have anything in your teeth
• Wrestling of any kind breaks out among co-workers. +3 drinks
• That intern actually does have some pretty good weed. +1 joint

In the end, what you really want to do is let yourself have a good time, while keeping in mind that things can get out of hand much more easily than you might think. But if they do, it’s not like ripping off your shirt and singing ABBA to your boss is the end of the world, right? Right?

Matthew Latkiewicz writes about drinking and other subjects at You Will Not Believe. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s, Wired, Time.com, Boing Boing, and Gastronomica. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more posts by Matthew Latkiewicz

Filed Under: sloshed, career advice, holidays

• 0 Comments

Let’s make this a reality, people.

I recently ran some numbers, and if my calculations are correct, by 2018 every American citizen will have participated in an extreme dessert competition. This is, of course, because we are up to our eyeballs in food shows — you cannot escape them, and soon, you will probably not be able to escape appearing in them. But as far as I can tell, there has never been a successful television show about drinking, unless you think Mad Men counts. The problem is that alcohol, like Richard Nixon, is not particularly TV-friendly. But here at the bar in Brooklyn where I’m writing this Sloshed HQ, there is hope yet. So today I’m going to present my idea for Sloshed TV. It will be kind of a No Reservations meets “This American Life” with a dash of The Joy of Painting With Bob Ross thrown in. Trust me, this is gonna work.

When you think about it, it’s kind of surprising that more booze isn’t on TV. Alcohol is fun, for God’s sake! But like roller coasters and other people’s dreams, alcohol is really only fun for participants, not for audiences (all the designated drivers at Sloshed HQ know what I mean). Plus, television is a visual medium, and drinks are notoriously uninteresting to look at. No matter how many orange wedges and cherries you shove into an old-fashioned, it’s still just a glass of brown liquid. (Wineries and distilleries aren’t much to look at, either.) And even though a show called something like Man v. Alcohol sounds like it might have potential, it’d be impossible to get around all the legal (and moral) hurdles. And, spoiler alert: The alcohol would always win.

What’s a television producer to do? The few booze shows that are out there mostly serve to illustrate how difficult it must be to make one work, because, frankly, the ones that are out there don’t work. (And no, those Funny or Die “Drunk History” shorts don’t count.) The shows I have seen are Stanley Tucci’s Vine Talk on PBS, Drink Up on the Cooking Channel, and something on Hulu called Three Sheets. (One particular Sheets episode involved the host convincing a bunch of Australians to drink snow drenched in Blue Curacao. It was like a bizarro Girls Gone Wild setup, without the payoff.)

Look, I know how hard it is to create anything, most especially anything involving cameras and catering trucks, so I applaud all the above for giving it the old college try, but these shows just aren’t good. (Sorry, Stanley Tucci! I love Big Night, by the way.)

So here’s what our show is going to focus on instead: audience participation and crazy stories about alcohol-fueled behavior.

Yes, I said audience participation. Even Bob Ross knew that watching someone paint landscapes is boring, but pretending to follow along with Bob Ross as he (creepily) paints landscapes makes for some strangely riveting television. That’s why, before the main titles even roll, each episode of Sloshed TV will quickly teach the audience how to make a drink that’s related to the episode. If you tune in, we will assume you are drinking. (Bonus social media opportunity: “Follow Sloshed on Twitter and Facebook to learn which ingredients you’ll need for next week’s episode.”) If we can find someone who looks like Bob Ross to actually make the drinks, all the better.

Okay, with that out of the way, let’s move to the heart of the show. Our subject, remember, is alcohol: maker of poets, ruiner of lives, inciter of romances. We don’t need to take a boring tour of the St. Germain factory, or discuss the way Syrah grows really well in the 44th parallel or whatever. At this point, everyone’s got a drink and we need some stories. Classic booze stories, like that time Raymond Chandler went on a producer-fueled scotch bender that ended with him writing the Oscar-winning screenplay for Blue Dahlia. Yes, Sloshed TV will tackle stories like these, stories about what alcohol has meant for us, “This American Life”–style.

