What do you drink when you aren't drinking wine?

[Josh]

Me: Vodka Martini up dry with olives.

Or coors lite

[Howie Hart]

Or coors lite

EWWWW
Guiness or a Canadian draft

[Doug Surplus]

Frozen Margarita
Micro-brew ale
Single-malt scotch
Brandy
Kai-tini
Mojito

[Bruce Hayes]

Milk.

Still on my wine (and all alcohol) break. Coming up on two weeks now.

[Jeff Yeast]

Mostly bourbon but also some microbrews and my own homebrew.

[Ian Sutton]

Tea, coffee, water, juice, fizzy crap, beer, drinking chocolate,whisky, sambuca covers most of it.

[Robin Garr]

Me: Vodka Martini up dry with olives.

Or coors lite

Josh, I drink so much wine for work that I don't have a whole lot of brain and liver cells left over for anything else, but ...

* Microbrewery beers, mostly local, when the food or my mood calls for a change of pace.

* Mass-market industrial beer ONLY at the ball game on a hot summer day.

* A little taste of Bourbon on rare occasion (hey, I'm a Kentuckian).

* A Campari and soda when I'm in the mood for an aperitif that isn't wine.

Stuff like that.

This isn't really off-topic, and would probably get more responses in the Wine Forum. Assuming you don't mind, I'll move it, but I'll leave a trail in this forum so folks can still find it.

[Mike Filigenzi]

Summer: Gin and Tonic. Winter: Brandy Manhattans. When I feel festive: Planter's Punch, Chapalas, Brandy Old Fashioned, Negronis, Campari, and whatever other odd cocktail strikes my fancy.

Non-alcoholic: Orange juice, ginger ale, Dr. Pepper mixed with Diet Pepsi.

Mike

[wrcstl]

Hot weather: Vodka tonic

Cooler weather: Belgium ale and some Canadian beers

Walt

[Carl Eppig]

1. Craft ales (mostly from New England).

2. Rum Bloody Marys.

3. Rum and Diet Lime Coke.

4. A liter of coffee in the morn.

5. Diet sodas.

Hick, Carl

[Isaac]

Water.

Tea.

Bourbon.

[Bob Ross]

Water

Tea

Rarely, beer.

[JoePerry]

Polar Sparkling Water

Vodka and Cranberry Juice if I'm out with young'uns

[Bruce K]

Bitter ale and stout from the U.K. and Ireland in the tall cans with the floating widget -- comes remarkably close to recreating the drinking experience in a pub with the traditional slow-pour taps. These include Boddington's, Tetley's, Guinness, Murphy's, Beamish and Young's.

[Paul B.]

I tend to go without wine during the week and then it's always white or green loose-leaf tea. I stopped drinking both black tea and coffee earlier this year and it's done wonders for my teeth ...

That said, I just bought some Kenyan estate loose-leaf black tea after trying it at the specialty shop and finding it a far cry from the nasty bagged tea dust that I had been accustomed to for many years previously.

In the summer, I do lots of mineral water too.

[Sam Platt]

1. Diet Coke
2. Bottled water (cheap)
3. Coffee (cheap)
4. Wiess (sp?) beer - Blue Moon
5. Gin and tonic

[Carlo]

Beer !
It takes alot of beer to make good wine !

[Alan A.]

I tend to be a craft beer geek as much as a wine geek. My faves are Belgian ales (Chimay, Leffe, Duval, Orval, etc), ales from the UK and Ireland (Fuller’s, Young’s, McEwan’s, Smithwick’s, the black stuff, etc) German lagers (especially doppelbocks, Ayinger, Paulaner, Spaten), US micros (Rouge, Anchor, Bridgeport, Ommegang, Three Floyds, New Belgium, Deschutes, North Coast, Bell’s, Mendocino, Sierra Nevada, Hair of the Dog, etc) to name a few.

(Burp!)

[wrcstl]

I tend to be a craft beer geek as much as a wine geek. My faves are Belgian ales (Chimay, Leffe, Duval, Orval, etc), ales from the UK and Ireland (Fuller’s, Young’s, McEwan’s, Smithwick’s, the black stuff, etc) German lagers (especially doppelbocks, Ayinger, Paulaner, Spaten), US micros (Rouge, Anchor, Bridgeport, Ommegang, Three Floyds, New Belgium, Deschutes, North Coast, Bell’s, Mendocino, Sierra Nevada, Hair of the Dog, etc) to name a few.

(Burp!)

Alan,
I am a major Belgian ale guy and had a tasting of 5 of the 7 trapiste ales pluss several Belgian style ales. The winner was ’05 GOUDEN CAROLUS Grand Cru of the Emperor, not a trapiste ale but the oldest brewery. Chimay finished in the middle and Orval finished dead last. Prefer the Dubbels to Triple. The second place winner was a trapiste ale, Koningshoeven, the only one not in Belgium. For domestic beers I like Ommegang (it finished 3rd and got the QPR award) and drink New Belgium Abbey in a pinch. Another favorite is Le Fin de Monde (sp?), wonderful flavors and fantastic name. If you haven't tried some of these do and let me know what you think.
Walt

[Alan A.]

Thanks Walt, I’ll keep my eye out for those. Unfortunately, here in Bamer the law limits beer to 6% ABV so I have to purchase any high gravity beers from neighboring states (TN, GA, FL.) But there is a growing movement to overturn our archaic beer laws to allow beers up to 15% ABV (the same limit for table wine, which BTW isn’t being enforced to strictly as I have seen some CA wines in the 15.5% range on sale here in the state). Here’s the link to the organization that is lobbying for changes in the law: http://www.freethehops.org

[DebA]

H2O, milk, tea and the occasional chocolate martini when necessary!

[Mike B.]

Bourbon

Whisky sours

Stout ales

[Robin Garr]

In my initial reply, I assumed you meant what <i>alcoholic beverages</i> do I drink when I'm not drinking wine, which may reveal something about me.

My preferred non-alcoholic options are:

* Tea. Gallons of iced tea. Hot tea rarely, usually either at a Chinese restaurant or if I take an interest in some kind of high-end varietal tea and approach it like a wine tasting.

* Coffee. Espresso strongly preferred, either straight shots or espresso drinks. American coffee much less frequently.

* Water. Sparkling preferred, usually with a citrus twist, occasionally with a little shot of pomegranate juice or some other interesting (non-alc.) fruit juice.

I really don't care for soft drinks. I used to like them but got over Coke when I got into wine. Rarely I'll do something weird and ethnic in a restaurant, particularly Jarritos (I like the tamarindo) in a taqueria, or real ginger beer in a Jamaican eatery.

[Robin Garr]

I stopped drinking both black tea and coffee earlier this year and it's done wonders for my teeth ...

Seriously, Paul? Why not just brush 'em?