Alcoholic drinks always taste "bad"; people mostly develop an appreciation for the bad taste because they enjoy the effect. Mixologists, brewers, distillers, and vinters can be brilliant and hard-working, but a lot of them are pretentious snobs who don't realize their job is to put makeup on a pig.

I love pretty much all alcohol, and I can pretend to be into it. I appreciate the long production chain and the vast number of variables that can affect the final product. It's part of my job to sell whatever we're selling in my restaurant, so I've learned to appreciate the subtlety of the different tastes in cocktails, liquors, wines, and to highlight whatever is remotely unique about them in a creative and positive way that makes them easy to sell. I think I'm pretty good at it.

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It's all bullshit, though. When I sit down at the end of the night I drink a shot of tequila that's as tasteless as possible and have a beer that tastes like water. "Better" drinks almost always cost more, take a long time to learn to appreciate properly (costing even more), have additives to change the taste (adding calories and increasing the likelihood of a hangover), and STILL don't taste good in the way that we would describe non-alcoholic drinks or food as tasting good. It all seems like a waste of time and effort for anyone who's not employed to sell the product.