We’ve already got the Raymond Chandler story practically in the can, to which we could easily add stories about Faulkner, Bukowski, and Hemingway for an episode on alcohol’s contributions to literature. (Hell, we could make a whole series about Hemingway’s drinking.) What else? How about the role alcohol has played in political scandals? (I’m looking at you, Thomas Jefferson.) And I’ve always wanted to know more about those apocryphal Greek bacchanals. Let’s get everyone a glass of wine (or twenty) and do an episode on those. Wine! Orgies! People would watch a wine-orgy show.

The point is, too many shows focus on the ingredients that go into making alcohol, or, even worse, just show people drinking it. That’s like making a show about Alaskan crab fishermen, and then only focusing on the health benefits of crab meat. Alcohol is about more than ingredients, terroirs, or even bars. It plays a huge role in art, literature, music, movies, politics, and the rest of our collective culture. The stuff is everywhere, and Sloshed TV will celebrate that.

Speaking of celebrating, I’m going to go grab a drink and think a little more about this killer pitch. In the meantime, any interested producers or showrunners can call me at the bar my people.

Matthew Latkiewicz works for the Internet; he writes and podcasts about drinking and other subjects at You Will Not Believe. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s, Wired, Time.com, Boing Boing, and Gastronomica. Tragically, his wifelike girlfriend is allergic to wine.

More “Feeding Tube”:
Ten Important Moments in Food-TV Recipe History
Buttered Up: A Look at Paula Deen’s Financial Empire
The Feeding Tube: Five Cooking-Competition Bad Guys Tell Us Why They’re Just Misunderstood
Anthony Bourdain Tells Grub Street About the Food Shows He Actually Likes
Jonah Hill Totally Dissed Paula Deen on TV
How Food Television Changed the Way We Eat
Eleven Real Secrets Behind TV Food Styling
How Many Cooks (and Fridges, and Researchers) Does It Take to Run Food Network Kitchens?

Read more posts by Matthew Latkiewicz

Filed Under: sloshed, sloshed tv, the feeding tube, we’re going to become such hollywood assholes when we’re famous

• 0 Comments

They start ‘em young in France.

The legal drinking age is a somewhat arbitrary number. In most of the United States, it’s 21. In France, people can legally drink when they’re 18. Japan says 20 is the right age. In Wisconsin, anyone can drink at any age, as long as they’re with their parents or of-age spouses. But whichever cutoff point seems right to you, one thing is clear: Nobody aged 18 to 21 should drink all types of alcohol. Have you seen a 21-year-old lately? It is ridiculous. They barely look ready for coffee, let alone a stiff drink. Just as no high-school kid should try to pull off a tweed jacket, no 21-year-old should be ordering a Plymouth martini, up, heavy on the vermouth, with a twist. Age is perhaps the most important ingredient for successful drinking, and I don’t mean that in any sort of legal context.

Take that tweed blazer: It might look great on a 60-year-old college professor; it will look dopey on a 21-year-old college student. The same is true of drinks. Some look good on old men, some look better on twentysomethings. Rarely do all drinks look good on all people. Just as you can’t imagine a college freshman actually enjoying a Rob Roy, you probably can’t imagine your grandparents taking shots of After Shock from an ice luge — unless you grew up in a family that is awesome.

We know these rules intuitively, perhaps, but let’s go ahead and make them explicit.

The most important thing you can put in your wallet.Illustration: Jen Cotton

Under 21: Beer and Wine Only, Please
Stick to beer and wine, preferably cheap beer and wine. You won’t appreciate the expensive ones, and trust me when I say you are not ready for the hard stuff. TRUST ME.

Best choice: Canned beer, critter-label wines

21 to 25: Light Drinks, Shots, and Slippery Nipples
Move into things like gin and tonics and Collins drinks, and if you’re ever going to do shots that involve Jell-O and/or another person’s belly button, now’s the time. But if you order anything neat or with a water back, I’ll find you and force you to drink a bottle of grape Pucker. Forty-year-olds aren’t allowed to skateboard to work, and you aren’t allowed to throw around the same drink order as Charles Bukowski. That’s just how it works.

Best choice: Margaritas, Jäeger bombs, anything you can drink out of one of those huge bong-shaped cups that they have in places like Las Vegas. Then, a Bloody Mary to work off your hangover the next day.

26 to 49: Stiff Drinks
At this point, drink pretty much anything you want, except old-man drinks (see: 65 to 79, below). Learn as much as you can about cocktail-mixing here.

