Vodka has a special place in our generation. We embrace it to a degree that would embarress your average Slav. I don't really know why this is, it may be something to do with the fact that we are the first post-Cold War generation - for us, vodka is something that can be drunk freely without people suspecting that you are a Double Agent, collecting secrets from John Bull and sendin' them right back to the Kremlin!! Ahem, sorry, Cold War rhetoric makes me quite moist.
But even that doesn't completely explain the phenemenon, because (and I may be being controversial when I say this, but...) vodka just isn't very nice! Indeed, a hint about the nature of vodka comes from the word's etymology, it derivates from the Slavic roots 'voda', meaning water, and the suffix, '-ka', which, (more-or-less), means '-ish'. So vodka is a waterish drink, which really goes quite a way to demonstrate how plain and unimaginative it is. I mean, it does do the job, i.e. get you rat-arsed, but it doesn't deliver any nice taste along the way, and well, drinking for the taste rather than for the effect is what separates us from the animals! Those filthy, godless animals...
However, I don't mean to disparrage all vodkas, there is a great deal of niceness out there is vodkadom, BUT, that's not what everyone drinks. The most common vodka in this country is Smirnoff... which is French, so I don't get the kinda pseudo-post-Soviet-Kitsch-kinda appeal that people get from drinking it, and in any case, its shit. There is some good stuff, particularly the Polish stuff.
In any case, and this is a trick I learnt from working at the douchey Olde John O'Gaunt in Lancaster: KEEP YOUR VODKA IN THE FREEZER! It keeps it in a very viscous state, and makes it taste tres yummy, some of the water freezes into little bits of crystalised ice, but it will always stay in a liquid state (due to the alcohol content). So, my advice to you, always drink your vodka from the freezer, (if you're going to drink it at all), and you'll never want to go back to the room-temperature stuff.
PS. The housing guy didn't ring back today, (grr+eep=grreep!!!).
2 comments:
I like this blog. :)
Vodka tastes like something you'd scrub your corpse-filled car-boot out with, yet it probably appeals to me far more than any other alcoholic drink, except for ones which are blue.
I think it's the crystalline-cleariness of it. :) It must remain in the freezer!
I want to go to the vodka ice bar in London. The stools are made of ice and the vodka comes in ice goblets and it's all so freakin' icy! :D I'll probably have to wear my chinchilla fur coat when I go down there to keep nice and snug.
I totally agree with all of this post.
Post a Comment