What they're drinking on The Flash

I'm always interested in what TV characters drink. Earlier this year, I learned a terrific wine pairing for sashimi from Hannibal Lecter.

"The Flash," on the CW network, hasn't ventured far into gastrophilia, even though we've learned Barry Allen needs to eat constantly because he burns a lot of calories running around Central City at 400 mph.

We've heard them eat at Big Belly Burger (a DC Comics staple, like Quentin Tarantino's Big Kahuna Burger). But the main gastronomic highlight came recently when one of the Flash's support team wrote an equation to estimate how many bugs he consumes if he runs with his mouth open, a concept I'm not sure they have explored in the DC comic.

I haven't seen a lot of wine in The Flash, but I did take this screen grab of a bottle of whiskey.

Unlike Marvel superhero stories, which generally take place in real cities (usually New York, except when the X Men are trashing San Francisco), DC creates fictional cities like Metropolis and Gotham.

The Flash lives and runs in Central City, a middle America town that apparently has had a distillery since 1818! This is remarkable but doesn't require suspension of disbelief. Buffalo Trace and Jim Beam distilleries in Kentucky both date to the 1700s. If Central City is in Ohio (the literature isn't clear), the SB distillery wouldn't have been the first, as Cleveland had a small distillery as early as 1800.

However, there are no distilleries in the real Ohio that operated continuously through Prohibition. Does this mean the DC Universe didn't have Prohibition? Good thing if so: imagine Superman using his heat vision to melt down illegal stills. I can imagine that, because Superman has always been kind of a dick.

I can't imagine what this 16-year-old Ohio Bourbon might taste like. On the show, it's not a very successful bribe. Perhaps it's too oaky? I like the care that went into the box design, to the point that we see it's 45.5% alcohol by volume. That's not enough to affect The Flash, whose metabolism prevents him from getting drunk for more than a few seconds.

It occurs to me that if The Flash needs a side job, he'd be an amazing event bartender, whipping out craft cocktails before people even finish ordering them. Or he could be a breakfast chef in Las Vegas, a job that even most professional chefs can't do. Or hell, he's The Flash, he could do both. That might be more interesting than saving Central City. Give Captain Cold the city, Flash, and pursue your true destiny in the culinary arts!

Follow me on Twitter: @wblakegray and like The Gray Report on Facebook.