A note about Martinis: Don’t make a habit of ordering these until you’re at least 35, and when you do, make sure they are the gin version, served up (vodka martinis on the rocks are for mild alcoholics who have given up on happiness). Martinis are for Rat Pack members and James Bond. There isn’t a single twentysomething doing anything suave enough to warrant drinking one. The drink is inevitably going to be cooler than the drinker unless said drinker is: (a) Actually really cool and accomplished, like Dean Martin or Winston Churchill, or (b) not interested in seeming cool at all. These are both fundamentally impossible things for people in their twenties.

A note about Manhattans: Rye Manhattans have enjoyed a big resurgence, but there’s no denying that the drink smells like most people’s grandpas. That’s part of the appeal, of course, but it’s also a reason why nobody under the age of at least 40 should go near one.

Best choice: Get thee copies of Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails and David Wondrich’s Imbibe!; drink everything in them.

50 to 64: Expensive Whisk(e)y and Wine
Here’s the problem with having everything available to you during that last decade and a half of life: You find your favorite drink and stick with it. I have seen more women in their fifties order Sauvignon Blanc, and only Sauvignon Blanc, than I’ve ever wanted to. This is also around the time that otherwise-levelheaded adults stop caring about what they drink, as long as it gets the job done. (Here come the vodka martinis on ice.) Technically, this is fine, but this is also a good time to start in on that Scotch habit and blow your kids’ inheritance on great wine (see: below note).

A note about the really expensive stuff: As far as I can tell, professing to love Scotch if you are younger is basically the same as singing the praises of old French wine — it’s more about sounding like you know what you are talking about, not actually knowing what you are talking about or enjoying your drink. Which is why it’s best to stay away from Scotch and expensive wine until at least 50, when you stand a chance of knowing what you are talking about and of having the funds necessary for the good stuff.

Best choice: Drinking the kind of wine that has to be kept in a cellar and then decanted; taking a single malt or a snifter full of cognac after your meals.

65 to 79: Old-People Drinks
Here come the old-man and old-woman drinks. What makes an old-person drink? If it sounds disgusting, but not in a teenager way, then you’re probably there. In other words, now’s the time to drink Brandy Alexanders on the reg. Brandy, creme de cacao, and heavy cream: That is the drink of someone who butters their steak.

Best choice: The aforesaid Brandy Alexanders. Ramos Gin Fizzes before noon.

80-Plus: Anything Goes
From here on out, all bets are off. Octogenarians and above should drink whatever the hell they want, whenever the hell they want. There is literally no drink order that is not absolutely charming coming from an 85-year-old.

Best choice: You know what I said about Slippery Nipples only being appropriate for people in their twenties? Forget it: An 85-year-old ordering one is instantly going to be everyone’s favorite person in the bar. All the better if they do it while wearing a nice tweed jacket.

Matthew Latkiewicz writes about drinking and other subjects at You Will Not Believe. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s, Wired, Time.com, Boing Boing, and Gastronomica. Follow him on Twitter.

Earlier: How to Get Into the Small-Batch Spirits Boom Without Becoming a Booze Snob

Read more posts by Matthew Latkiewicz

Filed Under: sloshed, life advice

• 0 Comments

Booze snobbery, at its worst.

The last decade has been a boom time for distilled spirits and the people who drink them: First, all our bartenders grew delightful handlebar mustaches and got really, really good at mixing cocktails; and now, a lot of state governments — including New York — are loosening distilling laws and regulations, which makes it much easier for people to open small distilleries, which in turn has made for a figurative explosion in craft distilling. (Probably some literal ones, too.) But we must be careful! One need only look at the indie-rock explosion of the eighties and the indie-film boom of the nineties to see the potential dangers inherent in being a fan of today’s “indiestilling” movement. (That term works, right? Let’s make this happen, people: OED 2012!)

Let’s be clear: We should champion this movement. It is relatively new and exciting, and a world where Manhattans can come made with dozens of different kinds of rye is a world in which I want to live. But while us cocktail nerds should celebrate this boom — more alcohol to try! — we must be careful and discriminating in our adoption. If indie rock has taught us nothing, it is that indie culture can make you look like a real dick. So let’s band together.

