Drinks of the Year

We didn't officially take over the helm of the Drink of the Week booze cruise until mid-June this year, after the column's founder, Randall Roberts, set sail for the West Coast. For our end-of-the-year wrap-up, that leaves us with about a six month deficit from which to pick the three best drinks we drank. Indeed, not all of our Drinks of the Week were boozy ones: milkshakes, lattes, bottled water and various incarnations of tea were all represented in 2007's waning months. But for the purposes of this column, we'll stick to the alcoholic ones, if only to encourage trips beyond Schnucks or your corner gas station.

We've long thought that the whole hair-of-the-dog theory is pure garbage, an exercise in torture brought to you by the same people who, in grade school, did the "If your hand is bigger than your face, you have [insert horrible illness here]" joke and proceeded to smack your hand into your nose — hard — a gag you only fall for once. But in the name of blind hope and faith in the reader who suggested it, we went to Square One Brewery and ordered their Beermosa, a drink supposedly dreamt up following a beer-soaked camping trip as a hangover cure: half orange juice, half beer. (Square One varies the microbrew they use depending what's in season; ours was Light Squared.) The beer cuts the acidic orange juice perfectly, bringing out the alleged medicinal qualities of both. While we'll stop just short of calling it a legit hangover cure, it's the closest we've ever come to one. Bravo.

Though the word "versatile" is usually applied to hatchbacks and sleeper-sofas, we can only apply it to one drink we've had so far: El Scorcho's Infierno. Made with habanero-infused vodka, Chambord and créme de cacao, we likened its smell to a hybrid of Aztec hot chocolate and Tootsie Pops. El Scorcho infuses its own vodkas in-house (in this drink it's Tito's Texas Vodka), and while the drink was fine on its own — unique, kicky — it was when the bartender sagely recommended adding a shot of half-and-half that transformed it from happy-hour drink to dessert indulgence. Try getting that kind of mileage out of your 1987 Dodge Omni.

Technically, we did not fully drink this drink — Guinness in a small plastic cup, Jägermeister in the shot glass affixed to the cup's bottom and Baileys — though that was no fault of Pat's owner, Joe Finn, who made it for us and hoards of others gathered there to fete the demolition of the Tamm Avenue Bridge. We aren't particularly keen on shots: We pinched our nose like a child taking medicine, and after two gulps, felt an explosion well in the back of our throat and unceremoniously spit the drink back into its container. But it was by far the most fun we've ever had (not) doing a shot. Months later, we still admire the commemorative shots and T-shirts Pat's offered, the festive atmosphere and the presence of like-minded people gathered to watch an overpass go "boom."

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