Rom-coms are formulaic and familiar, and that’s exactly what makes them enjoyable. Before you even start streaming one, you already know two likable characters are going to fall in love. There will be roadblocks and conflicts along the way, but of course, they’ll be resolved by the ending credits. Knowing this delivers a jolt of happiness, and this feeling only seems to get mightier with each repeated viewing. This makes the films within the genre the ultimate cinematic comfort food.

That said, there’s no better way to pair this form of nourishment than with another: a cocktail. So, with Valentine’s Day drawing near, we’ve paired up some of the best rom-coms out there with their cocktail soulmates. As you peruse, feel free to keep a few in your back pocket for use throughout the year. Just like true love itself, the pairing of a romance and a proper cocktail is timeless; they don’t need the forced vibes of a Hallmark holiday to work.

There are spoilers ahead, of course. But that somehow feels OK — after all, we already know these rom-coms will end.

‘When Harry Met Sally…’ (1989): Manhattan

There are three stars in this all-time classic exploration of two friends slowly growing closer: Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, and New York City itself. The romanticized scenic shots of the city’s landmarks and buildings give the film its soul, delivering a palpable energy that further draws you into the film’s world and may have you checking NYC flight prices immediately afterward (or at least craving a pastrami sandwich from Katz’s Delicatessen). The Big Apple backdrop makes drinking a Manhattan as you watch the magic unfold almost mandatory; any other cocktail almost feels like you’re cheating on someone. It just doesn’t fit because of the name, either: The drink’s elegant combination of rye whiskey, sweet vermouth, and Angostura bitters with a cherry garnish is timeless, much like the film itself.

‘How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days’ (2003): Cosmopolitan

The women’s magazine that assigns journalist Andie Anderson the movie’s titular article is named Composure, and its style and substance essentially make it a stand-in for Cosmopolitan. Since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, indulging in a cocktail of the same name just makes sense, especially since a proper Cosmo can be delightful. And, much like the film, you can riff on the original — you definitely have options.

‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’ (2008): Jungle Bird

It’s tempting to plug in “The Naked and Famous” here for reasons that are obvious if you’ve seen the first five minutes of the movie. Instead, take the high road by making this refreshing tropical drink. Most of the movie takes place in Hawaii, and was filmed at the famed Turtle Bay Resort on Oahu’s North Shore. In real life, the resort’s flagship restaurant Alaia features a drink called Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which is basically a Jungle Bird when you break down its specs.

‘His Girl Friday’ (1940): Gin Martini

This old-school screwball rom-com about a newspaper editor and his reporter ex-wife is legendary for the rapid-fire dialogue and simmering chemistry between stars Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. The black-and-white cinematography, the wardrobe, and the stylistic settings capture the essence of Hollywood’s Golden Era with pristine precision. Only a classic cocktail will sufficiently fit the mood it creates, and a Gin Martini is an easy call here. Word of warning: The film contains a scene that you may recognize as a legendary meme, and so try not to spill your drink when you see it.

‘The Wedding Singer’ (1998): Between the Sheets

This retro rom-com takes place in 1985, a time when grotesque, artificially flavored drinks with overtly sexual names dominated the scene. And though it was invented around the Prohibition era, the Between the Sheets leaned on its moniker to remain in vogue amid the neon-hued monstrosities. The old-school drink blends light rum, Cognac, triple sec, and lemon juice for a sipper that’s a little tart, a little burly, and a lot delicious. And though it would be right at home at an ‘80s reception, its excellence makes it a standout in any era.

‘Crazy, Stupid, Love’ (2011): Old Fashioned

The Old Fashioned Ryan Gosling’s Jacob makes for Emma Stone’s Hannah in his attempt to woo her may be one of the most perfect cocktail moments in cinematic history. That’s because Gosling learned from the pros: He was a regular at The Varnish, the seminal downtown Los Angeles bar co-founded by Eric Alperin and the late Sasha Petraske, and Alperin taught him how to make the drink as part of Gosling’s research for the character. This tutelage makes Gosling’s on-screen technique somewhat meta. Knowing that the burgeoning cocktail movement had a hand in Jacob’s creation makes it even cooler.

‘You’ve Got Mail’ (1998): The Godfather

This drama-tinged romance — which centers around an online fling between two people who dislike each other in the real world — draws inspiration from the 1940 film “The Shop Around the Corner.” Its cocktail choice also happens to stem from a different flick: In the rom-com, bookstore owner Joe treats the 1972 classic “The Godfather” and its memorable lines like it’s a philosophical work. This is all the excuse you need to whip up the drink of the same name, which contains just Scotch and amaretto. While Disaronno has been the traditional amaretto brand used since the drink’s 1970s heyday, you may find experimenting with other brands may yield different nuanced flavors.

‘Moonstruck’ (1987): Champagne Cocktail

During this New York-set film, family members drop sugar cubes in their Champagne to celebrate two different engagements. It’s an act of superstition, referencing an Italian tradition that’s meant to keep the devil away from happy occasions. Though some may find that extra sugar over-sweetens their bubbly, a Champagne-filled flute seems like the perfect way to toast this movie, and a Champagne Cocktail offers a terrific work-around to the enhanced sugar conundrum. Its sweetness is nicely balanced by a few dashes of Angostura bitters and a lemon twist for garnish. Whether or not the cocktail has the power to ward off Satan remains to be seen.

‘Groundhog Day’ (1993): Sweet Vermouth on the Rocks With a Twist

On day one of the time loop Bill Murray’s Phil gets stuck in, his love interest Rita orders a sweet vermouth on the rocks with a twist while Phil orders a Jim Beam with ice and water. On day two, Phil orders Rita’s drink just before she does to impress her. The scene justifies having the drink, but it also provides the perfect excuse to explore a sweet vermouth category that’s grown substantially in the 30 years since the movie came out. Just remember to store your vermouth in the fridge when you’re not using it, please and thank you.

‘High Fidelity’ (2000): Tequila Sunrise

This John Cusack classic doubles as a love letter to record stores and obsessive music nerds, so its drink should have a music connection. This concoction of tequila, orange juice, and grenadine meets this criteria in two different ways. The Tequila Sunrise lent its name to the Eagles 1973 hit song, and it gained a boost in popularity (and infamy) during the Rolling Stones’ legendary 1972 concert tour, a perpetual party so decadent that the band dubbed it “The Cocaine and Tequila Sunrise Tour.” If you’ve seen the movie, you get the feeling that the denizens of Championship Vinyl would hate the Eagles connection. The Stones’ link, on the other hand? That would be very much appreciated.

The article The Definitive Rom-Com Cocktail Guide appeared first on VinePair.

Every so often, Long Island City, Queens bar Dutch Kills drops a cranky Instagram post. Their captions can read gruff and a little curmudgeonly, a disposition somewhat befitting of an establishment known for its throwback, no-nonsense vibe as much as its hand-cut ice. But for some folks in the hospitality industry, the message the bar left on its grid on Jan. 25 hit a particularly sensitive nerve: It came for cocktail throwing.

In the post, an anonymous bartender is shown with a smiling clown emoji over his face while sending a stream of liquid airborne from his shaker’s top half to its bottom half. He’s throwing a drink, a trending yet historic technique behind the stick. The caption below calls out the practice as “stupid,” “a waste of time,” and “a ridiculous display of pageantry.”

The post’s comment section quickly made it clear that this wasn’t just shots fired — this was a cannon blast, and the industry volleyed. Some agreed wholeheartedly. Others voiced disapproval. Some of the pushback from bartenders and bar owners came from practical places: detailed explanations of scientific principles like aeration; the history of thrown drinks; the defense of its entertainment factor and how it adds to the guest experience. Others simply asked, “Who hurt you?” One commenter even invoked the name of the late Sasha Petraske — who co-founded Dutch Kills with Richard Boccato in 2009 — claiming he’d once said one of the best Martinis he’d ever had was thrown. For some of the bartending world’s pros, the unserious jab at an old-school technique — particularly the use of the word “stupid” as opposed to weird or silly — was more than that: It was a mean-spirited swipe at those who like what they like.

To Each Their Own

“To be honest, it wasn’t necessarily about throwing cocktails,” says Kate Gerwin, owner of Happy Accidents in Albuquerque and one of the thread’s scientific-minded commentators. “There was a ‘Mean Girls’ level of arrogance going on. It was this super-weird flex, and it felt like bullying to me. Calling others in the hospitality industry stupid clowns like that when you’re also in the hospitality industry is completely out of line.”

“It felt gross,” adds Ramsey Musk, beverage director of Accomplice Bar and Little Fatty in Los Angeles who, along with Gerwin, brought science into the discussion. “It perpetuated the stereotype of bartenders being dumb and brainless. It also created this aggressive environment that we’re trying to remove from the hospitality industry. I’d like to feel like we’ve come a long way, but something like this makes me think, ‘Have we not learned anything?’”

“Nothing good comes from shaming. If you’re getting that angry over something, it’s probably better to get off the internet instead.”

Musk’s participation in the thread put him in a somewhat unorthodox situation. It came just one week after he got flak in some industry circles for publicly extolling the merits of Stoli Bluberri as a bartender’s handshake. He recognizes the sheer weirdness of getting swept up in two different viral bartending controversies in successive weeks, but such rapid-fire debates also provide him with perspective on the ordeal.

“It’s really the same side of a different coin,” he says. “The Stoli thing comes down to the philosophy of drinking what you like and having fun with it. Throwing the drink is the same way. If you think throwing a drink is fun for you and your guests, then go for it.”

To Throw or Not to Throw

According to Boccato, Dutch Kills pays someone to post and govern its social media accounts, including Instagram. This reveal wasn’t a dodge or a blame shift — “I stand behind everything we post,” he says — but it did allow Boccato to provide a little more context behind the message. “We don’t find throwing drinks practical,” he says. “From our perspective, it wastes time when we’re dealing with a round of ten cocktails. It also tends to be a little boisterous, which runs counter to our ethos.”

Boccato also notes the post’s intent was meant to be satirical in tone. He specifically mentions that the use of “stupid” was in reference to the act of throwing drinks and not meant to insult the people deploying the technique. “If throwing drinks works for your bar, and you feel that it can conjure up better cocktails, then I respect your decision. More power to you,” he says.

This context makes the initial statement less restrictive, which is what context is designed to do. Still, there is often little room for it on social media. Without it, these drinks-related hot takes can present as confrontational and exclusive.

“Instead of calling each other out on the internet, we should figure out ways to call each other in to have productive conversation face to face, me included.”

“Just like there are different genres of music, there are different styles of bartending and bars,” explains Izzy Tulloch, head bartender at Milady’s, Julie Reiner’s acclaimed Manhattan bar that currently has a thrown Apple Martini on the menu. “You may like one more than another. You may even dislike some. But if you’re the kind of person to shit on other people for what they enjoy or what they’re good at, I’m simply not interested in what you have to say.”

“Nothing good comes from shaming,” adds Max Reis, beverage director at Mirate in Los Angeles. “If you’re getting that angry over something, it’s probably better to get off the internet instead.”

Throwing Forward

While it will fade from public memory as most social media controversies do, the drink-throwing post is still fresh enough to allow for introspection about how those in the industry can better talk about these opinions, which can include stepping away from the keyboard — or just taking hot takes for what they are.

“We were all so brutal in the thread,” Gerwin says. “Even though I felt bullied, I bullied them right back. There’s no place for that in the industry. Instead of calling each other out on the internet, we should figure out ways to call each other in to have productive conversation face to face, me included.”

Of course, in-person chatter isn’t always possible due to the realities of geography and logistics, And the next social media dustup may already be lurking in the shadows, whether it’s a TikTok technique embraced by the next wave of bartenders or the pleasures of shooting a long-vilified spirit. When this moment arrives, the best move for industry pros may be to reserve their online energy for more important matters instead of adding fuel to a viral fire.

“Why are we even arguing about this stuff online in the first place?” asks Reis. “We should be using our platforms for bigger conversations instead of getting riled up over a technique. Think of what could happen if we directed that energy into something truly impactful.”

The article Why Is Everyone So Passionate (and Pissed) About ‘Throwing’ Drinks? appeared first on VinePair.

Indiana may not be the first state to come to mind when discussing the nation’s most popular wines. But Oliver Winery, which produces over 800,000 cases of wine per year, is a modern Midwestern success story.

Founded in 1972 by Indiana University law professor William Oliver, Oliver Winery operates with the guiding philosophy that “wine is for everyone,” and specializes in sweet wines ranging from reds made with Concord grapes to fruit-flavored Moscatos. Bill Oliver, William’s son, took over in 1983 and now serves as co-founder and a member of the board of directors.

Now that you know the basics, here are seven more things you should know about Oliver Winery.

1. The winery started as nothing more than a basement hobby.

   While Oliver Winery itself was not established until 1972, the foundations of the operation were conceived in the 1960s when William started making wine in his home’s basement in Bloomington, Ind. As Bill told Inside INdiana Business, some of his earliest memories are of helping his father make small batches of wine under their family home. A few years after William picked up the hobby, he established a vineyard on the outskirts of Bloomington to have more fruit to pull from.

