My recent post on
low cost Cognac Martell VS got me thinking about all the various bottles
I get through that really leave very little impression – the ones that, when I
look over my notes or the various things I’ve written over the course of time,
had left me struggling even to pad out a paragraph or two. With the Martell I
somehow managed to turn a dearth of thoughts and impressions into a post that
could be said to have had a point but, it wouldn’t be fair to you (or to me),
if I had to keep doing that. But the mediocre spirits deserve a mention too,
don’t they? Of course they do (even if it’s just to let you know there are
better ways to spend your money), so this week, let’s look back over the last
12 months or so and give a cursory nod to some of the bottles that were neither
good nor particularly bad, the ones that the term meh was invented for, and that may have escaped a mention elsewhere.
Perhaps we can make it an annual thing – like the annual Spirits of the Year post that I
started last year and will continue shortly...
Let’s split it into
categories.
Vodka
Stolichnaya Gold – 40% ABV, 70cl for £21.65
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I had high hopes for
this, given my admiration for the other two unflavoured Stolis (blue (which
was a winner of one of the coveted Spirits
of the Year awards last year) and red), but an immediate comparison with
the remains of my red led to crushing disappointment. Why would anyone knowing
what I know now, deliberately stump up that extra £5-10 for an inferior product
such as this? Everything that is enjoyable about the flavour of its siblings is
absent – replaced with the pharmaceutical taste you get if you accidentally
chomp on a pill. It just makes me feel sad. I mean, it probably is still better
than a bunch of other vodkas – it does contain 40 ABVs at least, which gives it
the advantage over supermarket fare but… come
on. Who thought this was a good idea?
Gin
Tesco London Dry Gin – 37.5% ABV, 70cl
for £12
Very sweet, but
uninteresting. I’m yawning just thinking about writing anything about this one.
Go on, let’s have a look at what we’ve got:
Non-descript bottle:
check.
Obscenely low ABV:
check.
I just don’t see the
point in it.
Tanqueray – 43.1% ABV, £15 for 70 cl
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This one was bought
for Mrs Cake’s Christmas present as a means of supporting her predilection for
g&t. £15 in Somerfield it was, that’s quite a bargain. It’s a good strength
(that’s almost interesting enough to warrant it’s own post), though on the
airline we flew with to Canada, they had a 47.3% variety (that would have been
more interesting).
In terms of
presentation, you’ve got a slightly off green bottle with a red faux-wax seal
and utilitarian white label. It would probably make a good, sturdy bludgeon.
And that’s where I
run out of things to say. How hard is it to write about gin? I suppose I’ll
look up some gin blogs in a bit and find out. Nevertheless, Tanqueray is good
enough to drink on it’s own, though obviously no one does. It’s probably even a
waste to put it with tonic. But is it interesting enough for me to get a whole
post out of it? No.
Rum
Tesco West Indian Dark Rum- 37.5% ABV, £12.50
for 70cl
Eee… I got nothing.
Blah, blah, blah, whatever. I remember buying this one for taking on a camping
trip. I knew I was going to be drinking out of plastic cups, so I didn’t want
to get anything that would make me regret that. Yes, it’s suitable for drinking
out of a plastic cup in a camper van in a field behind a Derbyshire pub. From
there it became acceptable hip flask fare. Mrs Cake polished it all off as a
matter of fact at the Sounds From the
Other City festival when I bought her a cider she didn’t like.
Mixer fodder.
The Kraken – 40% ABV, £19.50 for 70 cl
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Tesco actually sent
me a voucher for this one, which I coupled with one of those £3 off a £40 shop vouchers to make a
monstrous saving of £6.50. Yes!
Sadly, I’m just not
into it. Mrs Cake seems to be very fond of it though. She came in one night
telling me she’d been to a bar called Turtle
Bay where they do rum
platters and that she’d had one called The
Kraken that she loved.
We’ve got a bottle of that, I said. You
can have it if you like.
I was disappointed
on first impression. It is essentially too sweet for my personal taste and the
spicyness is just the wrong side of pleasant. I don’t know if this is
representative of spiced rum in general, but it isn’t currently something I get
the point of. The information on the bottle suggests it is blended with caramel
also, so not exactly a rum for the spirit aficionado.
In spite of that, I’m
pleased to be able to say I’ve turned Mrs Cake into a hard liquor drinker. When
she goes out with friends these days, she always insists on not having a mixer.
Her friends think she’s wild. I say what’s the point in drinking hard liquor if
you can’t taste it? Apart from getting hammered.
