Vodka, Gin, etc. description term. What is it called?

[scruffziller]

In the book.
20 ADS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD
The Century's Most Groundbreaking Advertising and How It Changed Us All

It talks about how ABSOLUT launched an ad campaign that made people want to buy vodka that normally would not have bought it because it this type of a liquor. It also referred to gin as being this as well.
It's a word that coins it as being a liquor/spirit that is normally drank as mixed with something else rather than straight unlike beer or wine.
The word is in the book but I can't remember it. I saw the key ads displayed at the American Museum of Advertising and Design in Milwaukee, WI.

[Mad Slanted Powers]

Hard liquor? Fire water?

[jjreason]

How 'bout "Distilled Beverage"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquor

[scruffziller]

No, that is not the word. I may have read a word in the article thinking that it was the word that meant the meaning I am looking for, but I am pretty sure that it is as I remember it. Or.....I could be thinking of the word "DIMUNITIVE" as that is how both names of the liquors came into being.
Taken from other words to make the name.

[Jargo]

how about spirits.

[jjreason]

Distillation? The word diminutive means small, at least in my diminutive brain it does.

[LTBasker]

Booze?
Moonshine?
Wonder drug?
Beauty potion?

[Jargo]

diminutive is a contraction of diminish and minute?

[jjreason]

Apparently it means the opposite of augmentative, so a diminutive might mean the addition of an ending to an existing word to make it the small version (eg cigar goes to cigarette in the diminutive). God bless grammar, each and every one.

[scruffziller]

I just might need to get the book.