"firefly" news and stories

Three of my favorite things converged recently: David Byrne, sweet tea, and booze. Down south, the latter two are common enough on their own, but now Firefly Distillery has combined them with Sweet Tea Flavored Vodka.

I was beyond skeptical when my friend brought a bottle to an outdoor David Byrne show in Atlanta. I'd never even met a canned or bottled sweet tea, or for that matter a flavored vodka, worth spitting at (most necessitate spitting out). I expected something cloying and artificial-tasting.

To my surprise, Firefly exercised remarkable restraint in infusing--or should I say brewing--the vodka with (according to John T. Edge writing for the Gourmet blog) local tea and sweetened with regionally appropriate Louisiana cane sugar. Edge calls it hyper-sweet, but by sweet tea standards it really isn't. He also recommends mixing with lemonade, which my friend also suggested. But such doctoring isn't necessary. Water and ice do the trick.

The smooth dance moves and electrifying vocals of David Byrne aren't necessary, either. But in my opinion, if "the name of the bar, the bar is called Heaven," then it follows that "heaven is a place" where spiked tea and live Talking Heads hits meet.