What you drink has to do with many factors, depending on your age and stage of life. Teens often drink whatever they can sneak or buy cheaply–whatever goes down the easiest. College students? Beer–or maybe drinks that make a person look sophisticated. Twenty-somethings on up: Depends on who you are and what life path you’ve chosen.
We want to know: How has your drink of choice changed over time? But first, we’ll share our own drink histories:
Leah: High school: I had a sip of beer and some sips of wine coolers. College: Kamikaze shots, lined up at the campus pub. The drinking age was 18. Vodka in the shower before parties. Piss beer at frat parties, grain alcohol-spiked punch or mixed drinks, such as Long Island Iced Teas. In short, whatever got us drunkest fastest, or whatever was around. I don’t remember drinking wine. Year abroad in Paris, then all over Europe: Carlsberg Blonde beer, red wine–from a box, from a baby bottle, however I could get it. Sometimes that licoricey French aperitif. On the Greek Island Ios, tequila slammers. Post-college years: Traveling cross country with my boyfriend, we drank Miller Hi Life from the bottle. Then, later in Manhattan, I stopped drinking almost anything else but wine–white wine, red wine, Sangria, rose, port wine–a trend that continues to this day.
Caren: My drinking experiences as a teen involved sneaking whiskey sours at family events if there was a bartender on the scene. Age really didn’t seem to matter to anyone back then. In high school, I remember being on the beach in Florida during a vacation with some friends and making facial contortions as I sipped a Miller Lite–so disgusting to me then. In college, while I did stupidly go for whatever was in the grain-alcohol-infused punch bowl (didn’t everyone?), it was always too sweet and never tasted good. That’s when I started actually acquiring a taste for beer. After college and once in the work force, frozen margaritas were the greatest happy hour treat, until I drank too many and woke up with the worst tequila hangover–stayed away from it for a couple of years thereafter. From that time on, I’ve really developed such a love for the taste of wine (and slightly heavier beers like Anchor Steam and Sierra Nevada) that it’s almost not worth drinking any other type of alcohol. An occasional bloody mary over brunch (though I could take or leave the vodka), but it’s really wine for me these days…
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In high school, we used to sneak Bacardi into our cokes (or was it diet cokes?) on Friday or Saturday nights. Those “rum and cokes” were pretty disgusting, so I nursed them slowly–seldom even finishing one in the course of a night. In college, it was the cheap boxed wine they served at “wine and cheeses” in the dorms and parties. I’ve never developed a taste for beer, although some Belgian friends of mine recently introduced me to some light Belgian brews, which I love. Now, I prefer wine—red, white, or rose—and while I am hardly a connoisseur, I’ve learned what I like and I order accordingly. Recently, I’ve been making terrific blackberry mojitos: the rum goes down much more smoothly now than it did back in high school!
Ok – College/Young+broke=cheap beer (Old Milwauke 16oz cans)
age 25-30 Tanqueray and tonics (only Tanqueray because I could afford not to have a headache with cheaper gin)
age 30-current age (44) – dirty martinis, occasional margaritas and good wine. In fact if the wine is not good, I will not drink it. The calories need to be worth it. Alas, I am a wine snob!
Sneaking alcohol out of parents’ liquor cabinet is all too easy. Parents are too busy to notice depletions and just blame the spouse for drinking it up too fast. Parents would do well to lock up or outlaw hard alcohol in the house during teens’ high school and maybe even middle school years.
The first time I ever got drunk was on a bottle of Oregon brand vodka in the back of a Camaro in rural Oregon. We chased it down with fruit squeeze-its. From there I moved on to Mad Dog 20/20, Micky’s Malt Liquor, Carlo Rossi, and Blitz, Weinhard’s ultraschwill. (As teenagers, we drank like bums, probably because that’s who was buying our alcohol for us.) In college I classed it up a bit by moving on to 40 oz bottles of Budweiser. Eventually I decided this was too mainstream (and sweet) and switched to (at the time) local pisswater, Olympia and Raineer. My friend bought me a bottle of Bombay Saphire Gin when I turned 19, and my roommate and I discovered the glories of ‘top shelf’ liquor. We then proceeded to spend our student loan money on stocking our liquor cabinet, and idea that seemed less brilliant when we graduated and ended up with crappy jobs. As amusing this may sound coming from someone who is currently drinking Pinot Evil from a box, he major trend seems to be toward refinement. For years I claimed that all wine tasted the same to me, and drank magnums of Casarsa. Until I changed my mind and gradually learned enough about wine to give up on two buck chuck for good. I’m certainly not a wine snob now, but I generally spend more than 7 bucks a bottle. The same goes for beer–I used to turn my nose up at micro brews, saying that bitterness was macho bullshit, but lately I notice that Raineer and PBR taste kind of disgusting and I find myself drinking Ninkasi IPAs. And I went from thinking that whiskey tasted of furniture polish to thinking that I might commit perjury for a nice bottle of single malt scotch (Glenrothes, preferably).
When I was a teen we drunk only cheap things and didn’t care what it was, but now I prefer a good glass of red wine.
In college I drank either Bud Light/Bud Select girl (if it was a beer night) or vodka tonics if it was a hard liquor night. Although, I also found myself drinking “jungle juice” (the gross mix of grain alcohol and way too sweet fruit juice). Later on I developed a love of gin and tonics and only ordered those when out unless I was in a beer mood, which I still tended to prefer Bud Select for those moods. Now, I have the same bottle of vodka sitting around that I did two years ago. It’s usually wine and beer for me, but now my beer palate has grown and diversified. And for fancy schmancy girls nights out we either hit up a martini bar or a champagne bar.