Virginia ABC: Protecting You from Beer Popsicles!
States such as Maryland and Virginia can always brag about how their alcohol-control systems lead to lower rates of underage drinking and fewer alcohol-related traffic fatalities for people under 21 than open jurisdictions. Fine, but as Jessica Gould reported this week, some of Virginia’s alcohol laws are so restrictive—dare I say controlling—that you can’t even order a decent glass of sangria in the state.
Now comes the latest restaurant dust-up with the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control: Frank Morales has been trying to introduce a beer popsicle to his suds-heavy menu at Rustico in Alexandria, but, according to the Associated Press, the Virginia ABC says the chef’s summer treat may break regulations requiring that “beer be served in its original container or served to the customer immediately once it’s poured.”
Let’s not fool ourselves here all right? These sangria and beer laws have little to do with protecting the public from potential harm—and almost everything to do with making sure the state collects its rightful money. After all, when it comes to specialty drinks and custom-made treats such as sangria and beer popsicles, state agents have no idea if the restaurants are actually using legally purchased alcohol.
The Virginia ABC, of course, needs to make sure that licensees follow the money-generating rules, which contributes hundreds of millions to the state’s coffers. But when laws prohibit the simple pleasure of downing a glass of brandy-spiked sangria in the summer or limit the ambitions of a creative chef like Morales, then the state’s got problems.
Virginia desperately needs to rewrite a few of its more draconian alcohol laws, which, in this day and age, look petty and absolutely Luddite.
25 Comments
Leave a Reply
You can follow any responses to this entry through its comments RSS feed.
4:32 pm
No beer popsicles in Virginia?!!? Holy dogshit!!.. What sort of a perverted nincompoop would want a beer popsicle anyway?! Ditto brandy-spiked sangria. The simple answer is the Tim Carman sort.
Piss off, Tim, to your beloved Dupont Circle where you can have more beer popsicles than you’d know what to do with. Wink.
In conclusion, please allow me to thank the Virginia ABC for not permitting all that crap on the territory of the state.
4:41 pm
Beer popsicles, indeed! What is this country coming to?
4:51 pm
Beer popsicles?.. I never. Surely, an aberration.
4:53 pm
Luddite is a noun, not an adjective.
4:55 pm
“Who would want brandy-spiked sangria?”???
Ernest, you is dumber than a bag of hammers. But what could we expect: your contribution to wine is the Gallo brand. Thanks for that plonk, dude; it’s an excellent toilet cleaner.
Hmm, who would want spiked sangria … maybe the Iberians who invented sangria and having been serving it spiked with brandy for centuries, you complete and utter sac du merde?? And, like, everyone else on earth who orders and drinks it, because without the brandy or triple sec, it’s just cheap red wine with some fuckin’ fruit in it?
I would say your mother likes to drink it too, but I can’t ask her opinion, as her mouth is full of my delicious beer popsicle at the moment. Wink.
5:09 pm
Tom,
Luddite is both a noun and an adjective.
Ernest,
I’m not taking the bait. But I’m sure your angry shtick works wonders with 13-year-old boys.
5:17 pm
You can shove your “delicious beer popscilcle” up your ass and [swears disgustingly] off while doing it, Anti-Ernest.
5:21 pm
It’s an adjective meaning “foolish.”
(To use it in a sentence: “It is very ‘Tom’ to state smugly and publicly that ‘Luddite’ is solely a noun, when the term’s adjectival use could have been easily confirmed by checking a dictionary.”)
5:26 pm
I would try that, Peggy, but Ernest’s mom just won’t let go of it! She’s licked it right down to the stick. It’s really pretty embarassing. If Rustico manages to thwart the ABC and get these things on the menu, they’ll at least have Ernest’s mom as a regular customer.
5:27 pm
If wit were shit, Anti-Ernest, you would die from the effort of straining.
5:33 pm
Ooh, I like that one, Beaky!
And if wit were shit … Ernest’s mom would still be licking my delicious, ice-cold, yummy Irish stout popsicle.
The only thing is, she keeps asking for a “lighter” version, cause she’s used to getting something a little smaller and paler from her boy at home. Sort of the O’Doul’s of popsicles, if you catch my drift. (Wink.)
5:35 pm
It’s really not working, Anti-Ernie. Go straight to the song.
5:39 pm
Yes, he’s terrible.
5:49 pm
Tom, on the other hand, is pretty cool.
6:00 pm
Nice pair of shots you wearing, Tommy babes. I like the use of color ‘blue’ by the designer. It suits you nicely.
6:11 pm
Ernest? Beaky? Booby? Peggy? Where are Gimpy and Crusty and Prolapsed Bunghole and the rest of the dwarves?
Ernest, you know what all these voices in your head might really like? Some delicious brandy-spiked sangria. Mmmm. So tasty. And it washes down psychotropic medications really, really well!
I would offer you and all of your personalities a delicious beer popsicle, but you know, your mama has plumb cleaned my freezer out.
6:21 pm
I meant ‘Tim’, actually.
Angie, what are you doing here, old trollop?
6:25 pm
Nice pair of trousers you wearing, Timmy babes. I like the use of color ‘blue’ by the designer. It suits you nicely.
What’s that Anti-Ernest wanker?
6:34 pm
Hey, that was my line!
So what’s that Anti-Ernest wanker?
6:42 pm
I hardly know. Some malodorous fuckwit with mother-fixation. Literally frothing at the mouth. He hates Ernest.
Still here, Anti?
11:47 am
For the record, Beaky/Booby/Peggy and the rest of the drooling pro-Ernest groundlings, I don’t hate Ernest. Most of the time, I merely think he is a fool with a sad case of logorrhea. But when he actually becomes rude and aggressive and dumps all over a blog item and its author for no apparent reason — as he’s done here multiple times in past weeks — he needs to be smacked down.
Here, he moronically asks, “Who would want to drink brandy-spiked sangria?”, which is basically like asking, “Who would want to drink beer that is beer?” His comments are no more elucidating that what you’d get from a chimp playing with a keyboard. And they ensure that the subjects of the posts are lost to any real, relevant commentary … all because Ernest felt the need to open his slack-hanging piehole and reassure the world that he, Ernest, has an uninformed opinion on this subject, too.
Believe me, Beaky, the froth at my mouth is nothing compared to the foam around the mouth of Ernest’s poor, drunk, beer-sucking mama. She only drinks because Ernest is such a disappointment to her.
2:09 pm
Peggy,
I’m astonished! I understand about the CP ape or, ahem, the others
but how could y o u have possibly uttered such a crudity? Shit.
11:13 pm
[...] of Virginia wasn’t fond of the idea that someone would make popsicles out of beer. Like Washington City Paper, DCeatz feels that Virginians do not need to be protected from beer popsicles, just puritanical ABC [...]
12:22 pm
excuse me. i have recently become allergic to beets and would like to know if it is possible to make a savory borscht without beets. what substitute would you recommend?
thank you
Alex
11:20 pm
You are all a bunch of dumb fucks, and none of you are witty or original at all. So stop polluting post boards.