Yongfook is a web producer and usability consultant based in Tokyo

I think I just broke the world record, or at least some kind of human tolerance plateau, for the Worst Drink In The Entire World.

You see I’m being extremely frugal as of late, since I am thinking of buying a new car to replace my current car, which has become affectionately known to me as “the rickety box of death”. So recently I’ve had to forgo such luxuries as, oh I don’t know, buying proper food and drink.

And so it comes to this, a night where I feel like a drink but my fridge has been long since drained of beer, thus leading me to my ‘liquor cabinet’, which is in fact just a mis-matched collection of novelty spirits and liqueurs that I keep on top of the fridge. A mere glance at the variety would be enough to make any alcohol connoisseur die right on the spot from either laughter or a stress-induced series of massive nerve spasms. Ready-made pina colada, cooking rum, several types of shochu and mangosteen liqueur are some of the highlights.

So what can one make with these? I didn’t want to complicate things (or cause spontaneous liver failure) by mixing any of these together, so I kept it simple and chose mangosteen liqueur and a non-alcoholic mixer. Here is where the plan falls flat on its face. Short of water, I have absolutely naff all normal drinks in my house. Apart from, that is, a bottle of concentrated Grape Calpis which I bought once out of blind curiosity.

Calpis is a soft drink unique to Japan and is one in a long line of ‘yoghurt’ flavour foodstuffs that the Japanese love to eat/drink. The original flavour is actually not bad - its sort of sweet, ever so slightly viscous, and leaves a kind of chalky coating at the back of your throat after consumption. I imagine its what Plaster of Paris tastes like if you add sugar. GRAPE flavour Calpis however, is a flavour so intensely bad that they don’t even bother selling it in diluted form - you can only get it in concentrate, from large supermarkets. I still remember not realising this after buying a carton, then pouring myself a glass (neat), taking a gulp then physically feeling all my teeth dissolve and my tongue audibly scream “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE”.

Concentrated Grape Calpis is a bright purple sludge and looks like something Barney would shit out after a bad curry, except I imagine Grape Calpis tastes about seventeen hundred times worse.

So that was my ‘cocktail’ tonight. Grape Calpis, Mangosteen Liqueur, topped up with water. I like to think it has an air of exotic tropical bourgeois whilst at the same time a gruff, exciting harshness like being felt up by a homeless man.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 12th, 2003 at 5:32 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.