2. William Oliver was a crucial figure in passing legislation that legalized wineries in Indiana.

   Commercial wineries weren’t legal in the days William was tinkering around in his basement, and he knew a change needed to be made. And as an active scholar in tax planning and reform, he knew exactly how to go about it. In 1971, he penned the Indiana Small Winery Act, which allowed for the establishment of small wineries and allowed for these wineries to produce wine for both wholesale and retail purposes. Additionally, the act allowed for the sale of wine directly to consumers (DTC) rather than through traditional distribution channels. Shortly after the legislation was passed, William opened Oliver Winery, Indiana’s first winery, in what is now the Indiana Uplands AVA. While the new law allowed for wineries to legally operate and distribute their products commercially, Oliver remained a small personal project for William, who retained his position at Indiana University until his retirement in 1991. According to Bill, if William sold enough wine to pay the bills, it “was a successful year.”

   While wineries are no longer able to sell directly to consumers, the Indiana Small Winery Act was instrumental in establishing the state as a wine-producing region, and today, there are over 100 operational wineries in the state, all thanks to William.

3. Hot air balloons are a central aspect of the brand’s marketing.

   While Bill was working part-time at Oliver Winery in high school and college, he found that he still needed a bit of spare change to supplement his earnings. He picked up work as a commercial hot air balloon pilot, and quickly fell in love with aviation. As Bill now says, “Hot air balloons are completely pointless, except for pure joy. A beautiful, singular experience — very much like wine.” The two are now inextricably linked in Oliver Winery’s branding. According to the brand, its wine labels were redesigned in September 2023, and now fruit-shaped hot air balloons are depicted front and center, serving as a symbol of Oliver’s rising future while honoring its past. The hot air balloon motif also extends off the label: The winery has several branded balloons that have flown above local Indiana fairgrounds in recent years.

4. The winery was employee-owned for 15 years.

   When Bill took over the winery in 1983, his main focuses were on enhancing guest experiences, increasing the quality and variety of its wines, and maintaining the winery as a great place to work. Ten years later, his wife Kathleen joined the team as a general manager, and the two continued to focus on taking care of the company’s staff. They launched an employee stock ownership plan, enabling employees to acquire stock in the winery on an annual basis without any cost barriers. By 2006, Oliver Winery was entirely employee-owned. While the winery was sold in 2021 to New York-based investment firm NexPhase Capital, it’s likely that the sale allowed for the 60-plus employees who formerly owned the winery to earn a sizable sum.

5. At Oliver, sweet wines are the sweet spot…

   After releasing its flagship Sweet Red, Oliver Winery quickly became synonymous with sweet wine production. Today, the brand has five collections: Real Fruit Moscatos, the Soft Wine Collection, the Bakery Series, the Pilot Project Series, and the Creekbend Collection, each of which carries dessert-like qualities. The Bakery Series even includes wines inspired by key lime pie, peach pie, and apple pie. The winery’s most popular line is its fruit-flavored Moscatos, which originally started out as experiments to offer in the tasting room. After witnessing the success of the product in-house, Oliver Winery released its Cherry Moscato commercially in 2018, followed by its blueberry, lemon, and melon mint Moscatos. The winery also produces two low-ABV botanical fizzes as well as single-varietal dry reds and whites.

6. …though they also dabble in hard cider production.

   In 2014, the brand launched Beanblossom, a line of hard dry ciders made from the same fruit used to produce its classic sweet wines. Made from apples sourced in Michigan, the hard cider was originally only available in its flagship expression, but has since expanded to include Peach Hard Cider and Bourbon Barrel Hard Cider.

7. Oliver Winery produces the official wine of the Indianapolis Colts.

   As Indiana’s first winery, Oliver Winery played an important role in establishing the state as a wine-producing region. So in 2020, the winery entered into a three-year partnership with the Indianapolis Colts to become the official wine of the NFL team. During the partnership, Oliver Winery produced several exclusive wines under the Colts Collection label, beginning with a dry red blend and a semi-sweet rosé. Glasses of Oliver Winery Pinot Grigio, Blueberry Moscato, and Sweet Red were also available for sale at the team’s home arena. It remains to be seen whether Oliver Winery and the Colts will renew their partnership now that the 2023 season has come to a close.

The article 7 Things You Should Know About Oliver Winery appeared first on VinePair.

There’s no denying the value a good garnish can add to a cocktail. From the aromatic lift a lemon peel offers a Gin Martini to the spicy, snack-friendly candied ginger you find on the edge of your Penicillin, garnishes can bring a new dimension of flavor to a drink — or even just make it all the more aesthetically pleasing.

Then again, there are some occasions when sourcing and adding the proper ingredients just feels like a hassle. Let’s say it’s Friday night and your bar cart is stocked with spirits and liqueurs, but you’re out of cocktail cherries. Maybe you’re hosting a dinner party and want easy-to-serve refreshments that don’t require hours of peeling citrus and daintily balancing twists on the side of each guest’s glass, or perhaps you’re just not a fan of something hitting your nose every time you go to take a sip. But instead of ditching the finishing touch on your favorite cocktail and potentially missing out on a balanced flavor profile, you can opt for a drink that’s naturally garnish-free. These drinks typically feature a highly aromatic component such as absinthe, Chartreuse, or gin that allow them to reach your senses without any add-ons.

So, when you’re short on supplies or time, look to these 10 cocktails that can really sing sans garnish.

Death in the Afternoon

This two-ingredient cocktail is the definition of low-lift. It’s as easy as adding absinthe to a chilled coupe glass and slowly topping it with Champagne. Make Ernest Hemingway (the drink’s inventor) proud and serve these as a welcome refreshment at your next moveable feast (dinner party).

Paper Plane

Though some may toy with the idea of attaching a small paper plane to the side of this modern classic with a tiny clothespin, it’s broadly considered a no-garnish drink. Created by mixology mastermind Sam Ross and inspired by the M.I.A. track “Paper Planes,” this well-balanced cocktail is equal parts bourbon, Aperol, Amaro Nonino, and lemon juice.

Last Word

Let’s be real: During Prohibition, garnishes were probably the last thing on drinkers’ minds. Determined cocktail-lovers snuck into back-room speakeasies for good, strong drinks, lemon twists be damned. That’s why it makes sense that this Prohibition-era cocktail is served garnish-free. The Last Word’s mixture of gin, green Chartreuse, Maraschino liqueur, and fresh lime juice is delightfully aromatic despite the lack of garnish, so go ahead and try it at home — if you can find green Chartreuse, that is.

Naked and Famous

True to its name, the Naked and Famous is served garnishless — or naked, if you will. Bartender Joaquín Simó, who created the drink at NYC’s Death & Co., describes it as “the bastard love child of the Last Word and the Paper Plane conceived in the mountains of Oaxaca.” This combo of mezcal, Aperol, yellow Chartreuse, and lime juice has certainly proved it can be provocative without waving a pineapple slice or tiny umbrella in your face.

Single Village Fix

The complex Single Village Fix is meant to pack a punch on its own, no snazzy garnishes needed. In this melange of mezcal, pineapple gum syrup, and lime juice, the mezcal is meant to shine. Bottle selection is key here, as the mezcal you choose will have a serious impact on the flavor profile, causing it to lean into smoke, charcoal notes, or more fruity characteristics.

Aviation

The Aviation is another Prohibition-era cocktail that was brought back to life in the 21st century. The gin-based drink is known to be a crowd-pleaser, delicately balancing tart and floral flavors. And the cocktail’s signature blush purple hue it gets from the crème de violette is eye-catching enough without any extra add-ons.

Champs-Élysées

The elegant Champs-Élysées cocktail is composed of several distinctly aromatic components, so even though it’s served sans garnish, the fruity and floral aromas will rise to greet your senses. The base of the drink is Cognac, which adds great complexity, and is complemented by green Chartreuse, lemon juice, and Angostura bitters. Simple syrup adds richness and balance to the final product.

Lion’s Tail

If you’ve ever wondered what a tropical Old Fashioned would taste like, it’s time to try the Lion’s Tail. Though this drink has gone in and out of favor over the years, we’re always down for this bright yet unctuous mixture of bourbon, allspice dram, lime juice, simple syrup, and Angostura bitters. Though some modern interpretations add a lime or orange twist, the cocktail traditionally has no garnish.

Corpse Reviver No. 1

Often overshadowed by its counterpart, the Corpse Reviver No. 2, the Corpse Reviver No. 1 is an elegant and easy-to-make drink that should be on your radar. Somewhat of a riff on the classic Manhattan, this drink combines Cognac with apple brandy and sweet Italian vermouth for a bold, boozy, and bittersweet profile.

White Russian

The Dude didn’t garnish his White Russians, and neither should you. Part of the appeal of this drink is the ease of making it, so go ahead and fill up your glass with vodka, half-and-half, and coffee liqueur and sit back for a movie night.

The article 10 of the Best Cocktails That Don’t Need a Garnish appeared first on VinePair.

“Cocktail College” is brought to you by Ketel One Vodka. Certain brands out there, certain vodka brands, want you to believe that these spirits should be flavorless and odorless and they achieve this profile through multiple runs of distillation in column stills. They actually celebrate this thing; they market it. But you’re a discerning drinker, “Cocktail College” listener, aren’t you? And you know that vodka should have character, subtle character, and that arrives from the base ingredient and the production technique. In the case of Ketel One, we’re talking about a wheat base, made using a blend or a mix of pot and column still distillation. And what you get there is character, but subtle character, so that it’s going to enhance but never overpower your favorite vodka cocktails, your Matinis, your Cosmos. Ketel One stands so firmly behind this production technique that on every single bottle there’s an invitation for you, the drinker, to visit them at their Netherlands distillery. And hey, why wouldn’t they? They’ve only got 330 years of family distilling experience right there. So it’s understandable that they back themselves, and you should back them too, listener. You should pick up a bottle and head to www.ketelone.com to learn more. Please Drink Responsibly. KETEL ONE Vodka.  Distilled from Grain.  40% Alc./Vol. Double Eagle Brands, B.V. Imported by Ketel One USA, Aliso Viejo, CA

In the wake of the post-pandemic rush back to bars, we’ve witnessed a return to the classics, especially the Martini. But with this reprise also came riffs aplenty, so much so that some drinks labeled as “Martinis” couldn’t be further from the original — many are only recognizable thanks to that quintessential serving glass. But one subcategory of the Martini family seems to have dodged an out-of-pocket makeover: the Vesper.

Unlike many classic cocktails, the Vesper has clear origins: James Bond creator Ian Fleming’s 1953 novel “Casino Royale.” In one chapter, Mr. Bond calls the “bar man” over and orders a specific Martini riff with a split base of gin and vodka. Though he refrains from naming it, the cocktail was christened “the Vesper” as a nod to the Bond character Vesper Lynd, who turns out to be a double agent working undercover as a Soviet spy. 

The word “vesper” literally translates to “evening star” in Latin — a delicate title for such a big and boozy cocktail. On that front, there are no bold syrups, spices, or smoke in this drink, just a blend of clean, austere ingredients that need to be mixed just right, whether shaken or stirred. 

Today, we’re digging deep into the “Cocktail College” vaults as we resurface our conversation on the Vesper. Little did we know when we first recorded this episode that the Vesper would end up going on a quiet tear in recent times. Bartenders just can’t resist building on the Martini trend, lending their interpretations of this riff to their menus. Joining us for that chat was Patrick Smith, who’s now senior beverage manager of Union Square Hospitality Group. Tune in for more. 

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Patrick Smith’s Vesper Recipe

Ingredients

• 2 ounces London Dry gin
• 1 ounce vodka
• 1 ounce of Tempus Fugit Kina L’Aéro d’Or
• Garnish: manicured lemon twist 

Directions

1. Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass with ice.
2. Stir until cold and strain into a chilled coupe glass.
3. Garnish with an expressed, manicured lemon twist.

The article The Cocktail College Podcast: The Vesper, Revisited appeared first on VinePair.

Toward the end of my hop water-fueled Dry-ish January, something occurred to me: Breweries aren’t enough.

“Breweries aren’t enough,” I told my wife at lunch one day late last month, with neither forewarning nor follow-up context to catch her up on my train of thought. In the patient, slightly wary manner of writers’ spouses everywhere, she asked me to explain what the hell I was talking about. Perhaps you’d like to know, too, reader. After all, this is a column about the beer industry, and while I’m often quite critical of the breweries that comprise it, they’ve proven “enough” to sustain our weekly efforts for over a year, haven’t they? Haven’t they?!

Yes. Jeez, calm down. Allow me to elaborate.

The second American craft brewing boom really hit its stride last decade. If you’re reading Hop Take, you probably already know the basics: The number of breweries nationwide skyrocketed as the American drinking public became enamored with their full-flavored beers and tidy David-versus-Goliath mythology. As the wave surged, mainstream media outlets like The Atlantic touted craft brewing as “the strangest, happiest economic story in America.” The Lumineers and other millennial stomp-clap troubadour types furnished a soundtrack for the era that romanticized many of the aesthetics and tropes craft brewers were already doing so well, like anti-corporate pastoralism, warehouse-district revitalization, and drinking things out of Mason jars. The sum total of these potent cultural forces is that people — including your younger and less jaded humble Hop Take columnist — started to enjoy hanging out at craft breweries.

This is de rigueur in 2024 — or even passé; more on that in a moment — but it’s important to remember that it wasn’t a preordained outcome. Before “brewery” became synonymous with “brewery taproom,” breweries were mostly places of light-industrial manufacture and niche interest, not destinations unto themselves. (From here on out I’ll use those terms interchangeably, because that’s the way most people talk nowadays, and I know you’re smart enough to keep up.) Mainstream normies worked, discoursed, and hung out in coffee shops, bars, even Barnes & Nobles. But breweries, not so much.

