Sunday, June 23, 2013

Cachaça & Quinquina -- 188 lbs (-41) [36X]



Enough experimentation. At this point, I've tried enough new distilled spirits from "The Drunken Botanist" to have strengthened my resolve for scotch and bourbon. It'll just be me and whisky for awhile, after I finish off the Boca Loco Cachaça and Bonal Gentiane-Quina (the latter isn't actually distilled, but "fortified").

Boca Loco Cachaça
I was a rum drinker long before whisky, and may do a nostalgic tour someday, but I wanted to try something slightly different with Boca Loco. Cachaça is distilled from pure sugercane juice (as opposed to molasses like rum), and is the main ingredient in a Caipirinha, a Brazilian cocktail a friend of mine is quite fond of (not unlike a Mojito--the ingredients are eerily similar). Boca Loco is much sweeter than rum, perhaps a bit too much to drink neat, but it's decent in coffee, and obviously good with lime juice. My main complaint about Boca Loco is the extra tall bottle--too tall to fit in my liquor cabinet w/ a pour spout, so I have to keep putting the spout on and taking it off, or risk spillage. Perhaps there is a shorter pourer out there, but I never had a need for one before.

Bonal Gentiane-Quina
The first mixed drink ever served to me in a pitcher was a Manhattan, so it holds a special place in my heart. And yet, despite experimenting with a variety of whiskies and vermouths, I've never had a Manhattan that I truly loved. Call it one of several unfulfilled quests in my life--perhaps unfulfillable now that I am hooked on whisky neat. The problem for me is that Manhattans, even with a dry vermouth, are just too sweet. So when I read about Bonal Gentiane-Quina, quinquina being a bitter cousin of vermouth, I had to give it a try. Well, straight up, it tastes like fermented Chinese orange chicken sauce with a lot of peel--almost enjoyable but ultimately disgusting. It was somehow sweeter than a sweet vermouth and dry at the same time. The resulting Manhattan, alas, was still too sweet, but pretty good. I may experiment mixing Bonal Gentiane-Quina with other whiskies just to finish the bottle, or I might just pour it down the drain--we'll see.

[+] What I Consumed Since Last Post ...
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