Actually, what is meant by this phrase? HM, drinking culture… It is right to drink, to use alcoholic beverages wisely and beautifully, with your permission, to swell shockingly – in fact, this is the basis of the culture of drinking. Vodka – in one gulp, whiskey – sipping, tequila – with lime and salt, sambuca – burning. In principle, not everything is so difficult. But!
There are many BUTs. The point is not even to drink certain drinks correctly – there is nothing complicated in this. The situation is just in the very approach to these alcoholic beverages. Here it is necessary, first of all, to decide what gives us vodka, whiskey, gin, or a combination of them.
For some, alcohol is a means – a means to escape from problems, a means to relax, a means of finding oneself. For some, a glass of vodka is the only thing he has left in his life. Everyone’s favorite C2H5OH in the history of mankind has done things – she overthrew governments, crippled lives, gave life. But, as I already wrote somewhere, alcoholic products have had a great impact on society, because it is not only a consumer product, it is also a whole cultural path of mankind.
So, back to the culture of drinking. There is such a friend – Erkin Tuzmukhamedov, one of the leading experts in the field of alcoholic beverages in Russia, a blogger and writer. Comrade Erkin devoted his life to the study of alcoholic beverages and the culture of drinking them. There is a lot of sarcasm, mockery and biting humor in his articles, but behind all this, one might even say pathos, lies the very truth. It was he who was the first (or one of the first) to begin to interpret and analyze social inclinations towards one or another type of alcohol. It was in one of his articles that I first heard about the so-called “Idiot” cocktail, and only then felt its essence on myself.
Cocktail “Idiot”
There are legends about this cocktail, even in narrow bartending circles. It is not known for certain, but it seems that this story happened at the end of the last millennium. Well, you know, there were such serious uncles then, bald, with a purse under their arm and a gold chain as thick as my arm. So, in the legend we are talking about one of the Moscow restaurants, which to this day enjoys considerable popularity. It was in this restaurant that such an uncle filled up, leading a classic blonde on a leash.
And, it means, a well-trained sommelier begins to helpfully show this gentleman the entire bar list. Naturally, the uncle chose the most expensive drink, namely The Macallan Lalique 50 years old whiskey, the market price of which exceeds 10 thousand USD. Then everything was obscenely stupid. The blonde wished for the same, but when the sommelier brought her a drink (as expected, in a rock without ice), she was indignant and demanded to supplement it all with ice and cola. This is how the sensational Idiot cocktail appeared, which, excuse me, can rightly be called the Idiot.
Funny? And I’m not very. Working at the bar, I saw a lot of such uncles. But more on that below. Let’s first figure out what kind of mockery of noble drinks can be called an Idiot cocktail. In principle, this cocktail can be classified as quite flexible (this is not a Dry Martini or Negroni, where each ingredient is strictly discussed by the IBA). It can include any expensive drink, tinted with phosphoric acid, which embodies the Coca-Cola brand. Whether it’s a 50 year old McCallan or an 1865 Hennessy Private Reserve. Yes, even a 12 year old Chivas can compete for the right to be the main ingredient of this cocktail, or a XNUMX year old Johnny Walking (I, for example, Johnnie Walker Blue Label). In general, we take any drink, the price of which exceeds all conceivable and inconceivable boundaries, and mix them with cola. Voila, the Idiot cocktail is ready.
My thoughts on this
In pursuit of fashion and someone else’s preferences, people make themselves look like idiots. This is how it is in our modern society. Show off in front of your friends and order a bottle of Hennessy in a restaurant, and then sip it with a lemon. Or show off in front of a girl and ask the bartender to mix something like that. Such things have already become commonplace. The culture of drinking in our country is below the plinth (I would even say in the entire post-Soviet space). And in principle, this decline can be easily justified – the “Iron Curtain”, breathtaking prices for the “elite”, moral stagnation, etc. But it’s already 2013 and the days of Prohibition are over. Don’t you think it’s time to gradually get out of this dark hole?
Enough. Stop mixing decent whiskey and cola, stop snacking on Hennessy X.O. lemon, stop thinking that Bloody Mary is just vodka with tomato juice, and Black Russian is a cloudy goo from a can. We are, after all, a civilized society. Working at the bar, you look at all this from the other side and understand that your work is akin to the profession of a barmaid in a Soviet cafeteria. If you understand what I want to say, please share your thoughts on this matter, otherwise all of the above does not make sense. Drink properly, drink beautifully, drink as they drink in civilized countries! Bye (meaning goodbye, not while drinking)!