Long time between drinks

Today being the the 12th of July, it's been almost two months since I did anything interesting. Well that's not quite true - a couple of weeks ago I went to a pretty good party on a wet Saturday afternoon. Apart from that, though, and a weekend in the Bay of Plenty, nada. Thoughts of boredom lead me very quickly to thoughts of drinking and at the moment I'm drinking a lot of what is known in the films of Europe as schnaps.

Don't jump to conclusions; we're not talking about some sort of nasty sickly peach flavoured muck here, but rather pure grain alcohol. It's the stuff that looks like vodka. You know, some guy'll walk into a bar and order "schnaps" and it says "schnaps" in the sub-title and the barman drops a small glass onto the counter and reaches for some nondescript bottle filled with a clear liquid and sloshes a measure into the glass and the guy slams it back slams down the glass and says "danke" or "grazie" or "obrigado" or whatever and wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand...

Nelson's South Pacific Distillery make a line of spirits called Roaring Forties and amongst them is their Doppelkorn Schnaps [38% a.b.v.]. It's a very pure-tasting drink and best drunk cold and straight. Unfortunately I haven't yet found a distributor so I'm nursing the last of the bottle I picked up when I was last in Nelson. No you can't have any. It's mine, preciouss...

Even more pure [possibly] is Frog-shine. Y'see about the only other interesting thing to have happened to me lately is to meet a guy, a friend-of-a-friend from Wanganui, who distills his own alcolhol. It comes in two variants - 30% a.b.v. and 55% a.b.v. - and it's very similar in quality to the Doppelkorn.

Both drinks are good drinkin' and will get you well fucked-up [see image, above] but the beautiful, wonderful thing about them is being made in a pure, traditional manner - Roaring Forties "100% cane or grain, no preservatives, chemicals or artificial flavours added" and Frog-shine "pure as fuck, man" - there's no nasty chemical aftertaste, and better still, there's no morning after. No hangover. You can drink away the evening on the stuff - I have - and get up in the morning with just a slighty funny taste in your mouth [and how unusual is that?]. You can even pick up again at 9 a.m. or whenever you get up - again, I have - and carry on with no adverse effects.

They're also real cheap.