Cheers!

I'm not much of a drinker when it comes to alcoholic beverages. To me beer is basically pee-coloured water with a taste like old, wet wool-socks.

It's sort of ok with Radler or Berliner Weisse, but to be frank I'm not sure if that depends on certain memories surrounding those beverages or the flavours themselves.

And wine is just a horrible tannic acid-tasting and smelly thing. Yes when it comes to wine, well, it's not a question of which wine is the best but which wine is the least horrible... So far no wine, except Martini Asti, has appealed to me. And I'm not really interested in trying to get my tastebuds to appreciate it. I seriously doubt it would give my life greater meaning...

By the way, why is wine spelled with a w but vineyard with a v?? Is that extra little v added when the grapes turn into the sour wine or what?

I'm as far away from being a whisky-fan as one can be - M being quite the opposite - but I do love Scotland in most other aspects!

On the other end of the scale of actually being my cup of tea - even if absolutely nothing beats a good cup of actual tea of course! - I do like a nice tropical fruit drink now and then - preferably in a tropical climate - and liqueur like Bailey's and Pisang Ambon. The later two compliments a cup of tea rather well... And Sangria with lots of fruit.

But then there's one kind of alcoholic beverage I do like to have and that's cider. The Swedish brands of ciders have a tendency to be on the fruity, sweet side of things. And that's really my cup of cider - even if the dryer kind reminds me of England and English pubs and that's always a pleasant thing...

My favourite English cider is Red C, it's several years since I last drank it and I'm not sure if it still exists but it was so perfectly tasty. Even if the classic Woodpecker is quite ok too, though being more of an acquired taste for my sweet t-buds. And the most horrible one I think I've ever tasted was a lable called something like Scrumpy Jack's - anything but scrumptious...

In South Africa I got to try a really nice and smooth cider, Sarita. And also a rather horrible wet-wool-socks kind by the name of Hunter's.

Back to the Swedish ciders, a classic pear one from the brand Kopparbergs is never wrong. That brewery also have some other nice, inventive kind of flavours like cranberry, cloudberry and elderberry. At their website you'll find a quite nice little story how it all started in 1882, also in English.

Then there's Rekorderlig cider - Rekorderlig translates something like Excellent. With flavours like passionfruit, raspberry-starfruit, gooseberry and Christmas-flavour.

And then there's also the one I should say is my favourite, the one in the pic above. xide - its original name being xider... - which I guess technically isn't a Swedish cider since it's from the originally Danish brewery Carlsberg. Anyway. My favourite flavour is probably the bright orange chili-mandarin, and the cactus-lime is nice too as well as wasabi-lemon. And there are some new flavours I haven't tried that sounds promising.

For last Christmas xide had this quite awful season-flavoured one, cranberry-mistletoe I think it was. Tasted like artificial fruitjuice and had this really thick syrup-like thing to it plus lots of glitter to get you into that special Christmas spirit...not.

The xide mandarin-chili goes really well with a thai vegetables in green curry by the way. They lift eachother's flavours nicely. And isn't that what food and drink is all about, well, every little constituent in life really, that they should lift eachothers flavours? Cheers!