In the world of gardening, if someone just has a knack for keeping plants alive and a natural affinity for seeing if they look crispy or malnourished or whatever, people say they have a green thumb. The opposite would be a black thumb: those who have caused countless plants to wither and die through negligence, apathy, or plain bad luck.
My sister, you see, has a black thumb for cocktails. When it comes to booze, she knows good from bad, can detect nuance in different spirits, and can appreciate a good drink. But Jesus Christ, the next time she makes a good cocktail on her own will be the first time. I've given her cocktail shakers, and I've supplied her with good base ingredients, but it's just turned her into the weirdest kind of tinkerer. Now, the intensity of her misdeeds is rapidly increasing, and I might be culpable.
“You should make a blog about it,” she teased. And so I did. I’d like to think it’s to share a few laughs, but it might also be to document her crimes to the proper authorities if they happen to come asking about them.
Crime #1: Vodka + Anything = Cocktail!
You're probably one of those people who's looked at the rows of flavored vodka at any liquor store and thought, “Who buys this stuff?” My sister—That's who. She is exactly the buyer for these things. Her and my brother in law already had a tremendous affinity for flavored beer that is as far away as one can get from actually tasting like beer—think pumpkin spice ales in the winter or cherry-vanilla wheat beer in the summer. (Which can be refreshing and delicious, admittedly!) But it's flavored vodka that brings out the worst in her.
Like this stuff, which is catnip to her.
“Here,” my sister said some time back, handing me a bedazzled plastic goblet filled with mystery fluid. “Tell me what you think of this.” It was cupcake vodka mixed with limoncello and sprite. She raised a bewildered eyebrow as my face contorted. The drink was too sweet, too sour, too boozy. Remarkably, it was literally all of the too adjectives people use to describe bad drinks.
It was then that she made a pouty face. “You don't like it?” she asked. She was genuinely surprised by the bad she did. Like when Lenny accidentally kills the mouse in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. (I was just trying to play with it, George! Honest!)
But lately, thanks to the unique kind of boredom and not giving a fuck that only Covid-19 could have created, my sister has been making the kinds of two-ingredient cocktails they undoubtedly serve in hell. I thought vodka and sour mix (alone, with nothing else) was rock bottom, but she's outdone herself thanks to the La Croix flavored water phenomenon. Now, she’s making her own shitty takes on White Claw like a mad scientist. Fake flavored vodka + fake flavored water? ONE CAN DO NO WRONG!
For example: if you've ever wanted to try a fizzy, boozy combination of birthday cake icing and strawberry pomegranate, shoot my sister a text.
Crime #2: Martinis that are so, so dirty
My sister's martinis aren't just dirty. They're so dirty you can't say them out loud. So dirty you'd be uncomfortable drinking them with your mom in the room. So dirty you need you’ll need to put in new carpeting if you spill them. So dirty they need to be hosed off before they get to come in the house.
You see, she goes apeshit with the brine. I've never blown a horse before, but I feel like I have a pretty good idea of what that experience would be like after having had so much salty liquid in my mouth at one time.
Men hard at work collecting the salt needed for my sister’s next martini.
I told her this and she laughed. “Yep—You know I like them dirty!” she said. I could almost feel her crossing her arms defiantly on the other end of the phone line. Clearly, this one was a badge of pride for her.
I should mention somewhere in here that her Martinis are vodka martinis, which to me is already wrong on principle, but when it comes to this issue you can't fight city hall—a lot of people just can’t stand gin. That said, I remembered the last time she made that terrible, terrible dirty martini it was just ice, vodka, and brine, so I got her some good vermouth so she could add a fourth ingredient—honest, I did! Dolin! I wrote about how much I like it! At least then maybe her martini would have some kind of flavor beyond salt.
I'd like to think she's using it. My hopes for my sister and vermouth are probably a lot like how mothers feel when they buy toothbrushes, underwear, and deodorant for their teen sons—just making sure they have some is most of the battle. You hope to god it's all being put to good use, but you also don't really want to ask about it.
Crime #3: Whatever this is
“I call this one Lady in White,” my sister said.
She sent me a text of what looked like a fairly appetizing drink, nicely served in a vintage glass goblet. Could it be that she'd finally figured out how to put the basics of drinkmaking together? Could it be that after years of stumbling around in the dark, she'd finally seen the light?
This did indeed happen.
“Looks good,” I said. “What's in it?”
“So, it's vodka and white chocolate coffee creamer,” she replied. “With cherry juice and two cherries.” I could tell she was proud.
I mean, in a way she'd come full circle. It still sounded gross, but it was a gross in a way that was 100% true to my sister. Vodka? Check. Because how would you make a mixed drink without Vodka? Flavored shit? Check! Using coffee creamer as an actual ingredient? Checkity check!
In that moment, I realized the way my sister makes drinks is like if someone got abducted by aliens, explained to them in about thirty seconds what a cocktail was, and then watched as they tried their hand at it. Or maybe what a machine learning program would come up with in its very first attempt at making drinks before programmers began to sternly correct it.
Let us hope future alien civilizations don’t judge us based on my sister’s drink recipes.
“YOU LIKE SWEET. YOU LIKE STRONG. YOU LIKE FRUIT. I HAVE MADE PERFECT HUMAN DRINK,” the computer would hiss. That's about the point where anyone responsible would take an axe to the circuitboards, fearful that the AI is on the path to becoming some bartending Skynet that will only be stopped by sending both humans and robots back in time to kill one another in an endless loop.
But, god help me, I think I might try the Lady in White. It might not be good, but this drink making train of my sister's has gone to strange places before and I'm morbidly curious to see what the end of the line looks like.
I think I’ll have tasted worse, but it's unlikely I'll have tasted weirder. I’ll report back once I’ve reached the other side.
