G. Snyder

Tequila + Sangrita

Glendale's Neat Bar, a bare-bones watering hole located in the shadow of the Verdugo Mountains, serves what could be best described as the anti-cocktail. Sure, the bar's well-lit back wall is filled with an impressive selection of spirits -- the variety of single-malt scotches alone is enough to make Don Draper swoon -- but you won't be having any of them mixed up into, say, a Penicillin or a Blood & Sand.

That's because the booze here is served straight up. It arrives poured into a small rocks glass and is paired with a bespoke, non-alcoholic accompaniment, anything from a frothy egg white mixture to a bitters-spiked tonic. The two glasses sit on a small wooden board like yin and yang, joined in theory but distinctly separate.

On a given night, the bartender could pour you a bit of Black Maple Hill Small Batch, a dry and oaky bourbon with a sourdough twang and a spicy chest-filling finish, and serve it next to a glass of bubbly lemon-ginger soda sweetened with honey. If you prefer a Moscow Mule, you'll have to be content with having your vodka and ginger beer separate.

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Flickr/ralph and jenny

Margarita

We're reminded that booze and artificially sweetened mixers sometimes can be a problematic combo. The study that figured this out has been around for a while, but it's being given fresh attention thanks to the June edition of the University of California, Berkeley Wellness Letter, which offers news and expert advice from the School of Public Health.

Citing a 2006 Australian study, the "Wellness Made Easy" column warns us of the dangers of consuming alcohol and diet mixers on an empty stomach. The problem is that the fake sweeteners leave the stomach faster than mixers made with regular sugar, allowing the alcohol to be absorbed into the blood more quickly. (In contrast, sugar slows down the absorption of alcohol.) The research suggests that even carbonated, no-calorie mixers like club soda may jump-start the absorption of booze in our bloodstream.

Says the newsletter: "Just one mixed drink containing diet soda may be enough to raise your blood alcohol level beyond the legal limit."

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Anne Fishbein

Seven Grand's rye Manhattan

I might be oversimplifying here, but when it comes to sex, there are two kinds of people: the kind who like using a lubricant, and the kind who don't. If you are in the second camp, feel free to move on.

If you're in the first, tell me this: To what extent is TASTE an important consideration? I ask because inevitably it becomes an issue (unless you have sex with your mouth closed). So do your preferences fall, say, more toward herbal or fruity? Appetizer or dessert? Chocolate or vanilla? Is the flavor of your edible personal lubricant a main course, or is it more like a condiment, a garnish for your edible underwear? Or do you prefer your edible personal lubricant to resemble a beverage? In my entire professional life I have never asked so many personal lubricant questions in a row.

But I ask because I have been presented with a sample of Whiskey Dick, the world's first whiskey-flavored personal lubricant, and I don't know how to feel.

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jgarbee

Mandolin Wine

Mother's Day is on Sunday. Yes, this Sunday. No need to get into a Googling gift search frenzy, as we have already compiled a handy last-minute Mother's Day gift list. Only here, you won't find the typical clichés like roses or chocolate, but gifts mom can drink. Heaven knows she deserves a strong one after putting up with all of your high school antics.

And not just any old point-and-click wine shipped overnight or picked up at the last minute on the way to brunch -- mom will know, she always knows. But really great wine, beer and spirits thoughtfully chosen with your mom's personality in mind. A floral gin for the gardener, a trolley car-inspired beer for the traveler. The Myers-Briggs of mom and alcohol pairings, if you will. Get our 10 picks, in no particular order, after the jump.

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jgarbee

The Botanist With Her (Irish) Whisky Colleagues

The Botanist has all the buzzwords of box office gin success. In addition to the typical gin aromatics (juniper berries, cassia bark, orange peel and such), it is distilled with "22 wild native Islay botanicals" (white clover, bog myrtle leaves, creeping thistle). They've been hand-picked by an "expert foraging team" from ocean-front shores, peat bogs and, we are told, even a few "windswept hills" for that full cinematic cocktail effect.

To thicken the plot, there's controversy. The gin is made by Bruichladdich, the 130-year-old distillery known for its bold, heavily peated, single-malt Scotch whisky. The distillery has never released a gin, or any spirit on such a delicate end of the flavor spectrum, for that matter. There's even a reference to Ugly Betty, although here, not the television show but the nickname of the Lomond pot-still used to slowly simmer -- for 17 hours, three times the average gin -- the 46% ABV potion. There's so much hype, we fully expected herbal overkill, a flavor flop.

