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Have some Madeira, m'dear

Kit-Cat Club

00:06 / 18.01.03

I've just spent a jolly pleasant couple of hours with some nice chaps and a bottle of Warre's LBV 1992 port (thank you, father, for the Christmas present...) and, though I know we've had several drink-related threads in the past, I wondered:

your high-class tipple of preference (money no object) ?

No mixers allowed...

Constitution Hill

00:37 / 18.01.03

Bear in mind it's been almost a year sicne i've touched a drop, and that the mere thought of the joys this thread will hold is making me salivate.

Blanton's Single Barrel Bourbon

I had a few glasses of this on a trip to Louisville 3 years ago, and I can still taste it. Oh my. I also visited the Maker's Mark distillery while i was there, and that remains one of the finest days imaginable.

Ganesh

00:43 / 18.01.03

Champagne - always, always, always. Champagne is the most amphetaminoid of alcoholic beverages, and a drunken night of nothing but good-quality champagne leaves one feeling bubbly, giggly, and relatively free of 'heavy' hangoverness.

Of course, sticking exclusively to decent champagne is impractical, financially. I've only managed it a handful of times, the most memorable being my 30th birthday, when we filled the bath with ice and ordered a dozen bottles of good-vintage Perrier-Jouet. I like the dry, slightly toasty taste of good champagne, and generally prefer Veuve Cliquot or Piper-Hiedsiech to 'Patsy & Edina' Bollinger. I've never quite managed to overcome my stingy-Scotsman streak sufficiently to blow the credit card on Krug or Cristal, so I've no idea if they're worth the exorbitant cost.

Goodness Gracious Meme

00:48 / 18.01.03

ooOOOOooooh. I'm nicking that 30th bday idea.

Champagne. oOOh yummy. Came to my first barbe-meet still a bit pissed from a hen night that was champagne, and good stuff, all the way... in the house, in the club...

the best bit possibly being persuading a caff to let us polish the last few botts off with our fry-ups in the morning.

That, or Dalwhinnie, or Laphoaig/insert top-notch malt here.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

00:49 / 18.01.03

The bubbles always go up my nose from champagne. In that sense, I guess it is amphetaminoid.

I'd have to go with absinthe. Not only is it mental, not only does it have that "oh-so-decadent" ambience, but it's also bright fucking green and looks like it should smoke.

Constitution Hill

00:55 / 18.01.03

No Laphroaig & No Absinthe make Consti something something

Go crazy?

Don't mind if i do!

Yabber-jabber oingy boingy dibba dabber rubalubalub Zoiink!

This is not a healthy thread for me to be reading. But, Ah! the memories. Never could do champagne though, always found i met the floor rather sooner than expected. Tres gigglesome on the way down though.

Ganesh

01:07 / 18.01.03

Heh. 'Nother favourite champagne memory: ordering a nice bottle and slouching decoratively with Bengali on the steps of the Champagne Bar of the Royal Albert Hall, watching sundry rockabilly lesbians and suited & booted skinheads mill around before the recent Morrissey two-nights spectacular.

Class...

Goodness Gracious Meme

01:10 / 18.01.03

God, yesh, that was fabbbbbb.

and absolutely untopically, but since you've brought dykery into it. I(always with the rockabilly dykes, hon) I spent lots of tonite (clubbing) admiring some very pretty people, and one absolutely stunning woman in particular.... just add champers and I'm in heaven, baby...

Ganesh

01:14 / 18.01.03

Mm. Even though (because?) I was resplendent in pseudo-'80s Jeremy Clarksonesque 'finery', the champagne bucket and malfunctioning cigarette-holder just made the moment.

Accessories, darling. It's all in the accessories.

Goodness Gracious Meme

01:15 / 18.01.03

Absolutely. You're my favourite handbag, dahling. And you go with my earrings.

Ganesh

01:16 / 18.01.03

I believe the term is 'fag-bangle'...

Goodness Gracious Meme

01:17 / 18.01.03

oh, and if i'm allowed to cheat slightly:

good champagn+good mdma powder=

...

In fact, I may have just come up with a birthday plan

Goodness Gracious Meme

01:18 / 18.01.03

really? I'll make a note of it. Actually, you might have to share premier 'fag bangle' status with my husband, but I'm sure I can fit you both in...

