Whiskys (non-Irish or Scot) & Bourbons

[Drunk Monk]

[thatguy]

"I drank too much whiskey and got crabs" now has a new meaning...introducing "Crab Trapper"! We'll just call it "crapper" for short...

https://www.delish.com/food-news/a403959...r-whiskey/

This Whiskey Is Made From Invasive Crabs And Tastes Like Fireball

It's "briny and better Fireball."
By Allison Arnold 
Jun 24, 2022

Crab-flavored whiskey? Yes, it's a thing. 
New Hampshire's Tamworth Distilling is shaking things up with an innovative effort to help eradicate the invasive European green crab. The limited-release House of Tamworth Crab Trapper whiskey is made from an aged bourbon and over 90 pounds of green crabs harvested from a local trapper. The thousands of crabs are cooked down into a stock, blended with the bourbon, and steeped with spices reminiscent of a low-country seafood boil.

The result is "briny and better Fireball," according to Tamworth founder Steven Grasse. You'll find notes of maple, vanilla, and caramel on the nose with the warm flavors of cinnamon, clove, and all-spice adding a bit of heat.

“Totally unexpectedly, crab and whiskey do in fact go together. But who knew the unique flavor combination would create an all-natural and sustainable riff on Fireball? We certainly didn’t!” Grasse said.

When you think of invasive species, eating them may not immediately come to mind. But green crabs, which have long wreaked havoc on the New England coast, are in fact edible. 

"People have a negative connotation of things that are quote unquote invasive," said Gabriela Bradt, Ph.D., founder of the NH Green Crab Project and fisheries specialist at the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension. "Just because it's not supposed to be here doesn't mean you can't eat it."

Bradt, who worked with Tamworth to develop the crab whiskey, is investigating the creation of viable markets and fisheries for the green crab to help mitigate the problem. The green crab is quite small, which is why they're often used as bait or to make broth. But you wouldn't steam and eat green crab like blue crab. "The amount of time it takes to pick it, and then processing and everything, would just make the price per pound skyrocket," Bradt said. 

Originally from Europe, the green crab made its way to New England in the early 1800s via ships and quickly flourished due to their ability to tolerate extreme conditions. The cold New England winters have traditionally kept the population down, but rising temperatures over the last 10 to 15 years have caused the population to explode, according to Bradt. A single green crab can eat 40 to 50 clams a day, which has greatly impacted the ecosystem of New England. 

JENNIFER BAKOS

“This collaboration [with Tamworth] is a really unique and exciting opportunity to help educate the public about green crabs, climate change, and sustainability," said Bradt.

“All of us at Tamworth Distilling are passionate outdoor enthusiasts. Sustainability and the wilderness surrounding our facility in Tamworth, New Hampshire, is a major source of inspiration for all new products," Grasse said in an announcement. "The unexpected results of these wild experiments are why we love using local flora and fauna as ingredients in our spirits."

The limited-release Crab Trapper whiskey (92 proof, 200 ml, $65) is available at seelbachs.com, Tamworth Distilling, and Philadelphia's Art in the Age.

--tg

[Drunk Monk]

200mL bottles for $65? That's not even a cup...

[Drunk Monk]

Mini bottles of Fireball aren't actually whiskey, leading to a lawsuit

Marysville, United States - June 13, 2012: Studio shot of a bottle of Fireball brand cinnamon flavored whisky. Fireball is a whisky-based liqueur made by the Sazerac Company. It has gained popularity for tasting like an Atomic Fireball candy in a liquor form. (drial7m1 via Getty Images)

2.4k[/url][url=https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Mini%20bottles%20of%20Fireball%20aren%27t%20actually%20whiskey%2C%20leading%20to%20a%20lawsuit&url=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.yahoo.com%2Fmini-bottles-fireball-arent-actually-003745438.html%3Fsoc_src%3Dsocial-sh%26soc_trk%3Dtw%26tsrc%3Dtwtr&via=YahooNews]
Emily Heil
Fri, January 20, 2023, 4:37 PM PST·3 min read


