Mr Sippy: Spirits and seafood should intermingle

Ask about what to drink with seafood and you'll almost invariably be directed to the white wine aisle. While nobody sane would argue the toss about that particular match, the liquor cabinet should also be considered, particularly if you're in the mood to mess things up a little.

Liquor is no stranger to seafood when it comes to cooking, whether you're talking Chinese drunken prawns (where small prawns are dunked in baijiu, a strong, vodka-like, sorghum-based spirit, and then either boiled or eaten raw and drunkenly wriggling), the tradition of curing salmon with vodka or gin to make ceviche or the ''Is it a drink, is it a snack?'' phenomenon of the oyster shooter, either in the traditional bloody mary form or in various other versions that have oysters adding their warmed salty rockpool-like brilliance to sake, tequila or rum.

But seafood and liquor can also exist side by side rather than on the same plate or in the same glass, though the Dirty Dirty Martini made super dry with a splash of oyster liquor makes a great argument for intermingling.

Oysters seem to be the seafood with the greatest affinity for the harder stuff, though the combination of cocktail and oyster bar, a fixture in the United States, is still a business opportunity waiting to happen in Australia.

In Scotland, oysters are teamed with briny, smoky whiskies like Ardbeg or Talisker to great effect, while the combination of high-quality frozen vodka and a plate of Sydney rock oysters augmented by nothing but a squeeze of lemon may have you questioning your atheist beliefs.

The Scandinavians are also good at matching booze with seafood. Shooting ice-cold aquavit (a clear spirit distilled from potatoes or grain and commonly flavoured with caraway) with pickled herring, shellfish and even sashimi may be the real reason for the region's stability, rather than their progressive welfare systems.

News that an Alaskan distillery has released a salmon-infused vodka may be taking the seafood and spirits thing a little too far, but there's plenty of space between that and the usual glass of white. Make like a Swede and go for it.