Martini Groove

Unless you're part of some totalitarian regime in Corporate America that requires your full-time attendance in order to hold up the walls of your cubicle, then you shouldn't be reading this. Go out, do family stuff, or do some very cool alone stuff, just get off my blog. I'm hoping all the readers (consisting of my mother and myself), have a great Christmas and a fantastic New Year. Here comes the rest of our lives. See you in 2008, the best year ever.

Did you ever want to just have a glass of wine but ended up drinking the whole bottle? Hey, it happens to the best of us. Now, you can stop lying to yourself and just have a glass of wine that holds a full bottle inside of it. No more feeling bad because you had 7 glasses of wine or opening a nice bottle and having to share it. Just pour yourself a single glass and you're good to go! This glass is probably best used for some sort of decoration (FABulous!) but if you want to get it and take a pic of yourself drinking from it, send it in! You'll get one of the new Martini Groove shirts! Full Bottle Wine Glass - US$24.95 via CoolBuzz

I've been asked to join one of the new food networks that seems to be doing a pretty good job. Foodbuzz.com has asked me to be one of their featured blogs. Anyone have an opinion on this? All comments will be screened and will not show up on this post, so feel free to leave whatever you want. Alternatively, you can e-mail me rick@martinigroove.com

Usually Las Vegas steals classy things from elsewhere (Paris, Venice, Monte Carlo, Hooters) then throws a few slots in and an expensive shop and calls it their own. Not this time. The need for Right Gin came about from a drunken evening in Vegas and the search for the recipe crossed the globe. What did they settle on? They included soft water from Lake Bolmen in Sweden, corn grain that is distilled five times, Juniper from Austria, Coriander Leaf from India, Cardamom from Russia. Add in lemon and Bergamont from Sicily, Lime and Bitter Orange from the West Indies, Black Pepper from Borneo, and you have a cosmopolitan gin with a huge flavor profile. Bottled and shipped in Sweden, then brought to the US for the ultimate gin lover. If you're in New York, Boston, or Chicago, you can get the stuff starting this month at US$35 a bottle. Right Gin

Time is running out and the last thing you want to do is actually think about what you should get for that office co-worker that just got you a fruit basket. Now you have to get him something because you weren't planning on him actually getting you something. The Holiday rules are very complicated. So, you can join The-March-Of-The-Totally-Stumped to Hickory Farms or you can throw one of these wines in a nice gift bag and show up with some style. I went to Super Sommelier Courtney Cochran and gave her a mission: Give me a list of wines that are actually widely available, are inexpensive, but won't make you look like a cheapskate if you give someone one or show up at a party with it. She came back with a great list. Read on True Believer: Dr. Loosen Dr. L Riesling , Germany - $11.99 A quality Riesling that is more on the sweet side and great for spicy foods. Goats Do Roam White , South Africa - $10.00 Fruity fun that gives you tastes of peach, apricot, and honey SoloRo...

Our friends over at Luxist are on top of things this week as they give us the scoop on the latest vodka in a crazy bottle: U'Luvka. U'Luvka is a Polish vodka made from barley, wheat, and rye and distilled only 3 times. Nothing is said on its filtration but the water comes from a deep, protected well somewhere in Poland. The recipe itself dates back to the 1500's, which is pretty much when people were only taking one bath a year. The signature bottle of U'luvka retails for approximately $59.95 and the Friendship, Love and Pleasure presentation with two glasses is priced at $84.95. U'Luvka Vodka via Luxist

Decanter magazine brought together a few Masters of Wine, some sommeliers, and a few other great palates to see which bottled water really tastes best. Just for kicks they threw in some tap water to see where it would rank among the high-end waters. The result? Tap water made from the Thames river through a public water processing plant ranked 3rd out of 25 of the world's most expensive waters. Many of the brands we haven't heard of in the US, but the river water beat out brands we do know by a big margin, including Evian, Bling H20, and Fiji. One of the waters it beat, 420 Volcanic, costs US$43 for about a quart of New Zealand's finest bottled water. Only two bottled waters beat the tap water and only by a slim margin. Bottom line? Bottled water just isn't worth it. Unless you live in a highly sulfuric region or have to draw water from a mud puddle, there's no sense in paying outrageous prices for something that you can get for free, and is often better for y...

