"Bar Month" at OnMilwaukee.com is back for another round! The whole month of February, we're serving up intoxicatingly fun bars and club articles -- including guides, unique features, drink recipes and more. Grab a designated driver and dive in!
One of the best parts about having a liquor distributor as the main sponsor of OnMilwaukee.com Bar Month is that I feel obliged to try its tasty products.
It didn't take much arm twisting to get a few of my co-workers to join me.
Badger Liquor, which represents (among many others) Jameson, Absolut Mango, Dr. McGillcuddy's Lemon Drop and Maker's Mark, kindly dropped off a few bottles to our office last week. Obviously, we dove right in.
Hey, it's in the interest of science, right?
With the exception of the Lemon Drop, the other three liquors aren't the kind I'm inclined to drink straight up, and after a sip of these room temperature products, I decided I couldn't give them a fair shake. So, Monday afternoon, five of us strolled across the street to The Twisted Fork, drink recipe sheets in hand.
Tasting (OK, drinking) six mini cocktails at 3:30 p.m. on a Monday afternoon is not typical, even for our less than typical office. But if our sponsors are kind enough to recommend we try a "Green Monkey," who am I to decline?
That said, I didn't promise I'd write something good, or in fact anything at all, about these liquors, as sponsorship doesn't buy editorial coverage. But with one exception I liked everything I tried enough to recommend them in earnest.
In fact, I thought the Absolut Mango was pretty awesome. With that spirit, we tried an "Absolut Mancrango" (vodka, Sprite and cranberry juice), an "Absolut Brazilian Cosmo" (vodka, triple sec, lime juice, cranberry juice and orange juice) and an Absolut Mango press.
I'm not a big Irish whiskey guy, but I more than tolerated the "Jenna Jameson," a shot made with equal parts Jameson and X-Rated Fusion.
The one drink that didn't work for me was the "Yellow Jacket," which is two parts Lemon Drop and one part Maker's Mark. This is one instance in which Maker's tastes better just on the rocks.
Maybe it was the handful of tiny afternoon drinks talking, but we couldn't leave until we tried two other cocktail recipes: the "Watermelon Margarita" and the "Green Monkey."
The watermelon drink tasted like a Jolly Rancher, with the Watermelon Pucker totally taking charge of our taste buds -- but not in a bad way. The "Green Monkey," a mix of banana and melon liquors ... well, it was good for one, but I don't see myself ordering it again.
The "Yellow Jacket" not withstanding, any of these drinks would make for something fun and different, but unless you have a serious sweet tooth, don't drink them all in one sitting.
For me, I've found a new favorite liquor in Absolut Mango. Personally, I'll drink it in a press, if only because it sounds a little less girly to order than asking for a "Brazilian Cosmo."
Andy is the president, publisher and founder of OnMilwaukee. He returned to Milwaukee in 1996 after living on the East Coast for nine years, where he wrote for The Dallas Morning News Washington Bureau and worked in the White House Office of Communications. He was also Associate Editor of The GW Hatchet, his college newspaper at The George Washington University.
Before launching OnMilwaukee.com in 1998 at age 23, he worked in public relations for two Milwaukee firms, most of the time daydreaming about starting his own publication.
Hobbies include running when he finds the time, fixing the rust on his '75 MGB, mowing the lawn at his cottage in the Northwoods, and making an annual pilgrimage to Phoenix for Brewers Spring Training.
