So What Will It Be? FHM's Guide to Bar Booze

Indians drink more than any other nation in Asia. But, with the choice in your average pub doubling over the last ten years, are you always certain where your money is going? Do you know enough about wine to wow a South Bombay girl? Enough about new beers to buy a great round? Never fear, FHM’s all-new guide to bar booze is here…

Beers you must try

Christoffel Bier

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Finally a blonde Dutch worth holding on to. This pilsner has a golden-coloured full body, a fresh balanced taste and a mild bitterness with a fruity finish.

Kapittel Pater

Best when aged a few years to release aromas of burnt wood, spice and caramel. The flavour is a hint of orange, apples, raisins and peaches ending in a hoppy bitterness.

Schneider Weisse

This original Bavarian wheat beer is an unfiltered classic, still made from a recipe fit for royalty. Dark amber in colour, it’s smooth with subtly sweet undertones.

Trappistes Rochefort 10

Bartender, bartender standing so tall – who’s the strongest of them all? This powerhouse packs 11.3% with a complex palate and a nose of roasted malt, plums, dates and figs. A sweet center and sherry like intensity define it.

Chimay Red

In sharp contrast to the bitter Orval, this Chimay is much easier on the senses. Its apricot aroma with notes of nutmeg and black currant lends to a warm, dark red colour and soft, fruity taste.

St-Feuillien Triple

This Belgian beauty is pale amber in colour with a distinct maltiness and a bouquet of aromatic hops and spices that will linger on. A perfect summer drink.

Saison Dupont

Part of the farmhouse ale tradition, this fresh Belgian has an orange blonde colour with a sharp, crisp taste offset by a light aroma in a well balanced mix.

Duvel

If ever there was a pissing contest between beers, Duvel would wipe out the competition. This most perfect specimen of Belgian golden ales made us pick sides, when we never would.

Brooklyn Lager

The lone American on our list, this Viennese lager is great company for a day of pizza and PS3 – yes, we tested it for you. Hazy caramel colours accompany a floral, spicy hop.

…and a glass of white wine for the lady

Like Pinot Grigio? Order her dry Riesling

If the lady in your life likes something a little on the dry side, but doesn’t want to taste sand, go German. You might find it a bit sickly sweet, but still. She should genuinely love it. Rieslings are making a post-’70s comeback.

Like dry whites? Order Semillon-Sauvignon

Wow, she wasn’t too big on the Riesling you just ordered her? Don’t panic. This Semy-Sauv is your back-up plan, plus it’s crisper and tastes more of limes. It’s really clean, you can tell her, and mineralic. She’ll store that to tell her chums.

Like crazy flavours? Order Gewürztraminer

If you’re dating someone who dreams of “an all-purple wedding”, then she’ll be into this. It tastes of lychees and Turkish Delight. Remark about the intensity of “whites produced in Alsace”, then sleep with her. But don’t marry her.

Like Sauvignon Blanc? Order her Camel Valley

Sauvignon Blanc tastes like drinking perfumed grass, but if she loves that smell of a rolling hill in her glass, order this Cornwall-produced speciality. It’s not as floral, but it tastes similar and there’s a fair chance she’s never had it before.

Like Chardonnay? Order her Viognier

And if it’s about midnight and you’re trying to finally seal the deal, Viognier is a total panty-melter. Bored of Chardonnay, Viognier to her will be like drinking sweet grape juice. Done.

World map of red wine

South Africa

Ask for a Cabernet, Merlot, or Syrah or SA’s own unique grape, a Pinotage. Expect an earthy, fruity taste that’ll give you a lot of pow! for your pound if you’re only getting a small glass.

France

Though famous for Cabernets and Bordeauxs, France has hundreds of styles. Gerard Basset, World’s Best Sommelier 2010, says look out for earthy Rhone wines.

Eastern Europe

Slovenia borders Italy and because the climate’s very similar, the wine’s don’t just taste similar in richness – you won’t look like a weirdo ordering one from here. Slovenia’s in!

Spain and Portugal

Rioja is the Spanish region, Tempranillo is the kind of grape they use. Expect an oaky, fruity, earthy taste. Portuguese wines often use that same grape.

Italy

Remember to ask for anything with the Tuscan grape Sangiovese in, used to make Hannibal Lecter’s fave, Chianti. That failing, order a Primitivo wine from Puglia for a very spicy taste.

