Alright so for reference to those who don’t drink alcohol but want to write fanfiction:
Definitions: 1 shot of hard liquor = 1 beer = 1 glass of wine, approximately.
A “shot” is a little less than a fourth of a cup, and when put into a standard tumbler or drinking glass (like the kind you use at your dinner table) will fill up the glass about the width of a finger high, depending on the size of the glass. That’s why they sometimes call it a “finger.”
“Straight” means you’re not mixing the liquor with anything, so it’s just a shot of whiskey or gin or whatever. “Neat” means roughly the same thing, only it also excludes taking it with ice. “On the rocks” means you want it poured over ice (the “rocks”). “Cocktails” are hard liquor mixed with other things like liqueurs, fruits and herbs, seltzer water, etc.
Wine can be either sweet or dry. Sweet means what you think it does, dry means the opposite (sort of a more sour or bitter taste; once you’re more used to drinking wine most people prefer it “dry” because sweet wine tastes too saccharine). “Tannins” are the stuff that makes the wine taste bitter, and they kind of have a...phantom feeling, I guess?...on your tongue, the same way really bitter chocolate does.
“Hard seltzer” is like if someone made La Croix sweeter and alcoholic. I personally hate them, but they’re quite popular. “Hard lemonade” is exactly what it sounds like.
Sake and soju are not the same thing, even if they both come from rice. Sake functions and tastes more like wine; soju is stronger than sake and, IMHO, functions and tastes more like vodka, even though they sell it in individual bottles. (Soju also sometimes comes flavored, like peach-flavored or plum-flavored, but I've never seen flavored sake). Both of them are served (at least in America) with the bottle and ceramic saucers that kind of look like small shot-glasses; you pour them into the ceramic saucers and drink them that way. Bottles of both alcohols are often split between several people.
“Bitters” are a kind of extremely condensed alcohol that’s used for flavoring a cocktail a certain way. It usually only takes a few drops (“dashes”) to influence the flavor of a drink. Unless otherwise specified, “bitters” refers specifically to angostura bitters (which tastes like spices) but there can also be orange bitters (which taste like oranges), etc. You would never drink bitters straight because it would taste horrible. It’s like a spice to your drink.
“Liqueur” is distinct from “liquor” and signifies a very condensed alcohol with an extremely strong and sweet flavor (usually something like orange or coconut) used to make a cocktail. They’re different from bitters because you need much more of them to influence the drink.
A “fruity” drink is something like a margarita or other cocktail that has a lot of other stuff mixed into it (syrups, crushed-up fruit, bitters, liqueurs, etc.).
Taste: This is just my opinion, but: whiskey tastes kind of sweet, like brown sugar, but also burns; vodka tastes the way nail polish remover smells, but its taste almost disappears once you mix it with something, making it a popular cocktail choice; rum is even sweeter than whiskey and can either be dark (brown) or white (clear); beer is kind of bitter, tastes like fermented bread and can either be very tasty or the worst thing you’ve ever drunk; red wine tastes like the dark chocolate or coffee version of grape juice (if that makes any sense); white wine tastes like sour-but-not-unpleasant white grape juice; mezcal (a type of Mexican liquor) tastes like someone somehow turned woodsmoke into hard alcohol; sake tastes like an extremely sweet and light white wine; soju tastes somewhere between sake and vodka. I can’t speak for gin because I’ve never had it, and I can't speak for tequila because I've never had it straight.
Stereotypes in Writing: In general, characters who are out having a good time will order something like cocktails, whereas characters who are having a bad time will drink hard liquor straight.
Subverting this trope, however, can also give an interesting twist to your characters! A character who drinks wine or whiskey while her friends are drinking cocktails will be perceived by the reader as more serious than the rest, while a character who orders a cocktail while depression-drinking alone is showing that they’re looking to get really drunk (this is because cocktails are usually twice as expensive as straight liquor, so that implies the character is the kind of person who usually only drinks for fun and is therefore not going to be able to hold their liquor once they take the dive into depression-drinking).
In terms of gift-giving, a bottle of wine is a nice gift, a bottle of whiskey is a very nice gift, a bottle of cheap vodka is a cheap gift (and kind of insulting), a bottle of expensive vodka (or mezcal, tequila, etc.) is an exceptionally nice gift.
Cost: In terms of cost, wine costs anywhere from ~$8.00 a bottle to into the hundreds (depending on how nice it is). Hard liquor usually starts around ~$20.00 a bottle and goes up from there. Beer is usually $10.00-25.00 a case (six bottles or cans in a case), depending on whether it’s something cheap like Budweiser or something craft from a local brewery. Sake is similar in costs to wine. Soju comes in green bottles and is about $8.00 in the U.S. (but much cheaper in Korea, like $1.00-2.00).
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