What gets me is that most distilled liquors, until you acquire the taste for them, taste "horrible."
They BURN going down. It doesn't matter how good of a liquor it is, Johnnie Walker Blue or the best tequila or six-times distilled vodka. That much alcohol in any solution creates a burning sensation.
If you give something like that to someone who has never had liquor, they're going to screw up their face and wonder why you're trying to poison them.
It's only after you've acquired the taste, and learned to distinguish the subtle flavors that accompany the sensation, and start to appreciate those flavors, that you can even stomach such drinks.
People don't start by drinking whiskey. They drink a whiskey & coke, or a whiskey sour, or a 7&7, and slowly acclimate their palate to start appreciating what the whiskey starts bringing to the table. Then they might drink it straight on the rocks (the cold blunts the flavor and sensation), and only if they decide they really like it do they start drinking it neat.
Many people never do. They try to find the smoothest vodka they can, drop it into a cocktail full of fruit and sugar to mask the flavor/sensation, and never would consider drinking straight liquors because they simply don't like it.
I'll bet that appreciating baiju is much like appreciating fine whiskey here; seen as a sign of sophistication. So people put in the time and effort to develop the taste for it, and for some of them (like here with whiskey) they actually grow to enjoy and appreciate it.
