Featured Articles

HOPEFULLY by the time this article is published the sun will be shining and Jack Frost will have been put to bed for another year. Spring has finally sprung in New England and it’s time for a little “spring drinking”. Our clients’ palates are changing once again from mostly heavy... Read More

Some of my fondest earliest experiences as an entry level drinker, many decades ago, centered on a broad variety of rum cocktails – from Frozen Daquiris and Zombies to a fabulous concoction that my late, great rum-loving father created with an antique shaker. Just watching my Dad’s ceremonious preparations was... Read More

JULIO & JULITO VIOLA • 51 & 25 • Winery Impresarios • Bodegas del Fin del Mundo • Patagonia, Argentina Founders of a handsome, high-tech, space age winery, and developers of two (and counting) turnkey satellite wineries for investors, the Violas are riding the gold rush wine wave in Southern... Read More

Let’s examine whether an increase from the 12 or 13 percent, to which we have been accustomed in table wine, to 16 or 17 percent is likely to influence either the adverse or beneficial effects of wine upon health. To ask a question whose answer seems obvious, what has changed... Read More

2OO5 was also the year when beer industry executives publicly admitted that their actions had bruised the public image of beer and thus dented their bottom lines. The mainstream media continues to hammer the notion that beer is passe and that consumers are tumbling over one another to get their... Read More

MICHAEL AHEARN • 34 • Head Bartender • Stella • Boston’s South End Michael could be having a bad day – worked ’til 3, up at 6 to mind sis’ kids, bar’s a mess, distributors are delivering waaaaay too early – but he’s upbeat, animated, witty, and his hair looks... Read More

Not that the wine it makes ever knocks you out with dramatic flavor. Its charms are subtlety and understatement. It flows rather than rushes at you. More Debussy than Wagner. But this is exactly what I’m looking for lately in a multi-purpose white wine with fish. In fact, one of... Read More

Readers can pull off such a tasting themselves, though the dimensions of it all can get out of hand. Participants (mostly consumers, a few trade folks) bought into this event by pledging a small fee and contributing one or two bottles. The tasting took place in a naturally lit room,... Read More

Bill Hardy, scion of the eponymic family of the Hardy Wine Company, visited Massachusetts recently, bearing samples of Hardy’s way with Shiraz, the Australian term for Syrah. We’ll get into those specifics after consideration of the genre. Syrah is the great black grape of the northern Rhone, most notably Cote... Read More

Every year, in the first week of June, Tuscany’s Carmignano Consorzio presents its newly released vintages to journalists. By far the most interest is lavished on the prestigious local red wines, the Carmignano and Carmignano Riserva DOCGs, but Carmignano for its size (some 2O producers working some 5OO acres of... Read More