Very cool motivation around personal “lists” generally!

Gin took me the longest to “get” and subtle cocktails that play to its strengths seem to have had the most lasting appeal.

Whiskey drinks are great but I’d usually just rather have a nice whiskey straight, versus diluted with sugar. Whiskey+wine has some good combos.

Likewise with tequila.

Rum/rhum I still don’t get the sipping side, so cocktails is still the go-to there. A splash of nice white wine+rum has been a recent successful experiment.

Vodka… well what’s the point?

While its a "you really should have it straight..."

One of the things that I've found is various advent calendars of a given type or theme of spirit. I've had three different ones for gin (several different ways to approach it) and I've found great variety in them while maintaining an amount of "yep, that's gin."

There are subtle gins and not so subtle gins. The one that was the least subtle was Hepple Gin ( https://theginisin.com/gin-reviews/hepple-gin/ ) which if you notice on that chart has a very high juniper flavor profile.

> The nose is delicately spicy with lots of juniper. Green, piney-juniper, fir branch, with a bit of citrus tinged herbal notes beneath it.

https://hepplespirits.com/products/hepple-gin - note the equipment for the process.

I also had a South American gin... which was "ok, instead of old world botanicals and base, new world." It was gin... but it certainly wasn't London gin.

If I had to have a gin gin, moonshot was my favorite.

If you're curious about it... in September start looking for them.

> Rum/rhum I still don’t get the sipping side

There's a vast variety and some is great, some not so much. There are very sweet, delicious rums like Diplomatico Reserva Exclusiva, which is tasty but a little bit on the syrupy side. Then there are delicious but less sweet rums like Appleton Estate, Flor de Cana, Havana Club, Mount Gay, El Dorado etc. Ron Zacapa is very sippable too, and very approachable, and I think their solera 23 makes a really good entry point to the 'genre'.

As with whisky, the older the rum, the more complex and in general 'better' they tend to be, and the various 'XO' versions of Zacapa etc are more refined again.

I prefer to stick to the bigger names like those above, which is not to say there aren't good rums from newer or smaller places, but if you're just starting out these are some good, solid makers to begin to develop your palate. I guess a bit like recommending someone start an exploration of Scotch with a taste of Ardbeg, Highland Park, Macallan etc - get to know the big names a little before you experiment.

Spiced rums can be delicious sipped, but the cheaper end of the market often use their flavouring to mask a poor underlying spirit. See Sailor Jerry, Kraken, and other highly-flavoured rums like Pink Pigeon. Bumbu is good though and (surprisingly?) so is Captain Morgans Private Stock. I generally stay away from anything else labelled Captain Morgan. Purists will argue that any/all spiced rums are not really rum, because they are flavoured and almost all are heavily sweetened and so should be called 'rum liqueur'. It's not an argument I'd like to partake in particularly.

Avoid white rums unless mixing, IMHO. Anything claiming to be Navy rum is probably a bit rough (I'm not a fan of Pussers). And stay away from "Stroh 80", that stuff tastes like burning tyres.

I don't really drink rum any more, but when I did ... I drank all the rums!

I was in the same boat about sipping rum not being very interesting until I found Zacapa Guatemalan rum. It's relatively common and reasonably priced and very delicious coming from someone who likes whiskey neat and also many cocktails. If you wanna feont the cash for the Zacapa XO for ~$125+/bottle then you are in for an amazing treat.

Check TheGinIsIn.com to learn why you like your favorite. So much dramatic variety in gin styles!

Vodka is for adding to juice or simple drinks (oj, cranberry, lemonade etc), and when you don't want to muddle up the flavour of something else. Or for shots of course :)