People buying small bottles of Fireball at their local convenience store might be surprised to learn that they're not getting the same as the stuff that comes from the liquor store - and that difference is at the center of a lawsuit in which a customer is suing the maker of both beverages.
"Fireball Cinnamon Whisky," the spicy-hot booze sold in liquor stores, is the drink most people are probably more familiar with. But "Fireball Cinnamon," which is available at grocery stores, gas stations and other places that are not permitted to sell liquor, is something else. The drink, which debuted in 2020, is actually a malt beverage flavored to taste like whiskey; it's sold in small bottles that usually go for 99 cents.
A recent lawsuit filed against Sazerac, which makes both, claims that the convenience-store version is misleading, because the packaging is almost identical to its boozy older sibling, and one would have to read the very fine print on the bottle to know that it wasn't just a smaller version of the popular liquor. "The label misleads consumers into believing it is or contains distilled spirits," according to a class-action lawsuit brought by Anna Marquez, an Illinois woman who claims she purchased the small bottles assuming they contained whiskey.
Malt beverages are made by fermentation and are often categorized with beer and wine (popular examples include Colt 45 and hard seltzers). Distilled spirits, like whiskey, are typically more tightly regulated.
The lawsuit takes issue with the way the malt-beverage version's label describes its ingredients: "Malt Beverage With Natural Whisky & Other Flavors and Carmel Color." The lawsuit calls this a "clever turn of phrase" meant to trick consumers into thinking the drink contains whiskey and not just a whiskey flavoring. Shoppers "will think the Product is a malt beverage with added (1) natural whisky and (2) other flavors," the filing says.
The filing cited local news stories about the appearance of what seemed to be mini Fireball whiskey bottles in settings where liquor isn't usually sold, underscoring its claim of a common misconception. "You can't buy wine, or any other hard liquor at any stores like this, so why is Fireball OK?" one Hudson Valley radio personality wrote. "Yes it's convenient for Fireball drinkers, but what about vodka drinkers, or bourbon fans, I want to see a Tito's display right next to the Fireball . . . LOL!"
The lawsuit, which claims the company violated state consumer-fraud statutes, is seeking to cover anyone in Illinois, North Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, Alaska, Iowa, Mississippi, Arkansas, Kansas, Arizona, South Carolina or Utah who purchased Fireball Cinnamon. It seeks unspecified statutory and punitive damages, although the filing states that the amount would likely be over $5 million.
The lawyer representing Marquez and others in her class is Spencer Sheehan, a plaintiff's attorney famous for filing hundreds of class-action lawsuits against food companies. Sheehan is sometimes called the "Vanilla Vigilate" for his litigation over products that contain artificial vanilla and not the real thing. His other cases have included one against Frito-Lay for not using enough real lime juice in its "Hint of Lime" Tostitos and another alleging that Kellogg's strawberry Pop-Tarts contain just as much apple and pear as they do the titular fruit.
A representative for Sazerac, the maker of Fireball, said the company would not comment on ongoing litigation.

I freaking knew it.

[King Bob]

That shit is nasty. Unlike the Pitbull song of the same name, which is great.

[Drunk Monk]

Totally nasty. It's right up there with Hot Damn schnapps. That's some fucked up liquor right there...

[King Bob]

At Total Wine there was a whole shelf of oddly flavored whiskeys. Most sounded really bad - banana for example. Drink Malibu if you want that sort of thing.

