The development of animal models of alcoholism has encountered limited success. Unlike humans, rats and most other animals are reticent to self-administer alcohol at levels resulting in pharmacological effects. These experiments were designed to investigate the ability of a positive reinforcer, sucrose, to transfer positive motivational properties to ethanol through Pavlovian conditioning. The influence of sucrose pairing on ethanol reward was measured using three different paradigms: self-administration, taste conditioning, and place conditioning.