So says Rachel Maddow on the Jimmy Fallon show. (Okay, she says it tastes like hell until you mix it with other stuff.)
Rachel makes a Bijou cocktail for Jimmy (gin, sweet vermouth, Chartreuse, orange bitters) in this segment of the show. (It's near the end of the second break.)
Cachacagora spotted this quote from the Sydney Morning Herald's interview with Max Warner of Chivas:
Q What's the strangest drink you've ever been served?
A In South America, there are large and sleepy bees and the kids wrap cotton threads around them while they're asleep so they end up on a leash. I was served a drink that consisted of cachaca and champagne poured over honeycomb. One end of the string was tied around the honeycomb; on the other end was a live garnish. As the honeycomb slowly dissolves, the string releases and the bee flies away.
That is amazing, though I don't know how close I'd want bees to my face while drinking cocktails. I would try that at home, but all I have to work with is large spiders.
Wow- This is a great animated website, promoting a product in cool bottles with limited edition goth-style art.
It's too bad about what's in those bottles. They have the European legal maximum amount of thujone, the chemical in grand wormwood that is the supposed hallucinogenic (but isn't really unless you poison yourself with it). In the EU the limit is 35 parts per million as opposed to 10 in the USA.
The thujone is placed in 25% alcohol (most vodka is 40%, most absinthe is around 65%) then made less bitter according to the text on the website. So you get the minimum amount of flavor and the minimum amount of alcohol with the maximum amount of thujone.
Oh well, at least for once the website is pretty.
As a bonus supplement to my story in the SF Chronicle on E Clampus Vitus, here are pictures I took of the historic plaques located around SF. I didn't get a picture of the Anchor Brewing or Molloy's Tavern in Colma, but here are the other four.
That date – 1932 in our years – corresponds with the rebirth of an organization commonly called ECV, or the Clampers, whose motto, Credo Quia Absurdum, translates (though not exactly) into "I believe because it is absurd."
Here is the rest of this story I wrote in today's San Francisco Chronicle about E Camplus Vitus, a drinking historical society or a historical drinking society- they can't decide which.