Tini Bigs in Seattle pushes out over 27 martini's a day and what are the holidays without some sort of red or green concoction that has the word "Santa" or "X-mas" in it? The Santa Tini is as spicy as your ex-wife's "relations" with Santa that year at the neighborhood Christmas party. Loaded with pepper infused vodka and topped off with a chili, you're bound to breathe a bit of fire. Red Hot Santa Tini Rim a martini glass with cocoa powder with a pinch of cayenne pepper added. Shake together 2 oz. Mazama vodka from Bend Distillery in Bend, Ore. and 2 oz. Godiva chocolate liqueur and pour into glass. Top with 1 1/2 oz. sweetened whipping cream. Garnish the cream with a small Thai chili pepper. This one's sure to impress and remove that layer of tissue on your tongue you've been thinking about getting redone.

Kevin at The Scotch Blog launched "The 12 Days of Scotchmas." Scotch gifts and deals for the next 12 Days! www.thescotchblog.com

The last few weeks have been a plethora of trying liqueurs and Absinthe. Oh Lord, so much Absinthe. The bottle of Pama is very pretty and tall and has a pomegranate tree on it. It seems to say "You can drink me on the rocks or mixed in to your favorite drink" just by its very look. It also says that with text right on the bottle. The taste This is where it falls apart. To wit: Pama vs. Cough Syrup I tried Pama first just on the rocks. It reminded me of cherry flavored cough syrup, which tastes nothing like cherries, but tastes like cherry flavored stuff. Pama doesn't even taste like pomegranate flavored cough syrup, but some sort of imitation cherry flavored cough syrup. As you might be able to tell. I didn't like the stuff very much. I went in search of a bar that was serving the stuff. I found a few that used to serve it, but had to stop because they felt pretty much the same way about it that I did. I finally found a bar that was not only serving the stuff...

If you're lucky enough to live in one of the By Your Friend a Drink.com markets, then you're lucky enough to get a free drink this holiday season. The company allows you to purchase a type of gift certificate so that you can purchase a round for your buddies, but they do it via gift cards and even text message validation codes. It's smarter to use their cards because if you buy a US$25 gift card, they throw in another US$5 for you to get your drink on. This holiday, if you request a drink card (it comes free and has US$10 on it) then buy a card for a friend, they'll match the gift card you buy up to US$15. That's a whole lotta free. Buy your friend a drink (.com)

Here's a bunch of stuff you can get me for Christmas, but if it works for someone else too, well, I guess that's okay. Personalized Whiskey I know what you're thinking: "If only there was some way I could get a 1993 bottle of whiskey personalized for the one I love so much." Tullibardine is doing just that for around US$60. You can get a sexy, albeit small, message put on your own whiskey bottle. A great way of telling him that you completely destroyed his collection of Tron memorabilia. Tullibardine Personalized Whiskey Bottle - US$60 Leather Wine Case Why the hell would you spend US$255 on that 1983 Cain V for someone then put it in a $1.99 bag from Wal-Mart and give it to them? You might as well as just throw it at them as you drive by their house. What you need is a super-sexy wine presentation case. It's leather, it's hip, it's now. Plus it won't make you look like your grandmother who writes you an eleven dollar check every year for your b...

Saaga 1763 is the latest to launch in a crowded market of vodka's that are the latest to launch. The good thing is, they know exactly just how crowded the market is and what an uphill battle they have ahead of them. Rather than a super slick advertising campaign throwing millions at TV and print, they've decided to go straight to the bartenders and mixologists of the world and get them to fall in love with the stuff. And what's not to love? The rye vodka comes from heirloom estate rye, then is selected using Spectral Fluorescence Signature Technology, a fancy name for using light bulbs to sort the rye. Once this is done, they use a very slow, very precise distillation process that makes it so no filtration is required because the purity is already where they want it to be. The vodka is going to sell for between US$30 and $50, which is quite the range. I see it online for around US$40. It's currently available in Texas, New York, Florida, and California with hopes to...

42 Below's meteoric rise from the plucky vodka-that-could made in a country that's only other contributions to the world market were Lord of the Rings, Nuclear Free Zones, and Flight of the Conchords is starting to take off with their new found marketing dollars. They've launched a slew of viral videos that actually have the chance of being viral because they're worth watching. My favorite is "Canada" (below) but don't miss out on Good Thought , Bestest , Wallaby , Feijoa (Non-sequitur humor is the best), Bees , and Cows (a message about not abusing cows in any way...or rabbits). 42 Below Vodka