Girl Drink Drunk is a regular column that features your host, an adult male who prefers bourbon and beer, exploring the sugary, sweet world of “girly drinks” for your edification and entertainment. He promises not to barf on you. Enjoy.
Remember when, as a kid, you’d eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and feel like you had the whole world figured out? This WORKS, you’d think, your mouth sticky, and then you’d rip the day a new asshole playing freeze tag like a fucking beast. Or, maybe on a quiet Saturday morning, you’d sit watching your favorite cartoon with a gigantic bowl of Froot Loops… just the PERFECT amount of milk… the sugary taste and brightly colored O’s matching exactly the animated zaniness on the screen in front of you. “I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE TO HAVE A PROBLEM,” you thought-screamed into the universe.
The adventures of fucking He-Man, and cereal… goddamn PB&J, and stiff-arming your friends in a field during recess… two magical experiences that perfectly encapsulate that magical “little kid” time. Of course, you eventually grew up. You learned about debt, and liquor, and heartbreak. Soon… too soon… you discovered that death exists, that people will hurt you and not even care, that there are those in the world that will smile through their lies while your soul shrivels inside you like a deflating Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade float. If only there was a way to recapture those lost moments of pure, innocent joy… to re-experience that simple bliss… but, you know, to do so in a fashion that will ALSO got you super wasted…
The Girl Drink(s):
Enter Van Gogh and Three Olives… two liquor brands that are attempting to mixologize your childhood memories with vodka. These came from my wife’s own personal stock of girly drinks, and they are both a little bit terrifying. I think it’s important to note that the lid on the Loopy Vodka… called that, by the way, for copyright infringement reasons, and for what it makes your stomach feel like immediately after drinking it… was practically cemented onto the bottle due to all the sugar. That should give you an idea of what I’m in for here.
Another note… the “jelly” in the PB&J is raspberry, as opposed to the traditional grape. I think this is blasphemous and grounds for, at minimum, a bazooka-ing of their manufacturing plant. My wife, however, says that grape jelly is “a third-tier jelly” and that I am wrong. So we’ll agree to disagree on this one.
Straight Up:
To really get a sense of what these two nostalgia boozes were all about, I took shots of each of them straight. This was a terrible idea. DO NOT DRINK THESE STRAIGHT. I did that for you, as I am awesome and care about your happiness in life.
If you were to murder a Care Bear and drink its blood in some sort of horrifying, full-moon, pagan ritual, it would taste exactly like Loopy Vodka. Sweet… oh merciful, cruel Jesus… just so very sweet. If you can power through the sugar high that is ripping through your veins, you’ll notice a taste that is… sort of… kind of… in the ballpark of… Froot Loops. There’s almost a wheat-y taste, like the cereal itself, and there’s DEFINITELY a frooty (not “fruity”) taste as well. It’s the most fake flavor you’ve ever let slide down your throat. It makes Bubble Yum taste like organic fruit grown by a vegan cult. Oddly enough, the most offensive part of a Loopy Vodka shot is the smell: It smells unmistakably like Lemon-scented Pledge. Highly toxic cleaning products… mmmmm… WHO’S READY TO PARTY???
The PB&J vodka is much more palatable. The smell, for one thing, doesn’t make you rethink your nose and how it’s really not THAT necessary, right [tests kitchen knife for sharpness by slicing a sheet of paper in half]? In fact, the PB&J vodka smells… good! Really good, actually. Warm and peanut buttery, like the neck of a Keebler Elf as you give him a long, meaningful hug. It tastes pretty not-disgusting, as well, especially when compared to the Loopy vodka. The fine folks at Van Gogh have dialed down the sweetness quite a bit for this particular flavor. Consequently, it has less of that drinking-a-bag-of-powdered-sugar-dissolved-in-rubbing-alcohol aftertaste, letting the Peanut Butter and the Jelly really shine through. (the synthetic, super fake tastes that somewhat resemble those two actual things, but you know what I mean)
Loopy vodka with Milk:
This is an actual paring suggested by the Three Olives website. They actually want you to pour liquor into milk and drink it and then walk around for the rest of your life like that was an okay thing to have done. “Drink this, then try to justify your actions to your God,” they seem to be suggesting. And so, okay… I’ll take that challenge, you fucking website. I AIN’T NEVER SCARED.
[makes the sign of the cross, sheds a wistful tear for America, drinks the drink]
…I’ll be damned.
It’s kind of… well, delicious might be a stretch, but it doesn’t suck. In fact, it tastes like the milk that’s left over after you’ve eaten your fill of Froot Loops. Like, it tastes EXACTLY like that, with just a hint of an alcohol burn on the back end.
The fact that this didn’t make me do a comical spit-take, then hop around like an angry prospector, completely baffles me. My world is torn asunder. All that I knew is now unknown. Fucking weirdballs.
PB&J vodka with Coke:
Eh.
This is what my wife suggested for the PB&J vodka, as it is how SHE drinks it, and… eh.
I mean… it wasn’t like drinking that liquid that collects in the bottom of a garbage bag or anything. It was FINE. But it was also just kind of nondescript. Actually, one kind of unusual thing: Drinking it, I could taste the Coke and the PB&J vodka TOTALLY SEPARATE from one another. Like, they didn’t mix. There was no mixing. It was one, and then the other, in the same swallow of liquid. Very efficient, I guess, if you prefer the “shot and a chaser” method of boozing, but confusing if you’re looking for an actual cocktail-style cocktail.
I blame science, or possibly the Devil. That guy’s always up to no good.
Closing Time:
So was there any of that childhood magic to be found in either of these two girly drinks? Maybe a little… the Loopy vodka in particular, when mixed with (of all things) MILK, really does bring back that feeling of slurping down slightly-pink cereal run-off while GI Joe kicks Cobra in the nads at maximum volume, 18 inches from your face.
So propers to Three Olives for that, despite their vodka being more sugary than Gummi Worm barf. And a proper or two to Van Gogh, who’s PB&J vodka isn’t as sweet as you’d expect, and therefore doesn’t taste like you’re asphyxiating on Willy Wonka’s underwear. I trust that both of those sentences will be showing up in the copy of their respective advertisements within the week.
Three Olives Loopy Vodka – C+
Van Gogh PB&J Vodka – B-
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