Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage (or food) that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.
Golf was not fun for me for a while. Being a member of Rhode Island’s third-worst high school golf team was part of this.
While our status on the team afforded us perks none of us public school reprobates could otherwise afford — access to private country clubs to the largest of eye rolls, golf balls that weren’t fished out of brackish ponds, occasional access to bathrooms with combs soaked in jars of bright blue barbershop fluids — the arduousness of being bad at the sport took a toll. Golf, it turns out, is not especially fun when you’re bad at it and have to count every stroke, especially if it comes while dorks from local private schools are bad at hiding derisive scoffs.
The game came back to me in graduate school. Not because of any love for it, but because a local Nashville municipal course could be played for $8 per round and, well, there wasn’t much else to do with all the money of a $550 per month research assistant stipend. From there, everything made sense. Not because of inherent talent that had suddenly been tapped or learned skill from hours of practice, but the fact I could sneak a six pack of beer in my bag with a couple ice packs and write off any shot that caromed into the woods as a practice stroke.
This is how my appreciation of golf persists. Not as a competitive endeavor, but as parts of scrambles where my ability to contribute a decent shot one in four tries is almost as appreciated as my ability to sneak a cooler into the back of my cart. Fore Craft Cocktails understands this. Fore Craft Cocktails would like to help.
Fore has taken the most-requested cocktails at the turn and packaged them into cans you can clandestinely slide into your golf bag. That includes your standard, early morning bloody Mary, an Arnold Palmer with vodka (known as the John Daly), an azalea and an infusion. Each sounds great on its own. But will they be able to match the quality of a grumpily mixed solo cup by a local grandmother behind the clubhouse bar?
Forezeala: A-
Cracking the can unleashes a wave of kind of rose-flavored carbonation and does smell floral with a little bit of citrus and vodka. Not lots of vodka, but enough to remind you it’s not a soda.
The first sip is light, with a minor current of bubbles carrying it along. You can taste the vodka at seven percent, but it’s not a deterrent. The main event is citrus, slightly bitter but balanced off with the artificial sugar of the lemonade.
The end result doesn’t feel like a boozy cocktail. It’s refreshing, though sneaking it into my golf bag has left it slightly warmer than I’d hoped. I could put down a few of these, no problem.
Bloody Mary: C
Argh. I should’ve started with this. All I ask of my bloodies is full flavor and enough heat to make me mildly uncomfortable.
Cracking the can unleashes a wave of tomato and celery salt. It’s a thick first sip; pouring it over ice would help. It’s heavy on vegetables and salt. The vodka is light. A little more would help thin things out and make it easier to drink.
For a canned bloody, it’s fine. More V8 than cocktail, which is a bummer. Bring some hot sauce and a little extra vodka and you’re in luck.
Fore Tea: B
It smells like lemon citrus and vodka and it’s not super appealing. I’d like it if it smelled a little bit more like sweet tea but, you know, it’s tough to complain too much. It’s reminiscent of a Sonic or lower caliber lemon seltzer which isn’t a great start.
The first sip delivers much fuller flavor, but still something is still a bit off. The lemon is heavy and the tea is light. It’s a lot more like a Sprite with alcohol than a lemon tea. That iced tea does kind of clock in later in the sip; you understand what they’re going for but it’s a little sloppy.
On the plus side, it’s very easy to drink on a hot golf course day. You probably won’t complain about the flavor even though it’s just okay. This is cocktail made for a very specific purpose and Fore fulfills it.
That sugar makes it easy to come back to, even if I rue the hangover yet to come. It tastes pleasant enough. You could do better, you could do worse.
Transfusion: A
This is the main event. Which does sound kind of sad, but I do really like a good vodka transfusion. It’s a drink best known as a golf cocktail, but it’s good pretty much whenever. We need more ginger beer in all cocktails; that’s really where I stand on this.
Cracking the can unleashes a little bit of ginger a mild amount of grape. The foam leaves a ring of purple tinge on the top of the can. As someone who drank a lot of Sunny Delight back in the day, I have learned not to be daunted by purple stuff. In fact, artificial colors are sort of a selling point for me, because I am a large ape who is soothed by pastels.
The first sip is grape, a little bit of ginger and a lot of sugar. You can’t tell there’s any alcohol in there whatsoever despite its 7 percent ABV content. It works out really really well, as the carbonation keeps things crisp despite that sweetness.
I could crush four five six of these without issue. It’s basically boozy Kool-ade. Lovely.
Would I drink it instead of a Hamm’s?
This is a pass/fail mechanism where I compare whatever I’m drinking to my baseline cheap beer. That’s the standby from the land of sky-blue waters, Hamm’s. So the question to answer is: on a typical day, would I drink Fore Craft Cocktails…