Now they do, and so do I. And why not? Breweries, as they have come to exist across the country, are about as good as it gets for “third places,” Ray Oldenburg’s famous formulation of “gathering places near enough to people’s homes to afford the easy access and familiar faces to a vital informal public life.” Plenty has changed since Oldenburg published “The Great Good Place,” the book that entered the term into the lexicon, in 1989. Still, in the intervening 35 years, the need for such places has only increased. Americans have reported a steadily rising rate of loneliness since the ‘70s. We are more polarized than ever by almost every measure, from class, to political affiliation, to… I mean, we’re not more polarized than ever by race, given, y’know, the thing, but these days, the United States isn’t looking too united on that front, either. Third places can’t solve these many-layered problems, but they can help by organic, equalizing, and enjoyable settings where low-stakes neighborly intimacy has a chance to thrive.

Oldenburg never mentions “microbreweries” in his book, but he does a whole chapter on German-American lager beer gardens, where “striking signs of inclusiveness” included “[t]he mixing of nationalities, presence of women, comingling of the rich and poor, and frequent instances in which three generations had fun together at the same time and in the same place.” Setting aside the intractable and deeply boring argument over whether kids belong at breweries (the correct answer is “sure, if their parents aren’t shitheels about it,” no further questions), breweries have lots of overlap with the Oldenburgian vision of great, good places. Some of them are exactly that.

And yet. After a dozen years spent hanging out in craft breweries, I’ve realized that most of them still aren’t doing enough to meet the many needs of the communities they rely on. I’ve argued before that the industry writ large has been slow — recalcitrant, even — to expand its alcoholic offerings to meet changing consumer tastes, to its own detriment. This Dry January, I extended that argument to non-alcoholic offerings. Where the hell are all the hop waters, man? Where is the coffee, tea, and artisanal soda?

I’m sympathetic to the social-media kvetching each year as brewers lament the dearth of business during this month of opt-in abstinence, I really am. But having spent this past Saturday afternoon working on some reporting while drinking Phony Negronis at a coffee shop because nary a brewery in my fairly large, fairly brewery-dense city put together an NA menu to speak of for Dry January, I feel like I’m going insane. Craft breweries have the wherewithal, the equipment, and the physical space to deliver unto their communities the private sector’s superlative third-place experience. Coffee shops and bars are great, but tend to be too small. Ditto independent bookstores. Barnes & Nobles barely exist anymore; ditto malls. Breweries have the best thing going when it comes to serendipitous, accessible civic exchange. With a broader selection of wares to match the evolving community thirst, they can be even better.

There’s an obvious economic argument to be made there, but I’ve hammered on about that plenty in columns past. Instead, I want to put forth a more challenging idea. The Platonic ideal of a craft brewery, where the hop water flows like actual water and children flock like the salmon of Capistrano (but not in an annoying way), is still not a good enough third place. We deserve better! We deserve public spaces where buying shit is an option, not an obligation; where alcohol and NA drinks (and other recreational drugs) can be enjoyed safely and socially; where the magic of the public commons, not logic of the market, dictates the terms of engagement.

As an American raised in the suburbs, I sometimes struggle to conceptualize what such a non-commercial, non-private social space would even look like. I’m not the only one. “Maybe we wouldn’t love [dive bars] as much if there were more community centers or more public spaces,” Brandon Hinke, the creator of the popular pandemic Twitter handle Pictures of Dives, told me in 2021, “but every aspect of our lives has just been absolutely atomized, and we’re all kind of stuck in our own places.”

Libraries could be a model. (They’re already beloved, society-affirming gathering places, but depending on the branch’s rules, food and drink may be prohibited, and I don’t know of one that allows alcohol.) Public parks are another, but weather is a limiting factor, particularly as the climate crisis ushers more extreme versions of it to the fore. James Wilt, author of the provocative 2022 book “Drinking Up The Revolution: How To Smash Big Alcohol and Reclaim Working-Class Joy,” highlights models for publicly funded, drinking-optional spaces along a spectrum that runs from explicitly socialistic projects to more capitalistic public-private partnerships, like 19th-century Sweden’s historic Gothenburg system, which featured “community-owned hotels with ‘disinterested’ management” whose profits were capped “to sever the link between alcohol use and revenue generation.”

In an interview in late 2022, I pressed him on how the examples in “Drinking Up The Revolution” could be introduced to the contemporary landscape. “Community-owned and -controlled alternatives” to bars and breweries that, he argued, “would include non-alcohol-centric public spaces, like public parks, and all-age venues and late-night places for people to go where alcohol is present but not necessarily the only thing that you have to use.” Just as libraries compare to bookstores, such booze-optional public venues could be far more inclusive than breweries thanks to lower or nonexistent costs at visitors’ point-of-use. And just as public parks complement private gyms, the third places Wilt envisioned don’t have to compete with privately owned craft breweries. (Hell, they could be partially funded by leasing concessions to those very breweries!)

I’m not so foolish as to think securing taxpayer funding for “libraries, but for hanging out” is an easy task in this American moment. Nor do I mean to kick America’s beleaguered craft breweries to the curb: many if not most of them are vibrant, vital swatches of their respective civic fabrics, even if they still don’t make hop water for some reason. But in an age of stratification and isolation, the American drinking public deserves a richer, more textured, and more cohering civic fabric than the craft brewing industry, or industry in general, can weave on its own. As third places, breweries aren’t enough — but I can see a future where they’re just part of plenty.

🤯 Hop-ocalypse Now

Man becomes conservative pundit, launches slapdash “anti-woke” beer brand to grift outrage dollars off the country’s transphobic, Bud Light-addled rubes. Tale as old as time, right? Yes, and: Right-wing haircut Seth Weathers is facing mounting criticism from over 100 of said rubes, who say Ultra Right Beer LLC never shipped the cartoonishly expensive, contract-brewed 6-packs they ordered months ago. The reactionary marks’ customer-service complaints have netted the company an F rating from the Better Business Bureau. Nice to see the cosmic scales of justice rebalance in real time, ain’t it?

📈 Ups…

CANarchy Craft Brewing Collective is dead, long live Monster Brewing Company… Two Roads Brewing’s new Guy Fieri-themed flavored malt beverage line is expanding into hard tea and punch, sure why not… The Wine & Spirits Education Trust (WSET) named its inaugural North American course providers for Level 1 and 2 beer awards… Sounds like Anheuser-Busch InBev’s crucially important annual distributor conference actually went well… Fresh off its Octopi Brewing acquisition, Asahi Group Holdings took a stake in non-alcoholic retailer/importer Zero Proof…

📉 …and downs

After a $24 million Series B fundraise in 2021, one-time hard kombucha darling JuneShine just raised a “seven-figure” Series C… Nobody freak out, but cannabis did see some statewide sales upticks and a big consumer-interest boost during Dry January… Lease woes contributed to recent closures of Forbidden Boardwalk Brewing in New Jersey and Buffalo Bayou Brewing in Houston…

The article Breweries Are Great Third Places. But We Deserve Even Better Ones. appeared first on VinePair.

In its cool factor and mass appeal, the Martini has stood the test of time. These days, every craft cocktail bar has a house spec, if not its very own Martini riff, sometimes tweaked to the point where it no longer resembles the cocktail in its classical guise. Take the “Green Mango Martini” at NYC’s Superbueno or the kitschy, canonical Pornstar Martini — both are delicious, but a far cry from the quintessential spec.

Beyond the drink’s undeniable current popularity, if there’s one thing that’s true in 2024, it’s that in Martini-ville, anything goes. But in this era of hair-down, laissez-faire attitudes toward the Martini, one thing remains surprisingly rigid: the garnishes — and more specifically, the olives we allow into our coupes and Nick & Nora glasses. We’re happy to adorn our Martinis with blue cheese, pimento, and tinned-fish-stuffed olives — but only if the olives are green.

What about the beloved black olive, though? Cocktail culture is no stranger to defying the laws of tradition, so what is it about Kalamatas et al. that’s made them the black sheep of the garnish game all these years?

The Snack Factor

Black olives predominantly live in salads and on charcuterie boards. But when alcohol enters the equation, green olives remain king. For Martinis, Spanish Queen olives have been the industry go-to since the drink’s inception. They hail from Sevilla, where they’re known as “gordal” or “the fat one” for their size, and these olives are briny, nutty, and make for great eye candy. They’re crowd pleasing, for sure, but bartenders have recently acknowledged that there’s room for improvement, which is where the Italian Castelvetrano olive comes in. Known for their complex flavor and subdued salinity, the variety has now cemented itself as the bartender’s darling Martini garnish.

“They have a lower sodium content,” says Nino Asaro, business development manager at Partanna Specialty Foods. “They’re not as salty — more buttery, sweet, and texturally more appealing.”

Most olives, like Kalamatas, are preserved in a salt water brine, but since Castelvetranos are shocked in a brine of citric acid and salt, they contain 50 to 60 percent less sodium. They’re also picked before peak ripeness, maintaining a more firm, snappy texture and attractive green pigmentation. All the elements of a Castelvetrano make for a more nuanced garnish. It’s less of a brine bomb, and instead adds layers of sweetness and umami that pair brilliantly with a gin’s botanicals.

Kalamatas, on the other hand, are brined in salt water and ripened until they turn purplish black, resulting in a softer texture and higher salinity. “Depending on how they’re packed, Kalamatas can get a little misshapen in the jar,” says Eric Tecosky, owner of olive juice and cocktail garnish brand Dirty Sue. We drink with our eyes, so a crooked black olive may not pop as much as a bright green Castelvetrano or Spanish Queen. But considering black olives’ versatility in many cuisines, as well as cocktail culture’s tendency to draw inspiration from the culinary world, perhaps the black olive itself isn’t the issue, but rather finding a suitable base spirit to complement its profile.

Vodka Viability

“Gin is a little less forgiving than vodka,” Tecosky says. The spirit’s floral, botanical, and citrusy notes generally don’t provide enough sweetness to counteract a Kalamata’s bitterness. On the other hand, vodka presents a “blank-er” canvas for experimentation. It essentially picks up whatever flavors you throw at it.

Even then, the Kalamata’s potential with vodka has yet to be fully embraced. Tecosky worked as a bartender in Los Angeles for about 20 years before founding Dirty Sue, and he hadn’t come across a Kalamata Martini until he actually began selling olives. He says that, these days, he has a handful of clients that religiously buy his Kalamatas to put in their vodka Martinis.

The key to a successful black olive Martini could very well be using an ingredient that’s so distant from a classic Martini build that it inversely makes it approachable.

Dirty Sue makes feta-stuffed Kalamata olives, which Tecosky claims “are mostly sold to Greek restaurants” — so maybe feta is the key ingredient that weaves Kalamatas and vodka to make for a balanced Martini. “With vodka, you’ll want to temper it with something else. That’s why feta is a nice balance,” Tecosky says. “It gets more creaminess and a bit of sweetness in there.”

As scrumptious as this riff sounds, it hasn’t caught on with cocktail culture at large, let alone earn an official moniker.

The Oh So Dirty Future

Cultural nostalgia aside, this black olive Martini concept has the potential to be a hit on paper, but it won’t be as straightforward as swapping green olives for Kalamatas.

According to Asaro from Partanna Specialty Foods, among the 1,000-plus olive varieties out there, Taggiasca olives could be a great addition to a Martini. “They have a more violet hue, and are sweeter than a Kalamata,” he says. Indeed, considering Kalamatas as the only potential black Martini olive is a probably too limiting. However, given that the U.S. imports over 30,000 tons of Kalamata olives on average annually, it’s evident that the variety’s domestic popularity is well established — all the more reason why its absence in the cocktail realm feels like a missed opportunity, at least for now.

“I’ve seen a lot of reimagined Dirty Martinis lately,” says Claire Mallett, beverage director of Catch One in Los Angeles. “There’s a pop-up that serves one with fish oil, and at The Wolves, they do one with salmon skin and black garlic.” Fellow Cali resident Tecosky has also mixed up “spicy Martinis” with Kalamata and pepperoncini brine. The key to a successful black olive Martini could very well be using an ingredient that’s so distant from a classic Martini build that it inversely makes it approachable.

While chatting about olives, Tecosky got to thinking about what other spirits black olives could accompany. “Salt is a natural pairing with tequila,” he says. “If I was gonna go a little off script and do something different, I think I’d go with an aged tequila.” As unorthodox as Tecosky’s theoretical tequila cocktail sounds, it’s the sort of idea that could easily snowball and become a modern classic.

For all we know, the finalized black olive Martini may include a jigger’s worth of salmon skin and not even look remotely like any Martini we’ve seen before. But honestly, that would only make it more noteworthy — if not gifting it staying power.

Either way, if any bartender out there finds a way to slide those Kalamatas off the charcuterie board and into our cocktail glasses — tastefully, that is — we’re here for it.

Photo via Александр Захаров – stock.adobe.com

The article Why Are Kalamatas the Black Sheep of Martini Olives? appeared first on VinePair.

Vodka can be a bar’s workhorse spirit. It provides the backbone for some of the scene’s most popular drinks, from the trendy Espresso Martini to the humble Vodka Soda. Its neutrality can also provide a cocktail’s anticipated pop of alcohol without masking the flavors of its other ingredients. In some cases, a vodka imbued with a little flavoring can even be a bartender’s friend, whether that flavoring comes straight out of the bottle or through something fancy like an infusion.

Although vodka is a neutral-grain spirit, different brands can carry distinct yet nuanced characteristics that make them unique. Skilled bartenders can identify these singular properties and use them to their advantage. But which brands are beloved behind the bar? To find out, we asked 14 bartenders what vodka they prefer to use in their drinks.

