4 minute read
LIQUOR
LIQUOR Five light offerings to help you through summer
by Mike Usinger
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As much as we thought things were going to be better this summer, it’s not looking radically different from 2020. Masks remain a notterribly-comfortable fashion statement, road trips guarantee you’ll be getting the stink eye from the locals in Lund, and a day at the beach comes with the very real possibility you’ll make the nightly newscast’s COVIDiot roundup.
So what to do? That’s easy: stay at home and drink—not necessarily to excess, but more to take the edge off this endlessly repetitive period in human history.
To distract you from the sameness of the past 365 days, you might as well try to change things up. Here are reviews of five new, seasonally appropriate offerings.
ARIZONA HARD ICED TEA (LEMON FLAVOURED) Cliff’s Notes: Down in the States—which remains maddeningly off-limits—iced tea is one of the great traditions of summer. Just make sure to ask for a sugar packet next time you’re on a wraparound porch in Kentucky. Brewed with black tea, the lemon version of AriZona Hard Iced Tea comes fortified with vodka and infused with concentrated lemon juice. Grade: Like many of the nonspiked canned teas you’ll find at 7-Eleven, AriZona Hard is mildly chemically tasting, but not offputtingly so. As anyone who’s ever had an unsweetened tea in Lexington knows, there are worse things.
GROWERS SPARKLING SPRITZ PEACH ORANGE BLOSSOM CIDER Cliff’s Notes: For decades, Growers offered B.C. imbibers basic, unfussy options like Extra Dry Apple and Bartlett Pear. These fancier times have led to new rollouts like Peach Orange Blossom—a mix of cider and soda water with a waistline-friendly one gram of sugar. Grade: More like a mildly sweetened seltzer than a traditional cider, Growers Sparkling Spritz Peach Orange Blossom ultimately gets a thumbs up for its subtlety—something that wasn’t exactly considered important back in 1922. How far we’ve come.
NUDE VODKA SODA BLACK CHERRY Cliff’s Notes: Proudly emblazoned at the top of the can is the word “Unsweetened”, which warns you in advance that Nude Vodka Soda is not a drink favoured by four out five houseflies. Or Seth Brundle. The selling point—for those who actually care what they look like in a bathing suit—is no carbs, no sugar, no artificial-tasting sweeteners, and only 100 calories per can. Grade: The fruit so understated that it only reveals itself as an afterthought. Is sacrificing in-your-face flavour for a sensible drink worth it? That’s for you to decide, especially if you’re standing horror-struck, yet in denial, on the bathroom scale while wondering if it’s time to lay off the Coco Lopez coconut-cream Painkillers.
WAYNE GRETZKY NO. 99 SESSION ALE Cliff’s Notes: Funny how time changes a lot of things. To Vancouver Canucks fans of a certain vintage, Wayne Gretzky was the whiny leader of Team Arrogance—an Edmonton Oilers dynasty that used Lotusland’s endlessly hopeless franchise as a favourite punching bag in the early ’80s. Today, for reasons that include a stint in Los Angeles with the Kings, the Wayner is loved as royalty, and quite rightly so. Since 2017 he’s also carved out a mammothly respected postgame career as a liquor baron, founding Wayne Gretzky Estates in the Niagara region of Ontario. The move into beer was a natural one, because, really, no one ever drinks wine from a Stanley Cup. Grade: Gretzky wasn’t called the Great One for nothing, so it should surprise no one that No. 99 Session Ale is, well, pretty great—light as summer, but not at the expense of taste. What you get is a mildly hoppy but surprisingly complex beer with a vaguely tropical finish. In other words an indisputable winner—just like Gretzy.
COORS SLICE (LIME FLAVOURED) Cliff’s Notes: Even though it falls under the umbrella of what Pavement might call “Water, Domestic”, there’s nothing wrong with Coors if you get it cold enough. Coors Slice on the other hand…. Grade: Down in Mexico—which, like America, remains maddeningly off-limits—someone figured out long ago that everything tastes better with a bit of lime. At the top of the list are Lay’s Limón potato chips, Tajin seasoning, and Sol Chelada Limón y Sal beer. The best of those three—and this saying something—is the latter. Sol has proven it’s not that hard to make a great lime beer. Coors hasn’t. Slice tastes like someone cut a thin American lager with too much soda water, and then added created-in-a-lab lime essence. It’s not a shandy, it doesn’t taste like a lime beer, and it’s not particularly enjoyable. Man, if only Sol Chelada shipped up here. Or, you know, we could all somehow get across the bloody border. g
Wayne Gretzky’s mildly hoppy No. 99 Session Ale is almost as great as the Great One himself.
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