Pyrat XO Reserve

Rum
Purchase Price: $22
Place of Purchase: Warehouse - New York, NY
Rating: 8.4

This stuff is great--really delicious! Spicy, fruity, and floral, it tastes a bit like cake, so you may not want to pour half a bottle down your gullet in one sitting but rather save it for special times and special places, the way cake is traditionally doled out. I like this rum so much I can even overlook the fact that the name of it is an overly cutesy way of spelling "Pirate." As long as they are expending their mental faculties on putting together the rum in the exemplary fashion they obviously are, I’m not going to quibble about the mildly retarded branding. As a bonus, each bottle comes with its own medallion doo-hicky thing imprinted with a picture of Hoti, the Chinese patron saint of bartenders. This little item makes a perfect icebreaker—go ahead and present it to that hot bartender you’ve been stalking and good things are bound to follow.

Dewar's White Label

Blended Scotch
Purchase Price: $23
Place of Purchase: Warehouse - New York, NY
Rating: 7.5

This is the first brand of Scotch I ever actually purchased an entire bottle of and at that time (roughly 1989), I liked it--although at that point in my life the only scotches I had tried were stolen rations of brands like Cutty Sark, Passport and J&B out of the family liquor cabinet. It's amazing how all those high profile blends of the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties have now almost entirely faded away. Does anyone anywhere these days stroll into a bar and say "I'll have a J&B on the rocks please." I doubt it. The one exception, however, is Dewar's, which is performing as strong as ever-- in fact it's consistently ranked among the top-selling blends in the world. My only problem is that I just don't rate it very highly these days. There are so many fantastic, involving and wonderfully unique blends out there that Dewar's heavy reek of familiarity just doesn't measure up.

Grande Canadian

Canadian Whisky
Purchase Price: $12
Place of Purchase: Warehouse - New York, NY
Rating: 7.7

I grew up in a town where that most infamous of Canadians--Black Velvet--ruled the roost. I never liked it, because just what was there to like? The stuff is all harshness and truculence, just the ticket to wash away bad memories of another day at the mill. At least that's what you'd think but the fact is, it wasn't just steel workers and retired drunks who took to BV with such enthusiasm back then. In fact, there are people "of means" and in general, fairly decent taste in things, who STILL love the stuff. Well, good for them, they can have it. What's funny is that Grande Canadian is actually cheaper than Black Velvet, but it somehow manages to taste better. It's not exactly as delicious as a mouthful of Lucky Charms, but if the soaring costs of 21st-century living have left you with only enough money for a cheap bottle of Canadian Whisky, grab this instead of the "other guy." Some good things should happen from that point on. If you drink enough, of course.

Tomatin 12 Year

Single Malt
Purchase Price: $20
Place of Purchase: Unknown - Somewhere near Stockbridge, MA
Rating: 7.6

I saw Tomatin for the first time sitting on a shelf in some random liquor store out in the wilds of Western Massachusetts. With a cool black label (very rare for this category for some reason) and a price of exactly one $20 bill, I had absolutely no compunction about grabbing a bottle. Well, the verdict is that Tomatin is a strange malt, possessing an element of bicycle tire rubber that makes you think you've been stranded in the sporting goods department of Kmart again. Now, normally that would get anyone other than maybe Eddy Merckx pedaling the other way, but surprisingly enough this whisky manages to offset that bizarre note with a lot of really pleasant layers of "normal" things like malt and heather and toffee. Still, it’s pretty hard to reconcile all that with the feeling of "biting down hard on an inner tube for no reason," so approach with caution.

Danzka

Vodka
Purchase Price: $13
Place of Purchase: Warehouse - New York, NY
Rating: 8.2

You talk about Space Age packaging--seriously, the brushed aluminum bottle Danzka utilizes not only looks like it belongs on a space capsule, but it could even be a space capsule, if you, er, blew it up to 1,000 times it’s normal size using some kind of Matter Expansion Machine. The Danes have seemingly perfected the art of churning out affordable and great-tasting vodka--both Fris and this stuff are real revelations. And wonder of wonders, they both score the exact same 8.2 on the “That Drinking Feeling” scale of achievement. Sweden should take some notes because they are coming up short with their bargain-priced offerings like Svedka and Svensk, neither of which come within a ten-foot icicle of this.

Merry's

Irish Whiskey
Purchase Price: $15
Place of Purchase: Warehouse - New York, NY
Rating: 8.1

A real find. I think this was $15 at Warehouse but it's got some genuinely becoming sweetness to it—a real charmer. It reminds me of holding hands and talking about Samuel Beckett and Brendan Behan with some green-eyed, dark-haired lass with skin as pale as moonlight. Much better than spending time in a borstal, I would say!

Michter's Straight Rye

Rye
Purchase Price: $34
Place of Purchase: Warehouse - New York, NY
Rating: 7.8

Michter’s line-up of brown whiskies tend to cost and arm and a leg and maybe even part of an ear. Some things are worth losing extremities for, but this isn’t among that elite group of sacrificial worthies. In fact, this rye (and the Michter’s bourbon as well) doesn’t come anywhere near justifying its inflated price tag. There’s something anemic about it and that’s a trait one just shouldn’t be charged extra for. I find it remarkable that this drink costs twice as much as Old Overholt while delivering approximately half of what that grizzled veteran provides. A fraud? I wouldn’t go that far, but you can get far more bang for your buck elsewhere.

Plymouth

Gin
Purchase Price: $14
Place of Purchase: Warehouse - New York, NY
Rating: 8.4

Plymouth is one of the world’s best gins, period. I would even go so far to say that it is my second favorite gin, just a nose behind Tanqueray Ten. Plymouth is crisp; it’s no-frills; it takes to tonic or vermouth like Yukon Cornelius does to snow. They have changed bottles recently and the price has gone up but it’s still worth every farthing. I have included the old bottle here for nostalgia’s sake. Plymouth is one of England’s oldest brands--just a bit younger than the USA itself and the spirit itself was originally distilled by Monks on the same site for many years before that. The Pilgrims of yore departed for the New World from Plymouth on a ship you may have heard of--The Mayflower, which, as you can see, had a prominent place on the label until only very recently. So sip a bit of history, won’t you?