I. We will not let our passion turn us into a bunch of obscure-booze snobs.
Don’t get me wrong, I am one of the aforesaid dicks. I actively champion independent music, film, and coffee; I read Pitchfork; I have and will again spend $4 on a cup of black coffee; and when it comes to spirits, I have overhead myself saying, “If you like Knob Creek, you really should try this Hudson Baby Bourbon.” On paper, I probably wouldn’t hang out with me.

But a lot of the bartenders and distillers I spoke with talked about educating people, that this was in some ways why they were doing what they were doing. “I want to help consumers understand where the stuff they enjoy comes from,” Allen Katz, host of “The Cocktail Hour” and founder of the soon-to-be-distilling New York Distilling Co., told me. So, rather than look down our nose at the guy ordering a Jack and Coke, we should share with him our excitement about a really well-made Bourbon Smash — and then ensnare and convert and force a mustache upon his face when he tells us he likes it. But we must also know when to back off and accept that the dude ordering the Jack and Coke doesn’t deserve our scorn (unless of course he’s being jerky to the bartender, in which case open up a whole sixteen-ounce can of scorn).

We must use our enthusiasm for good, find those who will care, and tell them about this mezcal we know that’s distilled through chicken breasts.

II. We will not confuse “unique” with “good.”
Uniqueness can make a drink special. Take tequila, for instance. Cuervo is simply not going to be as gloriously interesting as Ocho Tequila, a tequila introduced to me by the bartenders at San Francisco’s Bourbon & Branch. Ocho is created by a Mexican distiller who has been playing around with the concept of vintage and terroir in tequila. Rather than make something that tastes the same every year, Ocho is trying to get at some essence of the land from which that particular agave plant grew. It’s a French wine thing applied to something most people associate with spring break parties and stories about why they’ll never drink tequila again. So score one for indie culture.

But uniqueness can veer very quickly into simply not being very good. I once saw an indie-music show where some guy sat onstage screeching while rubbing two pieces of glass together. And before you think that is a joke, let me assure you: I do not joke about such things. The same is true with booze: “Some of these micro-distilled spirits are trying so hard to be unique, they end up being one note or just bad,” Bourbon & Branch’s bar manager Jayson Wilde told me. “I won’t name names, but there’s a particular bourbon that is doing this hickory-smoked thing. It’s different, but it just tastes like hickory smoke.” While hickory smoke might not be unpleasant in the way that glass-rubbing music is, it also doesn’t necessarily make your bourbon good, and the argument can be made that its simple flavor profile makes it less interesting than something as mundane as Jim Beam.

Yes, we’re rooting for these brands to succeed, since all boats rise with the boozy tide. But let’s make sure we recognize the screechy glass players when we see drink them.

III. We will avoid the stereotypes.
You can grow a handlebar mustache and killer sideburns if you really want to, but you shouldn’t feel like you have to. The fewer of us have them, the less able people will be to make broad characterizations about the indiestilling fan base. That said, I’m totally down with the old-timey-bartender, rolled-up-short-sleeve thing. That’s just a solid look.

IV. We will acknowledge the fact that big brands have their place.
The small-batch spirits stand out against the big-brand stuff because small producers are often aiming for something one of a kind that big brands aren’t. In the case of something like Boyd & Blair’s truly smooth vodka from Pennsylvania, this is terrific; the producer is just trying to make the best possible product. But in the case of Boomsma Oude Genever, which is malt-based Genever gin that’s then aged in oak barrels, the weirdness goes too far and the spirit becomes unmixable (see: Tenet II).

Yes, people drink a lot of things neat or with a little water, but oftentimes the most interesting spirits are those with which a bartender can do something. Most spirits are designed to be ingredients, after all. When I asked Allen Katz about balancing uniqueness and mixability, he said, “We go for reasonable originality,” which is a great phrase, and probably applicable to most things. “We want our spirits to be fun and unique,” he continued, “but also useful.”

And you know who makes things that are really useful? Big booze companies. When I asked bartenders at Bourbon & Branch and Absinthe Brasserie & Bar what they used in their standard martinis, they didn’t rattle off the name of some obscure gin; they both told me Plymouth. Not only is it better for martinis, it’s also less expensive. And the whole reason cocktails were invented was to dress up inexpensive booze.

V. We will happily tell people about the good stuff.
One things indie-rock nerds do really well is share what they are listening to. As such, here’s a partial list of what we’re drinking (and loving):

Boyd & Blair vodka: ?See above for reasoning — this is as smooth and neutral as vodka gets. (I’m not alone in thinking this.)