Goodness Gracious Meme

01:24 / 18.01.03

the champagne bucket and malfunctioning cigarette-holder just made the moment.

Yeah, think its the combination of efforless glamour and slightly tawdry 'not quite making the grade'-ness.

Ok, now i need to lie down.

gravitybitch

05:37 / 18.01.03

Ooohh. Champagne memories. Celebrating getting through the summer session of quantitative chemistry with a handful of friends who'd survived more or less intact... (it's a horrible thing to take any chemistry class as a summer session!! don't do it!!)

Everybody was supposed to bring a bottle and a date and we were going to do a taste-off, but people didn't show up at the same time; we just drank the stuff with whoever was there.

I, the other hostess, and her room-mate must have put away a full bottle apiece by the end of the evening... the next morning was hell and we couldn't remember what we'd liked the best.

gravitybitch

05:44 / 18.01.03

Current temptation to spend way more on booze than is in my budget: I second the single-malt idea!

Cosmicjamas

07:27 / 18.01.03

It just has to be Pink Champagne dahlings...and always order the most obscurely named malt you can afford. Even if you do end up picking the remains of a peat bog out of your teeth (metaphorically) for the rest of the evening.

Kit-Cat Club

09:34 / 18.01.03

That port was so good I don't even have a port hangover. It looked like blood in the glass.

I have actually had Madeira - once - my father bought a bottle for the festive season last year. It's really odd stuff - like a drier version of a rich sherry. Didn't like it very much, but perhaps it's an acquired taste.

I had an insane friend who came to visit me on her birthday and *made* me drink two bottles of champagne with her for breakfast (while we played St Etienne and danced around my room in feather boas), and then another with lunch. Think I was still wearing the feather boa when I went to bed.

sleazenation

09:39 / 18.01.03

Actually I only came to this thread *because* of the Flanders and Swann sing-along value of it, but since Kit-kat knows this already i probably don't qualify for the pint and song, which is a shame cos kit-kat does sing it with much aplomb.

as far as drink goes, it depends on mood- mine and that of the evening. I've recently been drinking more larger than my usual guiness, but will usually be tempted by an interesting ale or indeed anything else. However few things in life raise my spirits like a fresh fruit smoothie.

The Strobe

09:43 / 18.01.03

"Port is a wine I can well do without..."

Rubbish. In terms of class, nothing beats Port. It's not a good drink to start an evening on, but when someone breaks it out after dinner or it gets passed around... oh, yes. Goes down nicely, gets you drunk nicely, gives you potentially rancid hangovers (or potentially none...). Brilliant.

If not that, then yes, decent whiskey, though I know very little about it. Under no circumstances: champagne. I'll drink it at functions, but really, it's not a very pleasant drink. In fact, cheap champagne (or even better, sparkling wine, yum) is far nicer to my palate than good champagne, which tastes of... fizzy yeast. Ugh.

(At a pinch, if class is less pressing, but gurning's high on the agenda: Pernod.)

Regrettable Juvenilia

09:56 / 18.01.03

"drinking more larger" - an appropriate typo, because drinking more lager will inevitably make you larger. And larder. Although I like the idea that this is just the crazy clubspeak that the kids today are all talking - having it larger, drinking it larger...

Back on topic, God, I don't know if I *have* a favourite classy drink. My favourite drinks are about as classy as the rest of me. In terms of expensive tastes, I *do* have a weakness for certain cocktails, but I'm not sure that counts... What else? Baileys? About as classy as babycham... White Russians? Duuude...

Port is good though. Champagne is nice, but gets me pissed quicker than anything else, which is saying something.

12:53 / 18.01.03

Ganesh- Champagne is the most amphetaminoid of alcoholic beverages

Hmmmm, I think I shall have to dispute your claim and advance Tequila as the true speed of the alcohol family. I'm not sure if Tequila can really be considered to be a "high-class" drop, but it's my hard liquor of choice, and I'm sure I could get away with pretending it is.

pointless and uncalled for

14:33 / 18.01.03

I'd like some unexported tequilia. While considered to be something of a cad of a drink, when made to the finest highest Mexican standards it can taste as smooth as a cashmere codpiece. Sadly this stuff is not made readily available to gringos and tourists alike and can only be procured at source and with patience. Not nessicarily what would be considered a high-class tipple but I have no capacity to taste the actual expense of a drink, just the quality.