[Drunk Monk]

BOOZE NEWS
This 150-Year-Old Shipwreck Holds $17 Million Worth of Whiskey, Gold
[b]WORDS:[/b] NICOLETTE BAKER
[b]PHOTOGRAPHY: [/b]CHRIS ROXBURGH
[b]UPDATED:[/b] FEBRUARY 8, 2023
   

A shipwreck at the bottom of Lake Michigan containing a trove of boozy treasures may soon reach the surface.
Researchers are planning to retrieve some €16 million ($17 million) of gold, whiskey, and other valuables from the preserved remains of the ship, according to a Feb. 6 article by The Mirror. The ship sank in Lake Michigan during a storm in December 1854, resulting in 17 casualties. It was left undisturbed for centuries on the uneven floor of the Great Lake.
Underwater explorer Ross Richardson first discovered the wreck in 2010 and now intends to unearth its cargo once receiving a permit. The “salvage operation” is in its first stages, he says, as his team plans to retrieve some of Westmoreland’s historic treasure.

Credit: Chris Roxburgh

Among the vessel’s cargo is a large amount of whiskey, which he says was likely headed toward a fort on Mackinac Island. The gold coins on the ship are believed to have originally been intended to pay soldiers stationed there.
The objects are noted to be well-preserved and include some 280 barrels of whiskey. Richardson expects whiskey collectors and distilleries will have a special interest in the resale value of the 1850s spirit.
“The Westmoreland is an underwater museum, filled with perfectly-preserved relics from the 1850s, and preserving them for public display would be a worthy cause,” Richardson told The Mirror.
Richardson is especially interested in the differences between wheat utilized in the 19th-century liquor and today’s spirits — upon unearthing, the whiskey is set to undergo testing by a local distillery.

So no one in D00M scuba dives?

[Greg]

Scapino. And I've done it.

[King Bob]

I would like to, but have never done it.

[Drunk Monk]

