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ERIK JOHNSON • 37 • Beverage Manager/Sommelier • L’Espalier and Sel de la Terre • Boston Sel de la Terre, located opposite the Aquarium T-stop, is admirably positioned to do a booming lunch trade and tourist business for its Mediterranean cuisine. L’Espalier, tucked in toney Back Bay, enters its third... Read More

LOOKING BACK at my recent article about winter and it relationship to big reds and after-dinner drinks got me to thinking about the other beverages of the season. The upcoming holidays present a smorgasbord of traditional drinks and foods on which to build with a creative twist. Who doesn’t love... Read More

Dean Martin was a star in his own right, a well-paid singer and actor. But when Frank Sinatra was in the room, Martin was eclipsed, and he knew it. It Was a Very Good Year So it is with the Titan from Tennessee. Jack Daniel’s is the best-selling whiskey in... Read More

Anyone holding a license to serve alcohol in Massachusetts may soon face tougher and more costly regulatory requirements. A home rule petition now pending in the state legislature would require all licensees to run criminal background checks on all employees involved with admitting patrons. This includes door staff and anyone... Read More

While Santorini is well-known for its spectacular panoramas, its wine industry remains relatively undiscovered. Vines dot the slopes and plains that skirt down from the crater. The soil is a powdery gray volcanic ash peppered with chunks of pumice stone and black lava. The strong winds which are typical to... Read More

Ladybugs, now becoming a threat to our wine supply, were commonplace when I was a small boy in Brooklyn, even in that urban setting. We naively called them “potato bugs”. I don’t know why. They congregated on the large leaves of the small trees we called, with perfect logic, “potato-bug... Read More

Starting with his eponymously named pub in Baltimore, he has actively worked in the business since 198O. In the mid-nineteen eighties, Sisson decided he wanted to add a brewpub to his restaurant. After determining that Maryland law did not allow for on-premise brewing, Sisson and others petitioned the state legislature... Read More

Last summer I wrote about going to the Society of Wine Educators Conference and getting my wine geek on. This year the conference was in Monterey, which is a part of California wine country that I had not yet visited yet, so I was looking forward to this trip for... Read More

Buying wine in the United States used to be a big deal, something almost ceremonial and definitely out of the ordinary. One of the major reasons that consumption’s reached a new height of popularity in the past decade is that we’ve finally overcome the idea of wine as a “special... Read More

Sounds like Jim Koch knows what he’s talking about, doesn’t it? The “lunatic fringe of brewing” indeed. Utopias sounds like an insane concept: a unique gold-tone bottle shaped like a brewing vessel, a beer that’s 5O proof and practically flat, blended from several batches of beers aged for different periods,... Read More