Food History

At last, the end is near…

We tasted twelve drinks. I have to remind myself of this because it all seems rather fuzzy now. After all, I have been home five hours.

All of the drinks were the best of the best of the earlier tests. Every single one of them was loved by one or more of you. I talked the Conflux committee into testing them at the end of today’s meeting, because I wanted even more tastebuds involved. We now, therefore, have our drinks lists. Ta da!! Well, we have the drinks. The names are another issue entirely.

I’m going to give you the draft names for all twelve, just because I can. The only ones we need to find permanent names for are the ones that are in the second list. The first list weren’t liked enough, or, in one case, weren’t liked by anyone at all.

So, the not-quite-as good drinks and the names we thought up in our wit-of-the-afternoon (aided by drink):

1. Rocket cocktail or Ming the Merciless Cocktail (this is where Nicole said I was drunk – and we were only 2 cocktails into the testing. Or was it three? We didn’t actually test in order.)

2. Conjured Julep (which was actually really pleasant, just not the magic of the other julep – it made me think of the clever student at school, eclipsed by the sparkly but lazy student. Or something. It definitely made me think of something.)

3. Ultra Icky Dry Cocktail (if we had used a camera today, this is when the pictures would have been worthwhile: a row of puckered mouths.)

4. Steampunk orange cocktail or Clockwork orange cocktail (the names are great, but the Curacao was too dominant, alas.)

5. Witches’ brawl punch or Forgotten lands punch or Barsoom Brawl punch (we all fell in love with ingredients, but alas only one of us liked it and even he said that this was a drink for consenting adults only)

Now for the list of cocktails we actually want to see at Conflux in October. I would really love your comments on the names, since I’m going to have to finalise the list in the next few days. I especially need help deciding between the alternatives or maybe even rising above them and finding more exact names. I’ll try to give you some tasting notes for each, to help.

1. Roswell Abduction or Gernsbackian Dream. (rather like a martini, but not as strong)

2. Stardust smash or Elven smash (a gentle taste – bland to some tasters, very pleasant, the “Killing me softly” drink)

3. Venusian sour (fresh flavour, sweet and just a little acidic, with strawberries)

4. Vampiric dreaming (Lovecraftian special) or Vampire lust (the brown of old blood, but rich and sweet and delectable in a mulled wine kind of way)

5. Southern Nights julep (the nicest champagne julep I have ever had)

6. Fremen cocktail or Apollo Tang cocktail (elegant, aroma of oranges and lemons, the perfect pre-dinner drink)

7. Stardust cobbler or New York, New York cobbler (everyone’s dream drink – and we were so busy dreaming about it that we didn’t have any decent ideas for names. Strawberries and pineapple and dangerously tempting – please suggest names for this one!)

And that’s it. I need help deciding between alternate names and help replacing some names with better ones. All the names need to reflect science fiction, fantasy or horror.

If your name gets selected, I’ll post you a special treat.