As I settled down for the night with a glass of vodka and cold water a few weeks ago, I had a very unsettling experience. My vodka had a horrible bitter taste. A bad batch of vodka? I opened another bottle. Same result. So I opened a third bottle. Same result. So it seemed that my taste-buds had gone awry.
And the curious thing was that all my other tastes were OK. It was only alcohol that tasted bad. And alcohol is supposed to be odorless and tasteless.
So I abandoned my usual dinner wine -- Tyrrells Verdelho -- and sought a sweeter wine that would drown out the bitterness. I chose Rosemount Traminer Riesling. I knew Traminer as a grape that Germans make their "fruity" wines out of so suspected that the Rosemount product might be a bit sweet too. And it was, though not Chablis sweet. It was a very nice wine in general, and only around $9 from Murphys. I drink it to this day.
I tried various things to jolt my tastebuds back into normality but not with much success. I eventually tried a FULL glass of cranberry juice. Cranberries have a very strong taste and commercial juices generally combine them with a lot of sugar or other sweetener. Even so, half of a glass of it is all one would usually be able to drink. And that big glass did the trick. Alcohol gradually lost its bitterness after that.
What was it all about? I think I know. My cumquat tree was in fruit and I had recently discovered lemonade with a dash of cumquat juice in it. It gave lemonade a real tang. Cumquats are however a very bitter fruit so a dash of their juice is all you need. So to extend the discovery I started to have it with vodka as my going-to-bed drink.
And I think my brain began to associate cumquat bitterness with alcohol. So it returned any experience of alcohol as bitter. And the strong taste of the cranberrries over-rode that. That's the best I can make of it, anyway. I threw all my cumquats out.
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