The best vodkas for cocktails, according to bartenders:

• Reyka Vodka
• Good Vodka
• Haku Vodka
• Flavored Vodkas in general
• Ketel One Vodka
• ALB Vodka
• Square One Vodka
• State Line Vodka
• Skyy Vodka
• Thatcher’s Organic Vodka

“Reyka is my default bottle when I’m mixing up something with vodka. It’s an easily accessible, affordable spirit with a polished mouthfeel, and the snap of citrus on the back end lends itself well to multiple cocktail applications. We use it in our house Espresso Martinis at Traveling Mercies and Annette, but if I’m out for the night and looking for a refreshing ‘halftime’ drink to reset my palate, a Reyka soda with a lemon twist is always my call.” —Matt Bazcor, bar manager, Annette and Traveling Mercies, Aurora, Colo.

“One of my favorite vodkas for creating cocktails is going to be Reyka. It’s made in Iceland and is filtered through — get this, friends — volcanic rock. The flavor profile of this vodka plays well with others but also stands great on its own. Want to make an ice-cold, slightly dirty Martini? This is your vodka. Want to make something a little more refreshing with some lime, fruit, and soda? Reyka will blend right in. This is a great vodka, and it also delivers a lot of value at its price point.” —Eliza Hoar, principal bartender, Equal Measure, Boston

“I prefer using Good Vodka for mixing cocktails. It’s made from the coffee fruit that is leftover from coffee production. With a creamy texture and light cocoa and tropical fruit notes, it adds to anything that it’s mixed with.” —Nick Jackson, head bartender, The Rum House, NYC

“One of my favorite vodkas to work with right now is Good Vodka. Made from waste from coffee production in Colombia, Good Vodka is on a mission to reduce water waste and carbon emissions with their product, and because they’re buying waste from farmers, they’re also creating a whole new revenue stream for them. The vodka itself has an amazing taste and mouthfeel, and it kind of reminds me more of a pisco in flavor, which makes it super fun to work with in cocktails.” —Alex Jump, founder and director of operations, Focus on Health/founder, Dim Lights Hospitality, Denver

“My recommendation has to be Haku Vodka. Produced by House of Suntory and made with 100 percent white rice, it creates a great starting point for cocktails. It’s reasonably priced and has a pleasant mouthfeel due to the bamboo charcoal filtration used during production. A freezer Martini would be ideal to highlight this vodka. Serve it with some oysters or sashimi and you have the perfect pairing.” —Julian Flores Torres, bar lead, Maizano/Entre Nos, Costa Mesa, Calif.

“I am one of those bartenders that feels strongly about all vodka being the same, especially when it comes to mixing. Now flavored vodka… that’s another story. Flavored vodka can be great and be used in a variety of ways. Citron Vodka is probably the most popular; Cosmopolitans wouldn’t be the same without it. I also like using a cucumber-flavored vodka to make a cucumber-sage cordial. Fresh cucumber juice spoils pretty quickly, so to get that hint of cucumber flavor without wasting a ton of good produce, the cucumber-flavored vodka can come through in the clutch.” —Diego Deleon, beverage manager, Kaori, Miami

“Ketel One, to me, is the best vodka for mixing cocktails. Everything the Nolet family does seems to exceed my expectations as far as quality and versatility is concerned. Ketel One, in particular, has achieved what seemingly every vodka brand strives to do: provide a clean and crisp flavor that pairs with nearly anything. If you want a tart, bright vodka Gimlet, then Ketel One is your gal to showcase the refreshing acidity and comforting sweetness that comes along with that classic. If you’re craving a Martini — whether that’s dry, wet, or dirty — Ketel One is the vehicle that provides a clean palate so that even the most subtle hints of vermouth, citrus oil, or brine will shine. If ever I am craving a vodka cocktail, Ketel One is always my call.” —Grace Tomczak, lead bartender, MAKfam, Denver

“My favorite is Ketel One Vodka because it’s so smooth and great for infusing. It’s super clean and really soaks up the flavors of whatever you’re infusing or mixing it with. While some vodkas have a super-strong alcohol flavor, Ketel is much milder because it’s made through a dual distillation process. I’d recommend it to anyone looking for an affordable vodka that’s great for mixing.” —Fionna Gemzon, bar manager, None of the Above, St. Louis.

“One of the best vodkas for mixing is still, to this day, Ketel One. Designed in the ‘80s specifically with bartenders and cocktails in mind, the generations of distilling knowledge that the Nolet family puts into Ketel One means that the texture and quality of the distillation really shines in everything from Martinis to sours.” —Adam Fournier, bar director, Spago, Beverly Hills, Calif.

“Square One’s lineup of rye vodkas. I’ve always been a fan of rye vodkas for most mixing scenarios, as the robust grain just shines on its own and stands up to other ingredients. Their flagship brand, Square One Organic, has the most unique and delicious approach to flavors. Square One Basil makes an insane basil Gimlet, and their Cucumber flavor is the best on the market, especially for a Cucumber Collins.” —H. Joseph Ehrman, proprietor, Elixir, San Francisco

“Vodka is a super-easy spirit category to snag a local distillery product and make it shine, yet most bartenders are told which vodka they need to be mixing with by either management or guests. So, in the rare chance I have to create or mix with a vodka of my choice, I tend to go local, and right now, that’s State Line Vodka. It’s smooth, wheat-based, and hits all my marks.” —Tripper Duval, owner and janitor, Lost Whale, Milwaukee

“Over the years, I’ve gained a certain appreciation for the role vodka plays in a cocktail bar. Skyy Vodka stands out to me because of its remarkable versatility. It blends seamlessly with other ingredients and provides vodka enthusiasts with distinct yet balanced flavors, all while maintaining an attractive price point.” —Nik Sparks, head bartender and beverage director, The Wooly, NYC

“For anything shaken with citrus, I prefer using ALB Vodka, coming from Albany Distilling Co. It’s 100 percent American corn vodka, it’s local, and it’s clean and crisp. I use it at The Golden Swan in the Dorothy Day cocktail alongside Clear Creek Pear Brandy, GE Massenez Golden 8 Pear Liqueur, St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram, honey syrup, orange, and lemon juice. It’s refreshing, seasonally spiced, and a favorite among our guests.” —Andy May, head bartender, The Golden Swan, NYC

“Allow me to paint you a vibrant picture composed of beautiful, sunny corn fields and quiet country life, framed by tulips and a host of other flowers. However, this is not just a wild fantasy placed on canvas with the painter’s palette. On the outskirts of Temperance, Mich., you will find not only this marvelous scene, but also Thatcher’s Distillery. Thatcher’s Organic Vodka is made using only natural ingredients utilizing an entirely organic distillation process. This true gem of purest vodka brings an unbelievable crisp and fresh taste, and it’s perfect to enjoy on the rocks or in a wide variety of cocktails. My suggestion would be a twist on a Vesper Martini: Pair it with birch water syrup, a gentle touch of gentian liqueur, and lemon zest to realize that vibrant picture right on your palate.” —Petr Balcarovsky, lead bartender, The Apparatus Room at Detroit Foundation Hotel, Detroit

The article We Asked 14 Bartenders: What’s the Best Vodka for Cocktails? (2024) appeared first on VinePair.

Ah, Champagne. We adore its southeast-facing slopes, chalky soil, and the wonderful wine that it yields. But long before all the fame, fortune, and bubbles, the region — and all of France — sat beneath prehistoric waters, patiently waiting for tectonic plates to push it up to the surface.

To fully grasp Champagne’s history, we need to go back 300 million years before the first glass of wine was ever sipped. It was a time when the seven continents were nestled up against each other, forming “supercontinents,” like Pangea. As mountain ranges formed beneath the ocean, the many chunks of Pangea began to move this way and that, gradually separating over the course of eons.

Eventually, those mountains would rise, forming water basins and shallow seas around them teeming with ancient microorganisms, which would inevitably contribute to Champagne’s healthy soil once these basins drained and rose above sea level. This ancient sea bed turned rolling hills slowly transformed into the countryside of northern France, where modern-day Champagne is located and the soil quality is unparalleled for wine production.

On this episode of “Wine 101,” we’re kicking off our Champagne series with a trip back to prehistoric times to discuss how soil, tectonic plates, and lithology played a part in setting up this region for success down the line. Tune in for more.

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Follow Keith on Instagram @VinePairKeith. Rate and review this podcast wherever you get your podcasts from. It really helps get the word out there.

“Wine 101” was produced, recorded, and edited by yours truly, Keith Beavers, at the VinePair headquarters in New York City. I want to give a big old shout-out to co-founders Adam Teeter and Josh Malin for creating VinePair. Big shout-out to Danielle Grinberg, the art director of VinePair, for creating the most awesome logo for this podcast. Also, Darby Cicci for the theme song. And I want to thank the entire VinePair staff for helping me learn something new every day. See you next week.

*Image retrieved from barmalini via stock.adobe.com

The article Wine 101: Champagne: Part I Pangea and the Paris Basin appeared first on VinePair.

Heaven Hill Distillery has announced the latest release in its Heritage Collection: an 18 year-old Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey.

Released each Spring, the Heritage Collection focuses on the distillery’s traditional mash bills and oldest inventory. Previous national releases have included a 17 year-old Kentucky bourbon (2022) and a 20 year-old corn whiskey (2023).

According to Heaven Hill, the 2024 bottling comes from 133 barrels laid down in December 2005. The whiskey was distilled from a mashbill of 78 percent corn, 12 percent malted barley, and 10 percent rye. It’s the same recipe used in other Heaven Hill bourbons, including the Evan Williams, Henry McKenna, and Elijah Craig lines.

All barrels in the release were aged on the third floor of Rickhouse 1I.

“We now have over 2 million barrels aging,” master distiller Conor O’Driscoll told VinePair in an exclusive interview. “Rickhouse 1I is 12 stories, it’s almost 100 years old, it’s a large brick and concrete building. It’s got 80,000 barrels aging, and it’s particularly good at aging older whiskeys. When you taste this 18-year-old, it’s remarkably soft and subtle and gentle, and there is no overpowering wood.”

O’Driscoll further emphasized the potential risks and temptations in releasing ultra-aged American whiskey. For him and his team, a main challenge in curating Heritage Collection releases is finding well-aged stock at the peak of flavor — without going too far over.

“Our guiding North Star is that the whiskey has to taste good. It doesn’t matter if it’s 22 and a half years-old if it tastes like a dirty old stick,” he says. “There’s a lot of very expensive, very sought after whiskey out there with big age statements on it. And in my opinion, they don’t always taste that good.”

O’Driscoll contrasted the brand’s Heritage Collection — which will typically feature whiskeys aged at least 15 years — with another annual Heaven Hill line: the Parker’s Heritage Collection.

“The Heaven Hill Heritage Collection is released in the Spring, and Parker’s comes out in the Fall,” O’Driscoll told VinePair. “The Heritage Collection is more classic, more traditional. We’re not doing weird mash bills or new barrel finishes. Whereas Parker’s is a lot more innovative. So you will see different barrel finishes, different chars, different mashbills.”

The 18 year-old Heritage Collection bourbon will be released in March 2024 at 120 proof. Heaven Hill representatives told VinePair that after dumping all 133 barrels, the batch’s initial proof was above 150.

Heaven Hill Heritage Collection 18 Year-Old Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey releases to select retailers nationally. The manufacturer’s suggested retail price is $299.99.

Curious about our opinion of the release? Tasted by VinePair contributor David Thomas Tao, check out our extended Heaven Hill Heritage Collection 18-Year-Old Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey review.

The article Heaven Hill Announces 18 Year-Old Bourbon for 2024 Heritage Collection appeared first on VinePair.

For a spirit so dependent on extended aging periods, it’s remarkable how much the whiskey landscape can change over the course of just one year. Legacy producers continually introduce new limited and permanent expressions, while innovations arrive in myriad forms ranging from cask finishes to hyper-specific aging conditions.

At VinePair, we cover such developments over the course of any given year, both via news and feature articles, as well as dedicated buying guides. But selecting one standout bottle from every sub-category of whiskey at the beginning of each year offers a unique snapshot into what wowed us over the last 12 months.

Before we dive into those picks, a few notes on how we compiled this list, especially given the sheer subjectivity of the notion of “best” when it comes to alcoholic beverages.

For the regular categories — bourbon, rye, single malt, etc. — we’re showcasing products that deliver on every front, from character and concentration, to balance, availability, and value. These may not be the absolute best of the best in their respective styles, nor did they necessarily debut within the last year. They are instead bottles we’re confident drinkers across the country should be able to find with relative ease, at which point we wouldn’t hesitate to recommend buying them. For those seeking the absolute crème de la crème, we have you covered toward the end of this list with our splurge and limited-edition recommendations.

From single malt to single barrel, barrel proof to cask finished, these are the best whiskeys to drink in 2024.

