The Wavis Cocktail

When the Thirsty Ass orders up a cocktail he tends to fall back on tried and true standbys. When he's feeling his normal jaunty self, these would include the G&T the V&T and the J&C. For hangovers he turns to the bloody Mary (or the ceasar when on home soil). For baptisms, brisses and masked balls, the gin martini always takes the edge off. When symptoms of scurvy begin appearing, a greyhound or a vodka cran does the trick. Going any further than this tends to produce puzzlement in the bartenders of the kind of drinking establishments he frequents. Not that this presents a problem; the Thirsty Ass is generally content as long as there is booze in his cup.

But the Ass is always open to new flavour sensations, pass him the cup and he will drink. Earlier today, at the home of the great gynalcohologist Wade Davis, the Ass was presented with an entirely new species of cocktail. This cocktail contained a powerful secret ingredient. It produced a pungent flavour, somewhere between sour, spicy, sweet and astringent.  This complex flavour lit up all areas of the tongue and triggered a massive release of serotonin in the brain. It blended harmoniously with the vodka, and seemed like a long lost cousin of the apple juice in which it was mixed. Perhaps a few of you more astute readers have deduced the secret ... or perhaps it is beyond the imagination of anyone who would bother to read the ramblings of a Donkey. Anyway, here it is: organic lemon vinegar mixed with organic apple cider vinegar.

Vinegar? ... in a cocktail? that's right, you heard it first here, straight from the Donkey's mouth. I predict fruit vinegars will slowly begin popping up in the cocktails of finer drinking establishments. It will then swell into a world-wide rage with vinegar bars popping up on every corner. Finally the trend will die out as reports surface that vinegar, contrary to common belief, causes sterility in men and cancer in rats. But until that time, be the first kid on your block to be sipping the newest in new-wave vinegar cocktails. In honour of the mad genius who created it, it will heretofore be known as The Wavis.

(The vinegar in question was a homemade variety procured from the Zhong Mei Jie Market in Taichung, just up from Xiang Shang Lu, for 400nt a bottle.)

The Wavis Cocktail
Fill a tumbler 2/3rds full with ice
Add two ounces of quality vodka
Throw in 1-2 tablespoons of organic fruit vinegar (Wade's concoction was about 9 parts apple cider vinegar and 1 part lemon vinegar, but feel free to experiment)
Fill the glass with pure organic apple juice
Stir
Enjoy 


If you're feeling nutso, throw in the contents of one ripened passion fruit for some extra explosions of flavor. If you've got a mortar and pestle, crush up the seeds a bit first. 

The Thirsty Ass: Liquor Container Design

We at the Donkey have two deep loves (aside from food of course): fine liquor and good design. Bring the two together, and witness the transmogrification of The Hungry Donkey into 'The Thirsty Ass'. In this long awaited first installment of 'The Thirsty Ass' we will take a tour of the latest and greatest in liquor packaging design.

Along with bottled water and perfume, liquor is one of the most challenging and exciting products to design packaging for. As a product, it has virtually no distinct visual qualities, it is shapeless, often colourless, and visually indistinguishable from rival products. Whereas a solid object dictates the shape of its packaging, a liquid takes on the shape of whatever container it is held in. Not only does this remove the normal constraints on the shape of the container, it also forces the container to visually define the product. Furthermore, liquor is something we consume to alter our emotional state. We drink it to temporarily transform into different people. So the container should, in some way, represent the kind of person that (we believe) liquor can help us to become. I other words, it should project an element of magic.

The first product is an amazake produced by the Morinaga Company.

Check out the restraint of the one colour printing, the happy little flowers, and the puffy white clouds. Funky, yet peaceful and unassuming. It's kind of like a mix between a Charlie Watts drum riff and a Hello Kitty dreamscape.

 

Next up we've got Yaoki Shochu. The bottle is a gorgeous piece of minimal sculpture in itself. It would make a fine urn for your ashes somewhere down the line. The labeling demonstrates traditional Japanese restraint updated in a techno-geometric composition. It makes me think of both architecture and Japanese pictographic characters. Looks like orange and white are where its at these days in Japan.

