Alcademics.com

A Tanqueray Shout-Out from Madonna

Madonna is two -for-two in promoting Diageo products from songs on her new ablum. In the first video for Give All Your Luvin' she had Smirnoff bottles in the background. 

On the new song and video (which is just words over a picture) for Girl Gone Wild, she gives a shout-out to Tanqueray:

 

The room is spinning
It must be the Tanqueray 
I'm about to go astray 
My inibition's gone away

 

I feel like sinning
You've got me in the zone
DJ play my favorite song
Turn me on

 

 

The video is below.

The New Madonna Video and Smirnoff Vodka Product Placement

The latest music video from Madonna "Give Me All Your Luvin'" includes some product placement luvin' for Smirnoff vodka. 

 

 

 

It's far enough in the background that it's not entirely clear what the brand is, unless of course one is already familiar with these things. 

The full video is below. 

 

 

Smirnoff and Madonna did some work together this fall in a promotion called the  Smirnoff Nightlife Exchange Project, in which dancers auditioned to go on tour with Madonna. So I guess it shouldn't be a surprise. 

 

 

 

Of course, it's not unusual for pop stars to put liquor in their music videos, I just don't watch them very often to notice. Lady Gaga did tons of placements as I covered here before here and here. 

 

 

Bushwhacking in Tuscany: Juniper Berry Harvest Video

Last week I went to Tuscany with Bombay Sapphire to see a demonstration of juniper berry harvesting. I'll try to post more information in a little bit, but for now here's how they do it:

Using a flat, round basket and a short hard stick, they whack the juniper bush branches so that the berries fall off. They want only the blue, ripe berries and not the green, unripe ones that will be ready the following year. Thus they must hit the bush with a certain force that removes one ripeness of berry and not the other.

Tequila Production Videos

I went to a bunch of tequila distilleries a couple of weeks ago. Here are some videos of tequila production. 

Harvesting an agave plant at Sauza.

 

Cutting up the agave at the Don Julio distillery to prepare it for baking.

 

At the Olmeca Altos distillery, crushing the baked agave using the stone tahona. 

 

At the Patron distillery, crushing agave in the rollermill, the more modern way to do this. Both Patron and Olmeca Altos use a blend of tahona and rollermill- crushed agave.

 

Then the agave ferments,

 

And is distilled to make tequila. 

For your weekend viewing pleasure

I recovered this video from a couple of years ago and I thought I'd share.

I was on St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands visiting the Cruzan Rum distillery and we stopped into this awesome dive bar Mt. Pellier Domino Club. There they have pigs in pens who love beer- they grab a can out of your hand and crush it with their terrifying teeth and suck down the beer. It's non-alcoholic beer so the pigs aren't drunk. I can't say the same for me at the time.

Hurry Beyonce, That Martini is Getting Warm

In this otherwise fantabulous Beyonce video, the poor woman must suffer the indignities of a man who doesn't treat her right, and also a nearly-empty oversized Martini with two huge, presumably warm Castelvetrano olives inappropriate for the drink. It makes her cry, and me too a little.

"Why Don't You Love Me" - Beyoncé from Beyoncé on Vimeo.

Guatemala Miscellany

My post on how rum is aged at Zacapa will have to wait another day- I thought I fully understood it but an item on a slide tripped me up. Time for a fact-check!

In the meantime, here are some other items of interest:

- There is now an Alcademics channel on YouTube. 

- I am new to taking video, so most of them are shaky and boring. You have been warned. 

Highlights:

A demonstration of sugar cane being cut by hand. Note that this is cleaned up and un-burned sugar cane, but the process is otherwise the same. The machetes they use have a sideways blade to allow more of the root of the plant to be cut.

View from the helicopter going to aging facility. You can see cloud-covered mountains, farmland, and other dramatic scenery. Guatemala has rich and fertile mountainous terrain, great for growing coffee and by the ocean, sugarcane for rum. Fun fact: Guatemala is also a major export market for mini vegetables that get sent to Japan. If you're ever in Guatemala I recommend a helicopter tour unless, like me, you find it absolutely terrifying. 

This is the village soccer field where we landed the helicopters. Everybody came out to check us out. 

 At the aging facility they re-char ex-bourbon barrels that are used in part of the rum aging process. This is the machine that does it. Fire!

The straw bands around bottles of Zacapa? They're woven by hand and each one takes 20 minutes to make. Here is a demonstration they did for us. You can (sorta) hear the English translator talking as well as the weavers. 

After the rum tour, we did some fun stuff in Guatemala including hiking up a volcano and playing with lava (fast-forward to :40)!

Adam Lambert and the Improperly Used Absinthe Fountain

Hey, did y'all see the new Adam Lambert video "For Your Entertainment"? I sure did. As you'd expect, he dresses in all black with sparkly studded accessories and sings while people writhe around him. He also holds a snake.

Less expected is the new symbol of rock star stature: an absinthe fountain. RISKY!  You'll notice that the pouring absinthe fountain doesn't appear to have ice in it, and that given its color it looks like they put absinthe in the fountain instead of ice water, and that the other fountain appears to be filled with sugar cubes.

No matter! What is important is that Lambert is thrusting his bloodlust for absinthe on impressionable American teenagers who comprise his primary audience.

My first question to myself was "WHAT BRAND OF ABSINTHE?" (I always speak to myself in capslock.) But alas, I could not find any evidence of product placement.

Wouldn't it have been awesome if they were drinking Marilyn Manson's product Mansinthe?

Or maybe he should come out with his own brand: LAMSINTHE.