Reader Friday – It’s Libation Time

Reader Friday: It’s Libation Time
Reader Friday

I know TKZers don’t fall into the alcoholic detective trap, but that doesn’t mean our characters don’t imbibe, whether it be a beverage with or without alcohol.

What’s your character’s libation of choice?

Any reason for it?

54 thoughts on “Reader Friday – It’s Libation Time

  1. In my ICE HAMMER series, Irish Mercenary Tommie Dolan is the most bad-a$$ tea snob around. His drink of choice:

    “While no one would deign to call Tommie a tea snob to his face, the very fact that he mixed his own precise blend of leaves, one fourth Assam and one fourth Javan black tea combined with smoky Lapsang Souchong leaves making the other half, probably meant that he was indeed very much a tea snob.
    He poured several drops of sweetened condensed milk from a can into a chipped enamelware mug. After checking his watch to ensure the tea had steeped for exactly five minutes, he poured it over the milk, gave a quick gentle stir and raised it to his nose inhaling the smoky sweet scent. Yeah, he was a tea snob. Albeit a tea snob with hairy calloused knuckles and black belts in several lethal martial arts.”

    • Aside from the hairy knuckles, that sounds a lot like my late sister-in-law, who brought her own teas, thermometers, timers, and other fixings wherever she went.She also had separate tiny ceramic pots for different types of teas.

  2. Interesting question, Terry. My answer is Barq’s Root Beer in a longneck bottle. The reason is that it’s what I order up at the St. Charles Tavern each time I arrive in New Orleans.

    • I’ll bet you’re looking forward to having it again, Joe. I’ve never tried Barq’s, but you’ve got me curious about it now. Is it blasphemous to use it in a float?

  3. Mike Romeo and his creator prefer a cold bottle of Corona with a lime wedge…preferably at the beach. Push lime wedge into bottle, put thumb over top, turn bottle over so the lime floats “up” to the bottom, return bottle to upright position and remove thumb slowly to avoid fizz pop. Enjoy.

    • On the beach, Skip and Go Naked’s were the libation of choice, preferable mixed in a yellow bucket. But in a pinch, a Corona with lime will work.

    • True story: Out with the wife at her favorite Mexican restaurant, first time without the kids in a while. She orders their signature margarita, I order a Corona and lime. I push the lime in, do the flip like a seasoned pro, and release the pressure at the mouth of the bottle ever so slightly, like I’ve done many times before. Except THAT night a laser-focused, sniper-level stream of beer fizz and lime juice squirted out and hit her right in the eye. Appetizers hadn’t even arrived yet. You could give me a thousand more tries and I wouldn’t be able to duplicate that shot.

  4. My m/c in my current based-on-true crime series hasn’t had a beer in over ten years, gave up Scotch two years ago because it was killing his guts, and now only drinks wine – preferably Pino Grigio from a cold box in the fridge. It’s called method writing. Enjoy your weekend, KZers! 🙂

    • I discovered Irish whisky on a trip to Ireland — gadzooks, I think it was in 2000. I enjoy a cold Pino Grigio. And a Sauvignon Blanc. My list keeps growing, as we try new wines through our Naked Wines subscription.

  5. Lukewarm boiled water. He’s in China in the 80s before tap water was commonly drinkable, and everybody had to boil water each day to drink, and refrigerators were rare.

      • Yeah, I thought about that after I posted. For me it’d be diet,( in fact a diet Dr Pepper is the only diet drink that doesn’t taste absolutely awful) but she’s a health food nut so probably the regular…with peanuts. And it’s a rare treat…because she’s disciplined enough to only drink one a week…unless it’s a really bad week…

        • Unless you count a G&T, I don’t think I’ve had a soda in decades. I have fond memories of Fresca in high school, but somewhere along the way, I lost all interest in flavored carbonated water.

  6. Macallan 18, mainly because Macallan is my go-to scotch, but the 18 is about two shelves above where I normally shop. What good is writing if you can’t live vicariously through your characters, right?

    • One of my characters drinks Macallan as his ‘special occasion’ libation, but I’m not sure if he drinks the 12 or 18. I suppose I could go check. Another has his Jameson 12. We had great fun on our trip to the British Isles before everything shut down, and toured many a distillery. As did my characters in Heather’s Chase. 😉

  7. Before dinner, Jonathan Grave loves a Beefeater martini, straight up with olives. After dinner, he prefers a wee dram of Lagavulin Scotch. His buddy, Boxers, likes the most expensive thing in Jonathan’s liquor cabinet.

    • Smart Man, that Boxers. My dad was a Beefeater man. Also Cutty Sark. After he died, my brother and I discovered an “airline sized” bottle of that in the back of his liquor shelf. Had we known, we’d probably have buried it with him. Instead, we toasted him with it.

  8. Since my Mad River Magic gang are under age, their libation of choice is cold milk, served with Gram’s fresh-baked oat meal chocolate chip cookies, of course.

