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Then I grew up and had a beer, and ran into porters and stouts. The relationships of these beers makes for one very, very messy Venn diagram, with more circles than a UFO nut’s cornfield, a lot of scratched-out lines and erasures, and some really odd intersections. Porter definitely came... Read More

Master and apprentice, behemoth and beauty, yin and yang: two complementary personalities and temperaments make this newly formed team creating wine at Bodega Norton. The winery was founded by Edmund James Palmer Norton, an English engineer who’d come to Argentina to help in the gargantuan task of building the Transandean... Read More

As restaurateurs and retail proprietors, one of the many questions we are frequently asked by our clients is about food and wine pairings. Many times the questions are about easy pairings that follow the old rules of red wine with meat and white with fish. When this rule was coined,... Read More

The four wineries range from northerly, near the border of Vermont, to westerly, near New York State, to southerly enough to approach Connecticut. They share the terrain and climate of the Berkshire Hills, too severe for home-grown vinifera grapes, but, as we’ll see, they make laudable potables from fruit other... Read More

“I really don’t want a Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot or Chardonnay,” I told the waitperson in a restaurant and pointed to a wine on the list. “Please bring me this one listed under Gravel over Clay.” This is the fantasy of a diehard wine terroirist: to have wines identified by soil... Read More

Paper City Brewing Company Holyoke, MA If you visit Paper City during one of its popular Friday night tour and party sessions, you’ll usually see a man off to one side, quietly building and filling beer containers for his departing guests. With his prodigious work ethic, it’s no surprise the... Read More

FRANK De PASQUALE • 53 • Restaurateur • Bricco, Umbria, Mare, News, Express, Trattoria Il Panino Since launching his first Trattoria Il Panino in 1989, Frank De Pasquale has opened a basketful of 21 diversely styled restaurants. Though the self-made restaurateur holds fast to the uncompromising ideal of serving authentic... Read More

AS THE HOLiDAYS NEAR and the New England weather turns to its usual snowy state, ’tis the season for heavier dishes and big red wines to grace our tables and warm our souls. In a bygone era, the end of the meal was when the cigars came out and the... Read More

As energy costs rise almost daily and people worry about the overall economy, it appears that many consumers are spending less disposable income on cognac, at least when it comes to home consumption. And when they do buy it, it’s often likely to be VS or VSOP, and not the... Read More