Featured Articles

PINK LADY’S ENDANGERED COCKTAIL OF THE MONTH 1O YEARS can seem to pass quickly, and if you’re a LUPEC Boston gal, you might just one day wake up and realize you’ve been spreading the gospel of the well-made cocktail for a decade.  Cheers to how far we’ve come! One of... Read More

by HARVEY FINKEL THERE ARE cooperatives, and, then, there are cooperatives.  This might be especially true in Italy, where I have visited industrial-sized wineries out of Chaplin’s Modern Times, whose watery emanations used to be served free on tourist-class international flights, and have marveled at others – blessed is the... Read More

by SANDY BLOCK, MW NO OTHER REGION does Pinot Noir quite like Oregon.  Not that it’s necessarily the place on earth that makes Pinot which will appeal most to every palate, but there is an automatic association between the state and the grape, as well as a consistent style, that... Read More

by HARVEY FINKEL HAVING HEARD increasingly positive word about the recently arrived 2O14 Burgundy vintage, an enthusiastic coterie of members and aspirants of the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin were drawn on an evening in April to the upstairs room at La Voile, the sweet little brasserie on Beacon Street... Read More

by PINK LADY EVER JUST HAVE “one of those” weeks?  As we type this it’s a warm, summer Friday, the birds are chirping outside and peonies are in bloom.  As the minute hand ticks away on the clock, our enthusiasm for actual “work” (even the work we love) wanes.  Perhaps... Read More

by LEW BRYSON “OH, IT’S . . . just the Canadian.” That’s a line from the pilot episode of “Due South,” a 9Os TV show about a Mountie who winds up working with a Chicago cop. His boss at the Canadian consulate is explaining how he overhears secrets and gathers... Read More

by ANDY CROUCH WHEN THE WEATHER turns cold, thoughts in the beer world turn immediately to dark beers.  Pints of warming, inviting black pints of stout are what is needed to combat snow piles awaiting the shovel.  Light hefeweizens, airy witbiers, and quenching Berliner weisses remain excellent selections when the... Read More

by HARVEY FINKEL, MD ALCOHOLISM TENDS TO cluster in families.  Observers have long wondered whether this destructive addiction, or at least susceptibility thereto, is inherited, however difficult it is to imagine the intricate individual steps required for genetic determinants to be translated into complex behavior. Studies aiming to uncover human... Read More

PINK LADY’S ENDANGERED COCKTAIL OF THE MONTH RUM is a delightful sip, and with our most patriotic holiday on the horizon it seems fitting to familiarize ourselves with a great recipe for a rum punch to raise in celebration.  Philadelphia Fish House Punch is older than America itself and was... Read More

by SANDY BLOCK, MW THE CARMENERE STORY has mythical overtones (a star grape in 19th Century Bordeaux, believed extinct, then rediscovered in Chile in the 199Os) but the reality is that for many years the grape has stirred strong passions, calling forth divisively negative, as well as positive, reactions among... Read More