Blue Whiskey

My favorite flavor is blue. You never know what it will taste like. Blue popsicles are often best, sometimes coconut, a flavor that has no color, or pineapple, which can't use yellow, because that's already lemon. Sometimes the flavor is a new one, one that never existed before popsicles.

Blue cocktails are, of course, the height of sophistication. Until recently, that meant blue curacao, a blue liqueur made from bitter oranges on the Caribbean isle of Curacao (artificially colored - it comes in clear and orange as well). My father brought souvenir bottles back from a trip or two, and I was allowed to taste it as a child. So it always reminds me of children's cough syrup. Still, it makes a fine replacement for triple sec if you want to turn a drink like a margarita blue. But the classic is the:

Blue Hawaii

2 oz. rum (I like it with coconut rum, like Malibu)
1 oz. lime juice (~1 lime)
1 oz. pineapple juice
1 oz. blue curacao
Shake and strain into a martini glass

But a new, blue liquor, Hpnotiq, is the rage. It is a French concoction made of brandy, vodka and "tropical fruit juices", colored a pearly turquoise blue. It has a distinctive flavor, not as sweet as you might expect, with a funny herbal flavor. It is like orange juice and toothpaste - not nasty like o.j. and t.p., but unexpected, like two sweet flavors that mix together bitter.

I guess you'll have to try it. It's pretty popular in champagne, but you can drink it on the rocks. I've had it in a number of cocktails this last few weeks: In a Blue Crush at the Hukilau in San Jose and the Xanh Burn at Xanh in Mountain View. And it's flavor haunts me.

Like the song says, "I'll send you a jug in the morning."

Goofy name though.