I found this one near the checkout area at one of my local liquor stores. It was my favorite situation for trying a new booze--a small, inexpensive bottle of a mere 50 mL capacity, which cost a dollar or two. Meaning if I didn't like it, I wouldn't be stuck with like 700 mL (about 24 ounces) of something I abhorred, nor would I have wasted $10, or $12, or more. This was the pickle whiskey from the T!lted brand. (And yes, I'm going to use that stylized spelling using the exclamation point throughout this post.)
T!lted is a brand of the mammoth Sazerac company, which I've covered several times before. (See, for example my posts on several 99 brand liquors, on December 19, 2020, and on June 11, 2022.) So I won't repeat this business's history again. T!lted appears to have begun in 2005, as a design, branding, and digital work studio. Which evidently means they mostly designed logos for other products. But, in 2018 they partnered up with Sazerac to make a flavored rye whiskey line. It's a little unclear whether T!lted just designed the logo and marketing scheme for this liquor, or was involved in the creation of it in the first place. Given their history, I suspect the former is more likely. Moving on, there are at least two other kinds of T!lted whiskey--a banana-flavored one, and a chocolate kind.
When I first saw this bottle, I was surprised, and intrigued. A pickle-flavored whiskey seemed pretty strange. But T!lted isn't the only brand to make such a thing. I found at least three others online. There's Doc Schmickles's Pickle Whiskey, Whicked Pickle Spicy Pickle Flavored Whiskey, and Skatterbrain Crocodill Pickle Whiskey. But all of these are probably based on a mixed drink, whose history I'll go into in the next paragraph.
Many mixed drinks and specialty shots have rather vague histories. It might be known approximately when the beverage was invented, or the general location, but often it's disputed, with several possible candidates. This is one of the exceptions, mostly. For starters, drinking booze while eating a pickle has presumably been going on for centuries, as long as there have been alcoholic drinks and pickles. Reportedly drinking vodka along with a pickle has been popular in Russia for a long time, for example. But, a related, but somewhat different series of shots is much more recent, and fairly well documented. On March 12th, 2006, bartender Reggie Cunningham was enjoying a jar of McClure's pickles while behind the bar at the Bushwick Country Club, in Brooklyn, NY. A lady came in and observed this. She then asked for a shot of whiskey, along with a chaser shot of the pickle brine from Cunningham's jar. He obliged, and this duet of shots became a thing at this establishment, and then it spread across the country, and maybe even into other countries. Reportedly the original whiskey used was the rather cheap Old Crow brand, but since most folks go for a more respected brand, often Jameson's. The type of whiskey used is apparently fluid, as some other consumers prefer the more sour George Dickel No. 12, or Jim Beam. Some people substitute another kind of alcohol, such as mezcal or tequila. And thus was born the Pickleback. I also find it kind of weird that so many of the details of the first Pickleback are known, but not even the first name of the woman who originally had the idea. Maybe she left before they could ask her, or maybe they thought if they included her name in the story that she'd sue for a share of the proceeds, or something. The important point to take away from all of this is that it's a pretty sure bet that the Pickleback led to the development of pickle-flavored whiskeys like T!lted.
T!lted pickle whiskey: Just as a review, I'm staunchly pro-pickle. Many times I've sat down and eaten an entire jar of pickles in one sitting. I like sour, dill-flavored kinds, and sweet, gherkin-style ones too. So I thought that this drink might be a winning combo, that it might make for a rare whiskey that I could drink straight, and like. (I usually can only stomach whiskeys as parts of mixed drinks, or if they're say, peanut butter flavored, as I reported on in my July 17, 2021 post.) Anyway, this whiskey was 70 proof, or 35% alcohol. Its color was a normal whiskey one, a honey brown. It had a pickle-ish odor. The taste was....just awful. A complete abomination. Even the tiny amount in this bottle was tough to finish. I loathed this. Normally I hate whiskey straight, and this added pickle flavor somehow made it even worse. A terrible pairing. Unless you really like the Pickleback shot, I wouldn't recommend this to anyone, ever, under any circumstances.
If you'd like to read my thoughts about another pickle-flavored beverage, this one with no alcohol content, see my post on August 19, 2023. Although much of the post is about the famous Eagles-Cowboys game in which pickle brine figured prominently.
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