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Flickr/Robert S. Donovan

Drinking stuff you shouldn't drink to get buzzed is hardly a new idea. Think bathtub gin, just for starters. Soviet-era Russians pretty much turned the practice into an art form, if you can call it that. But recent reports of teenagers drinking hand sanitizer to get high are a lot more troubling than most in this genre.

In the unlikely event that there are lots of teenagers reading this, consider this a public service announcement. Not that we'd recommend raiding your parents' liquor cabinets or any available hotel minibars under ordinary circumstances, but maybe it's a better idea than doing shots of Purell.

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S. Bonar

the orange blossom

There is another LA, one where the restaurant food is phenomenal. The flavors are exquisite, the portions proper (neither "bite-sized" nor spilling over the edges of the plate), the prices reasonable and the settings glorious. Further, it is a place where you may get a gourmet meal accompanied by a bottle of beer (no glass) served on a table covered in a garishly flowered oilcloth, followed by a gratis creme brulee, and where mixologists still call themselves bartenders.

We are talking, of course, about Louisiana, New Orleans to be precise, where we had the titanic misfortune to spend five days at an editing conference recently. But, in between heated arguments about the Oxford comma, we managed to find the time to discover an exquisite cocktail called the Orange Blossom in a picturesque 150-year-old-courtyard eatery in the French Quarter called Café Amelie. Sparkling, light, citrusy and slightly floral, made with Prosecco, West Indian orange bitters and St. Germaine elderflower liqueur, the Orange Blossom ($10) makes for a serene summertime cocktail.

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Flickr/Colbyt69

bourbon barrels

The relationship between beer and spirits is closer than you think -- and not just for the growing beer cocktail trend or the "pint and a shot" special at your local dive.

Mainly, the two crafts thrive on the same fermentation science, with spirits beginning life as a fermented-sugar liquid similar to beer before being run through a still, which pumps up the alcohol by volume (ABV). Whiskey is the nearest to beer in this way, since both of their base sugars are barley (as opposed to rum's molasses and tequila's agave sugar base). Basically, what gets put into the still to create whiskey is a beer brewed without hops, or what is called a "wash."

For centuries, the arts of brewing and distilling have remained on separate yet parallel paths, but one look at the American Distilling Institute's 2012 Artisan Spirits Award winners and it's clear that the two industries have begun to find common ground (hopped whiskey, anyone?). In the last few years, American craft distilling has grown in a similar way to craft beer and, with more than 200 small-batch distilleries experimenting with new methods and recipes, the two industries are cross-pollinating more than ever.

So what happens when a well-known craft brewery gives leftover beer to a distillery? Or when a rum is spiced like a beer? Read on for our top 5 spirits that both bartenders and beer geeks can appreciate.

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flicker user/tma031979

Spirits Tasting

In certain glossy magazine and high-end spirits competition circles, a vodka's photogenic front-page appeal is as important as what's inside the bottle in determining its award-winning value. But with the American Distilling Institute's annual Artisan American Spirits Awards, which were released last week, it's best not to judge those rather bland winner's circle photographs on the trade association's website. We mean that as a compliment.

This is the sort of awards list you scroll through when you want to find the most interesting artisan spirits for sipping, not just for bar shelf visual appeal - though if that's your thing, there's an "excellence in packaging" award here, too. But mostly you'll find moonshine and bourbon that hails from distilleries with names like Dark Corner or Ole Smoky, and rums that have been affectionately dubbed Three Sheets (from San Diego's Ballast Point, which took home several awards) and Cane and Abe ("Old Abe" was the name of a Civil War-era bald eagle mascot in Wisconsin).

The Man Booker Prize of moonshine, if you will. Get the list of this year's artisan American spirits winners after the jump.

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jgarbee

Karlsson's Batch 2008 with everyday russets

Swedish spirits company Karlsson's has released a new vodka, Karlsson's Batch 2008, a small-batch potato vodka from Börje Karlsson (he of Absolut notoriety), which promises to deliver the terroir subtleties and single-vintage potato notoriety of a top wine. The buzz -- literally -- here is in a single potato with celebrity tuber status: The company's first vodka release, Karlsson's Gold, is made from seven varieties of potatoes; the Karlsson's Batch 2008 from just one, the Gamel Svensk Röd. (It even sounds like the next hot movie star's name.)

And yeah, at $80 (!), the Batch 2008 is substantially more expensive than its everyday $30 blended wine-like counterpart -- and most vodka on the market.

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