Weird Booze

In typical HuffPost fashion, the headline of this piece is, I’m pretty sure, wrong: Where they said “worst,” I think they must have meant “weird.” Mind you, some of these flavors might be truly awful — personally, I can’t imagine peanut butter as a flavor in vodka, jelly or no — but the article doesn’t even claim they taste bad; only that they seem odd to the author. Well, most of them seem odd to me, too (actually, the whole concept of flavored vodka seems odd to me, but that’s a whole different rant), but many — bubble gum, cake, fluffed marshmallow, cotton candy, etc. — are simply “cute” variations on sweet and/or creamy. Several of them, though, I find intriguing:

• I came across a bottle of Bakon bacon-flavored vodka in the liquor store, and I just couldn’t resist buying it. I know the whole business of bacon obsession is kind of “so last month,” but I’m nothing if not a trailing-edge foodie.
• The smoked salmon vodka seems like it’d be ideal for a variety of takes on the Bloody Mary (and I promise I thought that even before I noticed it says so right on the label.

• I have so got to find a bottle of the Green Geisha wasabi-flavored vodka! The cocktail is already coming together in my head: Chilled wasabi vodka with a piece of toro sashimi as an edible garnish, with a clump of fish roe (or, perhaps, faux fish roe made from spherified whisky) and a drop of soy sauce (in lieu of bitters) artfully swirled into the drink. Yummmm….

Seriously, way too many people automatically equate weird with worst; in fact, weird is, I confidently insist, good!