Have cocktails changed your drinking habits?

[newbie21]

In the months prior to and since the opening of The Violet Hour, Toby awakened my senses to the incredible world of the best cocktails ever made. I believe I actually told him that I would drink gin over my dead, rotting corpse. I am now like the gaping maw of a newly hatched chick. If I'm not at The Violet Hour (or in NY at Milk and Honey, Death and Company, Freemans, Gotham, etc), it is sadly hard to find anything that comes close to the magic that is TVH.

[FoodMan]

Good wine is still good. Good beer is still good. Bad cocktails are worse.

My feelings exactly.

Sometimes I come home and I enjoy a well made cocktail, other times it's a glass of homebrew (or a good commercial brew), then there are the days where nothing but a good glass of wine would do.

I definitly would say that my cocktail drinking habits have changed to include a much bigger array of beverages over the past 2 years. I also enjoy making my own flavored liquours. I am also more into bitterish concotions and using different bitters as well as making them. I defintily drink a lot less straight Scotch, Tequila or the such. I try to mix it with something and see what I get.

[catscandal]

Cocktails changed a lot for me. They made the ideas of balance and synergy much clearer to my palate, and this gave me a much greater appreciation for these elements in desserts, savory cooking, coffee drinks (a well made single cappuccino is definitely a level of elegance rivaling the best of cocktails), and all manner of other worldly delights. The first time I made a well-balanced margarita with quality ingredients, I was just blown away at the splendid interplay of flavours and that mysterious something that makes a drink more than the sum of its parts, and I began to seek out such relationships in other media (quality Chinese food is splendid for that, as are fruit desserts).

As for my actual drinking habits, it was mostly a matter of context. Shifting drinking from "social gatherings" to before dinner, after dinner, winter, summer, and so forth helped me appreciate each individual drink's personality a lot more. And I'm much more likely to offer friends drinks when they come over because I feel like I can serve something I'm proud of instead of grabbing a cold beer out of the fridge (and without committing to drinking a whole bottle of wine). And of course cocktails led me to drink more simply because they taste far better than other alcoholic options (other than a brandy after dinner or the occasional sparkling treat). And call it a fetish, but straining a drink into that frosty 4.5oz glass just feels great.

[tikibars]

When I was younger it was all about the quantity.

Give me whatever cheap beer I could afford to drink a lot of, just as long as it got me loaded.

My habits have spun around 180 degrees over the past fifteen years, but very quickly in the past 3 years or so.

Now, if I can't have a really nice cocktail (such as from Pegu, Violet Hour, Velvet Tango Room, my own home, etc), then I don't want to bother drinking at all.

If I get dragged to a mediocre bar with pals, I will drink OJ or water.

I just don't want to spend the cash on a crappy drink, and I don't want to deal with a hangover, ruining my internal organs, and not being able to drive unless I know I am going to really enjoy the hell out of a drink.

If it isn't potentially delicious, then I don't want it.