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Gone Hunting

DAVID HUNT • 57 • Winemaker-Owner • Hunt Cellars • Paso Robles, CA Restless, confident and proud, David Hunt is an affable jokester and self-promoter, a lively, coaxing conversationalist with a Carolina drawl. He’s also a fanatic in the lab and crush-room, an inveterate tinkerer when blending. His Hunt Cellars...
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Rogue is Different

This Oregon brewery is perhaps the smallest brewery that you will find in beer stores and bars across the country – widely scattered high-end beer stores and bars, but national nonetheless. Being national certainly hasn’t hurt them, as they get picked in more “best of” lists than almost any other...
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Those Gimbels Guys

This is just some of the history belonging to Gimbel’s Liquors in Brookline’s Washington Square, presently celebrating its 4OTH anniversary. Longevity in the retail business is no easy task to accomplish. Few stores survive ten years, let alone forty but Gimbel’s has stood the test of time even as neighboring...
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GABF

The 24th annual Great American Beer Festival (GABF), the largest event yet for the Brewers Association, offered beer lovers an unparalleled sampling opportunity and contained a number of surprises for brewers as well. The awards ceremony itself took more than two hours to complete, a perhaps unwanted record for the...
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Tequila

LARGELY THROUGH EXPOSURE TO NEW LUXURY TEQUILAS, innovative marketing programs and the overall popularity of spirits, consumers have developed discerning palates. Today, people bandy terms about like blanco, reposado and anejo. They look for 1OO% blue agave distinctions on labels and sip tequilas from martini glasses or swirl them in...
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Mining Minerals!

The sommelier proclaimed, “Minerals!” I scratched my head. Minerality is the OM of wine tasting. But what do minerals smell like? In elementary school, I grew some minerals in science class. They didn’t smell of anything. But wine professionals frequently use the terms “mineral” and “minerality” to describe something about...
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Red Wine Delivering

Recent research has demonstrated that some of the polyphenols of wine appear to extend life span by mechanisms new to us. Maybe Ponce de Leon should have sought the fountain of youth in the vineyards of his native Spain instead of sloshing through the swamps of Florida. Be aware that,...
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New England Brewing Tales

Several of these breweries only recently entered the Massachusetts marketplace and each is striving to get its story out there. FOR THIS Six-pack of Local Breweries, I visit one-man operations, contract breweries, and some small craft breweries. Each of the breweries profiled here is distinctive, either for focusing on a...
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Knowing When to Cellar or Sell

TO CELLAR OR NOT TO CELLAR, that is the question. There have been more than a couple beverage programs I have worked with that I’ve tried to encourage putting away a small percentage of wine to improve their list for the future. More often than not the response has been...
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