The World’s Best Whiskey

• Best Bourbon: Wilderness Trail Small Batch High Rye Bourbon
• Honorable Mention: Maker’s Mark Cellar Aged
• Best Rye: Jack Daniel’s Bonded Rye
• Honorable Mention: George Dickel x Leopold Bros. Collaboration Blend
• Best Single Malt Scotch: Glenglassaugh Sandend Highland Single Malt
• Honorable Mention: Lagavulin Islay Single Malt 16 Years
• Best Blended Scotch: Maclean’s Nose Blended Scotch Whisky
• Honorable Mention: Johnnie Walker High Rye
• Best Irish Whiskey: Teeling Small Batch Irish Whiskey
• Best Canadian Whisky: Alberta Premium Cask Strength Rye
• Best Japanese Whisky: Mars ‘The Lucky Cat May & Luna’
• Best ‘New World’ Whiskey: Indri Single Malt Indian Whisky
• Best Peated Scotch: Elements of Islay Sherry Cask
• Best Single Barrel Whiskey: Baker’s 13 Year Old Single Barrel Bourbon (2023)
• Best Barrel-Proof Whiskey: Elijah Craig Barrel Proof Bourbon Batch C923
• Best Cask Finished Whiskey: Hinterhaus Distilling Trapper’s Oath 18 Year Rye
• Best Budget Whiskey: Compass Box Artist Blend Scotch Whisky
• Best Splurge Whiskey: Michter’s 25 Year Old Kentucky Straight Bourbon (2023)
• Best Limited-Edition Whiskeys: Russell’s Reserve Single Rickhouse Camp Nelson F Bourbon; Eagle Rare 17-Year-Old Bourbon (2023); Four Roses 135th Anniversary Limited Edition Small Batch; High N’ Wicked ‘Saints And Scholars II’ 19 Year Old Single Malt Irish Whiskey
• FAQ

Best Bourbon: Wilderness Trail Small Batch High Rye Bourbon

It’s been a big few years for Kentucky’s Wilderness Trail. The longtime craft whiskey drinkers’ darling (and VinePair Next Wave Award winner, 2021) celebrated its 10th anniversary in late 2023, one year after Gruppo Campari acquired a 70 percent stake in the distillery for a reported $420 million. In the long run, the deal should only increase the availability of this excellent-value, high-quality bourbon, which delivers more character and nuance than almost every competitor sold at a similar price and produced at comparable scale. During a time of over-pricing and unwarranted hype, this is a staple bourbon, equally adept for sipping occasions and mixing in cocktails.

Average price: $57
Rating: 94

Honorable Mention: Maker’s Mark Cellar Aged

The first-ever age-stated Maker’s Mark launched to much fanfare last year, and quickly became one of the most coveted bottles among whiskey hunters. With good reason: The oldest Maker’s release on record took the distillery’s signature wheated profile to complex new heights.

Best Rye: Jack Daniel’s Bonded Rye

If you’d predicted even just a few years ago that Jack Daniel’s would be responsible for some of the most exciting, experimental releases on the American whiskey market, many would have laughed at you. But innovate the company has, and perhaps even more exciting than its hazmat releases and left-field mash bills was the summer 2023 addition of this bold, earthy rye to its Bonded Series lineup. This is a decadent whiskey, with more age than legally required (around 7 years) and at a price point that’s incredibly hard to compete with.

Average price: $38
Rating: 93

Honorable Mention: George Dickel x Leopold Bros. Collaboration Blend

This collaboration blends column-distilled Dickel rye with Leopold Bros. signature “Three Chamber” distillate. Its profile is floral and herbaceous, with the signature spice of the base grain.

Best Single Malt Scotch: Glenglassaugh Sandend Highland Single Malt

A Highland single malt with attractive maritime influence, Glenglassaugh wowed us (and the general whiskey-drinking community) with its revamped packaging and this stunning release last year. It’s bottled at 50.5 percent ABV (an outlier in Scotch) without an age statement (similarly atypical for single malts), and oozes tropical fruitiness and butterscotch sweet notes. There are no gimmicks or trendy techniques at play here, just fine single malt whisky.

Average price: $70
Rating: 95

Honorable Mention: Lagavulin Islay Single Malt 16 Years

Equally worthy of recognition in the peated category, Lagavulin 16 is an iconic smoky Scotch — one we return to time and time again when we’re in the mood for malt whisky but want the added layers of BBQ, earth, and salty seawater.

Best Blended Scotch: Maclean’s Nose Blended Scotch Whisky

This non-chill-filtered blend of malt (70 percent) and grain (30 percent) whiskies could easily have been crowned this year’s best budget (or even bargain) expression. It offers vibrant citrus notes, sprays of salinity, and honeyed sweetness; it was named in honor of both the famed whisky writer Charles Maclean and a natural landmark that happens to be located close to the Ardnamurchan distillery with which he collaborated on the release (along with independent bottler Adelphi).

Average price: $37
Rating: 93

Honorable Mention: Johnnie Walker High Rye

Innovation is alive and well in Scotland, as this bottle from the world’s largest Scotch producer proves. A blend of 60 percent rye and 40 percent single malt, it has one foot on both sides of the Atlantic, invoking the richness and spicy bite of American rye, and malty sweetness of Scotch. We love it in cocktails.

Best Irish Whiskey: Teeling Small Batch Irish Whiskey

This blended, small batch Irish whiskey spends up to six years aging in used bourbon barrels, before a final six-month period in Central American rum casks. The maturation process has a pronounced impact on its profile, adding heady scents of caramel that give way to charred oak and molasses. Thankfully, oak doesn’t drown out the sweet and spicy character of the base spirit on the palate, and instead only adds to the overall experience.

Average price: $42
Rating: 92

Best Canadian Whisky: Alberta Premium Cask Strength Rye

While a little pricier than some of the inclusions up to this point, Canadian whisky continues to represent a subcategory where some of the biggest bargains can be found. Such is the case here, especially if you’re willing to ignore the lack of age statement, which we implore you do. Bottled at a bold 63.5 percent ABV, and produced using 100 percent unmalted rye, proprietary enzymes, and an innovative fermentation process, Alberta Premium is at once both familiar and unique within the rye space — melding intense tart berries with oak sweetness and complexity.

Average price: $85
Rating: 95

Best Japanese Whisky: Mars ‘The Lucky Cat May & Luna’

Named after the felines that call Mars’s Shinshu distillery home (and that are also depicted on the bottle label), this blend of malt and grain whiskies is matured in ex-bourbon, sherry, new American oak, and Sakura casks. If that sounds like there’s a lot going on, well… there is. But the final blend is harmonious and distinctive, with punchy, tart aromas of green apple and salty seaweed, before an unexpected pleasant burst of peat and smoke arrives on the palate.

Average price: $95
Rating: 92

Best ‘New World’ Whiskey: Indri Single Malt Indian Whisky

It’s a story that will likely only gain prominence over the coming years: India’s importance, not only as a major world consumer of whiskey, but as a producer of high-quality examples sold domestically and internationally. Based in Haryana in northern India, Indri offers one of the most enjoyable entrants to the category we’ve tasted in recent years. Triple-cask aging in bourbon, wine, and Pedro Ximenez sherry barrels, has a pronounced role in defining this single malt’s profile, which jumps from booze-soaked raisins to tropical fruit and caramel.

Average price: $60
Rating: 94

Best Peated Scotch: Elements of Islay Sherry Cask

A blend of malt whiskies from non-disclosed distilleries on Islay — considered the spiritual home of peated whisky — this release serves an ideal balance of smoky and sweet flavors. BBQ notes intertwine with a medley of stewed fruits, winter spices, and toffee — a mix that promises to please regular peat drinkers as well as calm any fears skeptics have that the style starts and ends with smoke. At 54.5 percent ABV, the proof lends itself to seasoned American whiskey drinkers.

Average price: $110
Rating: 94

Best Single Barrel Whiskey: Baker’s 13 Year Old Single Barrel Bourbon (2023)

Baker’s limited 13-year-old single barrel release returned in 2023 following a four-year hiatus. It did so to somewhat limited fanfare, an indication of the brand’s modest standing within parent company Jim Beam’s Small Batch lineup. All of which spells good news for whiskey hunters looking for something unexpected to share with friends. While each single-barrel batch will vary from one to the next, the sample we enjoyed opened with expressive fruity notes before delivering the textbook bourbon playbook of oak, sweetness, and just a hint of rye spice. It may raise an eyebrow if and when you pull it out at a bottle share. A smile is almost certain to follow.

Average price: $130
Rating: 93

Best Barrel-Proof Whiskey: Elijah Craig Barrel Proof Bourbon Batch C923

The third and final 2023 release of Heaven Hill’s Elijah Craig Barrel Proof series, Batch C923 was the second to arrive after the distillery introduced specific year and month age statements to the line. In this case, the numbers were a whopping 13 years and 7 months old — and that’s just of the youngest whiskey in the blend. The robust profile, with intense oaky, leathery, and woody notes, lived up to the lofty expectations of the series and quickly became a fan favorite. That reputation may have seen its price creep up a little above MSRP (listed below) but it’s still a great buy.

Average price: $75
Rating: 94

Best Cask Finished Whiskey: Hinterhaus Distilling Trapper’s Oath 18 Year Rye

So common have the sherry and sweet wine cask-finished expressions become on the international whiskey landscape that anything outside that realm instantly piques our interest (not that there’s anything wrong with the aforementioned styles). Seldom, however, do we encounter 18-year-old distillate finished in stout casks. The profile is atypical but the result is a resounding success — sweet, almost bubblegum cherry from the rye mingling with toasted bread and oatmeal-like creaminess.

Average price: $130
Rating: 93

Best Budget Whiskey: Compass Box Artist Blend Scotch Whisky

Just as our previously listed Best Blended Scotch could have appeared in this category, so, too, could Compass Box’s Artist Blend have taken the title of the best blend. Aged in ex-bourbon barrels, French oak casks, and Palo Cortado-seasoned sherry butts, and bottled without chill-filtration, this Scotch packs a stone fruit punch and holds its own when mixed in cocktails or sipped on ice. With good reason it’s become a favorite in the bartending community.

Average price: $36
Rating: 92

Best Splurge Whiskey: Michter’s 25 Year Old Kentucky Straight Bourbon (2023)

Admittedly, we’re pushing the very limits of the term “splurge” by suggesting a four-figure bottle. But there are plenty of exceptional three-figure releases still to come on this list and this particular limited-production release is too good not to highlight. It ranks among the richest, most flavorful American whiskey releases we’ve had the pleasure of tasting in recent years. And this is no mean feat, considering bourbon often becomes tired and lifeless after it hits 20 years old, let alone a quarter century. If you have the fortune to sample or even afford a full bottle, expect the dizzying array of aromas and flavors the price commands, and a lengthy, ever-evolving finish.

Average price: $1,500
Rating: 98

Best Limited-Edition Whiskeys:

Russell’s Reserve Single Rickhouse Camp Nelson F Bourbon (2023)

Russell’s Reserve launched its single rickhouse limited series (batched bourbon, sourced from a single aging warehouse) in 2022. The second installment of that hyper-focused line, this expression is bottled without an age statement at a barrel proof 58.8 percent ABV. It carries all the Wild Turkey hallmarks — notes of cherry, cloves, and sweet caramel — but simultaneously darts off in unexpected directions. The palate and finish are punchy and prolonged, cementing this line’s merited ascending status.

Average price: $300
Rating: 96

Eagle Rare 17-Year-Old Bourbon (2023)

As with all the whiskeys listed in this limited-edition section, the price here (based off MSRP) should be taken with a pinch of salt, not least because this bottle exists as part of the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection. Seldom does Eagle Rare 17 rank as the best in that lineup, however, let alone among the best spirits of the year. But this proved to be the case for VinePair tasters sampling the 2023 edition of this release. Our No. 1 spirit of last year, this is a balanced, bold, and complex bourbon worth hunting for.

Average price: $125
Rating: 97

Four Roses 135th Anniversary Limited Edition Small Batch

Four Roses marked its 135th anniversary with a truly special release last year, comprising four different base bourbons ranging in age from 12 to 25 years old. Some 15,000 bottles went to market in September — the majority of which landed directly in consumers’ hands via an online lottery system, meaning that this is another bottle requiring some searching. What awaits, however, is one of the distillery’s finest limited-edition releases to date, exhibiting depth, brightness, and nuance in stunning harmony.

Average price: $200
Rating: 96

High N’ Wicked ‘Saints And Scholars II’ 19 Year Old Single Malt Irish Whiskey

The second iteration of High N’ Wicked’s “Saints And Scholars” limited line included just five single casks pulled from the personal collection of celebrated distiller Noel Sweeney. It’s a single malt for those who like their whiskey to mature into tropical rather than overly dried fruit territory, with pineapple and mango notes defining its nose, and chocolate, oaky sweetness and complexity joining on the palate.

Average price: $500
Rating: 95

FAQ

What is the smoothest whiskey?

Wheated bourbons are typically considered to be the smoothest, most easy-drinking whiskeys on the market. Some popular examples include Maker’s Mark and, the ultimate unicorn, Pappy Van Winkle.

What is the best whiskey?

Based on tastings of hundreds of whiskeys from around the world this year, the best bourbon is Wilderness Trail Small Batch High Rye Bourbon. The best rye is Jack Daniel’s Bonded Rye. The best single malt Scotch is Glenglassaugh Sandend Highland Single Malt Whisky. The best Irish whiskey is Teeling Small Batch Irish Whiskey. The best Japanese whisky is Mars ‘The Lucky Cat May & Luna.’ The best Canadian whisky is Alberta Premium Cask Strength Rye.

VinePair’s Tasting Methodology

Throughout the year, VinePair conducts numerous tastings for our popular Buy This Booze column and wine and spirits reviews. Our mission is to provide a clear, reliable source of information for drinkers, providing an overview applicable to day-to-day buying and drinking.

