Sorting the Liquor

I pulled all the liquor out of the cabinet tonight. Look at all that! This isn't even all of it, since I didn't bother to bring up the bottles stored in the basement, of things we don't drink very often (hard ciders and odd beers gifted to us). Also there were several wine bottles I left out, too (on balance, several of these are mixers, not liquor). About a dozen of these bottles have never been opened, including some fine dusty old grappa that has been in the cupboard for years.

Being who I am, and granted my training, I was obliged to sort the liquor. I made a free-form map of drinking alcohol, based on how it is made (fermented or distilled -- roughly left to right), what it is made from (fruit, grains, roots, sugars -- also roughly left to right) and how sweet it is (from not at all to heavily sweetened -- very roughly outside to inside).

I had to consult the keeper of all knowledge, Wikipedia (true facts or truthy facts -- it doesn't matter for a mental map of a liquor cabinet), and I learned a lot I hadn't known. Did you realize Whisky and Barleywine are both made from barley? Well, I hadn't known that. Nor that Creme de Menthe is ideally made with a particular kind of peppermint leaf and unrestricted "grain alcohol". So you could drink a Creme de Menthe whisky.

Others were joking about the household's problem with alcoholism, looking at this pile of proof. I know better -- in an alcoholic's house, there are very few bottles, and all of them are open. They don't last long enough to fill the cabinet.