The Supreme Court ponders a surprisingly difficult case about poop jokes
A case about a silly, poop-themed dog toy is also a case about free speech and judicial humility.
By Ian Millhiser  Mar 22, 2023, 8:00am EDT
[img=713x0]https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/7h9yx0UOzITDksvQ6kXGZRqluYM=/0x0:5184x3456/1200x800/filters:focal(2178x1314:3006x2142)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72101526/907114442.0.jpg[/img]Chocolate banana poo emoji macaroons. Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images
Ian Millhiser is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the decline of liberal democracy in the United States. He received a JD from Duke University and is the author of two books on the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court will take a break on Wednesday from the unusually political mix of cases it decided to hear during its current term, to consider a case about poop jokes.
[i]Jack Daniel’s v. VIP Products[/i] asks whether VIP Products, the nation’s second-largest maker of dog toys, infringed upon the whiskey maker’s trademarked bottle shape and label when it sold dog toys that resemble a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. The dog toy, named “Bad Spaniels,” juxtaposes imagery drawn from the whiskey maker’s trademarks with a gag about a dog dropping “the old No. 2 on your Tennessee carpet.”
Jack Daniel’s seeks a court order prohibiting VIP from continuing to sell this toy.
[img=401x0]https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/R9VnfmHGAmgHY55MwRFQzvj5MgA=/0x0:401x404/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:401x404):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24525939/temp.png[/img]Petitioner’s brief in [i]Jack Daniel’s v. VIP Products[/i]
[i]Jack Daniel’s [/i]is, on the surface, a very silly case, which prompted some very silly attempts by the whiskey maker’s lawyers to explain why their client is so offended by this dog toy. Sample quote from their brief: “Jack Daniel’s loves dogs and appreciates a good joke as much as anyone. But Jack Daniel’s likes its customers even more, and doesn’t want them confused or associating its fine whiskey with dog poop.”
Lurking below the surface, however, are very serious questions about the First Amendment. And about how far courts should go in second-guessing Congress’s decisions about how to balance the needs of the marketplace with the demands of free speech. VIP has strong legal arguments that it should prevail in this case, but Jack Daniel’s also raises strong claims that the lower courts did too much to undermine federal trademark law.
Trademark law — that is, the body of law giving companies an exclusive right to use the imagery associated with their brand to market their products — necessarily limits free speech. Only McDonald’s, for example, may use its trademarked golden arches to sell hamburgers, and only Nike may use its trademarked swoosh simply to sell shoes — which creates a risk that companies may sometimes go overboard in filing lawsuits seeking to protect their trademarks.
And yet, we give companies like McDonald’s or Nike a monopoly over such commercial uses of their trademarks because the marketplace would function less reliably if consumers cannot readily identify which products are genuine Big Macs or Air Jordans, and which ones are knockoffs.
Additionally, the Court explained in [i]Park ’N Fly v. Dollar Park and Fly[/i][i] [/i](1985) that “trademarks foster competition and the maintenance of quality by securing to the producer the benefits of good reputation.” Because Pepsi, and only Pepsi, can use its distinctive labeling to market its products, Pepsi has a clear incentive to ensure that any beverage that uses that labeling will be high quality — because, if the quality suffers, consumers will know not to buy anything that uses Pepsi’s trademarked red, white, and blue label.
The specific legal questions that arise out of the [i]Jack Daniel’s[/i] case are difficult, in part because federal trademark law sometimes permits companies to sell products that parody a famous trademark. But the federal appeals court that heard this case largely bypassed the hard questions that arise under federal statutes, and instead held that the First Amendment places strict limits on a company’s ability to protect its own trademarks.
Federal trademark law, however, already strikes a careful balance between the demands of the First Amendment and the benefits all of society gains from allowing companies to clearly and consistently brand their products. And it is far from clear why the appeals court should be allowed to upset that balance.
The Lanham Act, briefly explained
Jack Daniel’s argues that the Bad Spaniels dog toy violates the Lanham Act, the primary federal law governing trademarks, in two ways. The dog toy allegedly “infringed” Jack Daniel’s trademarks by using imagery that consumers would associate with the whiskey maker and not with pet products. And it allegedly “diluted” Jack Daniel’s trademarks by “associating them with dog poop” and other imagery that the whiskey maker does not want consumers to think about when they see a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
A trademark owner will prevail in an infringement claim if they can show that some other party used their trademarked imagery in a way that “is likely to cause confusion” about whether a particular product is being sold by the trademark owner. Imagine, for example, a soda manufacturer that sells “Popsi” cola, and that markets it in red, white, and blue cans similar to Pepsi’s branding. Pepsi would almost certainly prevail in a trademark infringement suit against the makers of Popsi because consumers could very easily mistake this newcomer cola for the more venerable brand.
Similarly, the classic Eddie Murphy comedy [i]Coming to America[/i] features a straightforward case of trademark infringement.