Tastings are not typically conducted blind. In alignment with our reviews mission, we believe in purposefully tasting all products as our readers typically would, with full knowledge of the producer, the region, and — importantly — the price.

For Buy This Booze roundups, we typically include a maximum of one expression per brand, though we do allow multiple products from the same production facility (i.e., released under different labels).

For this roundup, we considered a number of different factors before finalizing the list. Our aim was to provide a comprehensive picture of the myriad styles and expressions that make up the broader whiskey category. And ultimately, we wanted to highlight the bottles we’d reach for given the chance of choosing any — but only one — in each of the respective subcategories. We are confident that every product that made this final ranking delivers on flavor, balance, depth, and complexity for each of their respective price points.

The article All of the Best Whiskeys to Drink in 2024 appeared first on VinePair.

When it comes to classic after-dinner drinks, one’s mind may wander to spirits like amaro, Cognac, or bourbon. But what about classic Scotch? While the spirit is most often associated with grassy flavors, hearty peat, and supple smoke, there are a multitude of sweeter Scotch whiskies ideal for sipping post-meal. That’s why we’ve sorted through some of our favorite Scotches to round up the most decadent. In these bottles, expect baking spice and floral aromas along with ripe berry, dark chocolate, and toffee notes on the palate that will complement dessert or stand out all on their own.

So, if you’re looking for something different to spice up your after-supper sipping, consider one of these stunning post-dinner Scotches.

• The GlenAllachie Speyside Single Malt Aged 12 Years
• Arran Single Malt Sauternes Cask Finish
• The Glen Grant Single Malt Aged 15 Years
• Elements of Islay Sherry Cask
• Tamdhu 15 Year Old
• The Macallan Double Cask 15 Years Old Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky
• The Glenlivet 14 Year Cognac Cask Selection Single Malt Scotch Whisky
• Glenmorangie The Quinta Ruban 14 Year Old Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky
• Aberlour A’bunadh Speyside Single Malt Scotch Whisky
• The GlenDronach Revival Aged 15 Years

The GlenAllachie Speyside Single Malt Aged 12 Years

Aged in virgin oak barrels, The GlenAllachie’s 12-year-old Speyside Single Malt is incredibly bold given its age statement, and delivers robust yet well-integrated tannins. Its profile opens with ripe dark berry and baking spice aromas before washing the palate with a rich, sweet berry compote essence. Polished by a hint of toasted oak from time spent in the barrel, this Scotch is a berry pastry in a glass.

Average Price: $70
Score: 93

Arran Single Malt Sauternes Cask Finish

Hailing from the Lochranza Distillery on the Isle of Arran, Arran Single Malt Sauternes Cask Finish comes in at 50 percent ABV and offers a seductive medley of floral, fruit, and honey notes. Aged in the casks of one of the world’s most beloved sweet wines, this Scotch is indulgent and luxurious, with a thick mouthfeel begging to be enjoyed over ice.

Average Price: $80
Score: 94

The Glen Grant Single Malt Aged 15 Years

Citrusy and floral, The Glen Grant’s 15-year-old single malt expression is bottled at 50 percent ABV, yet the heat remains in check thanks to its undercurrent of malty sweetness. Aged in ex-bourbon barrels, the Scotch remains youthful and fresh despite its age statement, tying Meyer lemon and honeysuckle notes together with a cake batter-flavored bow.

Average Price: $93
Score: 94

Elements of Islay Sherry Cask

A blend of malt whiskies from a number of undisclosed Islay distilleries, this Scotch was bottled and released by independent bottler Elements of Islay. While complex smoke is present throughout, the bottle showcases peat’s sweeter side, with a palate of toffee and stewed berry compote. Aged in ex-sherry barrels and clocking in at 109 proof, the Scotch is certain to soothe any stuffed stomachs after a hearty meal.

Average Price: $110
Score: 94

Tamdhu 15 Year Old

If sherry bombs are your preferred style of Scotch, allow us to introduce you to Tamdhu 15 Year Old, a Speyside single malt aged exclusively in oloroso casks. Non-chill-filtered and bottled at 46 percent ABV, the Scotch splashes dark chocolate, stone fruit, and berry across the taste buds and finishes with sweet malt and fortified wine notes. Given the decadence present in this bottle, we suggest pairing it with a piece of dark chocolate.

Average Price: $150
Score: 93

The Macallan Double Cask 15 Years Old Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky

It wouldn’t be a comprehensive after-dinner roundup without The Macallan. Rich and full-bodied, Double Cask 15 Years Old Highland Single Malt stays true to the brand’s signature sherry style, delivering dried fruit aromas and a fortified wine essence on the palate. Carrying notes of baked apple and butterscotch, The Macallan Double Cask 15 leans to the sweeter side and is certain to satisfy any after-dinner cravings.

Average Price: $138
Score: 95

The Glenlivet 14 Year Cognac Cask Selection Single Malt Scotch Whisky

Given Cognac’s reputation as a traditional after-supper sipper, it’s only natural that a Scotch aged in Cognac barrels would be ripe for the same occasions. Reminiscent of a holiday fruit cake, The Glenlivet’s 14 Year Cognac Cask Selection offers pleasant caramel, apricot, and citrus notes, ideal for capping a comforting winter meal.

Average Price: $60
Score: 92

Glenmorangie The Quinta Ruban 14 Year Old Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky

If you’re looking for a Scotch that perfectly skirts the line between sweet and savory, we’d shoot for Glenmorangie’s The Quinta Ruban 14 Year Old Highland Single Malt. Matured in a combination of port casks and ex-bourbon barrels, the aged whisky offers spiced, earthy notes and a red-wine richness before finishing with dried fruit and caramelized nut flavors. And at 46 percent ABV, this Scotch is approachable yet satisfyingly complex.

Average Price: $70
Score: 93

Aberlour A’bunadh Speyside Single Malt Scotch Whisky

After tucking into something hearty, sipping on something stiff is required to break through the richness. On those occasions, Aberlour A’bunadh Speyside Single Malt is the perfect pick. Bottled cask-strength at 61.2 percent ABV, the whisky opens with orchard fruit and fresh flower aromas before the palate takes over with succulent, honey-coated stone fruit and a toasted oak finish. Given the heat in the proof, we recommend enjoying over a large block of ice to savor the flavor.

Average Price: $100
Score: 95

The GlenDronach Revival Aged 15 Years

Given that GlenDronach translates from Scottish Gaelic to “valley of the brambles,” it’s no surprise that this 15-year-old Scotch presents an abundance of rich, dark berry notes. Matured in a combination of oloroso and Pedro Ximenez casks, GlenDronach Revival boasts fortified wine notes that perfectly fuse with the palate’s ripe fig, walnut praline, and blackberry.

Average Price: $95
Score: 95

The article Skip Dessert: 10 Excellent After-Dinner Scotches appeared first on VinePair.

There are many ways to prepare a drink, from stirring and “throwing” to flash-blending, and they all have their place behind the bar. But arguably the most common (and coolest-looking) is shaking. There’s something satisfying and almost therapeutic about the sight and sound of a cocktail getting shaken and poured into a glass. That said, there are different methods of the technique, and they all require a little expertise.

Before we go any further, it’s important to note that there is no single, standardized way to shake a cocktail. Not every great baseball player has the same batting stance, and it’s the same story with bartenders and their unique, stylized shakes. Some techniques are easier on the arms and shoulders than others, but ultimately, being comfortable and yielding good results are what really matters.

There are a few rules that come in handy, but once one understands the fundamentals of what different shaking techniques achieve, they can decide for themselves which ones work better for their cocktails with a little R&D. To help break down the many methods — from the controversial reverse dry shake to the “regal shake” — we caught up with Harrison Snow, owner and beverage director of NYC’s Lullaby, who gave us his takes on how to get the most out of different shaking methods and when to employ them.

Wet Shake

The most common type of shake is a wet shake, which is shaking with ice. When doing so, you’re trying to achieve three things: dilution, aeration, and emulsification.

These three pillars come together through kinetic energy. When performing a wet shake, you’re essentially creating friction between the ice and the cocktail. The swift movement of ice allows it to melt a bit (dilution), propels air throughout the cocktail (aeration), and blends the ingredients into a cohesive solution (emulsification). How hard to shake the tin and how long to shake for can vary depending on a number of factors, such as the nature of the cocktail ingredients, the ice used, and the thickness of the shaker tin. That said there are some basic guidelines on how to get the most out of your wet shake.

“Shake the cocktail as hard as possible — eight to 10 seconds is the standard, but that depends on the type of ice and the cocktail,” Snow suggests. The harder you shake, the faster you can check off the mighty three qualifications, and the less risk there is for over-dilution and a loss of aeration or emulsification. “There are two crucial windows in the shaking process: when you put the ice in the shaker tin, and when you stop shaking,” he continues. The very moment the shaking is complete, the cocktail is at its coldest and most aerated, so it’s best to get it in a glass quickly. And when choosing which direction to shake in, keep in mind that gravity isn’t in your favor when you shake straight up and down.

“In terms of basic physics, the ideal way to shake, in my opinion, is sideways in a horizontal fashion,” Snow says. Then, you’re not working more or less against gravity in either direction you shake. “Your push forward is just as effective as your push backward,” he says. When asked to describe the most efficient motion, Snow says it’s “kind of like if you were holding a knife and stabbing someone directly at chest level, or something.”

As morbid an analogy it is, it paints a pretty spot-on picture. A wet shake can be performed one- or two-handed, with a hand on each half of the tin. Two-handed is ideal (and easier) if making only one cocktail at a time.

Snow also suggests that bartenders elongate their shake. “If you do really short shakes, you’re not allowing momentum to build up,” he says. “You’re rapidly changing the direction of the ice so much that everything is just kind of staying in one place.” In general, a wet shake is called for when making any cocktail that employs fresh ingredients, like a Daiquiri, Margarita, or Mai Tai.

Dry Shake

A dry shake entails shaking your ingredients without ice, and it’s almost always followed by a wet shake. This method is typically used to emulsify an egg white or egg white alternative, as such products take more time and arm work to break down, while also allowing the egg white to further aerate and foam up. If you’re looking to whip up a Whiskey Sour or a Clover Club, dry shaking is the way to go.

“Dry shaking is necessary for any time where the amount of aeration and emulsification you need or desire for the cocktail you’re making requires more time than you have in the tin with ice,” Snow says. The moment the ice touches the tin, dilution begins. But with a dry shake beforehand, you can shake to your heart’s content without worrying about dilution, though a solid 30 seconds should do the trick for most sours and egg-white cocktails. Some drinks, like the Ramos Gin Fizz, call for several minutes of dry shaking. When pulled off properly, this method will yield a creamy, towering layer of foam atop the cocktail.

Reverse Dry Shake

Just like it sounds, this is an inverted dry shake: Shake a cocktail with ice, strain it back into one-half of the tin, discard the ice, and finish with a dry shake. Since the first round of straining removes the ice, straining after the final dry shake is unnecessary.

“Some people believe that it gets a better aeration and better texture,” Snow explains. “When you add ice after a dry shake, you inevitably disrupt some of the aeration you just achieved. It’s gonna push out some of the air you just introduced.” With this method, that doesn’t happen. However, when performing a reverse dry shake, the cocktail is going to inevitably warm up after it’s just been chilled, so there are a lot of naysayers in the larger conversation of this technique. Plus, if a wet shake is done with enough vigor, you can achieve sufficient aeration with a traditional dry shake. Advocates of the method say it makes for a better Ramos or Whiskey Sour.

Whip Shake

A lot of bartenders have different definitions as to what the whip shake is. Some believe it means putting one or two ice cubes in the tin and shaking vigorously until they’re completely gone. Others perform it as a one- to two-cube shake, but only for a few quick seconds. Then there’s another school of thought that claims a whip shake is shaking with a small amount of crushed ice, and “dirty dumping” (a.k.a. pouring without straining) the contents into the serving glass. Some even say it’s as simple as moving the shaker in a whipping motion as you shake.

Regardless of the specifics, the overall intent of a whip shake is to create more agitation in the shaker; the more room the ice has to “whip” around in the tin, the more aeration the drink will have. But like the reverse dry shake, the whip shake can have a few pitfalls. While you might achieve some nice aeration by shaking a cocktail until the ice is fully melted, it’s likely that the cocktail will have too much dilution. Even if you go with the route of using a single ice cube, the results might not be favorable.

“At Lullaby, we found that when shaking with one [standard] cube, there’s not enough ice for the transfer of kinetic energy from the liquid to the ice that you need to chill the cocktail down to where it needs to be,” Snow explains. “You’d be best off using one large cube from the freezer If your goal was to get as much air introduced into the cocktail while controlling your dilution as much as possible.” For those who don’t have large ice cubes, Snow asserts that a dry shake followed by a wet shake with three to four standard cubes allows for enough of a heat exchange that one doesn’t have to shake until the ice melts. It’ll still yield maximum aeration without sacrificing temperature. Fans of the whip shake tend to recommend it for cocktails with harder-to-mix ingredients, like a Piña Verde (coconut cream) or a Grasshopper (heavy cream, crème de cacao, and crème de menthe).

Regal Shake

While it has arguably existed for many years, the regal shake was officially coined in 2010 by bartender Theo Lieberman while working at Milk & Honey in NYC. Admittedly, we’re not quite sure what makes this shake “regal,” but in simple terms, it’s a wet shake with a citrus peel added to the tin. Unlike relying on a garnish, with this method, you’re able to introduce citrus oils into the cocktail mid-make rather than just expressing them on top. Depending on your spirit, this can bring your cocktail to the next level.

