My Halloweens in New York have, by and large, been monumentally disappointing. Okay, maybe not monumentally, but they've certainly been disappointing. It's really no one's fault but my own. This Halloween, I had plans to get dressed up in my "1960s fez-wearing assassin" outfit and head out to Brooklyn's North Six for their costume ball and burlesque extravaganza. What I ended up doing, however, was sitting at home working around-the-clock on a freelance project that has been both the bane and boon of my existance. It is a big one, and it paid my bills and rent for years, but it is also timed to happen on every holiday I want to celebrate or every week I want to take a vacation. Now, it's become extraneous to my life, as I'm enjoying full-time permanent employment again. So this is my last round, and thus the last time the project will ruin another holiday for me. I decided to make the pain go away by spending my Halloween weekend at home, finishing off the project, and celebrating its departure from my life by getting dead drunk while working on it. Yes, getting drunk alone at home while working on online fund manager interview videos -- if that ain't middle age, I don't know what is. It did, however, give me a chance to concoct a variety of cocktails and detail them here.

The Lonesome Highway: Absolut Apeach vodka, Zygo vodka, peach schnapps, Red Bull (sorry -- I didn't measure quantities). The peach flavors take the edge off the nasty taste of Red Bull, and the Red Bull adds a crispness to the peach and keeps the entire concoction from ebing too cloying and sweet. Plus, it gives you a nice buzz and keeps you from falling asleep at 11:30 p.m. while you are synching graphs to a video interview about equity and income investment strategies. Absolute Apeach has quickly become one of my absolute (no pun -- no, never mind, pun intended) favorite liquors. The idea behind the drink, besides making investment strategy video interviews go down easy, was to conjure up the sweet taste of The South and counter the fact that I'm in New York. It was a fairly successful experiment, but not quite as successful as...

The Southern Gent: Knob Creek bourbon, Zygo vodka, a splash of peach schnapps, a splash of Absolut Apeach, top with Sprite. Having run out of Red Bull, I was relying on Zygo to give an extra kick to the drinks and keep me from falling asleep. And Knob Creek is, quite possible, my favorite bourbon. Maker's Mark has the reputation, and woodford Reserve has the cool bottle, but although both are smooth and delicious, nothing goes down as smoothly for me as Knob Creek. Where as the Lonesome Highway tastes like a non-alcoholic mixture (though its potency speaks to its true nature), the Southern Gent relies on the bourbon to give it a smooth, oaky taste that compliments the peach highlights from Zygo. In future mixtures, I might increase the amount of Absolut or schnapps, but for this run, I ran out of room in the glass and only used them as a topper. Ont he other hand, as a native Kentuckian, I like having the bourbon define the taste of the drink while the vodka and peach flavors serve as an accent. The Sprite, added to give the drink a bit of carbonated bite, was actually going flat, so it didn't add the bite I wanted the first time around. Second time around, i opened a new bottle of Sprite, and it did the trick.

After a couple of each of the above, I was feeling pretty good about my work. though my typing skills were suffering. I'd definitely have to do some proof-reading the next day. Anyway, no bout with clandestine cocktail mixing in my house would be complete without through an absinthe anice-free pseudo-absinthe into the mix.

The Southern Victorian: By this point (roughly 1:30 a.m. and half-way through my project), I was feeling pretty, well, you know. I drained a couple glasses of water to bring me back down to some semblance of reality, but after two each of the above, plus a Black and Tan with my fish and chips during dinner, I was getting pretty loopy. The last thing I needed to do was add absinthe into the mix -- which is exactly what i did with this drink. La Fee Parisian, mixed with Zygo vodka, a splash of peach schnapps, and topped with Sprite. I decided to stick with the peach theme for the night and see how it blended with the strong anise/licorice taste of La Fee absinthe. It turns out the two mix quite well. La Fee even louches into a medium pale green with the addiition of a soda like Sprite. The taste of anise dominates the drink, as one would expect. Even a dash of peach schnapps isn't going to mask that taste, though it does serve to make it more palatable to those who might find anise rather difficult to swallow. With only a touch of Sprite to top things off, and with several drink spiled on top of it, this one was quite potent. The mix of Zygo caffeinated vodka with the absinthe (La Fee is a perfectly acceptable, middle-of-the-road true absinthe) served to really drive the buzz into overdrive, but I was still able to function (my lack of accurate typing can be attributed to my usual deficiency in such skills) and forge ahead in my project. I can't say the concoction made the work any more interesting, but at least I had a contented smile on my face.

And thus concluded my Halloween weekend. All in all, I was disappointed to miss the burlesque show at North Six, but there's always next year, and at the very least, I managed to get myself fantastically drunk while, at the same time, still managing to competently synch up slides with various points in a video -- which may not be the best use of an absinthe and vodka buzz, but it's all I had to wokr with tonight.

For the record, Ellie, frustrated by her grad school classes, mixed up some Charbay Key Lime vodka and Sprite. Said vodka will be getting its own write-up later in the week, but let me just back up her claim: mix some Charbay Key Lime with Absolut Vanilla and Sprite, and you're getting drunk on liquid Key Lime Pie.

Labels: Drink