Featured Articles

By Harvey Finkel You’d think you were looking through Alice’s looking glass to view the labyrinthine history of Scharffenberger Cellars, though the wines have been on a straight line of good quality. In 1981, the young John Scharffenberger, having studied agricultural geography at Berkeley, founded a marginally capitalized eponymous sparkling... Read More

by PINK LADY The Fourth of July is one of the great drinking holidays of summer, and while it’s certainly fun to serve guests red, white, and blue-themed beverages, a drink with true Revolutionary Era roots is sure to intrigue the history buffs at your picnic. If their numbers are... Read More

by HARVEY FINKEL Seriously delicious. Short supply. Stable prices. These are the key phrases one took away from the early reviews of the 2016 vintage in Burgundy, now in distribution on our shores. Like an inverted phoenix, the splendor of the wines arose, not from fire, but from ice. We’ve... Read More

by ANDY CROUCH A consumer’s beer fridge undergoes a number of seasonal changes throughout the year, transitioning from the lighter, crisper beers of summer into more full bodied offerings in the fall and through winter before returning full circle in the spring. As the seasons change, some beers can get... Read More

“A single bottle of Prosecco DOCG sparkling wine drinks 4.4 kg of soil every year.” By Harvey Finkel Among the inconvenient truths about humankind’s disturbances of the ecosystem is that thoughtless agricultural cultivation accelerates soil erosion, already losing 30 percent of the farm production on the half of the earth’s... Read More

ENDANGERED COCKTAIL OF THE MONTH By Pink Lady After an interminable, dark winter, by the time June rolls around, it feels celebratory and refreshing to sip something light and bright for body and spirit. The Tuxedo No. 2 is a fun Martini variation that will surely impress your less-nerdy-than-you cocktail... Read More

By Kirsten Amann Good salespeople are expert problem solvers. In the continuously evolving landscape of beverage alcohol distribution, with more brands in the market than ever, savvier consumers with sophisticated palates, and restaurants and retailers jockeying to offer them the next best thing, efficient problem-solving is essential at all levels... Read More

By Sandy Block, MW The bread and butter of every Champagne house remains its Brut Non-Vintage blend. This is most often an alchemical assemblage of dozens of different wines from far flung villages within the Champagne viticole, as well as multiple vintages, including older “reserve” wines, and a varying proportion... Read More

By Pink Lady It may take us a while to warm up here in old, cold New England, but a sure sign that the days are getting longer – and our moods are getting happier – is the introduction of light, bright, citrus-y cocktails on menus statewide. And rum. In... Read More

By Harvey Finkel When I was but a boy, I would be transported weekly to Victorian England by the Sherlock Holmes radio program. Almost as much as the adventure, I enjoyed the usual coda, in which Nigel Bruce, genial, stalwart, comfortable Dr. Watson to Basil Rathbone’s incisive Holmes, sitting before... Read More