“You don’t need that much [peel] in there,” Snow says. “You really only need like a quarter-inch piece of lime peel to make a difference.” He’s right: Due to the high concentration of oil in citrus peels, too much peel in a regal shake can impart astringency. We recommend familiarizing yourself with this method by tossing a bit of lime peel into your shaker before making a Daiquiri (known as a “Regal Daiquiri”), or try a smidge of grapefruit peel in a Gold Rush. In general, lemon peels don’t tend to work as well as those of lime, orange, or grapefruit, but experiment away and see what sticks.

The article The Proper Way to Shake Every Type of Cocktail appeared first on VinePair.

While Chenin Blanc is considered South Africa’s signature white wine (as I pointed out in my last column), the country’s less heralded Sauvignon Blancs may be South Africa’s key to greater recognition and prominence in the wine world.

I suggest this for two reasons: The world knows and loves Sauvignon Blanc, so there’s nothing particularly exotic about the variety to wine drinkers; not much of a learning curve to appreciate the grape. Just as importantly, South Africa is producing some damn good Sauvignon Blancs, at exceptional prices, as I found in my recent tastings of the wines.

South Africa, I am sure, would like a little of wine lovers’ long infatuation with New Zealand’s Sauvignons to rub off. In fact, one producer seems to be gunning for that right on its front label, proclaiming that its Sauvignon has “gooseberry flavours & chalky minerality.”

The gooseberry tasting note, of course, is almost a New Zealand Sauvignon cliché. And while this wine does have the tart, citrusy flavor of the fruit that few people have ever eaten — “Who even knows what a gooseberry tastes like?” as someone I know put it. Beyond New Zealand, maybe this producer is trying to invoke the mineral-driven wines of the Loire Valley as well. Sorry. Still, at a mere $9, the wine delivers, and you can read about it below.

To say that gooseberry dominates South African Sauvignons would be a vast overstatement. In fact, what I like about the wines is that they don’t seem to have one defining characteristic; they show a variety of flavors, with each somewhat different from the next. But all are refreshing, mostly unoaked, interesting, and easy to drink.

One of the best is from the Aslina label of Ntsiki Biyela, a pioneering figure in post-apartheid South Africa who became the country’s first Black winemaker. I first met Biyela — and tasted her wines — on a visit to South Africa’s winelands in 2016, the year she established her Aslina label. As I wrote back then, her journey into wine is fascinating, and in the years since her wines have only gotten better.

Here are five South African Sauvignon Blancs, plus a couple of other white wines, worth trying:

Southern Right Sauvignon Blanc 2023

From the coastal Hemel-en-Aarde Valley and Walker Bay appellations, this delightfully fresh Sauvignon is citrus-dominated and shows grapefruit and lime flavors, herbs, and a candied orange note on the finish. With piercing acidity, it nonetheless finishes with a soft landing, thanks to a hint of cream (a small percentage of the wine is fermented in neutral oak barrels). The winery is named after the Southern Right whales that are common in the ocean. Southern Right is a sister property of and adjacent to the famed Hamilton Russell Vineyards.

Price: $15
Buy This Wine

Savage Salt River Sauvignon Blanc 2022

From Stellenbosch, this wine is at once subtle but full of character, with green apple and herb notes along with hints of nutmeg and eucalyptus. Fermented in stainless-steel tanks, concrete eggs, and old barrels, it spends four months on the lees before being bottled. Named after the Salt River area of Cape Town, owner Duncan Savage sources grapes from throughout the Western Cape.

Price: $16
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Aslina Sauvignon Blanc 2022

Crisp and delicious with stone and tropical fruit notes, grapefruit pith, and a layer of cream. The wine was aged on the lees for four months. This is an exceptional Sauvignon Blanc from the Western Cape and Ntsiki Biyela, who named her label Aslina after her grandmother, a guiding force in her life growing up in Zululand in eastern South Africa.

Price: $19
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Neil Ellis Sauvignon Blanc 2022

There’s unusual elegance and complexity in this wine from the Cape West Coast appellation. It’s got typical Sauvignon grassiness that underlies the green apple, melon, and white grapefruit flavors. There’s a salty mineral note and a hint of black licorice on the long finish. The wine has a rich mouthfeel. Stylistically, I think of it as New Zealand meets Sancerre.

Price: $18
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KWV Sauvignon Blanc 2022

The powerful KWV brand, which stands for “Co-operative Winemakers Union of South Africa,” was founded as a wine co-op more than a century ago and became a private company in 1997. It churned out oceans of cheap wine and still offers value bottlings like this one from the Western Cape, which is marked by those gooseberry notes I mentioned above, along with lime and a creamy end note that softens the finish. If you like New Zealand Sauvignon, this is a worthwhile alternative at a bargain price.

Price: $9
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Aslina Chardonnay 2022

Another winning wine from Ntsiki Biyela, this is a well-balanced Chardonnay with green apple and citrus flavors, a hint of green olive, and touch of cream on the finish from partial aging in oak barrels.

Price: $22
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Bosman Family Vineyards ‘Fides’ Skin Contact Grenache Blanc 2020

From the Wellington appellation of the Western Cape, this wonderful “orange” wine has a good deal of tannic grip from extended skin contact. Butterscotch in color with flavors of golden delicious apple, tropical fruit, and subtle strawberry, there’s also a touch of honey and a mineral note. Lees and partial barrel aging provide a hint of vanilla.

Price: $27
Buy This Wine

Next up: Cooler-climate American Syrahs

The article 7 of the Best White Wines From South Africa (That Aren’t Chenin Blanc) appeared first on VinePair.

Malt liquor has been available for decades, but the advent of the 40-ounce bottle in the early ‘80s saw a boom in the beer-adjacent category. While the 40-ounce is considered something of a relic in this day and age, back then, it became a part of a culture — whether or not that culture really wanted it in the first place.

Before influencers there were… well, celebrities. And before rappers were rhyming the praises of Dom Pérignon, Hennessy, and Patrón, they were rapping about St. Ides malt liquor, but it wasn’t because they necessarily loved the stuff. Rather, as is the case with any celebrity endorsement deal, they were getting paid to do so.

St. Ides malt liquor first arrived on store shelves in 1987, but it wasn’t until the brand’s parent company hired the iconic DJ Pooh that it began to take off. And when it did, sales certainly followed, but so did the controversy and lawsuits (courtesy of public health officials and rapper Chuck D) that would eventually bring St. Ides’ breakout celeb-endorsed project to an end.

Joining “Taplines” today is Jacinta Howard, a veteran culture and music writer and editor in Atlanta, to talk about a very specific, very special, and very star-studded sponcon series that hit the airwaves back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, long before “sponsored content” was even a thing. Tune in for more.

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The article Taplines: Remembering Ice Cube’s Iconic, Infamous St. Ides Rhymes appeared first on VinePair.

Researchers have uncovered a Roman-era wine shop at a 1,600-year-old site in the ancient city of Sicyon, located in what’s now southern Greece. Scott Gallimore, an archaeologist at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada, and Martin Wells, a classics scholar at ​​Austin College, presented these findings at the Archaeological Institute of America in Chicago earlier this month, according to Smithsonian Magazine.

Upon examining the site, the researchers discerned that the wine shop was likely destroyed during a “sudden event” such as an earthquake or extreme weather, which collapsed the structure and caused the owners to evacuate. They also found signs of commerce including marble tabletops, broken pottery, and about 60 bronze coins across the space.

“This seems to indicate that they were being kept together as some type of group, whether in a ceramic vessel or some type of bag,” Gallimore speculates. “When the [shop] was destroyed, that container appears to have fallen to the floor and scattered the coins.” The coins helped distinguish which time period the shop was likely thriving in, as many of them were made during Constantius II’s reign, which lasted from 337 to 361 C.E.

Studies of the site also revealed that the shop might have sold olive oil in addition to wine. Evidence of pips from Vitis vinifera grapes was found, as well as an area that housed tools to press grapes or olives. Despite this insight, researchers have been unable to confirm what type of wine the shop might have sold.

Though this shop might have seen an untimely demise, we’re pretty sure the locals quickly found another place to buy wine to keep up with their, ahem, indulgent lifestyle.

The article Archaeologists Discover Ancient Wine Shop in Greece appeared first on VinePair.

It’s lunchtime at the Devonshire in London’s Soho and the bar top is thick with glasses of Guinness. This pub, reopened in November last year, is run by Dubliner Oisín Rogers and Guinness has quickly become a central part of its appeal: More than 60 percent of the beer sold here is Ireland’s famous stout. There are rumors, indeed, that the Devonshire sells more pints of Guinness than anywhere else in the U.K. or Ireland. “Our suppliers reckon there’s nobody close,” Rogers says.

If that makes the Devonshire unique, then this large street-corner pub is typical in another way. Guinness is booming in Britain, at the head of a nitro-stout trend that shows little sign of slowing. Last year British drinks conglomerate Diageo, which owns Guinness, claimed it was the most popular pub pint in Britain (which was true, albeit only for a four-week period in the run-up to Christmas 2022). Meanwhile, at Anspach and Hobday, a small brewery in South London, nitro porter now makes up 70 percent of production, from a standing start in the spring of 2021. As a category, stout grew from 6.9 to 8.1 percent of the market during 2023.

It’s a remarkable turnaround. Until relatively recently, Guinness and its rivals were thought to be old hat in Britain, a niche drink for rugby fans, older Irishmen, and those with an emotional connection to Ireland. Now it’s the most fashionable beer in the country, a social-media staple, a key part of many young drinkers’ online personalities.

And with a new “microbrewery and culture hub,” Guinness at Old Brewer’s Yard in London’s Covent Garden, set to open later this year, the trend shows no sign of running out of steam.

How has this happened?

The answer is complex, but it starts with Covid-19.

Pub Pinings

There was plenty to miss during the U.K.’s Covid-19 lockdowns. Shops, nightclubs, music venues, theaters, and restaurants were forcibly shut, but it was the conviviality and informality of pubs that people most missed — and a big part of that was Guinness.

“Guinness is one of those things you can’t have at home, in the same way you can’t really do fish and chips,” says Rogers.

Guinness, never short of a smart marketing idea, launched “Looks Like Guinness” in May 2021, a campaign that played on consumers’ unfulfilled desires by featuring everyday sights that resemble a pint of stout: a white cat lying on a black composting bin, for example, or a smoke-blackened chimney pot with white seagulls perching on it. It struck a nerve, and drinkers began to post their own examples on social media.

“It’s a very social drink, it just sparks conversation.”

Of course, Guinness can be enjoyed at home — and Diageo has invested a lot of money in convincing British customers to do just that, from the 2022 launch of Guinness 0.0 to last year’s Nitrosurge, a can-top device that offers, so the promotional material had it, “the ultimate pouring experience from the comfort of your home.”

For aficionados, though, none of this replicates Guinness in the pub.

“It’s a very social drink, it just sparks conversation,” says Rogers, who has spent almost 40 years in the pub world, running the iconic Guinea Grill in Mayfair until recently. “People always want to talk about it. It’s a sensual product.”

Insta-Pints

Not just sensual, but attractive, too. Modern food culture loves an Instagrammable mouthful, from elaborate donuts to huge sandwiches, and Guinness — ruby-black, domed white foam — fits the bill. “It’s one of the only alcoholic drinks that looks really good in a photo,” says Ian Ryan, author of “A Beautiful Pint: One Man’s Search for the Perfect Pint of Guinness,” out in the U.S. later this month.

It can look bad, too, as Cork-raised Ryan knows well. He launched the Instagram account ShitLondonGuinness in 2019 to record bad pints he’d had in London pubs. A rogues’ gallery of dirty glasses, wrong glasses, ugly foam, and more, it quickly took off (the account now has 248,000 followers, and famous fans including actor Jamie Dornan) and almost certainly fueled Guinness’s popularity. “I’ve probably made a difference to some degree,” he says. “I think pints in London have gotten way better as Guinness has got more popular.”

ShitLondonGuinness’s success also reflects a mild nerdiness about the beer — encouraged and reinforced by decades of Guinness marketing — that puts it somewhere between “stack it up, sell it cheap” macro lager and the fussier end of the craft-beer market. There’s a right glass, a right level of nitrogen (Rogers serves it with an 82/18 nitrogen/carbon dioxide mix, as opposed to the U.K. standard 70/30, making for a smoother, arguably richer mouthful), a proper amount of time for the beer to rest between first and second pours. It’s a beer for aficionados, but — crucially — not one that requires the consumer to try too hard.

“Lockdown gave us the chance to experiment. By the second batch, we were really happy.”

For drinkers like Katie Mather, a writer whose passion for the famous stout led her sister to give her Guinness earrings for Christmas, it’s a reliable, down-to-earth, thoroughly normal treat. When she walks into her local in Lancashire in northern England, she says, the staff start pouring her Guinness. “It’s my go-to,” she says. “That’s not to say that I don’t drink anything else, it’s just the thing I get if I’m in a normal pub.”

Brits’ Stout

Guinness has a long history in Britain. Originally inspired by London Porter, Guinness’s story is pockmarked by significant intervention from across the Irish Sea: There’s artist John Gilroy, for example, who created Guinness’s most iconic advertising, or Michael Ash, inventor of the game-changing nitro pour at Guinness’s former brewery in West London (which closed in 2005 at a time of declining sales). It has been headquartered in the U.K., its biggest market, since 1932.

