Ed Ranks Hard Liquor

I’ve ranked beers and whisk[e]ys by country previously, as well as IBA cocktails, but I’ve never really ranked alcoholic beverages in general, have I? Well… let’s rank hard liquor.  I’m sticking to the primary hard liquors here. No liqueurs/cordials, and let’s be honest a lot of things that try to market themselves as unique and different types of liquors are simply sub-sets of the 8 categories I’m listing below. 

8. Herbal / Botanical Distillations

These are your herb, seed and botanical-heavy distilled spirits like Absinthe, Raki, Ouzo and so on. I can understand why in the days of yore they needed so many anise-heavy drinks: to hide the even worse flavor of awful distilling and polluted water. Nowadays though? Ugh. At most these should be used sparingly as cocktail mixers. 

7. Vodka

I do not like Vodka. It is the most boring of all hard liquors. It tastes like burning and the only way it doesn’t taste like burning is through the 4000 different “flavored vodkas” out there that try to hide the burning but only wind up tasting like burning plus that awful, chemical (mostly fruit) flavor they added. 

6. Rice Distillations

Look, this is a pretty broad category there that includes Soju as probably the most famous, but also a number of others such as Awamori, Baijiu, etc. And it doesn’t include rice wine. Lot of people think that low-proof rice drinks are rice liquors but they are not. I’m not talking about rice wine here. 

5. Brandy & Fruit Distillations 

This is another “Cover My Ass” catch-all category that includes wide varities of fruit-based alcohols that start more as wines, but then are distilled further and further until they lead to a proof where I suppose they could be called “liquor” instead of liqueurs or wines. Brandy is the most famous one, but there are dozens and dozens of grape, apple and other fruit concoctions like pisco, kirsh, rakia, tsikoudia, etc. A lot of them unfortunately lean pretty close to “this just tastes like vodka,” but some of them maintain some unique flavors – so I guess I’m putting it here. 

4. Rum 

Ah, rum. I had not actually known that there were really good sipping rums out there until a few years ago – I thought that rum was that stuff you mixed with fruit (especially citrus) and drank in cocktail form. I mean it still MOSTLY is, but rum can actually be more than that. It’s pretty versatile. Seriously though, rum cocktails are great. 

3. Tequila / Mezcal 

Tequilas and Mezcals are delicious and complex. No I’m not talking about your basic bitch college frat party tequilas and I’m certainly not talking about any of that worm-in-the-bottle junk that’s out there more for the American myth about tequilas and mezcals than its about authenticity. There is some great sipping stuff out there and tequila is so much more than margarita juice. 

2. Gin

Gin is something I most definitely did not like when I was a young person first consuming adult beverages. The herbal / earthy qualities of the juniper in it hit a strong “dislike” on the tastebuds that is still the reason I rank general herbal / botanical distillations so low. But the juniper is no where near as harsh or strong as it is in some of those others, and as I hit my 30s that subtle complexity in flavor transformed into a strong like. Simple gin cocktails are fantastic. A martini NEEDS to be gin-based (vodka martinis are garbage), and is largely just a glass of cold gin with maybe a very small splash of vermouth. Gimlets are delicious, and a simple gin and tonic is the official drink of summer. 

1. Whiskey

Whiskey/whisky is the best. It includes your Scotch, your Bourbons, your Irish Whiskys, and everything else in the whole range of delicious brown elixir. It’s not even close. This is the best liquor. On its own to drink neat or on ice when picking out a fantastic sipping one. And also in epic cocktails like a Manhattan or Old Fashioned.  

Okay, so that’s it. Short and sweet rankings, right?