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be avoided at all costs. It has an unpleasant aftertaste and a god-awful cat-pee smell (perhaps channeling Madame Dubonnet’s feline?). Dubonnet Rouge, on the other hand, makes an excellent mixer, particularly with gin. It doesn’t have a million applications, but the few it does have stand out and make it worthwhile. Case in point: The Dubonnet Cocktail (the Queen Mother’s drink) is a mix of equal parts gin and Dubonnet that’s simple and wonderful, an early-twentieth-century classic. Add a dash of orange bitters to the mix, and it might give the martini a run for its money. It’s the perfect drink to share with the Queen. Or with Pia Zadora. Or if you happen to be sent off to the French Foreign Legion. Or if you’re relaxing at home and want to be super-certain that you remain malaria free.

CHAPTER 2

FLAVOR AND ITS DISCONTENTS

ALL OF LIFE IS A DISPUTE OVER TASTE AND TASTING.

—Friedrich Nietzsche

WHEN WE TALK ABOUT FLAVOR, we must make a simple distinction. First, there are actual tastes that grow out of a place, a tradition, an artisan method; then there is Flavor™, which is conceived in a conference room, developed in a lab, and validated by focus groups.

With that in mind, I feel the need to say a few words about the explosion of flavored vodkas. Well, maybe just two words: totally ridiculous. No, that is perhaps too harsh, too strident, and ungenerous. So maybe a few more. I mean, I can understand the impulse behind, say, a basic citrus vodka, and maybe even vanilla. But is there any earthly justification for the existence of a lychee-flavored vodka? Or coconut vodka? Watermelon vodka? Green grape vodka and red grape vodka? Cherry and black cherry vodka? Huckleberry vodka? Kaffir lime vodka? Blood orange vodka? Pink lemonade vodka? Organic cucumber vodka? Sweet tea vodka? Cola vodka? Root beer vodka? Sake-infused vodka? Protein powder–infused vodka? Dutch caramel vodka? Espresso vodka? Double espresso vodka? Triple espresso vodka? So-called mojito mint vodka? Bubble gum vodka? Yes, every one of these vodka flavors has sat on a liquor store shelf, and this list represents only the tip of the iceberg. In 2003, there were about two hundred flavored vodkas on the market. Today, there are more than five hundred.

The liquor store has swiftly come to resemble those Jelly Belly stores that sprung up when I was a kid in the 1980s. I can remember the first time my brother Tyler and I were let loose, on a family vacation, to scoop our own half pounds of jelly beans from dozens of varieties. You were allowed to taste all the beans as you scooped, and we went nuts, bingeing our way into a sugar overdose. “Cotton candy! Dr. Pepper! Green apple! Chocolate pudding! A&W root beer! Piña colada!”

“Can you believe this jelly bean tastes like buttered popcorn?”

“Taste this one! It’s like cheesecake!”

“Toasted marshmallow!”

There was certainly no pretense of real flavor. The idea of authenticity was rendered utterly irrelevant—I mean, all the flavors came from freaking identically shaped beans! They were a food engineering marvel and it was absolutely awesome … at least when I was, um, eleven. You know what else I liked when I was eleven? Garbage Pail Kids, Mr. T, parachute pants, snapping Jenny Bellamente’s training bra strap, and building forts in the woods. These days, I go to the liquor store for a slightly different experience. (Although ironically, in the summer of 2010, Jelly Belly introduced several “adult” flavors as part of their new Cocktail Classics line: Mojito, Peach Bellini, and Pomegranate Cosmo among them.)

Flavored vodkas follow the same flavor fads that sports drinks, fruit snacks, and sugar cereals follow. A flavorist for Givaudan, the world’s largest manufacturer of flavors, explained the development of these trends in a 2009 article in the New Yorker: “You are trying to sell a flavor. It’s not like you are getting judged on how close you are to the real fruit. At the end of the day, you are getting judged on how good the flavor tastes.”

With that sort of calculation, it’s no surprise that flavor trends