  Pop quiz: What substance inspired these ethereal musings?
Answer: Vodka!  Specifically, Pinnacle vodka, a French (!)
import that's being touted (and sold at the low, low price of
$17 per 1.5-liter jug) by the Wine Merchant, Ltd.  Unreal was
struck by the description when we encountered it in a recent
Wine Merchant e-newsletter, whose creators plucked it from the
Beverage Testing Institute, a no-doubt eminent center of higher
potable analysis that late last year (October 5, to be precise)
assigned Pinnacle a rating of 91 on a 100-point scale and
designated it as a "Best Buy."  Unreal can't resist a bargain.
Nor can we resist vodka that tastes like fennel granola. So we
hied to the Merch's Clayton location and picked up a bottle.
While we were hieing, we scored a bottle apiece of Smirnoff
blue-label and red-label "Triple Distilled" vodka and a bag of
Dixie cups.  Having delegated our recent K-Y lube test to our
burgeoning cougar entourage, we were damned if we were gonna let
the vodka slip through our finger