Argentina and Chile

If you like red wine that tastes of rich chocolate, Malbec from Argentina is your poison. If they don’t have one, order a dry Aussie Shiraz. Chilean wines also have a decent punch too. All three won’t disappoint.

California

The Cabernet Sauvignons from the Napa Valley are rich and powerful. So when you order, expect to get served a glass of wine with a very intense taste. Also order: Pinot Noir and Zinfadels, too.

Australia and New Zealand

Oz’s known for its very full, rounded Shirazes from Barossa. And quite rightly, too. But don’t overlook the intense Pinot Noirs from New Zealand. Smell the aromas theatrically in front of the barmaid.

The grown-up’s guide to whisky

If drinking starts with alcopops in the playground, it graduates to full manhood here in Mad Men territory with a crystal tumbler in your hand…

Bourbon

Made from at least 51% maize, plus rye and barley, bourbon is spicy and as American as apple pie, invading unstable Third World countries and spiralling gun crime. Surprisingly, Jack Daniels, daddy of American spirits, is actually a whisky and not a bourbon.

Start with:

“Four Roses is a very sophisticated, elegant bourbon, with a high rye content but a little touch of spiciness.”

Graduate to: “Wild Turkey, which is old-style bourbon, very bold, powerful, heady, with heavy honey characters and a strong rye kick.”

Canadian

Davin De Kergommeaux, writer of canadianwhisky.org, makes his country’s blends sound like a picturesque Alpine village has been exploded and bottled: “The signature flavour of Canadian whisky is rye – this includes cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and pepper, as well as fruity and floral notes, dust, wet slate, and fresh-water plants.”

Start with: The “very spicy” Wiser’s Legacy and Danfield’s Reserve with its “cedar and fresh-cut lumber notes”. It tastes like delicious wood, basically.

Graduate to:

Japanese single-malt, intense, whisky Yamazaki.

Single malt Scotch

Made from malted barley, water, yeast and nothing else, it’s first the size of the still (the container for distilling) that affects the flavour. Dave Broom, author or The World Atlas of Whisky, lends a hand:

Start with: “Glenfiddich, a gorgeous, medium-bodied whisky with a gentle appeal.”

Graduate to: “Springbank is a fantastically complex whisky, which distils all these flavour styles across Scotland in one bottle. Phenomenal.”

Blended Scotch

They’re the big-name whiskies that your pisshead uncle favours, though Dave is full of praise for them. “Blends are fantastic, versatile, they’re there to be mixed, they have complexity – we’ve just fallen out of love with them. Although it’s delicate and lighter in character they do all have a personality of their own.”

Start with: Cutty Sark or Chivas Regal.

Graduate to: The “smokier, richer” Johnnie Walker Black Label.

How to drink all night long (sensibly)

Don’t drink before the bar

Avoid bingeing at home first – not only will it usually end in your own tears at 10pm, but advisory firm Zolfo Cooper found that pre-loaders end up spending a third more during their night than those who have their first drink at the bar…

Start light

If you don’t want to drink the same thing all night, move gradually from a light spirit to a dark one. Switch between beers, wines and dark and light spirits, and you’ll soon be calling the nearest lamppost “bro”.

Avoid whisky

Dark-coloured alcohol tends to mean a worse hangover than clear alcohol, as it contains more chemicals produced during fermentation. Also a recent study found that whisky gives its drinkers a worse hangover in the mornings than vodkas does. Take note.

It turns out that eating food with vitamins B6 and B12 in will lessen hangovers so drink a banana-based cocktail, providing one’s on the menu. No, put the sparkler back in – it doesn’t work without it.

Cut out the calories

Feeling too bloated? No problem. Cut back on the blobby pints by noting that Stella has more calories than Guinness; Corona Light and Cobra Low-Cal both have around just 100 calories each. Now go for spirits with Diet Coke.

Final leg

Still going? Start alternating your drinks with pints of water so that when you get home and bosh two ibuprofen, you’re more sprightly when you wake up tomorrow. You won’t regret it.

