By Jack Roland Costello
It was Christmas Day, and the night before we’d done a White Elephant gift exchange. Whether by luck or divine intervention, my brothers and I each ended up with gifts containing alcohol in one form or another.
Christmas morning arrived with the usual chaos, wrapping paper on the floor, coffee brewing, and a general sense of love and good cheer. Among my gifts was a bar tool set and cocktail recipe book. Inside the cover, in looping handwriting, my brother Riley had written: “A man will always be judged by the amount of alcohol he can consume, and a woman will be impressed, whether she likes it or not.”
From experience, I knew this to be mostly true. I once managed to get a date with a beautiful blonde by saying, “Come watch me do a keg stand.” She did. Somehow, she still went out with me afterward.
Later that afternoon, after the presents had been opened and the house settled into its post-lunch lull, Riley decided it was time to put my new bar tools to use. He’d spent enough time watching me pretend to know what I was doing with the set to believe he could do it better. What followed was an act of creative hubris I have yet to see matched.
Honey, Vodka, Wine
He called it Honey, Vodka, Wine. The recipe, in his own words, was “simple but elegant.”
Step 1: Place a generous dollop of honey at the bottom of a wine glass.
Step 2: Pour in a generous amount of vodka. The cheaper, the better. If you spend more than $10 on a fifth, you’ve already ruined it.
Step 3: Add the cheapest red wine available. Bonus points if the bottle comes with a screw top and a vague warning about sulfites.
Step 4: Stir once, just once, and slowly. The goal is not to mix the honey, but to “let the flavors speak for themselves.”
He brought it to me with the pride of a man unveiling a scientific breakthrough. The drink looked like something you’d find in a biology lab. The honey clung stubbornly to the bottom of the glass, a golden swamp beneath a swirling layer of red and clear liquid that refused to mingle. It seemed less like a cocktail and more like a protest.
I took a sip.
The first sensation was pure vodka — sharp, medicinal, and unrepentant. Then came the wine, a sour wave that somehow made the vodka nostalgic. And finally, just as my body began rejecting both, came the honey, coating my tongue in a slow, cloying sweetness that trapped the taste like amber around a mosquito. It had all the worst qualities of its ingredients and none of their virtues. The vodka’s fire, the wine’s warmth, and the honey’s softness had been stripped of purpose, leaving only bitterness, syrup, and pain.
It was a drink that lingered, not like a fine finish, but like regret.
No Christmas Cocktail Miracle
Riley was watching me closely, eager for approval. “It’s not that bad, right?” he said.
I swallowed hard and looked at him. “Riley,” I said, “I don’t care if you get drunk on Christmas. But for the love of God, do not make Honey, Vodka, Wine on Christmas.”
Later that year, I tried ordering it at a bar just to see what would happen. The bartender stared at me like I’d confessed to a crime. “What’s in it?” he asked.
“Honey, vodka, and wine,” I said.
He set the glass he was polishing down slowly, like someone disarming a bomb. “We don’t make that kind of drink here.”
It’s been a long time since that Christmas, but Riley still insists the recipe “just needs the right ratios.” I maintain it needs divine forgiveness.
Postscript
My brothers and I have made plenty of bad decisions with full knowledge that they were bad decisions. We’ve jumped from cliffs we shouldn’t have climbed, taken roads we shouldn’t have driven, and, occasionally, drunk things we shouldn’t have named. Those moments have somehow become the stories I love most.
I’ve learned that Riley’s bad ideas tend to make for good memories, and I’ve stopped trying to talk him out of them. You don’t get to choose which moments will matter later; you just have to be there when they happen.
If anyone reading this feels inspired to try my brother’s recipe, please, before you begin, reach out to someone for help.
Preferably not him.
