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Kappy’s Antonio Pani

ANTONIO PANI • 57 • Wine Buyer & Store Manager • Kappy’s Fresh Pond, Cambridge, MA Denny Morris, a Berklee colleague, buys wine at Kappy’s Fresh Pond; he usually drinks $1O Cal cabs, but says Antonio Pani has sold him up to finer Priorats. Some salespeople keep up their careers...
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Wines of Cyprus

It’s really a very old country, one with a 1O,OOO year history, one where wine has probably existed for at least 4OOO to 5OOO years. Cypriot wine is lauded in the Hebrew Bible and other ancient documents. I confess to having never tasted any before my recent visit to this...
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The Hospices de Beaune Auction

Burgundy is a small wine producing region, making O.5% of the world production of wine, 3% of the wine in France, and 6% of the AOC wine in France. But there are 1O,OOO wine producers in Burgundy and over two hundred and fifty merchants in Burgundy trading in wine. Until...
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Irish Beer

“We had a limited range of beers in Ireland,” Seamus told me. “We went from a lot of local breweries in the 18OOs to . . . well, to Guinness. They began to die off in the late 18OOs, and the process continued. The canals and the railways had an...
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Defending Robert Parker

In my humble opinion, the constant noise about the “Parkerization” of the wine world is wearing just a little thin. In fact, it is getting on my nerves. Just in case, by some fluke, my dear reader, you are unfamiliar with the term, please allow this explanation. If a wine...
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RUM

Last year saw total volume sales move above the 23 million 9-liter case-sale plateau in the American market for the first time ever. Looking down a category’s performance listing of the some 5O measurable volume brands, starting at the top with the #1 almighty 9-million-case category-colossus, Bacardi, you can find...
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Irish Spirits

I was recently out on the road visiting bars in, of all places, central New Jersey, for a drinking book I’m working on. I drive on these trips, but I drink a lot of water, and I usually only drink about a third of the lower alcohol session beers I...
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J.J. Foley’s turns 99

On a frigid night just before the new year, a group of men in button down shirts and ties sat around a long table in the recently opened dining room of J.J. Foley’s Café on East Berkeley Street in Boston’s South End. The men were from all lines of work...
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