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xiphiasAfter the "Creating the Right Cocktail Menu" panel, Lis went to a "Designing Smarter Bars" panel, which interested her from a user interface design perspective (among the takeaway messages she got: people fuck up architecture in pretty much every way that people fuck up computer programs, and for most of the same reasons -- and you don't have to get to a very high level of abstraction before the solutions start looking real similar, too). I didn't go to a panel, instead electing to go to a tasting that Plymouth Gin was holding. See, they're bringing a new product in the the United States in the next couple months: Plymouth Sloe Gin.
I'm cribbing this description from SOMEONE else at Tales, and I can't remember whom. It could have been one of the presenters at the tasting . . . "In the United States, sloe gin is a bottle you only find in dive bars -- and it's usually the scariest thing there. It's covered in dust somewhere in the back, and it tastes entirely artificial and like cough medicine only worse."
One step up from that, but still unbearably vile, is the stuff that the presenter's grandmother makes. She takes the cheapest gin in plastic gallon bottles that she can get from the supermarket, soaks sloe berries in it, and adds tons of sugar.
Then there's the stuff we had at the tasting.
I mentioned, on this blog sometime, what it was like when I first had the marasca sour cherries in syrup that Luxardo makes, didn't I? You know, the REAL Maraschino cherries?
It was the same experience, only more so. "Oh. NOW I see what the entirely artificial gross thing was attempting to be like, and entirely failing to do."
Imagine sloe gin. Except good.
Yeah, you can't do it, can you? I suspect that even you Brits will have trouble with this one, since most of you probably have the same kind of sloe gin that the presenter's grandmother makes.
For you, just know that the stuff in the States is even worse than that.
. . . .and that I kind of like it anyway. . . .
I'm cribbing this description from SOMEONE else at Tales, and I can't remember whom. It could have been one of the presenters at the tasting . . . "In the United States, sloe gin is a bottle you only find in dive bars -- and it's usually the scariest thing there. It's covered in dust somewhere in the back, and it tastes entirely artificial and like cough medicine only worse."
One step up from that, but still unbearably vile, is the stuff that the presenter's grandmother makes. She takes the cheapest gin in plastic gallon bottles that she can get from the supermarket, soaks sloe berries in it, and adds tons of sugar.
Then there's the stuff we had at the tasting.
I mentioned, on this blog sometime, what it was like when I first had the marasca sour cherries in syrup that Luxardo makes, didn't I? You know, the REAL Maraschino cherries?
It was the same experience, only more so. "Oh. NOW I see what the entirely artificial gross thing was attempting to be like, and entirely failing to do."
Imagine sloe gin. Except good.
Yeah, you can't do it, can you? I suspect that even you Brits will have trouble with this one, since most of you probably have the same kind of sloe gin that the presenter's grandmother makes.
For you, just know that the stuff in the States is even worse than that.
. . . .and that I kind of like it anyway. . . .
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-30 12:38 am (UTC)Is there such a thing as gin that doesn't taste like Pine Sol smells? I can never drink anything that has gin involved at all because of that.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-30 03:37 am (UTC)Sort of.
The sine qua non of gin, short for the Dutch "jenever" is "jenever", which, in English, is "juniper."
Without juniper, you don't have gin.
Juniper, of course, is an evergreen conifer. Now, there ARE differences between the smells and tastes of juniper, spruce, and pine, but, well, they're more similar than not.
But there are gins that use the juniper as only one of the flavorings, often using coriander and orange peel as other major flavorings. Rose, star anise, and grains of paradise are also ones that are used.
So there are gins which have other flavors BESIDES the juniper -- but gin definitionally has juniper as a major flavor component.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-30 03:39 pm (UTC)