Popov Vodka

Popov Vodka comes in a plastic bottle. There is a banner across the top that reads as follows:

NOW! Unbreakable Bottle

It is the only thing I have seen yet for this blog that is so unabashedly proud of its cheapness and low quality, presumably because the people drinking, selling, and making Popov know that, at the end of the night, the bottle will be thrown across the room or weaponized.

 Will you tell my son...what time his father drank Popov?

It also brags about how remarkably smooth it is, but fuck. that. noise.

LOOK

It's clear and water-looking, but it may have the worst-looking label of the cheap vodkas I've tasted. It looks like a high-school illustration project: the backdrop is clearly a stock photo with the contrast cranked up, the font is too small for thick outlining, and all the colors clash.  This really is the least-appetizing looking bottle I've reviewed.

NOSE

It smells like vodka, only moreso than vodka should. It's the same sweetness and alcohol and mild pepper aroma four times over. It doesn't have much beyond the basic nail polish/alcohol smell, but it is so overbearingly strong compared to that mild haze that Stolichnaya has. It's the difference between a beauty mark and a dripping face tumor-- one of degree, not of quality. If smelling Stoli is like kissing Marilyn Monroe, snorting Popov is like finding some particularly attractive face-fold on the Elephant Man and just cramming your tongue in there.

hhheey thar shexhy

TASTE (STRAIGHT)

At first it tastes downright bearable-- watery, and thin, sure, but not awful.

At first. The aftertaste on this truly is something special-- incredibly chemical, bittersweet, and pretty much literally vomitous. There's actually different lays of aftertaste, from the first swell that tastes  like nail-polish remover to the lingering film that feels like my stomach trying to claw its way up to freedom. Like peeling away the layers on an onion, if an onion was mate of hatred and sorrow.

Come to think of it, what am I doing here?

Actually, you know what? I'm gonna see if the metaphors I keep using are true. I am gonna make a tiny half-shot of rubbing alcohol and tap water and see if there's any significant difference between that and Popov. Be right back. 

So, how does a few drops of isopropyl and tapwater compare? (Seriously-- just a few drops, they put puke drugs in there so that kids won't drink it, making this the first time I have literally ingested poison for you jackals). Pretty well. It obviously tastes more like poison and less palatable, but it also doesn't ave that mouth-puckering aftertaste. I'd say I'm probably better off with Popov, though.

I can't believe I just did that. Where the fuck have I come to in life?

TASTE (MIXED)

Dirty Martini

Threw some brine and vodka in a shot glass with an olive, and it pretty much tastes like the sea. Not in a romantic, sailor-y way. Like all the awful stuff in the ocean condensed into one delicious shot.

  Yummo!

FINAL THOUGHTS

Yeah, there's not really much I can say that'll be funnier than "Now! Unbreakable Bottle" 

Amarito Amaretto

Hello all. It's been a while since I gutrot for real-- the Week of Bumwine took a lot out of me (at some point, getting drunk on hobo-juice every night stopped being fn. Imagine that!). So I thought I'd start things nce and slow-- picked up a bottle of amaretto liqueur, gonna see how that goes. It was 6 dollars for a 750 ml bottle (roughly 1/4 of what, say, a nice bottle of Red Label would have cost), and is only about as alcoholic as wine.

It also comes from my old nemesis, Kentucky (see: Riva, KY Gentleman, Inver House). So, being Kentucky and NotBourbon (the worst kind of Kentucky liquor), it is going to be bad. The maker doesn't list Amarito on its website, and it does list Fighting Cock, so that should serve as a forewarning of the awful. So me and my wonderful girl are going to go at it.

Worse than this.

LOOK
Nope. I'm not even going to review this section. The bottle says "caramel color added," so it doesn't matter how good this looks, it's not going to tell me anything how bad it will taste. The bottle could look like a bottle of Laphroaig inside Helena Bonham Carter and it still wouldn't be appetizing, because it's a damn trap for whatever awful thing is lurking in here.

If there actually was a bottle of Scotch in this picture this blog would be over now. And I would be single. And I wouldn't notice.

NOSE
Pretty much entirely like sugar. There's almost no other flavor there beyonf the sweetness and faint alcohol and synthetic-fruit flavors. There's no hint of, y'know, almonds. Maybe it's because I've been reading a lot of Anais Nin lately (it's like porn, but you feel smart!), but I can't help but compare this to the perfume of a cheap Parisian prostitute. Whoremusk. And, like the other sugary cordials I've reviewed in the past, the smell is overpowering and creeps out of this bottle like an ancient evil just unlocked.

Amaretto of the Colossus.

 TASTE (STRAIGHT)

Again, there's a noticeable lack of any almond flavor here. Or fruit flavor. It tastes like really bad light rum cut with water-- more like pancake syrup than actual liquor. I really cannot think of any reason you would drink this straight. Much like the fact that Gary Glitter was, at one point, taken somewhat seriously, it is absolutely inexpicable. 

 

No one would have thought the Vietnamese had a limit on kiddie-diddlin', but Gary glitter found it.

TASTE (AMARETTO SOUR)

 Mixed it up with some water and lemon juice to see if that would help, and, to be honest, it kinda does. It actually tastes a little nice now, although it says something that the Amarito is so sickly sweet I could use half a lemon and it doesn't taste bitter at all.

I'd have to recommend this as the way to drink it if you have to, but the thing is this: there's so little flavor beyond the sugary-sweetness that this just tastes like lemonade with a drop or two of almond extract in it, and the entire glass has maybe a fifth of an ounce of alcohol in it. Plus it looks like milky, cloudy sewer water. So, the best way to drink Amarito is a way that almost completely eliminates the flavor of it.

Plus, if you have a couple sugar cubes and half a lemon and you wanna get buzzed, there is no excuse for not making yourself a vodka sling. Those things are scrumptious.

GLYNIS'S TAKE (AMARITO W/ ICED COFFEE)

 Since straight the stuff tastes like a clown choked down a cotton candy truck and promptly vomited, the addition of coffee means there's nowhere to go but up, right? NO. LAME SAUCE. A waste of perfectly fine coffee! This amaretto might as well be the offal at the end of the jarred maraschino cherries. And despite the desperate need for a bad likker blaaag, that's all that need be said. THE END.

 

This plays inside Glynis's head, all the time.

FINAL THOUGHTS

For starters, I just watched Glynis type, elete, and retype GOOD NIGHT FAGS like ten times before deciding on the more appropriate ending. Do not let her fool you. 

Amarito's not terrible gutrot, honestly, for amaretto-- which I don't like to begin with. But, in the nd, I have absoltely no reason to recommend it. It won't get you drunk enough to be worth the taste, and it doesn't taste like anything more than water, sugar, and a drop of fake flavoring. Good enough to ease myelf back into the game, I guess-- expect a return to truly wretched form some time next week.

I AM COMING HOME TO YOU...

...WITH MY OWN BLOOD IN MY MOUTH.








Nothing to report yet, but I wanted to let my (seven) loyal readers know that hey hey hey, I'm still here. I'm hoping to get something up within the next week. I might convince my girlfriend to maybe murder a bottle of something awful with me, so that you can hear her commentary (If you think I am filthy and angry when I'm drunk...)

Sorry for the long hiatus, everybody-- The Gutrotter is still gutrottin', and I wanted to let all y'all know that the W.o.B. didn't kill me. "But the river is bad, the river is hard." --Carey Mercer.