 Another minimal design, this time from Wyborowa Vodka. At first glance, this bottle seems to be overly derivative of Absolut's pioneering text on clear glass bottle. The design also co-opts the same trick used by Grey Goose of printing an image in reverse. The uniqueness of this design, is the way the text in blue, printed on the outside of the bottle, matches up with the text in grey, printed in reverse on the opposite side of the bottle. The phonetic aid of the (Z) above the name is also a nice touch.

 

Keeping with the text-only phonetic playfulness, we've got this design by ri 1, pronounced "rye one". Not knowing that it was rye whisky when I first saw the label, it took me a while to figure it out, but sometimes we donkeys need a little extra time.  A fine demonstration of the simple elegance of typography.

Last but not least, check out this optical illusion from Samurai Vodka. Corny? ... Maybe, but we donkeys are suckers for sight gags. You've also got to appreciate how a Russian company is taking vodka--the very symbol of Russia--and marketing it with a Japanese name and theme. It's a bizarre reversal of the old trick performed by the American vodka, Smirnoff, defrauding the consumer with an invented Russian name. Perhaps we're witnessing the emergence of a new species of cultural hybrid born from the forces of globalization. Let's see if MacDonald's comes out with a new stroganoff burger, then you'll know I'm on to something.

Gastromaps: Alcohol

 It is not often we relate the subject of food with innovative cartography. But thanks to the people (or person) over at Strange Maps, I've been able to compile a nice collection of bizarre geographic representations of data laid out in gastronomical proportions. In this first installment of Gastromaps, we will limit ourselves to cartographic representations related to alcohol.

Our first map details the average number of liters of red wine drunk per capita in the countries of the world in 2006.

Luxemburg wins the race with a respectable 5.91 liters while Brazil comes in last at 0.l7 liters. The Brazilians shouldn't feel too bad about this poor showing though. They will be cheered to know that they came first in per capita cocaine consumption. Various line graphs are available to illustrate this point.

Next we have a map drawn up by none other than the late great Freddy Heineken (1923-2002), of the Heineken brewing empire. Heineken believed the European Union would function more smoothly were it to be divided into a series of smaller states based along the lines of ethnic homogeneity. His logic was that a larger number of smaller states (populations 5-10 million) would be more conducive to reaching balanced consensus than a small club of uber-powerful states. Obviously this proposal is merely academic and could never be implemented, but kudos to the beer billionaire for directing his energies to such lofty and abstract pursuits. I'm sure he would have been a formidable opponent on the Risk board.

Finally, you've got to love this advertisement for Absolut Vodka, depicting a redrawn map of the United States and Mexico. The map loosely depicts the borders which existed prior to the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) in which the Mexicans were forced to cede nearly half of their territory. The Mexican ad campaign was eventually picked up by the American media prompting calls for a boycott of the Swedish liquor. Had to have bumped up sales south of the border though.

The Encyclopedia of Pasta

A couple of interesting articles from the net:

Retta Zanini de Vita, the 'pre-eminent Italian food historian', recently released "The Encyclopedia of Pasta". In the article, 'So you think you know pasta', Rachael Donadio from the New York Times, visits Zanini de Vita  to discuss her book. As with any subject, the history of pasta ends up being about much more than the object of inquiry. This history is a microcosm of the broader history of Italy. In it we find the influence of the Arabs in the middle ages, and the bitter regionalism from which that country was born and is still characterized by today.


Some interesting facts include ravioli being traced to the 11th Century Arab world as opposed to Liguria, as is claimed by the locals of that village. And no, Marco Polo did not introduce pasta to Italy. Pasta was spread by the Muslim conquerors of Sicily around 800 AD, 200 years before Polo's travels,

In the article, 'When Novelists Sober Up', Tom Shone from Intelligent Life, looks at alcoholic writers and their attempts to get off the sauce. A pretty astounding number of the 20th century's popular novelists battled the bottle with varying degrees of success. The list includes: Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Carver, Cheever, Bukowski (duh),  Hemingway, Leonard, Yates, Amis, and yes, even Stephen King. Apparently he was so sloshed when he banged out 'Cujo' that he doesn't remember writing it. Just as interesting as the article itself is the number of mistakes that Shone gets called out on in the comments forum. Check it out.