![](http://web.archive.org./web/20110816101518im_/http://downloads.jaredharley.com/images/phlog/juniper-berries.jpg)
I learned today that gin is made from vodka,
flavored with juniper berries. This from my
newly-21-year-old-son. This is one of the
many advantages to having children:
they teach us important facts about the world.
So why is it that vodka tastes good while gin
(in my opinion) tastes like poison? I should clarify:
vodka doesn't actually taste good, it just tastes
less toxic that gin. Now, I know there are people
out there who swear by gin (Melinda), but in 1979
in a Paris disco complete with rotating mirrored ball
and sloping floor (site of a former movie theater)
I consumed more than a reasonable share of gin & tonics
and became intimate with a toilette publique Francaise.
That summer, if it wasn't gin it was pernod, and if it wasn't
pernod it was a nice glass of cotes du Rhone which I could
make last an entire evening at a sidewalk cafe. Ah......
to be twenty-two again, thin as a baguette.......
No more gin. No more pernod; but a nice Rhone wine
will cure any malady. And I don't really have any desire
to be twenty-two encore .