(12-20-2022 12:41 AM)natibeast2.0 Wrote: Want bad hang over and destroy your body at same time drink any of the above. Want a nice easy drink with little hangover the next day. Stick to Vodka/Tequila even if it’s not the cool thing at the moment.
I do enjoy a whiskey or bourbon but reserve it to strictly holidays.
Anywho, this isn’t a thread for me so carry on as it’s been the craze in the area for 15ish years now.
Alcohol fads are kind of interesting...
Read a fascinating piece on how Jägermeister got popular. This kid, who grew up in a family of marketers and distributors was told that he needed to find his own product to make his own; the family business would back him up, but he needed to find something of his own to do. So he was jonesing around in Cleveland, looking for something and he went to a neighborhood bar where these little old men were drinking this syrupy drink in the middle of the afternoon. The bartender told him it was a German alcohol called "Jägermeister" but that nobody but little old men drank it. It was cheap, it was foreign...
So this kid gets the idea to market it to college students. His thought: "You drank beer in high school, here's this 'exotic' drink you can get now that you're all grown up." So he markets it on campuses and it blows up; this little-known brand that maybe your grand-father or great uncle drank...now it's "yours." The product went nuts for five-or-six years.
But the kid...he's not a "kid" anymore...sees a problem. Your "College Days" really only go so far, and now his demographic is aging out. So he starts looking around for another product that is cheap, plentiful, and can be the "next link" in the "maturity" chain. He looks at Gin, but gin is a little too "mature." He looks at Whiskey, but Whisky drinkers are really a well-defined sub-culture and they get bent out of shape when their product starts getting too widely marketed. Plus Whisky is expensive. He settles on Vodka: it's cheap and plentiful, it's "foreign," and people have been using it as an ingredient in all sorts of drinks for years. But drinking straight Vodka...well, that's something "only Russians" do. So he starts marketing Vodka to the now 30-somethings: "You drank beer in high school with your buds, you drank Jägermeister when you were in college, but NOW that you're really grown-up and really mature, you don't "drink" those things...you drink Vodka." And suddenly Vodka is the thing, and cheap Vodka is suddenly expensive and there's all these fancy labels and cool looking bottles.
The thing is that you're paying for the label and the bottle. The "high end," "thrice-distilled" Vodka you pay $60/bottle for is basically THE SAME Vodka you get out of the plastic bottle. It's really all about the perception of the thing.
Add to that the American...uh...cultural mob-mentality: When Covid first blossomed on the scene, you literally had people dumping crates of Corona Beer because of the name: Corona. (There's another fad...) When Russia invaded the Ukraine this spring, you had people smashing crates of Vodka...even though most Vodka is either domestically produced or Scandinavian in origin. The American consumer is...well...dumb.
So you have Dan Ackroyd put his name on a bottle of Tequila and people will get it...because. Or you put it in a funky bottle shaped like a skull...
And don't get me wrong: I like Tequila. Good Tequila is a thing of beauty. Same with Scotch. But I think it's really about finding something YOU like, not something that is "the fad." Because "the fad" isn't about the consumer, it's about the marketer.
Bourbon is kind of "a thing" right now. I know in my part of PA, where "Microbreweries" used to be the rage, now all sorts of "Micro-distilleries" are opening.
Find what you like and what fits your budget...and enjoy!