Alcohol, when I was young, self righteous and ignorant, held no interest for me. When, at the age of eighteen, I was finally swayed to drink, I found that I despised the taste of all alcohol. This meant that I did not drink to be social, I did not drink to relax, I did not drink to enjoy the flavor or body or aroma or anything else about the drink. I drank to get drunk and get drunk as quickly and with as little pain as possible. That meant that I found the most powerful alcohol around and just pumped it down my throat as quickly as it would go, followed by some sort of chaser. So, when I began drinking, it was hard alcohol straight.

In my early twenties, I finally began to learn to mix drinks and, more importantly, learned of mixed drinks I could actually enjoy the flavor of. Slowly, my drinking became more refined and guzzling vodka and whiskey was replaced by bloody marys, tequila sunrises and other drinks designed specifically to deal with the fact that most people don't like the taste of hard liquor.

In my mid twenties, I noticed that mixed drinks tended to dull the taste of the hard liquors, which I inexplicably was learning to enjoy. I began to mix drinks more strongly, and eventually gave up on mixing for the most part. Sure, I enjoy the occasional cocktail, especially during public social occasions, but most of the time it's straight up alcohol. Only now, I DO spend my time appreciating the flavor and aroma, the body and texture. Drinking has, after a decade's worth of work, finally become a worthy indulgence for some reason other than as a direct assault upon the brain and liver.

Reviews here are both critiques and devotionals to a variety of liquors that I have enjoyed, for one reason or another, drinking all by their lonesome. That's not to say that most of them wouldn't make excellent mixers, but here we discuss the drinks entirely on their own merit. Also, just for reference, I won't be dealing with wines or beers, either. I like drinking both, but here it's just straight, pure hard liquor.

If you have any liquor you'd like to recommend, I'd be more than happy to hear about them, and even try them, although I'm not wealthy beyond compare, so some of those 80 year aged scotches are just going to have to wait. I have no doubt that they're good, but dem's da breaks.