(Bottles L-R) Limoncello, plum bourbon, Rainier cherry bump. © Ryan Schierling |
Obviously.
Get started on a few of these tipples now and you'll have plenty of practice time before next season's holiday haze begins.
There are menu pages of before-dinner drinks available. Some people just call those drinks. The French have a couple of words that have become synonymous with the intake of specific alcoholic beverages before and after dinner – apĆ©ritif and digestif – which basically mean "to open" and "a digestive." In America, we call apĆ©ritifs "happy hour," and that's unfortunate, because it literally translates to "half-price well drinks and non-import draft beers, cheapskate."
Apertifs are usually herbal recipes meant to stimulate the appetite. I don't typically need a reason to be hungry, so here at home we occasionally like to sip on the after-dinner beverage – the digestif.