Tequila
Jose Cuervo Tradicional – 38%, 50cl for
£19.99
Tired of the lack of
tequila options available in my local supermarket, I was thrilled to find that
Tesco had started stocking a 100% agave variety of Jose Cuervo – Jose Cuervo
Tradicional. It’s £19.99 for 50cl and bottled at 38% (mine was at least – the
internet suggested it’s 40% but I don’t know how that can be). It’s a reposado rather than a blanco so in spite of the disappointing
ABV, I consider it to be pretty good value.
The bottle is tall
and clear with a classy label and a cork stopper. Impressive. Each bottle also
has a number printed at the bottom of the label that tells you how many years
after 1795 it was produced. Not really sure of the point in that, but it’s a
feature.
So with friends
coming over I decided to allow myself to dip into my booze budget for this one.
We managed to polish off 4/5 of it in the one evening, which isn’t unusual for
tequila. If there’s one spirit you buy solely for caning, then tequila is it. A
lot of people might balk at paying £20 for a tequila such as this, as you’re
essentially paying more for less, but when you take that step up to 100% agave,
you don’t go back because it’s totally worth it.
In terms of actual
quality, the agave flavours are somewhat mild, which is disappointing, but if
you’re not as into tequila for sipping, as I am, this might be a positive. We
did try it with lime and salt also and we all agreed that the lime wasn’t even
necessary.
A word that seemed
to come up a lot on online reviews was “earthy”, which I’m afraid I don’t
really get on board with. I’d say it’s quite clean and fresh and I’d definitely
buy it again – though obviously that’s unlikely since I’ll be keen to try
something else – but as a go-to; do.
I’ll just finish
with a word from a Master of Malt customer review:
“NEVER gives me a
hangover.”
I don’t know why
this is considered a sign of a good spirit… is it? In my opinion, only idiots judge alcohol on whether they have a
hangover the next day because really, if you had a hangover it wasn’t what you drank, but how much of it.
Irish Cream
Country Mist – 14.5%, £5.19 for 70cl
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A cheapo Irish Cream
brand that I picked up from Morrison’s. Even cheaper in fact than the king of
budget Irish Creams, Ballycastle Premium. It is presented in a standard
bottle for this genre – squat and dark – and features a generic and
uninteresting picture of a field – presumably to represent Ireland. Nowhere on
the bottle does it state “produced exclusively for Morrison’s” or anything like
that.
So Irish Cream
brands have sorted themselves neatly into a few different types of late –
sublime (Baileys, Ballycastle Premium), pleasant (Ballycastle), weird
(Carolan’s) and wrong (Irish Country Cream). Country Mist is another one for
the “pleasant” category. It is too cheap and thin to impress, not luxurious
enough to delight, but in spite of its light body, the flavours are pleasant –
no, they don’t jump out at you, but I have to give it credit for avoiding
anything errant. Also in its favour
is that it isn’t a conspicuous off-cream colour.
It works in coffee, it works on ice. It isn’t up to the standard of either of
the Aldi brands, but it is good enough.
Vermouth
Rosso Vermouth- 14.7%, £5.50 for 1 litre
Typically low rent
bottle with a Spartan label.
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Not sure why I
prefer vermouth over wine because it’s clearly not as complex or fine as a nice
wine, but it is more pleasant to drink. Perhaps it’s because it’s uncomplicated
that I like it – it’s like alcoholic fruit juice – stick some ice in it and
it’s refreshingly intoxicating.
As far as this one
is concerned, I really like the colour – having gone for a Rosso variety this time, despite being tempted by an extra dry, I
have to say I like the slightly brown tinge which, to a whisky drinker like me,
suggests a degree of ageing in oak barrels. I have absolutely no idea what the
real cause is, but in this aspect at least it meets with my approval.
Martini Rosato- 15%, £9 for I litre
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First of all, hats
of to Tesco for honouring an unapplied historical discount on this one. Your
accounts may be unreliable, but your customer service has so far been decent in
my experience.
Martini Rosato is
described as a modern age, aromatic
spiced vermouth, blended from red and white wines and featuring Madagascan
cloves and Sri-Lankan cinnamon quills among the botanicals it is infused with.
I have to say, I was
a little disappointed, and I’m going to class it as fairly standard.
I’ll leave that here
for now, then. I know it doesn’t seem like all that much but, to be fair, a
number of other uninteresting spirits will appear in posts I’m planning for the
new year, so I don’t want to spoil the surprise as far as any of those are
concerned. You can expect another roundup this time next year, in which some of
those will feature. More importantly, you can find out what the recipients of
my prestigious Spirits of the Year 2014 were
next week. Until then, enjoy your Christmas. I hope you get plenty of chance to
be day drunk and that you receive plenty of interesting
bottles as gifts. Me too.
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