BOOZE BLOG REBELLION: Drink Van Gogh espresso vodka, because it warms the heart

Hear me out.

There’s something of a cultish following around Van Gogh espresso vodka in Charleston, and especially at Cutty’s, a most perfect bar. Charleston is a beautiful town with a beautiful food and booze culture that everyone should enjoy. Come see me. I bought Zach a few of these things a couple weeks back, and he’s sold on the efficacy and splendid taste that is this particular liqueur. That’s what it is: a liqueur.

A liqueur stands beside and apposite of liquor. A liqueur prides itself on taste. Liquor, in the trashy, college sense, is just straight-up liquor. It gets you drunk and you shoot it until the lights turn off. Liquor sucks, and as the foremost food and booze blog on the internet, we love it. But we also love liqueur, because we’ve travelled.

Vodka is weird. Vodka takes off the cliff edge then slams you into the earth so that you wake up the next day wondering why you’re still alive. This is the most horrible way I’ve ever felt in my life, and I’m going to go do it again next weekend, because I’m an idiot, and I’m in college. Fuck vodka. Vodka’s great.

Van Gogh — not the artist, the alcoholists — makes vodka. They make many varieties of vodka, premier among which is their espresso brew. It’s just enough sugary to overcome the fact that it’s vodka, which is basically tasteless but stings the palette to induce one’s gag reflex. But it also tastes enough like espresso to bring you back time and time and time and time and time again. It’s very shootable.

Van Gogh espresso vodka sits down in your chest and belly with a warmth almost only reserved for the holidays. It’s the same type of embrace you get from Fernet and Maker’s. That weird, wonderful spirit that burns out your esophagus but in the good way. It’s imminently repeatable, which makes it a dangerous affair. Too many, and you’ll wake up the next morning absolutely regretting why you tweeted “If anyone has evidence of recruiting violations send them to compliance@olemiss.edu.”

Drink this stuff. Ask your local barkeep to stock it. It’s quite good.