Other than that I'll settle for scotch that has been matured in charcoaled casks. Quite platable.

Linus Dunce

15:00 / 18.01.03

Good tequila's up there, but my all-time favourite has to be whisk(e)y too.

Pretty much any single malt, but the more smoky and/or metallic, the better.

Or Maker's Mark. Mmm. Yes, barman, make it a large one.

Bill Posters

17:50 / 18.01.03

Well considering I'm one of the resident poshos here, I fail miserably, because I simply don't do expensive drinks. Though I do recall having once drunk champaigne and once drunk a poncy wine called Nuit St George (?), really, a few cans of 'K' cider do me nicely. Not so much upper crust, as upper crusty, me.

P.S. You're all a bunch of overpaid parasites and when the Revolution comes you'll be the first up against the wall.

P.P.S. On a serious note, I am fascinated, but unconvinced, by this notion of certain drinks getting one drunk in a certain way, and also having certain types of hangovers associated with them. Can someone please explain how this is so (as opposed to placebo / folk pharmacology)?

Linus Dunce

23:18 / 18.01.03

If you can get us to stand up against the wall without falling over.

Diff'rent strokes, booze-wise:

-Bubbles, or lack of them, affect the way alcohol is absorbed into the stomach lining.

-Hops are not just there for flavour. Different types will have different effects on your head.

Then you you have your by-products and additives. And your differing sugar contents.

Tonight, I have been mostly drinking ... Staropramen.

ephemerat

04:11 / 19.01.03

Hmm... Laphroaig, Glenmorangie, Glenlivet, Talisker etc. Oh yes.

White Russians (the Dude abides). Long Island Iced Tea (novelty drinks occasionally rock). Manhattans (every ingredient blissfully alchoholic). And, alright yeah - champagne. Namely whatever the fuck kind of stuff I was drinking on the cusp of the Millenium in an altogether way too swish party for my low-rent proletarian arse - magnums of Moet and cigars the length of your thighbone (actually made up for the certain-individuals-who-shall-remain-nameless who efficiently hoovered up all the coke before I got even an approximation of a sniff of it).

Goodness Gracious Meme

04:54 / 19.01.03

Funny. Seems from the thread, of people I know, that it's the proles/petit bourgeys that get all excited about posh drinks while the properly posh just drink their 'from the supermarket' lines...

And the hangovers/drinks thing is about the chemical composition of various drinks, but too tired and drunk to look it up, Bill.

oh, and i'm tres surprised that the 'rat is an expert in this field.

Oh. and not that posh, but bombay sapphire. mm-mmmm.

Cherry Bomb

11:28 / 19.01.03

Mmmm.... I, too am nicking the bath of champers idea, though bengali's champaigne + mdma idea makes me think I need to make sure I get an invite to her birthday...

And yes I have to agree folks, champers all the way! Though I've never had Veuve Cliquot but I've always really really wanted to. Champagne = class, style, etc.

Kit-Cat, my only problem with port is it seems both so heavy and so sweet. What do you do about that?

rizla mission

14:40 / 19.01.03

You know, I fucking love port.

Which is quite odd considering my position in life..

But yes, my Dad frequently has lots of rather expensive port as the result of frequent visits to Portugal and a completely screwed money/sense radar, and, well, damn it's nice.

I actually bought and drank a bottle myself just before christmas, much to the surprise of other lager-addled students..

w1rebaby

22:51 / 19.01.03

Dunno, when I were a student (not all that long ago) port was quite a common drink, due to the fact that you could get a bottle of Tesco port for three quid and be really, really ill. Vomiting after drinking port makes it look like you've burst a blood vessel somewhere.

I've never really like champagne. I'll drink it, if someone else is pouring or for a toast, and I'll buy it as a present, but I wouldn't go out of my way. My drink of choice is red wine, and the expensive bottles of that I've bought have been disappointing.

If price was no object, I guess it would be some sort of ridiculously nice tequila. But if I'm going to spend a lot of money I'll spend it on pretty ordinary drinks in a stupidly expensive location, out of preference.

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