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Category: Spirits

St. Petersburg Alimov Vodka 750mL

BuffaloJern 1 Comment

We’ve been playing this game with vodka. It’s called – let’s buy stuff for under 20 bucks and then hate ourselves the following morning all in the hopes that there’s another mark on the list we can give you the readers to avoid. However Alimov is not going onto that list, we are HBR and we speak for the Santa because this is going on the nice list. Of course as always we have our comments, and nobody is perfect, but strap in because it’s been a long time since something that cost $13 bucks didn’t extract a blood price in return.

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Gin di Fiori Premium Italian Dry Gin 750mL

BuffaloJern 1 Comment

This is odd to say, but it’s sort of sad to dislike something you were actually sort of ready and willing to like. We’re big fans of lemoncello here so when we see the Italians making a gin, our hopes in a bevy of citrus and awesome flavors were sort of muted by the end result in Gin di Fiori. While the lemon certainly has a role to play here, overall it’s just not a good gin. It straddles that expanse between galaxies of ‘gin’ gins and ‘wild’ gins, and fails to be either.

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896 Barbados Gold Rum 750mL

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Would a rum by any other name tastes as sweet? We have no idea, because this barely even has a name (just the enigmatic 896), and is to us a ghost. No text, no identifiers, no website – it merely exists. This causes complications for us. One the hand we promote that you let the contents of the bottle do the real talking, on the other we feel you should at the very least stand by your work. If however you don’t frankly care about that – the good news is this is a pretty decent rum for not a lot of money.

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Winchester Kentucky Rye Whiskey 750mL

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Now we know two things in regards to Winchester. The first being they made the Winchester rifle, the gun of the American West. We also know of the Winchester House, home of Sarah Winchester which is very haunted and weird. (What we like ghost stories even if they aren’t real). Now something we don’t know of is the ‘Winchester Cowboy’ or “Winchester Whiskey’ and yet here we have the name of the famous brand on this Rye – but why?

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Esme Gin 750mL

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One does not typically think of France when one thinks of Gin, but then if you had been given this in a blind solo cup test – it’s not like you’d be able to determine it comes just a bit south of the good ol’ english. Sure looking at it – the design certainly can invoke that imagery, but what you get with the taste is something good, but not too good. Really though the end result of this whole endeavor is something that actually works well in a G&T and surprisingly isn’t overpriced to match it’s look.

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Casa Noble Reposado Tequila

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The downside of reviewing things on this site at a moderate schedule is that we’ll often say we’d look forward to trying a similar version of something – especially with tequilas where we’ve had a blanco or reposado and want to try the other (or even the anejo). Then of course time marches on so we come to a situation where we’re like – oh yeah we should do the reposado of Casa Noble given how much we actually like the blanco ver. That was in 2016 which according to our records was over a century ago. Anyway how does the aged version fare?

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Beluga Transatlantic Racing Export Noble Russian Vodka 750mL

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The best days of doing these reviews on this site is when you find something that you’d normally never try, and are rewarded for the experience. While that may be colored by having so many bad spirits show up – it goes to the ethos of the site that it’s far worse to be stuck in the rut of what you know, instead of what could be. We honestly might have been stuck forever drinking Ketel One had we not started this reviewing process. In short we have to give props to a yacht racing vodka (no wait don’t go we’re not exactly cool how upper white middle class it is either)

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