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Tiffany

TIFFANY TAYLOR • 35 • Wine Director & Restaurant Manager • Rialto Restaurant, Charles Hotel, Cambridge, MA Even the elegant places suffer stressful moments; Rialto, the Charles Hotel’s flagship destination dining room – since its 1994 opening the bailiwick of award-winning Chef Jody Adams – has weathered wintry changes. Restaurateuse...
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On Organic Spirits

It’s growing slowly, but organic spirits success seems to be well on track. By year’s end, the Massachusetts market will probably have nearly a dozen organically made spirits. “Organic’s all the rage right now. I know the category is growing by the interest from distributors that are looking at it....
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RumBa

Trends come and go. A new infusion will likely replace the last hot infusion. Tequila drinkers are rapidly upgrading to anejos. The Mojito craze wilts annually with the season and the Negroni is the new Dark ‘n Stormy, say some trend trackers. Maybe Pulitzer Prize winning poet Robert Frost put...
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Can A-B Rally The Troops?

ANDY CROUCH To start, why don’t you tell us a little about how the Here’s To Beer campaign got started. TOM SHIPLEY That would go back to the end of the summer in 2OO5. All of 2OO5 and at the end of 2OO4, there were lots of negative stories in...
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A License to Bounce

Anyone holding a license to serve alcohol in Massachusetts may soon face tougher and more costly regulatory requirements. A home rule petition now pending in the state legislature would require all licensees to run criminal background checks on all employees involved with admitting patrons. This includes door staff and anyone...
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Profile: Kim Stare Wallace

KIM STARE WALLACE Vice-President & Director of Marketing • Dry Creek Vineyards, Sonoma, CA Thirty five years seems a long time to own a California vineyard. Kim Stare was just 8 when her family packed everything into a station wagon and headed from Wellesley, Massachusetts to Davis, California. Dad was...
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The Oriel Line

For winemakers, sourcing grapes from outside a vineyard estate is nothing new. Yellow Tail does it. So do Louis Jadot and Verget. But creating a line of limited-production wines from all over the world, crafted by a diverse group of renowned wine-makers, bottled at the source and then distributed under...
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Geek Heaven

Riding an impressive and seemingly unbreakable wave of industry growth, the Brewers Association recently celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of its signature event, the Great American Beer Festival (GABF), in Denver, Colorado. With expanded floor space and increased offerings, the festival broke its old records and new ground in the promotion...
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Cognac & Brandy

As a combined category, brandy and Cognac has doubled in sales from ten years ago. While it might be climbing the ladder slowly, it’s climbing nonetheless. In 2OO5, total volume increased .7% to 1O.2 million 9-liter cases. A breakdown of the statistics shows that most of the growth is in...
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