Merry's Irish Cream: Better and Cheaper than Bailey's

So usually when you hit the Irish Cream portion of the Wine & Spirits store, if your like me, you look for Bailey's. However, if your also like me, your a college student strapped for cash. Now admittedly Irish Cream is usually not my top style of alcoholic beverage, however I do enjoy it from time to time.

So during this trip to the store I was actually looking for more of a dessert type drink, so Irish Cream was not out of the question. And low and behold a new bottle caught my eye, something that I had not seen before, it was a line-up of Irish Creme boxes of assorted flavors. Upon closer inspection I saw the label Merry's. There were a whole line of flavors including the tradition Irish Cream, White Chocolate, Butter Scotch, Peaches and Cream, Strawberry Ripple, Cappucino, and what I eventually ended up choosing: Mint Chocolate.

Needless to say at first glance I was expecting to pay around $20+ for 750ml, similiar to that of Baileys. However, when I saw the price tag was only $9.99, I was estatic. Granted, a low price tag usually means low quality, take for example many students' low-cost vodka of choice Vlad. After further inquiry to a store worker, I had learned that Merry's was actually vastly outselling Bailey's at the location, and she assured me the quality was comperable. This review put me at some ease, and the fact that you got two glasses with the box, that were actually very nice, but me over the edge.

After getting back from the store and testing the Merry's I came to the conclusion that this was in fact a stellar bargain. Not only was Merry's comparable to Bailey's, it also further dampened the bite associated with the whiskey. One note of caution however is that Merry's is thicker than Bailey's and does not lend well to a high level consumption. However, if the primary goal is as a dessert or an ingredient in a more complex drink, than I would full heartedly choose Merry's over Bailey's, which I would imagine would be approximately 3/4 or more of the uses for the drink. And after all, you get two sweet glasses with it.