• France
• Pinot Noir

Review Date:	11/28/2007
Price Range**:	$
Winery:	Pinot Evil
Vintage:	2005
Varieties:	Pinot Noir
Country:	France
Region:
Appellation:
Rating:	4/10
Notes: Very poor. Overly sour with plenty of alcohol. No complexity to speak of and a little watery. A relatively inexpensive wine, but that doesn't excuse the poor quality, and the stupid name.
** $ - approx $10 or less $$ - approx $25 or less $$$ - approx $50 or less $$$$ - approx $100 or less $$$$$ - more than $100

• Cocktail
• Cognac
• France
• Vodka

Trying new drinks can sometimes be a trying experience.  It's great if you have the wherewithal to subject yourself to the unknown, but sometimes your stomach can be tested with unpalatable libations.  So when at a house-warming party and you happen to spot a pretty blue bottle, approach at your own risk.

We had to give Hpnotiq a try after seeing the frosted, trendy liquor sitting on the counter at the party, not a normal occurence for us, but then we do happen to write about some of these weird, trendy beverages, so for the good of readers everywhere we felt obliged to give it a shot.

Here at WhatsInAGlass we strive for at least some semblance of objectivity.  We promise never to be swayed by the Hollywood jet set promoting some hot new drink just because it came in one of the free Oscar gift bags.  Who knew? but this passionfruit-flavored scourge of the earth is supposedly the hottest thing going in LA-LA Land since River Phoenix at the Viper Room.  We certainly weren't aware at the time, but let us assure you that we couldn't give a toss what Tara Reid is drinking...this time of day.  In fact, it's pretty much settled that anything Tara Reid enjoys we will mock and ridicule as completely vapid so as to avoid any accusations of preferential treatment for alumni of the American Pie movies.

But we digress...It was a little disturbing that the Hpnotiq bottle lists more than two ingredients on it, vodka, cognac, and an "inspired" blend of tropical juices.  This stuff is essentially a pre-mixed cocktail for those without a refrigerator or fruit juice or the prerequesite hands needed to create a cocktail in the first place, but we may be being a little overly critical.  The liquor is a reasonable 17% alcohol, which is exactly what you get from a drink that's already pretty much put together for you.  But the taste is impossible to enjoy, a rich, overly-sugary passionfruit catastrophe that offends the senses in every possible way.  Altogether too potent of a mixture, it doesn't enjoy any of the subtlety, lightness, or roundness of a well-made bar cocktail.  The drink is just incredibly syrupy and hard to get down.  It didn't help that we're not exactly fans of passionfruit over here, but that said, we have enjoyed passionfruit-based drinks of all kinds in the past, from convenience store iced-tea to tropical fruit drinks.  Passionfruit is a tricky taste to work around since you risk the odd sourness that accompanies the sweet fruit flavor so we can understand the problems inherent in making a drink with this flavor.

But Hpnotiq is just unbearable.  Looking around the bar, we were lucky enough to find something to kill the taste, a decent bottle of champagne.  We would have gladly opted for half a tin of altoids, but we'll take what we can get.  We divided up the glass, half champagne, half evil blue drink and plopped a few ice cubes into the mix.  We were able to choke down most of it, but that's as far as we're willing to go for this review.

There are no doubt some people out there who will love this drink, but even we, with all of our charm, couldn't foist it upon any unsuspecting partygoer, except some girl who was already wrecked, like 5 seconds away from tripping over the smooth hardwoods into a faceplant on the fireplace hearth wrecked.

For those of you brave souls out ther we found a few suggestions for creating something drinkable out of this liquor on the Hpnotiq website.

Recipe - Hpno-tini
2 oz. Hpnotiq
1 oz. super premium vodka
Splash of lemon juice.
Shake well with ice, strain into a martini glass. Garnish with a lemon slice.

Recipe - Bubbles n' Blue
2 oz. Hpnotiq
2 oz. champagne
Pour chilled Hpnotiq and champagne into a flute.

We're confident that the internet is teeming with other recipes for this vile stuff, but we're not going to do anything further to promote it.