Change the “peasants” to “serfs.” Don’t you want a legal tie to the land?

Vodka is for sissies. It tastes like nothing! I stick with gin or single malt scotch. If you can handle scotch neat, you most certainly should be able to handle vodka in the same manner.

So sayeth the Goddess of Booze.

His MAximumness speaks ill of flavored vodkas, then gives gin a seat at the table… but what IS gin? It’s a neutral spirit grain alcohol (like vodka) that’s been infused with juniper berries and other spices/herbs (flavored). Double standard, methinks…

My Maximum Leader, I have only just returned from an out of town business junket. Imagine my thrill to see that your maximumness deemed it appropriate to feature my humble comments in a recent post. I am blushing. However, I am not so thoroughly blushed that I can sit quietly by without offering some minionesque comments on the Hierarchy of Boozes. To wit…

1) To augment your list, I grovelingly submit the following: Sloe Gin, the dancing dwarf of boozes; Flavored (aka “Candy”) brandies, the court slut of boozes.

2) One important correction to your list: Gin is the twisted, bipolar hunchback (e.g. the Richard III) of boozes. Think about it and be honest with yourself. How many people, after all, do you know who partake of the juniper berry without succumbing to either murder or the burning down of some great public building?

Your humble minion, Card

I would argue that there are in fact three warring kingdoms of booze. The High Test Kingdom of Liqour, The Principate of Wine, and the Republic of Beer.

The High King of Liquor is certainly Scotch. And many of the roles you suggest for other distilled spirits are appropriate. But really, the wines would never submit to the rule of another alcohol. The Prince of the Wines (after a recent civil war) is the House of Cabernet from California. They displaced the French Cabernets, who are now plotting in return. The nobility of the Principate is largely the red wines. The awkward bourgeoisie - putting on airs, but still with red clay on their feet, is the blush and zinfandels. The yeomanry is the white wines, though some white wines still cling to noble titles like saxons in Plantagenet England. The serfs are the box wines.

The republic of beer is a low place. The vast majority of the population is low income industrial workers, the proletariat of thin American style lagers. There is a vibrant entrepreneurial class, though, of independent craft brewers. Some of these have become successful, and have started aping the manners of the nobility of the Liquors and Wines. There is also a large corporate managerial class, wholly owned by the large lager magnates, but who aspire to higher quality than they actually possess. In a curious inversion of life in America, the darker beers are the more respected and wealthy.

In the mountains between Wine and Liquor, there is a barbarous, semi-independent state inhabited by piratical and impoverished fortified wines. The high sulfate content of the soils there leaves life very hard indeed.

I hesitate to bring up such ugliness but…

After the Kingdom of Liquor, the Principate of Wine, and the Republic of Beer, there is yet another dark realm — an outlaw realm. Yes, you all know what I’m talking about. Don’t feign innocence as if you’ve never dipped your nib in the inkwell of depravity. I have seen you all there, as I now see you glancing over your shoulders. THERE…sipping on your after shave, adding a squirt of lighter fluid to your Faygo, and deeply inhaling that model glue as you mix a little turpentine in your green Gatorade. Don’t even think of putting on airs with me.