Well Hung Over

     It goes good with Coke, it’s in Pina Coladas and Mojitos and it’s the third most ordered liquor behind whiskey and vodka. Yes, whether it’s white, dark or gold drinkers love rum!

Distilled from either sugarcane or molasses Rum is what made the New World run back in the 1600’s and to some pirates it was more valuable than any treasure chest. In fact, rum rations were what most sea captains (named Morgan or not) provided to keep a crew happy. It also might have lead to many shipwrecks off the Atlantic Coast but who am I to judge?

     There probably isn’t a more magical or to some mortifying liquor than Tequila. It can make you the life of a party at one moment and hugging the toilet the next. Tequila has a taste all its own and whether you’re shooting it or having a kick-ass margarita, Tequila is no doubt one of the world’s best spirits.

     A certain portion of the population has an aversion to Tequila. Maybe it was one too many shots one night, maybe its the overpowering scent of the drink, but if “License to Drive” has taught me anything it is “To Live In Fear, Is Not To Live At All,” so people of the world let go of your Tequila-phobia and embrace it for what it is, a liquor that can open or unleash your mind like no other. Maybe that’s the mystique that Tequila carries with it, whereas just one shot of some liquors might affect you a little bit, in Tequila’s case just one shot is sometimes all you need to break on through to your wild side.

A Tequila “NO-NO”: The Frozen Margarita

Now maybe if you’re 10 years-old or some really hot coed you can let this slide, but no respectable drinker should ever been seen with one these Slurpee meets a splash of Cuervo drinks. Wow, great, a drink that leaves me bloated and with a brain freeze. Leave this drink for the tourists on vacation and the housewives at Jimmy Buffet shows.

     To me when it comes to Vodka, its all about Red Bull and Vodka. A drink that makes you feel good and keeps you partying all night. But when you’re making a Red Bull and Vodka make sure you use cheap vodka, because it’s a sin to waste high-end vodka in a mix drink. If you spend the dough on something like Stoli, Ketel One or Grey Goose then be a man and drink it straight up or keep what you mix with it to a minimum, think of James Bond and his martini. I can’t stand people who waste good vodka in their cranberry drinks or screwdrivers, when a $5 bottle could easily do the same job.

USA’s #1 Poison

With 28% of the liquor market, Vodka, is the unquestioned King of Booze in America

Where would we be without Jello shots?

Mary Bloody Mary

Bloody Mary

Perhaps the only drink that’s acceptable for a man to drink that has a vegetable hanging out of it, maybe because he’s usually drinking it before noon, the Bloody Mary is a mixture of vodka, tomato juice, Tabasco, and Worcestershire sauce that symbolizes the ultimate hangover cure.

Can you “prove” this?

For early distillers, 50% alcohol was considered “good” enough. One crude method of measuring was to mix equal parts whiskey and gunpowder together. If the mix burned, it was considered “good enough” and thereby, “proved”, which led to “PROOF”.

140 Proof!!!

140 proof is the maximum proof allowed on commercial flights. Anything higher is considered a hazardous material by the TSA.

Kentucky: It’s more than just the home of “The Colonel”.

99% of all bourbon is made in Kentucky. A small brand out of Virginia makes the rest.

THE MACALLAN 1926!!!

The only bar where you can still sample the most expensive whiskey ever made, which is completely sold out, is at the Old Homestead Steak House at the Borgata Casino in Atlantic City, where it sells for $3,300 a shot.

A WellHungOver.net exclusive photo of 1 of only 3 bottles left in the world of the Macallan 1926!

(Source: “Bourbon, Straight” by Charles K. Cowdery)

     ALCOHOL and its intoxicating effects are more than one way responsible for the rise of America. Take a look at how the founding fathers drank first and pioneered second.

Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson certainly discussed ideas for the Declaration of Independence with friends and associates over alcoholic beverages. He even wrote parts of it in a tavern, with a glass of wine next to his ink.

George Washington

Alcohol, at one time, played an important role on Election Day. Washington lost his first bid for elective office (to the Virginia Assembly) in part because he didn’t buy enough booze for voters. Two years later, he won with the help of 144 gallons of rum, wine and beer.

Ben Franklin

Franklin wrote about the ill effects of alcohol, but remember, this is the same guy that tied a key to a kite and went out playing in a lightning storm – clearly he got shitfaced. He was concerned with excess drinking in the colonies, but he never had any objections to it himself.

Abraham Lincoln

During Lincoln’s stint in the White House, the American temperance movement was starting to get fired up, but Lincoln supported a man’s right to drink. He regarded abstinence as fanaticism, and therefore evil, and before freeing the slaves, Honest Abe freed people’s inhibitions with his liquor license and ownership of several taverns.

(Source: “The Spirits of America” by Eric Burns)