Some Words

So I had rambled the other night about how it was possible to get a very respectable bar together for very little money per week. I told myself I’d go into this more. Mark and I went on a liquor run and hadn’t put much money out there. It had to be done, we were running through things at an even rate, and we had about two fingers left of four different things.

Actually we had more than four fingers of gin, but two of them were Beefeater, which Mark, Chaya, and I don’t want to drink. I think Mark slipped some of it into a drink for Chaya a while back, but it’s going down slow.

This brings me to the first point: Getting a solid cheap gin.

You do not need to lay down for expensive gin. You do not need Bombay. Gilbey’s and Burnett’s are fine. Mark started me on Gilbey’s and then when I was home for the holidays I discovered Burnett’s. Gilbey’s is lighter and mixes well, without any of the nasty things you think about gin because you snuck it from your parent’s liquor cabinet. Burnett’s is a bit heavier, and Mark made a pretty nice martini with it the other night. He’s been working on perfecting his martinis. The important thing about both of these is that they are 10 dollars a liter or so, depending on what liquor store you buy from. That’s less than half the big names.

Gin is the first thing to put into the bar. Sometimes it seems like it’s in about every damn drink on earth. It’s in martinis and gin and tonics, and it doesn’t get much more basic than that. With a few cheap additions it opens up a host of doors.

I think after that the next rant should be about some of those mixers, but we’ll see. For the moment I’m headed off to bed.