An Ode To Fireball

Alex Buscemi10 years ago

I love Fireball. Or, as people call it after drinking it all night, “FUEEGO BOLAA, MOTHAFUCKAA!” But maybe that’s just me. It’s very possible that’s just me.

Anyway, Fireball is the most popular liquor amongst American millennials right now. And for good reason. The geniuses at Sazerac Co., the Louisiana-based distillery who created it, have achieved a feat once thought to be impossible: branding an alcohol that women love, and the guys can drink without the shame that accompanies a shot from a bottle of, say, flavored vodka.

Not that a man should care about any judgment that may arise from a drink of Cherry Burnett’s. Alcohol is alcohol, and when you’re in college, the last thing you can afford to be is picky. But for whatever reason, some fall victim to the stigma. “Cherry Burnett’s! Ha! Do you have a vagina? Are you gonna sit down to pee it out later?… You know, cause of the vagina?”

That’s where Fireball comes in. They slap a badass demon-looking decal on the side of the bottle right next to an equally badass slogan: “Tastes like heaven – burns like hell!” This fools the mental midgets who would otherwise write it off as a “drink for chicks.” It’s considered almost manly, but in reality, it’s as sweet and sugary as that Cherry ‘Nett’s. It’s a goddamn marketing masterpiece is what it is.

The slogan also doubles as a sort of challenge.

“Burns like hell? Pshhht. I ate a habanero at Chipotle the other week. This ain’t shit!” Glug, glug, glug.

The taste doesn’t burn too much, though. I think the “burn” refers to the sensation in your urethra that surfaces a few days later — a direct consequence of the questionable decisions you make upon consuming mass quantities of the stuff.

As far as the “heaven” part of the slogan goes, they weren’t lying.

It’s like Christmas in your mouth. Not the Holidays. Christmas. I’m not being exclusionary. Hanukah tastes like potatoes and Kwanzaa tastes like squash. Christmas tastes like Fireball. That’s just the way it is. I don’t make the rules. Fireball tastes like gingerbread cookies and milk and pine needles and Claymation Rudolph. It tastes like you traveled to the North Pole, slipped Santa a couple hundreds, and let the elves just bukkakke in your mouth. That’s what it tastes like.

With that being said, you pay the price. Not financially — shit’s cheap as hell — but physically. They say the more sugary the drink, the worse the hangover. Well, I don’t know if you’ve ever poured a shot of Fireball, but it’s like squeezing molasses into a cup. It rolls out of the bottle it’s so thick with sugar, especially when you freeze it. Drink upwards of seven or eight shots, and the next morning you’ll be in the hell the bottle warned you about.

I think a lot of the hangover pain comes from the makers dumping in large quantities of antifreeze – enough for several countries in Europe to ban it altogether. Pussies. If your alcohol isn’t torching a hole in your stomach wall like it would a sheet of ice stuck to a windshield, are you even drinking?

I usually drink it straight, but there are several mixologist-approved concoctions you can make with the blazing liquid goodness. Mix it with some apple juice for the perfect autumn tailgate companion. Mix it with chai tea for what I call a “Weekend In Thailand” – it comes from Asia and it burns. Or, especially for the ladies, mix it with RumChata for a Cinnamon Toast Crunch shot.

No matter how you drink it, you can’t go wrong with Fireball. Crack open a bottle of the cinammony, syrupy liquid tonight. Christmas came early this year, bitches..

Image via YouTube