Martini Groove

Experiment on gin for 2 years and you'll probably come up with something that's perfect for removing bumper stickers from your car and fingernail polish.  However, when Desmond Payne does it, you get 12 botanicals, including a blend of teas along with extracts of grapefruit, bitter almond, orris root and Seville orange peel  You then name it Beefeater 24 after the 24 hour steeping process that is required for each batch. It's launching right now in San Francisco and New York, because those cities are pretty cool, but you'll be able to get it in Peoria fairly soon.  Want to know more?  Watch the video! Beefeater 24 - US$30

The Happy Hour Lounge is all about casual banter, good music from multiple eras, and making sure that you know how to make a cocktail.  If only one person listens to the podcast and is able to get drunk, then Happy Hour Lounge will have fulfilled their mission.  In their most recent version they rocked some Ray Charles, talked about some great music history, and mixed a White Russian.  These are a few of my favorite things.  You can check out the podcast on crappy ol' iTunes or you can listen to them over at podbean.  I don't care how you do it, but you must listen.   The Happy Hour Lounge Podcast

Just the other day I was thinking to myself, "Self!  Wouldn't it be great if we could get good and pickled without all that nasty drinking?  The effort is just getting to be too much!"  Well, not one to sit idly by while a great idea comes through my head, I went on the Internet Service and found this! Alcoholic Architecture is a bar in central London that promises to leave you "feeling slightly merry" after just 45 minutes of inhaling their specially blended gin & tonic.  No, not inhaling like your sister-in-law with a pound cake and a Hershey's bar in front of her.  Inhaling like literally breathing IN.  Though breathing out is also recommended, you may not want to as your lungs will be filled with vaporized gin and tonic.  Here's a nice part:  You get to stay in there for an hour for ~US$7.25!!  That's a cheap drink.  No, not cheap like your sister-in-law's taste in fine cutlery which compels her to buy Ginsu, but cheap like "...

So, if you look at today's top bartenders, including all of the ultra-cool ones mentioned in the latest Playboy article , they never really got in to the vodka thing, but lots of other ones did and it was somewhat integral in bringing back the cocktail craze. I think vodka was an important step to bringing us to the current renaissance of classic cocktails as well as helping us take baby steps to enjoying some of the more complex stuff that's out there right now. Vodka will always have a place at the bar and in a lot of drinks, but maybe not always as prominent as it was in the early 2000's. The Wall Street Journal points out that there's been a significant decline in the sweet cocktails of yesteryear (3 years ago) and that it's not being taken over by any one liquor but by many. Gin, amari, and others that create tastes that are far away from the Sphincter-tini's we were all getting charged $15 for (oh, and I enjoyed quite a few of them). The proof? ...

It can be safely said that drink probably isn't going to be good for you.  I mean, it's good for you in the same way that the occasional weekend in Vegas or a plate of fried chicken is good for you, but not in the same way as say, a plate of broccoli or a Bloody Mary (those are good for you, right?  Especially if you use V8 instead of tomato juice). Infusion vodka drink is 4% alcohol (That's 8 proof!) and talks about what's not in them rather than what is in them.  Notably there's no stabilizers, sweeteners, preservatives and artificial ingredients.  It comes in multiple flavors like Mango & Passion Fruit, Pomegranate & Blueberry and Vina Grape & Lime.  So yeah, they're for girls.  Awwww, they're in the UK only.  Pack your bags!  Infusion Drinks

Square One loves vodka and the folks over there know how to do it right.  If you want to impress just about anyone then grab their Cucumber infused version and you'll spend the rest of the night drinking great gimlets. The recently launched Square One Botanical is stepping up to the plate with some tasty sounding flavors as well.  It's infused with 8 botanicals including pear, rose, chamomile, lemon verbena, lavender, rosemary, coriander and citrus peel.  It's potpourri in a bottle! It doesn't say what pricing is but the other one's both sell for US$29.99, so you can probably expect that price range.  Edit:  I just heard from the Square One crew that this stuff is 90 proof and not quite gin (no Juniper) so it's a "specialty spirit."  The extra processing makes it a bit more labor intensive so they're expecting to sell this for ~US$39.99.   Square One Botanical

You see, it's a light bulb that looks like a wine glass.  And because The Martini Groove knows you're fabulous and eco-friendly, it's actually stuffed with LED's which should give you around 10 years of bulb life.  Of course, at US$120 you could buy quite a bit of light bulbs that look like, you know, light bulbs. Wine Glass Light Bulbs - US$120

I know what you're thinking:  "If only I had something that could turn this apple here in to a shot glass that will match this bong I made out of a banana." Well, think no more!  The ShotCarver will make a shot glass out of most fruits (and a few non-fruits, based on my experiments with cactus and guinea pigs) and it's as easy as carve, pour, drink!  If this sounds like an ad that the PR company wrote and asked me to post here, rest assured, it's not.  I just want them to send me a free one.  ShotCarver - US$11.99