Compass Box Scotch: ?Yes, there’s such a thing as an artisanal blended Scotch. And the stuff from Compass Box, made by an American living in London, harkens to the jokey, assertively flavored craft-beer mentality that’s big here in the States — see especially the Peat Monster.

Delaware Phoenix absinthe: ?The small-batch booze movement isn’t limited to whiskey and gin, as evidenced by this excellent absinthe distillery from upstate New York. (That said, Delaware Phoenix released its first-ever line of whiskeys this week.)

Del Maguey Mezcal: The makers of the aforesaid chicken-breast mezcal. (They make plenty of mezcals that are more accessible, too, but you know my rule: If someone makes chicken-breast mezcal, I must drink chicken-breast mezcal.)

HUM Liqueur: ?There aren’t many bartenders with their own booze brand, but Chicago’s Adam Segar is one of the people behind this interesting, one-of-a-kind, rum-based spirit.

Whistle Pig rye: ?If you haven’t hit brown-booze fatigue limit, this tiny brand from Vermont — and made by a former Maker’s Mark distiller — is the current cause célèbre of the whiskey community.

VI. We will accept sellouts as a natural part of the indie ecosystem.
Oh how I hate it when the stuff I love becomes popular! That’s an impression of me anytime something I love becomes popular. It is every indie nerd’s worst nightmare.

For instance: the Shins, a very talented and well respected indie-rock band whom I told everyone about when I first heard them. But have you heard that Shins song in that McDonald’s commercial? It’s horrifying. I mean, good for the Shins, but all of sudden my nerdy relationship with the Shins is compromised because I know for a fact that suit-wearing McDonald’s executives have now also heard the Shins and approved of using their music to sell Chicken McNuggets.

(The upside of course is that there are always tons of new things — bands included — to get nerdy about. Which is sort of the best part.)

As smaller distillers rise in popularity, so do the chances that they’ll either be bought by larger producers &mdash even the venerable Hudson Valley brand (made by Tuthilltown Spirits) was bought by large Scottish company William Grant & Sons — or be forced to cater to more mainstream tastes. Arne Hillesland, distiller (and one of three employees) at Distillery 209, spoke to me about the reality of catering to more dominant tastes: “I’m going for that 21st century palate,” he said, meaning that Americans like sweetness and if he wants to sell his gin on any sort of scale, his recipe must cater to that. In other words, there’s not a lot of money to be made if you’re just trying to jam chicken-breast mezcal down people’s throats.

It’s dicey, though, because ultimately we want small distilleries to become popular enough to shift the mainstream taste, if for nothing else so that I can get a decent cocktail when I visit my parents in Oklahoma City. The good news is that at the moment that’s what’s happening: “Microdistilleries have raised the benchmark,” Wilde told me at Bourbon & Branch. “Sure, some are terrible, but for the most part, all these new spirits just mean that we have greater access to better ingredients.”

Now we all need to make sure we don’t fuck that up.

Matthew Latkiewicz writes about drinking and other subjects at You Will Not Believe. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s, Wired, Time.com, Boing Boing, and Gastronomica. Follow him on Twitter.

Earlier: Sloshed: How to Drink in Public, the Right Way

Read more posts by Matthew Latkiewicz

Filed Under: sloshed, booze news, booze you can use

• 0 Comments

That ain’t coffee in that mug.

I recently decided to buy a flask. The idea was to get something nice, something I could eventually pass on to my son, along with the art of shaving and advice on how to throw a punch without mussing your hair. Flasks recall a bygone era of unsanctioned drinking — they came of age during Prohibition, when a man in want of a drink needed to carry his own booze. Now, of course, people can drink plenty of places. But you still can’t drink everywhere, which is why there’s satisfaction to be found in not-exactly-legal public drinking.

I don’t mean “public” like outdoor bars, or restaurants with patios. I’m talking about parks, beaches, drive-in movie theaters, sidewalks: wherever drinking isn’t really allowed. There is no federal law about this, so it is up to the states to decide whether it’s cool or not, and most states agree: It is not really cool. But flasks exist, legally, because people like sneaking booze, just as head shops and Phish concerts exist because people like pot.

