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So says the mainstream media, the economic analysts, the industry analysts; for a change, even the raw numbers bear them out. Overall US beer sales were down 2.2% in 2OO9, and it’s not getting better in 2O1O; the Beer Institute says sales in the first five months are down 4%,... Read More

The Aviation is a tremendous cocktail that has been gloriously resurrected in recent times by classic cocktail cognoscenti.  The recipe was first published in How to Mix Drinks by Hugo Ensslin, the German-born head bartender at the Wallick House Hotel in Times Square.  His was the last cocktail manual to... Read More

About 25 years ago I was going through something of an epiphany regarding wine’s influences upon health. At the time there were two committed camps in the US. A sizable number insisted that anything containing alcohol was intrinsically evil, prohibitionists denying that any good could ever come from drinking, however... Read More

If Ballard Canyon in California’s Santa Barbara County is as unknown to most wine professionals as it had been to me prior to a recent trip to the region, my prediction is that it will soon be “discovered”. The pending AVA is a source of superb Syrah. Not that Rhône... Read More

Few indeed are sources of world-class Pinot Noir. Let us count them. The gold standard resides in the Côte d’Or and, to a lesser degree, the Côte Chalonnaise. I’ve drunk two or three exemplars in the Alto Adige, Italy’s most northerly reaches. Over here, we have Oregon’s Willamette Valley and... Read More

In a small industrial park near downtown Tampa, a buzz continues to grow louder, emanating from the stainless steel tanks of a tiny Florida brewery. The hype about Cigar City Brewing started long before it even brewed its first batch. Run by a beer columnist for a local Tampa newspaper,... Read More

Florodora, a musical revue from London, hit it big on Broadway in 19OO.  It was one of the first successful Broadway musicals of the 2Oth century, showing for 552 performances on the New York stage before touring extensively around the world.  If the name didn’t already cue you, the musical... Read More

Whether you’re talking politics, literature, culinary icons, or movies, there’s always a place for gin in the conversation.  After all, Winston Churchill, FDR, Julia Child, and Jack London are among its most famous fans, to name but a few.  With all the hullaballoo around vodka throughout the last decade-plus, gin... Read More

If you read the end of the year reports for any major beer producer, the song remains the same: 2OO9 was a challenging and complicated year in the beer industry, stemming from a depressed economic environment, tightening credit markets and continuing cost pressures.  Overall, beer sales in the United States... Read More

I’m a big fan of draft beer in the summer. The advantages are clear: less handling, usually less expensive, more environmentally friendly, and as lots of folks will tell you, it’s usually how brewers meant the beer to be poured. I like having draft at all our family gatherings: it... Read More