Things you only do in a bar

8 Argue with your friends

Generally men can mooch alongside each other like some low-expectation bovine race, happy to leave the peaks and troughs of emotional rollercoasters to women. But there’s a particular kind of session – usually one following a long week at work, a bad day with your girlfriend and/or experimenting with the more ‘premium European’ end of the lager market – which leaves you exhibiting all the fraternal good cheer you’d normally see during Dahi Handi. In the sober light of day, threatening to strangle someone over what you thought happened in Inception was probably uncalled for.

7 Forget basic adult functions

You’ve pretty much had ‘getting dressed’ nailed since you were five. But all it takes is a few scoops and you forget where you’ve left your jacket, the fact that you came with a bag. And that your credit card’s with the moron working behind the bar wearing a bib when he talked you into starting a tab.

6 Err towards light bigotry

Memo to self: complicated points about the delicate areas of race, religion, multiculturalism, law and order, gender relations, people’s private lives, etc, are best made by someone other than a bloke who’s so on his way that his urine could be used to sterilise equipment in an operating theatre.

5 Be obnoxious with women

Not in an aggressive way. More in a boisterous jumping into photos and administering headlocks before jumping around (kind of) in time to the music, twirling them round the dancefloor so fast their feet are almost a metre off the ground and then accidentally hitting them in the face while pointing upwards like John Travolta in the iconic Saturday Night Fever shot way. And then reflecting on the fact that it’s one rule for some total fruit on Jhalak Dikhla Ja, and another rule entirely for a man who’s just dislocated a complete stranger’s neck and accidentally left him with concussion.

4 Dance appallingly

All it takes is the opening notes of Kung Fu, and, despite considering it the song du jour for fat women in their forties, you’re suddenly thrusting your legs out in either direction, pushing yourself towards the dancefloor and – yup – bounding up and down through your knees like you’re Russian dancing. Nice moves. And ones that slightly undermine your ‘stone cold assassin’ killer you were attempting to pull off two hours earlier. When you were sober. And reaching for an excuse to overlook the fact you were, for a brief ten minutes, stood all alone by the side of the bar. No one thought you worked there, incidentally.

3 Lie

The flip side of pie-eyed aggression? Absolutely shameless bullshitting. Whether deployed to end a debate which has taken so many twists that you can’t even remember why you started it (did anyone really want to talk about Rekha’s exact age?) or a shameless attempt at self-aggrandisement, you’d better just hope that nobody remembers your claims to have done a 147 break at snooker, passed your ‘advance stunt driving’ test and arm-wrestled Nigel Benn at Tipton youth club in 1998.

2 Have some bloke you don’t really know spit in your ear

While talking intensely to you about something you can’t really hear. That, to be fair, if the lights were on and you both weren’t a bit tipsy, probably wouldn’t a) matter or b) make any sense at all. Best to just keep nodding. Even though he’s just spat all over the side of your face, and, yup, right on your top lip? Absolutely. You’re Indian. Keep a straight face. Nod. Smile enthusiastically. Then make a B-line for the toilets and scrub your face for as long as you can get away with it before some underpaid bloke who works there tries to offer you a pink lollipop

1 Walk in an anti-clockwise motion around the bar for two hours without stopping until you accidentally pull

Think New Year’s Eve, minus the excuse. Her? Hmmm. Oh, her? Possibly. No, wait, wait! Second thoughts, better not, she’s with a gorilla. No, wait again! That woman who looks like a cross between a sea lion and Sue Pollard! Phasers on stun, prepare to engage!

How to get served first

• Don’t push in as it creates stress

– Stand by one of the main draught pumps so that you’re directly in his eyeline

– Or stand by the hottest girl attempting to order. You’ll be next

– Tip so you’re remembered next time

Bar trick: the bottle and the banknote

Get an empty beer bottle. Turn it upside down, place it on top of a banknote. Tell your mates they can keep the cash if they remove it without the bottle falling over.

Your mates will inevitably try and whisk the note quickly away, which won’t work. After they’ve all hopelessly failed, remove the note like this...

Hold the edge of the note with one hand, start slowly pulling it, gently banging your fist on the table. The shakes from the table will loosen the bottle. Succeed. Act smug.

How to carry five pints

1 Arrange pints in two rows, bringing your torso flush with the bar…

2 Bring left arm round the front row. Grab pint. Do opposite with right hand.

3 Pull pints under right forearm to chest. Pin left forearm to right. Panic.

From the March 2011 issue of FHM India.