The holidays are past, but we still have a sweet tooth here.

• chocolate shavings for rimming
• 1 part crème de cacao
• 2 parts vodka
• dark chocolate garnish

Warm a martini glass over a small flame, then roll the rim in chocolate shavings. Put a square of dark chocolate in the glass, then prepare the liquor. Shake vodka and crème de cacao with ice and strain into glass. For additional flavor, sprinkle the top with cocoa powder or chocolate shavings.

Please tipple responsibly.

Hot weather demands cool drinks. Lemonade is fine for the kids, but adults need a pitcher of something more entertaining.

• 2 parts Vodka
• 1 part Orange Juice
• 2 parts Lemonade
• dash Lime Juice

Prepare in a pitcher with ice and share. Adjust quantities to taste.

Enjoy safely.

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Who wouldn’t enjoy a frozen mud slide on a hot summer day? Typical recipes call for crushed ice and cream or ice cream. For some reason, we decided to try making them from ice cream, from scratch.

The MaisonBisson Frozen Mud Slide

This recipe requires an ice cream maker, we used the Deni Scoop Factory.

• 1.5 cups heavy cream
• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup sugar
• .5 cups Bailey’s
• dash vanilla

Mix ingredients in bowl, then pour into ice cream maker’s freezer container. Follow your ice cream maker’s directions about time to freeze. Our Deni Scoop Factory was done in about 30 minutes. Spoon frozen ingredients into glass, add appropriate amounts of vodka and Kahlua and stir. Top with whipped cream and a cherry. Enjoy.

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I read enough of this to get a good laugh, but not enough to understand if it was serious or not. Some of it reads like satire, but other parts as are dry as, well, they’re dry (who really needs a simile anyway, they’re just dry, okay?).

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Cola wars are one thing, but “altbev” sure has come a long way since soft drink makers identified the market segment in the 90s. Coke’s Fruitopia was among the entries from the majors, but, as usual, it’s the independents that have lead the way. Water remains the leading altbev, but energy and “health” drinks are squeezing the market. Just as Coke and Pepsi were developing their bottled water brands to catch up with Poland Spring (owned by Nestle, by the way), Red Bull appeared and turned things upside down. Sure, Red Bull wasn’t the first energy drink, Jolt proved that over-caffeinated soda (how much caffein?) could sell well and Krank20 did the caffeinated water thing early on. But Red Bull found its place and took off. The small can, the list of hard to pronounce energy enhancing ingredients that sounded somehow natural and healthy, the late 90s economic bubble, and post Starbucks caffeine chasers looking for the next buzz all fell together just right.

Coke tried to follow Red Bull and Pepsi tried their own new products, but their attempts just seemed to legitimize Red Bull’s place. Importantly, however, people just couldn’t come up with a reason to switch from Red Bull. As much as they tried, nobody could differentiate between one caffein buzz or another, so the first to market had a huge advantage in field (which isn’t to say that the drinks don’t have detractors).

The real winner for any beverage, however, is when it becomes part of a popular mixed drink. Jack and Coke, rum and Coke, Seven and Seven, and now Red Bull and Vodka are part of our mixology.

With drinking and hard liquors back in fashion, nobody imagined it would take long for distillers to try to capitalize on Red Bull’s success. Enter Zygo, the “morning vodka.” I’m not sure what zygo means, but Google lists a lotta hits that aint vodka, including interferometers and augmentative communication devices.

Ken, a co-owner, appears to be a New Hampshire boy (he describes it as “north of Boston”), but the hooch is brewed from potatoes in Idaho. The 70-proof liquor boasts taurine, d-ribose, guarana and yerba mate among its energy enhancing additives. I was amused to find Ken working the drinking community with a post to ClubPlanet.com.