Actual rules regarding when and where somebody can drink vary greatly. It really breaks down like this: Places where it’s legal to drink out in public, places where it’s illegal, and places where people tend to just look the other way.

Print out a copy and keep it in your wallet for handy reference.Illustration: Jen Cotton

Places Where It’s Totally Legal
Only seven states in the U.S. allow open containers in public — Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and Pennsylvania — which really just means they don’t actively ban it. Instead, they pass the buck onto their municipalities to decide whether and how their citizens might imbibe publicly. Butte, Montana, for instance, is the one town in the country that (awesomely) allows people to drink anything they want, anywhere they want. Of course, New Orleans is probably the most well-known example of this kind of free-drinkin’ mentality, though even the Big Easy has some stipulations about what and where you can drink.

It sounds great, but there is something manufactured about the experience — at least in New Orleans, Las Vegas, and Savannah, all places where I have drunk from plastic containers on the street. Rather than “drinking in public,” this type of imbibing feels more like drinking in a giant outdoor bar, except with more unsolicited boobs (pro) and shittier drinks (con).

The ideal drink: Milk Punch (in New Orleans, before noon); Hurricanes, if you must (after noon); margaritas everywhere else.

Places Where It’s Illegal
Now we’re getting into it. This is where you’ll find flasks and their less elegant, more dangerous relative, the water bottle filled with vodka. My own flask epiphany came when I realized that along with convenience-store candy, I could also sneak whiskey into my local Cinemark movie theater. You know what would make Iron Man 2 even better? I thought to myself, Some Jim Beam. But I was wrong. Nothing could make Iron Man 2 any better.

Flasks are cool and they’re easy to conceal, but anyone who has ever drunk from one knows they’re a dead giveaway when it comes to actually drinking. Everyone recognizes that characteristic “tilt your head back and take a nip” motion required for sipping. A flask just showcases that you are hiding alcohol; it’s like trying sneak bullets somewhere by hiding them inside a gun.

The water bottle filled with clear liquor is much, much sneakier. Any high schooler will tell you that vodka works well; gin isn’t bad if you can mix it with something. But there is a happy medium to be found between this method and the flask: all that white whiskey that’s been popping up. It still looks like water, but it doesn’t taste like drinking warm rubbing alcohol.

The ideal drink: Flask: The best bourbon you can afford. Water bottle: Beefeater gin (if you have a mixer), or something like Kings County Corn Whiskey (if you don’t).

Places Where It’s Cool As Long As You’re Cool
Between the two poles of totally legal public drinking and totally illegal public drinking lies the sweet spot: places where it’s technically not allowed, but where nobody really cares.

The beer-in-a-brown-paper-bag best symbolizes this compromise between the law (no open containers) and the reality (a lot of public drinking isn’t worth busting). I remind you of Major Bunny Colvin’s great soliloquy from The Wire about this: The paper bag is “a great moment of civic compromise. That small, wrinkled-ass paper bag allowed the corner boys to have their drink in peace. And it gave us permission to do police work.” Of course, the compromise hinges on the integrity of the public drinker not to do anything that would require police work — acting belligerent, peeing against a building, unscrewing the heads on parking meters.

I recently sat outside in a public park near my house in Massachusetts with a 22-ounce beer from Stone Brewing in a brown paper bag. I wanted to be outside as the sun was going down. Some kids chased each other around blankets put out by their parents; a few college kids walked through and settled under a tree. Frisbees drifted by.

The ideal drink: The new tallboys from Sixpoint, if you can find them, or Miller High Life if you can’t. If you can swing a thermos, gin and tonics wouldn’t be a bad idea.

In places like New Orleans, there is no pact with the people around you. You are allowed to drink, so your pact is with the law. But out in the world away from Bourbon Street — whether that’s a movie theater, or the beach, or a park — the beauty of public drinking lies in the pact you must make with the people around you. You won’t ruin things by losing your cool, and they won’t rat you out. By looking the other way, they’re acknowledging that having a drink in the park on a hot, late-summer night is a pretty great thing to do.

Matthew Latkiewicz writes about drinking and other subjects at You Will Not Believe. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s, Wired, Time.com, Boing Boing, and Gastronomica. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more posts by Matthew Latkiewicz

Filed Under: sloshed, the great outdoors

• 0 Comments