this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2025
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Might as well make it year round. Hell, vanilla was considered the fanciest of fancy rare spices, and now it's in everything.
Biggest problem i have with "seasonal" food, is the absolutely infuriating amount of food wasted just because the box/product needs to be swapped for the version that has hearts and bunnies on it.
Vanilla, actual vanilla, is a pain in the ass to make, and almost all of the world's actual vanilla ends up in ice cream. We can synthesize the same chemicals out of, among other things, wood pulp and beaver secretions, which is why it's easier to make things vanilla flavored now.
Do you mean the vanilla bean is a pain in the ass to grow? Vanilla is really easy to make from vanilla beans. Just use alcohol to extract the vanilla
yes.
This is also why barrel-aged spirits don't just taste like vanilla, they have literal vanillin in them, which is vanilla's main flavor compound.
I'm surprised whiskey aged in oak doesn't come out as bitter af due to the tannin in the wood. Is that the point of charring the barrel?
IDK, TBH. Though I do think that many aged spirits are kind of bitter, especially the extra-long aged ones. Seems to depend on the oak species, too, French Oak often seems to lead to bitterer spirits (might be part of the reason why cognac often has added sugar) compared to White Oak (the standard for bourbon barrels).
Or I wonder if the bitterness isn't just hidden by the overwhelming flavor of motor fuel.
You mean the flavor of alcohol? If alcohol specifically hides bitterness but somehow lets all the sweet-ish barrel flavors shine through, no one would be able to taste the bitterness of cocktail bitters in drinks like the Old Fashioned. Cocktail bitters are very bitter, but the same is true for tannins.
Oh I'm convinced that the demand for fancy booze is pretty much entirely marketing.
First of all, wine is almost entirely judged by its packaging. Take Franzia, that extremely mid boxed wine, put it in a striking bottle with a real wood cork and a fancy or trendy looking label and people will start discussing bouquet and mouthfeel.
Beer (and I will pause after typing this parenthetical to take a swig from my Red Oak Bavarian Amber Lager) tastes kinda like puke. Like orange juice after brushing your teeth. Fancy schmancy beers will taste like burned oatmeal, and the craft beer industry died and now there's just IPAs which taste like yesterday's grass clippings and the occasional "we're not as big as Budweiser" company making "Amber lager".
As for spirits, vodka outsells fancy aged whiskies by a WIDE margin, and while flavors can be found in whiskey, a bottle of Pappy or Blantons or whatever ain't worth thousands of dollars, it's all just Buffalo Trace.
I've seen footage of a restaurant where rich people pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars to have chocolate sauce poured into their bare hands from a gravy boat. I've heard this phenomenon explained by the axiom "poor people prioritize quantity, middle class prioritize quality, and the rich prioritize experience." So the best you're going to get is a $40 bottle of scotch, because a $40,000 bottle of scotch will be the same booze in a really, really complicated bottle.
Have you ever had Johnny Walker Blue? It taste like ash. Johnny Walker Red is honestly a better experience, because it tastes like whisky. Johnny Walker Blue is more expensive because they tell you it is.
The difference (or lack thereof) between a 40 000$ bottle and a 40$ bottle really doesn't matter for this argument. 40$ whisky clearly tastes different from vodka or 10$ whisky, and if you can't appreciate that taste that's fine (as previously mentioned, many long-aged spirits do taste bitter to me), but don't make it out like people only drink 40$ whisky for reasons of prestige and marketing.
I don't like any Johnny Walker, though, peaty whisky isn't really my thing. We were discussing cask flavors, not smoke/peat flavors, right?
Maker's Mark, a mass produced basic bitch bourbon, was initially marketed with the tagline "It tastes expensive because it is." I say this as a whiskey drinker, it's pretty much all marketing.
Why are you a whisky drinker if its all just marketing? Vodka is cheaper.
Because I fell for the fucking marketing. Duh.