I have to admit, I feel lousy today. After blogging yesterday about Nick Faldo’s wine, I felt like I needed to provide some balance to the alcoholic pre-Ryder Cup coverage.

But Paul Azinger doesn’t have any wineries. Or if he does, he’s not sharing the fruits thereof with the rest of us.

What was I to do?

Well, obviously, I needed to sit down in front of my home bar and come up with a drink for our boys at Valhalla.

A drink that is not mead. (Seriously, have you tasted mead? No wonder the Vikings were so damned bellicose.)

Several bottles of various liquors later (which is a hard thing to say, or type, when drinking, by the way), I had concocted The Zinger. And as far as I can tell, this recipe is novel, or at least it does not appear on the most extensive online library of drink recipes that I know of.

Here’s how you make The Zinger:

First, you need some great vodka. I prefer potato vodka, like Viking Fjord, Absolut, or Chopin (in that order). But as these are all European, and we’re cheering on the Yanks here, we can go with Tito’s Handmade Vodka, which is distilled in Texas from corn. Yee-haw!

Next, fill a pint glass half-full with crushed ice. Pour in as much vodka as your liver and taste buds will allow. Add an equal amount of white grape juice (less if you have a tolerant liver, more if you’re a lightweight). Top off with a healthy glug of ginger ale or diet ginger ale.

Finally, the key ingredient is a handful of fresh blueberries. These you can muddle prior to adding, which infuses the entire drink with a nice berry flavor. Alternatively, you can just toss them in whole, in which case many will end up suspended at varying levels in your glass, borne upon bubbles from the ginger ale like those colorful glass bulbs in a Galilean thermometer. And then you can eat the berries at the end of the drink.

It required, oh, a half-dozen or so drinks to decide that I prefer the thermometer-version best.

Or not. I forget. It’s hard to remember.

I may have drunk-dialed Paula Creamer, come to think about it….

Oh well, in any case. Raise a glass to Zinger and the U.S. Team! (They’ll need all the help they can get.)

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