Waterville — Chicken Bones Liqueur, the holiday smash hit from Waterville-based Moonshine Creek Distillery, will be released today to anxious fans. Despite Ganong’s lack of direct participation in the new recipe, grandmothers across the province have stepped up to fill the void.
“It’s really a matter of supply and demand,” said Moonshine Creek president and CEO Jeremiah Clark. “We were unable to secure a supply of Chicken Bones product in time for our release, but thousands of metal candy dishes and hazy plastic bags full of hard, sticky, dusty, pink gold started showing up on the front step of the distillery with kind notes from Donelda, Anita, Lillian, Harriet, Flora, Pearl, Dot, Myrtle…our permed heroines.
“I mean, who the hell would eat them anyway?” Clark went on. “Certainly not anyone with functioning taste buds. It’s like someone found a really old pack of stale Red Hots and thought, ‘Hey, wanna know what would make these worse? How about we fill them with a paste barely recognizable as chocolate, and make the outside so sharp and brittle that it will cut your gums?!’ We’re just the geniuses who bottled it.”
“When I heard about the need, I cracked open my old sewing box and dug through a selection of Golden Buds, Slowpokes and Willow Crisp, to reveal a mountain of Chicken Bones,” said Vivian Long. “I haven’t touched them since I came down with the sugar diabetes 20 years ago, but they look the same as the day I bought them. I called on my bridge partners to do the same.”
“When my Viv told me about the emergency, shit was about to get real,” said Lois Marshall, a grandma with the mouth of a wounded sailor and a heart of gold. “I dug through the bottom of my purse, the Royal Doulton dish in my China cabinet, even the baking cupboard. Bridge bitches were gonna help make some liquor!”
Without Ganong on the label, die-hard fans are skeptical that the second generation will have the same smooth flavour of a cinnamon heart being expelled through the anus of a dollar store Easter bunny.
“I tried making my own last year,” said Snooty Fox mixologist Lincoln McMaster. “Two shots of Fireball into half a cup of Baxter’s chocolate milk. Only Baxter’s — not Northumberland. It was pretty close. Still disgusting.”