Vodka anyone?

One of the nicest surprises this weekend was how I lucked out with non-grain based Vokda. I've had a couple potato based vodkas (before and after the celiac diagnosis), and found them most agreeable.

This weekend, Mr. San Diego and I visited a liquor store in Tucson called "Plaza Liquors". Nice, locally owned shop with lots of variety in a such a small place. We found a honey flavored vodka made from potatoes (most flavored vodkas are grained based), so I picked that up. Then he found a nice bottle that was from France made from GRAPES! I decided to try that as well because I was curious, and the bottle was very cool looking.

Since there was only one grape-based vodka, I was pretty sure it wouldn't taste that great (otherwsie, there'd be more grape vodkas out there). So I was very pleasantly surprised to find it very agreeable. We opened the bottle Saturday night after it had a day to sit in the freezer. Very smooth, and a nice finish. I'll grab the bottle and post the name in case you're looking for a very nice sipping drink.

I decided against freezing the honey vodka, remembering that the last time I had flavored vodkas was at room temperature. We opened the bottle Sunday night. It's not as smooth going down, but you don't get a strong honey flavor until the finish (we were concerned about it tasting too sweet). But you have to watch it - it does warm your stomach pretty good after a few minutes. We stopped at one shot each. I don't think I'm going to be sipping this one too much, but it sure would be good in a cup of tea.

I read a slightly amusing story about what can happen if you share your martinis with a stranger.