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Grapes of Sloth
By bukkhead | August 2, 2007
PRODUCT REVIEW: ‘SMIRNOFF TWISTED V WILD GRAPE’
The Smirnoff Company, Norwalk, CT
20 oz, 3.5% ABV
Context is everything. If I say “I started drinking when I was 29,” it sounds like I am confessing to when the alcoholism began. But no, I mean I was a teetotaler until age 29. It was not for any moral issue, unless you want to get really deep into the meaning of morality. That seems a bit pointless for a review of grape-flavored malt beverage. No, for me, it was about identity. Not drinking kept me apart from everyone else. And then, without going into any details, I discovered that being apart from others was not necessarily always a good thing. So I started drinking.
But all of that means I never really developed a taste for it. I mean, I enjoy a good drunk now and again, though I’m pretty sure I’m a few orders of magnitude behind my peers in numbers of inebriated experiences. And hangovers—I can count how many I’ve had on one hand, and still have room left to hitch a ride home. But hard alcohol, even beer and wine, I don’t know that I enjoy their flavors. I’m told drinking’s not always for flavor. Pshaw. Try a Smirnoff Grape.
These flavored malt beverages are to the new millennium what wine coolers were to the 80s. I don’t know if Zima was the first of the new breed, but like Bartles & Jaymes, it was the one that got everyone else started. And since it doesn’t taste bad, and isn’t made of bear-piss, it got a bad rap. Things are not so tough as they once were, and a person can get away with drinking a Smirnoff Ice or Mike’s Hard Lemonade or one of the hundred other brands out there, as long as it’s not in a bar, no where near an old alcoholic in a beat-up fedora, and not in Chicago.
I’d had a hankering for grape soda the day I saw the bottles on Smirnoff Grape in the grocery store, and so it was a no-brainer to pick-up a six pack. Also, as I am in a long-term relationship with a beautiful woman who has seen me drop shots of whiskey like they were water, I have no worries about my reputation or image. I’m a middle aged slob. That’s my identity and I’m fine with that.
And it’s a damn fine beverage. As a newcomer to alcohol, I seem to lack some alcohol dehydrogenase, because I get drunk pretty quick (I also sober up fast). So half-way through the grape, I started to enjoy it even more. And of all the flavored malted beverages, this one had the least “beery” aftertaste. Then again, maybe that’s cause of all the sugar. Then again, maybe the sugar boosts my metabolism, and that’s why I got drunk so fast. Suffice it to say, this will be my drink of choice at house parties and picnic, in much the same way that Mike’s Lime with grenadine was my staple and crutch three summers ago.
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