Dilution suits, by contrast, allow the owners of a “famous” trademark to prevent its imagery from being used in ways that might cause “tarnishment” of their brand. This is the core of Jack Daniel’s complaint that it does not want consumers “associating its fine whiskey with dog poop.”
These twin protections against infringement and dilution exist to protect the benefits trademarks provide to all consumers. If a trademark can be too easily infringed, then consumers may have no way of knowing which products are actually made by Jack Daniel’s (or any other company), and which ones are potentially inferior knockoffs. And, if trademarks can be too easily diluted, then companies may lose their incentive to ensure that their branding is only associated with high-quality products.
After all, why go to the trouble and expense of making a tasty and consistent product if consumers are just going to associate your product with dog poop?
Yet, while the Lanham Act provides robust protections for trademark owners, it also recognizes that there will be some instances where the First Amendment should trump a company’s desire to control its branding and keep it free of negative associations. A leftist political organization, for example, may want to incorporate several famous corporate logos into a pamphlet criticizing capitalism. Or a journalist may want to use an image of McDonald’s golden arches in a hypothetical newspaper article that reveals embarrassing information about McDonald’s labor practices.
This kind of political speech is at the heart of the First Amendment, and has historically been given the highest level of constitutional protection.
Accordingly, the Lanham Act contains several provisions ensuring that companies cannot wield their trademarks as weapons to cut down essential speech. The law, for example, explicitly forbids companies from bringing dilution suits against “all forms of news reporting and news commentary” and against “any noncommercial” use of a trademark — thus protecting journalists and anti-corporate activists. In some cases, the Lanham Act also protects speech “parodying” a company or its products from dilution suits.
Similarly, courts have long understood that parodies of famous trademarks enjoy some protection against infringement suits because most consumers are smart enough to tell the difference between an authentic product and a joke seeking to mock or ridicule that product. As one consumer said in [i]Louis Vuitton Malletier SA v. Haute Diggity Dog[/i][i] [/i](2006), a lower court case that is strikingly similar to [i]Jack Daniel’s[/i] and which involved dog toys made to look like handbags, “if I really thought that a $10 dog toy made out of fluff and stuff was an actual Louis Vuitton product, [then] I would be stupid.”
The makers of Bad Spaniels, in other words, have strong legal arguments that they did not violate the Lanham Act. The dog toy is clearly a parody. And is anyone really going to confuse a poop-themed dog toy with an actual bottle of whiskey?
That said, Jack Daniel’s does have a stronger trademark dilution claim than Louis Vuitton did in its case, which involved dog toys marked with the words “Chewy Vuiton” and which didn’t associate Louis Vuitton’s brand with feces.
Unfortunately, however, the lower court that decided the [i]Jack Daniel’s[/i] case bypassed these legal arguments, instead ruling that the First Amendment provides such extraordinary protections to companies like VIP Products that trademark law could cease to function effectively.
The lower court made it “nearly impossible” for trademark owners to enforce their trademarks
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which heard the [i]Jack Daniel’s[/i] case before it reached the Supreme Court, applied an unusually expansive reading of the First Amendment. Under the Ninth Circuit’s decision, when a work that infringes upon a trademark engages in “artistic expression,” then a trademark owner’s attempt to enforce the Lanham Act will nearly always fail.
As one federal judge explained, this approach is so protective of the free speech rights of trademark infringers that “it appears nearly impossible for any trademark holder to prevail.”
One reason why is, as Jack Daniel’s argues in its brief, “all trademark uses are expressive, by owners and infringers alike.” The whole point of a trademark is to associate a particular product with the company’s efforts to market that product, and with whatever reputation that product has earned in the marketplace. Similarly, the whole point of infringing a trademark is to try to falsely convey to consumers that the infringing product is just like the properly trademarked product.
In any event, Congress struck a perfectly sensible balance between the advantages society as a whole gains from protecting trademarks and the demands of free speech when it wrote the Lanham Act. As explained above, the law protects the very sort of political and other noncommercial speech that enjoys special protection under the First Amendment.
There’s also one other reason to prefer the balance struck in the Lanham Act to the one struck by the Ninth Circuit. The Lanham Act was enacted by the people’s representatives in Congress assembled. The Ninth Circuit’s decision, by contrast, is the product of a few lawyers in black robes.
Again, under the legal rules laid out in the Lanham Act, VIP Products has strong arguments that it sells innocent, obvious parodies that do not violate federal trademark law. They can potentially win this case without having to upend decades of law establishing that free speech and trademarks can coexist. The Ninth Circuit’s rule, by contrast, could eviscerate the very real benefits that society derives from trademark law.
As the Supreme Court said nearly 150 years ago, “the right to adopt and use a symbol or a device to distinguish the goods or property made or sold by the person whose mark it is, to the exclusion of use by all other persons, has been long recognized by the common law and the chancery courts of England and of this country.” The United States has a long history of protecting both trademark rights and free speech. It’s unlikely that a bunch of unelected judges will come up with a better way of protecting both of these important interests than the Lanham Act.

Our tax dollars at work.

[Drunk Monk]

What is it with Suntory Toki whiskey lately. I’m seeing it everywhere. Had some (a lot) at Monterey Jazz fest. It’s decent. But I’ve had 2 other friends get into it lately beyond that. Is it trending?