International Libations

BY ROCCO CASTORO

PHOTOS BY ED ZIPCO

Special Thanks to the Wreck Room

Portugal

France

Japan

Jamaica

Sweden

Mexico

Belgium

USA

Germany

PEDRO
Liqueur From Beira**

SOPHIE
French Absinthe

MASAKI
Shōchū

OMAR
Jamaican Rum

MILÈNE
Aquavit

ALEJANDRO
Silver Tequila

MOENEN
Jenever

ALYSSA
Bourbon

VANESSA
Hunt-master**

Last October, a nice Chinese doctor named Ting-Kai Li retired from his post as director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. During his tenure, Dr. Li headed up research that explored how and why drinking lots of booze is more likely to turn certain people into sweaty goobers with permanently bloodshot eyes and tawny livers. One of his most important discoveries was that some ethnicities are genetically predisposed to be prolific drunkards while others are born naturally averse to the sauce. Ask any Native American and they’ll tell you this is old news, but Dr. Li was the first to provide a thorough explanation of alcoholism in relation to genetics.

Most of Dr. Li’s work focused on alcohol dehydrogenase, the enzyme that the liver uses to metabolize the poison that makes it easier to have sex with ugly people. Certain populations (particularly the Chinese and Japanese) carry a mutated gene that makes it more difficult to process alcohol. When they drink more than they should, the side effects come on quickly: Blood rushes to the skin, the heart pumps rapidly, and the stomach starts to feel like it’s digesting a four-pack of AA batteries.

It sounds fascinating, but only the sober are interested in reading in depth about scientific discoveries. Testing Dr. Li’s findings in a controlled, real-world environment was the only way we could truly explore the progenitorial dangers of alcohol consumption and warn the global citizenry. It was also a good excuse to get a bunch of foreigners drunk and laugh at them.

The assessment required us to round up an array of different ethnicities,* send them to a bar, and make them drink. To be completely fair and to compensate for their ancestors’ limited alcohol selection, each participant was assigned a spirit from his or her homeland. We then quizzed each with questions about national culture, history, and geography as both a barometer of lucidity and an additional method of embarrassment. Answering a question incorrectly meant taking a shot, and the winner would be determined by who was still able to answer questions correctly and coherently after three hours. These are our findings.

* Russians, anyone from anywhere in the UK, and Poles were excluded because these territories have produced some of the highest-functioning drunks of all time. We cite Boris Yeltsin, Winston Churchill, and Pope John Paul II as evidence.

** The trademarked names of these spirits have been translated into English because we did not have legal permission to use them. Google our translations to decipher what their labels really say.

Everyone seemed a little tense and no one volunteered to go first, so straws were drawn to determine who would be asked the opening question. Our man from Japan pulled the shortest, and it was decided that the order of questioning would flow from Masaki to the right. Shortly afterward we had a real-life bartender pour the first round for good luck.

We thought we’d give everyone a break and ask easy questions in the first round. Masaki’s was “Which ocean surrounds Japan?” He looked confused and paused for a few seconds before saying, “No English please!” which is wrong. We told him to drink up.   During the second round Milène didn’t know the name of the famous megalithic stone structure in southern Sweden (it’s Ale’s Stones), so she was forced to swallow a shot of aquavit (which tastes like melted licorice crayons dissolved in hydrogen peroxide).

Our Mexican, American, Portuguese, and French participants committed the next four blunders. The worst offender was Sophie. She was certain that the Latin root of the word

France

was

franc

(it’s

francia

, duh). Her punishment was a stinging gulp of absinthe.   In round four we asked Alejandro to sing Mexico’s national anthem. He made it about a stanza and a half in before covering his face in unpatriotic shame. El hombre couldn’t even state the name of the anthem, so he begrudgingly downed a shot of tequila.

At the commencement of the third round, our Belgian friend was so smug you would’ve thought he invented waffles. He had yet to even hesitate before stating his completely correct answers and even said it was “too easy.” So we decided to ask him the approximate value of Belgium’s 2008 GDP. His answer, “I’d say $100 million,” was only off by few hundred billion. He was forced to take his first taste of jenever, which is ginlike barf water that contains juniper-berry extract to mask its flavor. Everyone cheered, and we continued to unfairly ask him extremely difficult questions moving forward.

After a five-minute smoke break, we soldiered on with round four. Around this time things started to get a little out of hand. A few of our nationals began taking drinks out of turn and celebratory shots when they correctly answered questions. While this wasn’t against the rules, it certainly did not hone their trivia skills. Masaki was especially eager in his consumption, and within a few rounds he retired to the women’s restroom to “work some things out.” Dr. Li’s postulations that the Japanese are shitty drunks was proving to be true.

Vanessa decided to show off her German pride by wearing a traditional dirndl to the event. It proved a major source of distraction for the male participants, but it didn’t help her remember one of the most important dates in modern history: the surrender of Nazi Germany. Meanwhile, everyone else was freely drinking and lightly groping each other. We decided to take a second five-minute intermission to let things breathe for a bit. Portugal, Sweden, and Belgium were in the lead, and France was close behind.

Before starting the fifth round Masaki took a second trip to the bathroom and missed his question, effectively disqualifying him from the proceedings. He insisted on sitting back down, so his neighbor, Omar the Jamaican, readied the official slop bucket in case of any involuntary purging. We spontaneously instituted a lightning round that called for everyone except the person being questioned to knock back a shot when a correct answer was given. By this point Masaki was stumbling around the bar so he was delicately placed in a cab and sent home.

During the lightning round our participants were forced to drink a total of seven shots in a whirlwind of inebriation that resulted in the first broken glass of the competition. It was decided that no one would be ejected because it appeared to be a group effort.   Round six is where things really took a stomach turn for the worse. Alyssa, our American, seemed relatively together until this shot of bourbon, which was followed by an escorted trip to the bathroom. Ten minutes later it was decided that she needed to be sent home.

In the interest of safety (and not having to mop up lots of vomit) we instituted a sudden-death policy moving forward. Alejandro and Omar answered incorrectly and were both promptly 86’d, but Omar said he was having too much fun and continued to gurgle rum.   Moenen mysteriously vanished, thereby forfeiting a Belgian victory. Pedro didn’t know how many municipalities Portugal contained, so he was done. He claimed that the whole thing was rigged, so we pretended to let him continue because we thought it was funny.

Sophie and Milène were the last women standing. Madame Sophie answered her last question incorrectly, while Milène knew the year that Finland revolted against the Swedish Empire to become its own country. She was announced as the victor, and her impromptu prize was all the unused booze. Afterward, the impressively coherent Swede said, “I feel like a Viking! But I feel like I admire everyone. I want to make everyone ambassadors of my country—my kingdom of drunkenness!” Congratulations, Milène. The alcohol-smitten of the world salute you.

PHOTOS BY ED ZIPCO