drinkwire

It’s clearly okay to go home, add some tomato juice to your vodka, and call it a bloody mary. And it’s almost certainly a bad idea to go home and fire up your small pot still, to make just a little spirits. Somewhere in the middle, we now have “High Proof Micro-Batch Distilled Neutral Spirit Designed for Infusing.” It comes in a 375 ml. bottle, at 160 proof. It is made by The Northern Maine Distilling Company, of Houlton, Maine. The first related approval seems to go back about one year. It mentions that the vodka is designed for “infusions, extractions, mixology, and culinary applications.” The information-packed website explains:

160 Proof?  Yikes!  Don’t freak over the proof!  The high concentration of alcohol makes Twenty 2 HPS perfect for infusing fruits, vegetables, meats, or dairy into vibrant liqueurs or flavored vodkas.  Think of the 160 Proof like a very sharp knife in your kitchen.  If you handle the knife with respect, it can perform amazing tasks.  Same with the High Proof Spirit.  It’s “sharp blade” creates infusions in hours, not weeks.

We think Northern’s COLA is interesting because we don’t know of too many other products designed for this manner of use. Also, the label underscores that TTB has no problem with...

Tensley Wine is not happy with the way things are going in Washington. They claim it took more than a year to get approval on the wine label above. It is no wonder, and it is some credit that our government would approve it at all. Then again, it’s not entirely clear that the label is “approved.” Box 18c shows that it is an exemption from label approval, rather than a box 18a label approval. Either way, I am pretty sure President Obama (among others in Washington) has a thick skin and can deal with it. It is clear that Tensley is annoyed, but it’s less clear what Tensley is annoyed about. There is some griping about the local bureaucracy, and a lot of griping that federal taxes are too high for some people and too low for others. The front label notes that the wine has 1% more alcohol than table wine, but is taxed at a rate 235% higher.