  9. I’d join them in that, Steve. As long as the cookies are chewy, not crisp.

  10. Great question, Terry! My 1980s (at the start of the series) twenty-something para-librarian turned sleuth Meg Booker is a tea-drinker, loving earl gray. She keeps instant coffee around for drop in guests like her actor brother Theo. If he persuaded her to visit a hotel bar with him after one of his performances, she’ probably try a blue curaçao or a white zinfandel.

    Have a wonderful weekend.

    • Thanks, Dale. While we were in Africa, I had rooibos tea all the time (because, despite there being a significant coffee industry in Africa, they didn’t do decaf other than instant, and I can’t handle caffeine). My tea-drinking sister-in-law had introduced me to it some time before, so it wasn’t new to me.

    • Once my brother pointed out that on a spectrographic analysis, Jack and furniture polish were almost identical, I’ve avoided that particular libation in all its variations. But a Whiskey/Whisky sour with a different bourbon sounds just fine. (I’m not sure where bourbon falls when it comes to using whiskey or whisky. In Scotland, it’s whisky; in Ireland, it’s whiskey, but bourbon’s not a big libation in the British Isles (something my character in Heather’s Chase discovered when he wanted a Manhattan.)

  11. Cool question, Terry!

    My MC is a Marine vet (Vietnam “conflict”). He drinks coffee, the blacker the better. And woe to his wife if she forgets and puts his cup in the dishwasher. That is a serious violation. (In fact, in one of their opening scenes together, she does just that…the consequences are severe.)

    I patterned him after my Dad (Navy-Korea) and my brother (Coast Guard). Dad’s current coffee cup is, shall we say, seasoned. And once, in 2015, when we visited my bro in Atlanta, I “helped” his wife clean the kitchen. You guessed it…I put the bro’s cup in the dishwasher, and I still haven’t heard the end of it. 🙂

    • No messing with coffee drinkers! I worked in an office once where none of the guys washed their cups, but I’m sure it was for a different reason entirely.

  12. My characters haven’t expressed an enthusiasm for any particular drink. I see them imbibing tea, water, and an occasional glass of wine. It seems Chardonnay is a favorite.

    Their author, however, is sitting here drinking a mug of Peet’s French Roast while tapping away at the keyboard. I’ll have to recommend it to them.

    • Maybe plop your characters into a bar/restaurant after a trying or exceptionally successful day and see what they order.
      I’m with you on Peet’s .. it’s one of the few dark roast decafs I can get around here. And, as I commented above somewhere, I can’t handle caffeine. No snarky remarks. I still have a right to enjoy decent coffee, which I DO like.

    • I love Peet’s! Just discovered them and they’re my new favorite coffee company. I prefer lighter roasts, and their Luminosa blend is my new favorite breakfast drink.

    • Part of the time the Hubster worked for SeaWorld in Orlando, they were owned by Anheuser Busch. Employees got the same perks as the brewery workers: 2 cases of beer a month. Sadly, it was never their specialty beers, which he much preferred to Bud. And don’t get him started on Bud Light.

      • I live in St. Louis. The Belgian bean counters cut way back on the free beer 🙁 .

        Many neighborhoods had someone who worked at the Brewery. They would stock up their allotment for block parties.

      • It is possible that I have taken the Brewery tour more than a few times. Watching someone walk up to the bar with over 40 choices of free, fresh beer and use their token for a Bud Light is just sad. Really? You have never tried a Bud Light?

        • I recall going to our local sushi restaurant and Hubster and I ordered Kirin Ichiban, and the Asians at the neighboring table (in town for a convention based on their nametags) were drinking Bud Light.

        • Really, Alan? There’s an Anheuser-Busch plant about 45 minutes away from me (10 min. from my brother, so we’ve got an excuse 😉 ). We’re not big drinkers, but the tour sounds like fun.

          I once heard a fellow author talk about a book signing she held at a brewery. The more people drank, the more they bought books. LOL

  13. Addictions run in my family, both sides, so I don’t drink, and my characters don’t imbibe that much either because I have such an emotional aversion to it. So, bar scenes are very rare. Wine with a meal or a shared whiskey or Scotch in a conversation are about it. This has never been a problem since I’m not writing about mean streets, and my characters tend to be upper middle class or better which is where true intellectual evil hangs out.

    • My normal limit is two drinks (which took decades to build up to), although it appears we’re going through our wine a little faster since the pandemic. My body tends to say “stop” rather than it being a consciously established ration.
      Or, as they used to say, “Cheap Date.”

  14. Hmm…I hadn’t thought of it until I read this post, but for my new character, it’s water and tea, with a rare Dr. Pepper (which she only drinks for the burn on really hot days). It used to be wine. She and her husband, Jeff, loved experimenting with wine, and wine tours were always a part of their vacations. Since his death, even a whiff of wine will make her vomit.

    • Thanks for your comment Jeanne. Looks like your character has some interesting back story that can be revealed through her beverage choices. Glad I made you think about it.

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