The liquor a person drinks can say a lot about them. Or at least that’s what one Kansas City man discovered after a guest spotted a particular brand of vodka in his home.
Yourboyqs (@yourboyqs) shares how a pint of McCormick vodka left behind by a friend prompted another visitor to question his drinking habits.
“So check it out,” the man begins, pointing his camera at a small bottle of McCormick vodka. He explains that someone he’d been spending time with recently brought the bottle over and left it behind.
“It was sitting there for a few days,” he says.
When another friend came over and spotted the bottle, they apparently jumped to a troubling conclusion.
“Someone comes in my house, sees this right there. They’re like, oh my god, do you have a problem?” he recalls. “Just because they saw it was McCormick’s,” he says. “I was like, what?”
When asked whether he was surprised by his guest’s reaction, Yourboyqs tells Subplot News, “I was a little off guard but the kind gesture of being worried about me sent a sensation of euphoria going through me.”
“McCormick is not known for having that reputation but anytime you get a bottle of alcohol that costs $4 dollars, people start to worry,” he writes.
What’s Wrong With McCormick Vodka?
For the uninitiated, McCormick vodka is a budget-friendly vodka brand that has been around for decades. A 1.75-liter bottle typically costs $13.99, which is cheap when compared to other brands.
Retailer Total Wine & More says “[McCormick vodka] is quadruple distilled from American grain.” It has an alcohol by volume (ABV) of 40%.
Most people stigmatize inexpensive liquors sold in plastic bottles. Plastic is much cheaper to manufacture and lighter to transport than glass, but it is also more permeable, meaning liquor bottled in plastic has a shorter shelf life.
Premium brands will often emphasize the number of times their vodkas are distilled or filtered. But according to NPR’s “Planet Money” podcast, all vodka is essentially the same. Most of the differences in brands are attributable to marketing.
This hasn’t stopped certain “bottom-shelf” brands from acquiring bottom-shelf reputations.
And a person’s choice of vodka is obviously not a reliable indicator of whether they have a drinking problem, particularly in this case, where the McCormick pint didn’t even belong to Yourboyqs.
“I’m a well respected member of my community,” he wrote in the caption of his TikTok video, which has gotten just more than 2,000 views. “I don’t have a #drinking #problem like everyone says I do.”
Does More Expensive Vodka Taste Better?
Planet Money sent three vodka samples to Neva Parker, the president of White Labs—a company that manufactures liquid yeast cultures and supplies fermentation analysis—and asked, “Which of these three vodkas would you suspect should be the cheapest, least-desirable vodka?”
Parker chose the Grey Goose, which was the luxury option. White Labs “didn’t detect any taste-able differences even with our homemade vodka.” Still, the quality of the raw materials used and the distilling process can affect mouthfeel and taste of any liquor. And at least anecdotally, some bottom-shelf liquors taste better than others.
While one Reddit user says McCormick is “cheap” but “horrible,” another calls it “cool, refreshing,” and “the best.”
So while all vodka makers might create equal spirits, the court of public opinion is a different matter entirely.
@yourboyqs
Subplot News reached out to Yourboyqs via TikTok direct message and McCormick Distilling Co. via email.