It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that Guinness’s current boom has inspired British imitators. From Wells’s Genesis Bedford Stout to Brewdog’s Black Heart, Britain is brimming over with new nitro stouts. None, though, have been quite as successful as Anspach and Hobday’s London Black, a nitro porter now served in at least 250 pubs across the U.K.

It’s fuller-flavored than Guinness, roastier and sweeter, a difference that reflects the craft-beer market it supplies (it’s also often cheaper, a result of Diageo’s high pricing). According to Anspach and Hobday co-owner Jack Hobday, it found a ready market among those who enjoyed Guinness but wanted to support a small brewer. “There’d never really been a successful draft nitro stout in the craft-beer sector,” says Hobday, who credits Left Hand’s Eric Wallace for advice on how to make a quality nitro stout. “Lockdown gave us the chance to experiment. By the second batch, we were really happy.”

The New Black

Anspach and Hobday is one of the few smaller British breweries that can look to the future with relative equanimity, and it’s all thanks to London Black. Overall output grew by 30 percent in December, largely thanks to London Black, and it’ll soon go into cans, Hobday says, with export to the U.S. not too long after.

As Guinness booms, meanwhile, it’s not just smaller breweries eyeing the British stout market. Murphy’s, owned by Heineken, has been available in the U.K. for decades but had been on the retreat until recently. Sales are growing, though, and it’s now available in close to 200 pubs — nothing compared to Guinness (which pours in an estimated 36,000, which is most of Britain’s pubs), but the Dutch giants have the financial heft to change that in a hurry (and Murphy’s is generally far cheaper on the bar than Guinness).

Diageo bosses are unlikely to be too worried just yet, though. Back at the Devonshire, as that Friday lunchtime bleeds into early afternoon, deputy bar manager Sam Donohoe — another Dubliner — is pouring pint after pint of Guinness. With the new brewery/museum opening later this year, they could soon be in for even more work.

Could Guinness get even more popular?

“I can’t see how it could,” says Rogers, laughing. “It’s already bananas.”

The article How Guinness Led a Modern Nitro-Stout Takeover of Britain’s Pubs appeared first on VinePair.

America has a sweet tooth, but when it comes to wine, many tend to avoid bottles with a high sugar content. This makes sense considering the slew of one-note, saccharine-heavy examples on the market. But if you find a well-made, harmonious bottle, sweet wines can be some of the most complex and age-worthy wines in the world.

In sweet wines, balance is key. High acidity can offset the residual sugar (the natural sugars remaining post-fermentation) in the wine, keeping it light on your palate instead of cloying and syrupy. This is why many of the world’s best sweet wines are made with notoriously high-acid grapes like Riesling and Furmint.

Here at VinePair, we love embracing wines on the sweeter side, so we went ahead and tasted a wide variety and pared them down to the best the category has to offer. These bottles are perfect for dessert pairings, or maybe even indulging in a glass in lieu of dessert. From Canada to Friuli, Slovenia to the Finger Lakes, here are 15 of the best sweet wines to drink in 2024.

Table of Contents

• Best Sweet Red Wines
• Best Sweet White Wines
• Best Sparkling Sweet Wines
• FAQs

Best Sweet Red Wines

Cline Family Cellars Late Harvest Mourvèdre 2019

Red dessert wine is not as well known as white or sparkling, but when it hits, it hits — and this one hits. The Cline family sources Mourvèdre grapes from the deep, sandy soil of California’s Contra Costa Valley for this late-harvest wine. There’s a bright pop of peppery, dark fruit on the nose. The palate is a joy with notes of plums and blackberries. There’s just the right amount of sweetness countered by fresh acidity.

Average price: $32
Rating: 93

Best Sweet White Wines

Keuka Spring Vineyards Après 2021

Vignoles is one of the more well-known hybrid grapes, and it thrives in upstate New York. This delicious dessert wine comes from the banks of Keuka Lake in the Finger Lakes. It has inviting notes of raw honeycomb on the nose. The palate has an intriguing texture, with wonderful acidity and a balanced finish.

Average price: $22
Rating: 90

Rodica Yellow Muscat 2021

One of the oldest families of grapes on the planet, Muscat comes in many forms, ranging from dry to sweet and everything in between. This example finds the perfect middle ground, with a beeswax-like sweetness impeccably balanced by active natural acidity. The nose has notes of minerals and honey with refreshing hints of potpourri. The palate bursts with peaches and subtle flecks of pepper.

Average price: $25
Rating: 94

Big Cork Vineyards Bank Road Vidal Blanc 2020

When it comes to hybrid grapes, Virginia is one of the most prominent areas for production and experimentation. But just north, in Maryland, we’re beginning to see the same push and this Vidal Blanc shows they are on the right track. This wine has a shy nose, but it’s the mouthfeel that sings with rich caramel notes. The palate is quite angular, with good acid to balance the sweetness.

Average price: $35
Rating: 90

Lamoreaux Landing Riesling Ice 2022

Here’s a great example of how the Finger Lakes is killing it with frozen Riesling. This wine has wonderful notes of baked apple and honey on the nose with a hint of citrus peel. The palate is well balanced with plentiful acidity and harmonious fruit that fills the senses.

Average price: $38
Rating: 91

Barboursville Vineyards Paxxito 2019

This historic Virginia estate is calling back to our wine history with this sweet wine, a style very popular around the founding of the U.S. A blend of the aromatic Muscat Ottonel and Vidal Blanc grapes, the nose wafts with aromas of acacia and honey. The palate is rich yet balanced with good acidity and an even finish.

Average price: $40
Rating: 91

Stringer Cellars Late Harvest Viognier 2022

Viognier is super expressive. When made as a dry wine white it gives perfumed aromas and oily textures. As a sweet wine, it takes us on a different journey. This example from the Robert Young vineyard in Alexander Valley has a musky nose with notes of orange blossom, ginger, and chamomile tea. The fragrant nose is balanced on the palate with great acidity, breaking through the wine’s viscosity.

Average price: $50
Rating: 90

Mazza Vineyards Ice Wine of Vidal Blanc 2018

Hybrids are a big part of our American wine history. In the past few years, the industry has been celebrating these varieties more and we’re here for it. They thrive in the cool climates of the Northeast, and this Vidal ice wine from Pennsylvania is a great example of how delicious they can be. The nose is well developed with aged aromas of caramel and brûléed pear. The palate is inviting with a soft, creamy mouthfeel and balanced acidity. Welcome to hybrids.

Average price: $55
Rating: 92

Sheldrake Point Riesling Ice Wine 2020

High-acid varieties grown in very cool climates make for great ice wine, and New York’s Finger Lakes region is uniquely suited to make stunning wines in this style. This Riesling ice wine from Sheldrake Point is one of our favorites from the Empire State. It has a well-balanced nose with hints of white pepper, stone fruit, agave, and some ginger. The palate is creamy with concentrated tropical fruit notes and amazing acidity. Enjoy this with a rich cheese like Stilton.

Average price: $60
Rating: 93

Balletto Vineyards Harvest Select Noble B Chardonnay 2021

This is a first for us here at VinePair. We’ve tasted many sweet wines, but never one made from the Chardonnay grape. And after tasting this we hope to see more, cuz wow, this bottle from the Russian River Valley is good. It’s made with selectively harvested Chardonnay grapes that have been affected by botrytis (otherwise known as “noble rot”), which is a component in the production of the world’s most renowned sweet wines like Sauternes and Tokaji. It welcomes the senses with warming honeyed notes and hints of toasted coconut. The palate is soft and viscous with nice weight and just the right amount of acidity.

Average price: $65
Rating: 92

Materra Cunat Family Vineyards Amabie Late Harvest Sauvignon Blanc 2022

The Cunat family sets a standard here for late-harvest Sauvignon Blanc from California. It has classic green pepper aromas that you would expect from this grape, but coated with a dollop of honey. The palate is all about texture with a viscous mouthfeel lifted by nice acidity. What an awesome wine.

Average price: $68
Rating: 90

Lenkey Pincészet Tokaji Aszú 6 Puttonyos 2000

Hungary is known for producing some of the most age-worthy and prestigious sweet wines in the world. It’s a tradition going back centuries and this bottle from 2000 will send you back in time. The nose has salted caramel and citrus peel notes with hints of white pepper. The palate brings a dose of caramelized fruit flavor that adds to its complexity. The acidity is still lively, lifting up the richness on the palate.

Average price: $95
Rating: 96

Livio Felluga Picolit 2015

Picolit, a variety native to Italy’s Friuli region, is named for its small grape bunches. The conditions need to be just right to produce a perfect Picolit, so these wines aren’t made every year. It’s when the vintage is just right that these little berries are coaxed into a sweet, late-harvest wine. It’s a rare treat and Livio Felluga sets the standard when it comes to quality. This wine has a comforting nose with notes of caramel, pear brandy, and almonds. It has an exceptional, focused palate that finds the optimal balance between sweetness and acidity.

Average price: $125
Rating: 96

Best Sparkling Sweet Wines

Ceretto I Vignaioli di Santo Stefano Moscato d’Asti 2022

Asti, an ancient town in the heart of Piedmont’s wine country, is the first documented home of the Moscato grape. This naturally effervescent wine is how we first fell in love with this grape, and today wines from this region are better than ever. The nose is expressive with floral notes and pops of orange zest and honey. The palate is very balanced with calm, frothing bubbles and a nice harmony between sugar and acidity.

Average price: $24
Rating: 92

Inniskillin Sparkling Icewine 2022

The cold climate in our neighbor to the north makes it another great region for producing hybrid grapes and ice wine. Inniskillin was the first estate winery in Canada and we always enjoy their ice wine lineup. Especially when they add some sparkle. This bubbly bottle has ripe stone fruit on the nose with slight white pepper and creamy agave notes. The sweetness on the palate is balanced by lively bubbles that rise through the viscosity. That depth with those bubbles is so harmonious.

Average price: $90
Rating: 94

FAQs

How is sweet wine made?

There are several different techniques that can be used to make sweet wine. Wines can be made sweet from harvesting the grape later in the growing season to let them accumulate more sugars (these are known as late-harvest wines), harvesting the grapes when they’re frozen (these are known as ice wines), or by selecting grapes that have been affected by botrytis, a fungus also known as “noble rot” that concentrates sugars in the grape. Further explanation can be found here.

Where do sweet wines come from?

Sweet wines can be made in any region, but they are common in cooler-climate regions like Germany, New York, and Canada. Some of the world’s most famous sweet wines also come from Hungary and France’s Bordeaux. There are also great dessert wines coming out of Italy, where grapes can be dried using the passito method to retain sweetness.

Why are sweet wines so expensive?

Sweet wines can get pretty pricey, but that’s usually because they are so rare. The grapes used to make these wines are usually specially selected due to certain growing conditions or need to go through a time-consuming winemaking method, so there’s a limited amount of these wines produced.

VinePair’s Tasting Methodology

Throughout the year, VinePair conducts numerous tastings for our popular Buy This Booze column, and wine and spirits reviews. Our mission is to provide a clear, reliable source of information for drinkers, providing an overview applicable to day-to-day buying and drinking.

Tastings are not typically conducted blind. In alignment with our reviews mission, we believe in purposefully tasting all products as our readers typically would, with full knowledge of the producer, the region, and the price.

For Buy This Booze roundups, we typically include a maximum of one expression per brand, though we do allow multiple products from the same production facility (i.e., released under different labels).

In creating this list of the best sweet wines, we took into account various criteria before making our final decisions. Our goal was to showcase a diverse range of wines in different styles and from different regions, at a range of different prices, to best suit every possible occasion.

The article The 15 Best Sweet Wines for 2024 appeared first on VinePair.

Consumers may be surprised to know that the people in the beer industry will often personally opt for brands that can be found in most bars across the country. Once they’ve wrapped up a day of making craft ales and lagers, they may just feel like reaching for a dependable, nostalgic, and mass-produced brew without any of the frills.

Here, we tapped brewers to tell us their favorite macro beers and why they’re so loyal to them. And from ubiquitous Miller High Life to Modelo Especial to Coors Banquet and Bud Heavy, they delivered. Their reasoning might be different among them — cultural, nostalgic, or seemingly frivolous — but most of our sources agreed that simplicity, consistency, and approachability can be just what they need.

Read on for our brewers’ macro beers-of-choice.

The best macro beers, according to brewers:

• Miller High Life
• Modelo Especial
• Narragansett
• Presidente
• Pacifico
• Coors Banquet
• Budweiser
• Guinness

“It’s always going to be a (very cold!) Miller High Life in a bottle. It’s reliable and always consistent! After drinking craft beer exclusively for many years, I’ve realized that High Life is one of the most flavorful, crispy macro beers out there. The flaked corn gives it a smooth mouthfeel, so it’s the perfect go-to when you want to enjoy a tasty, easy-drinking beer at a handsome price point. They also have very good merch!” —Andreina Uribe, cellar person, Grimm Artisanal Ales, Brooklyn

“I’m going to go with Narragansett as my favorite macro beer. I remember being out with friends at one of my favorite bars in college. They ran out of PBR so the bartender suggested Narragansett to me, and it’s been my go to for over 10 years now!” —LaTroya Butts, brewer, Resident Culture Brewing Co., Charlotte N.C.

“Modelo Especial. What I bring to every family get-together. It’s crisp, refreshing and easy-drinking. Something that I can drink and dance with all night.” —Galadriel Hernandez, brewer, Grimm Artisanal Ales, Brooklyn

“My go-to macro beer is Miller High Life, always in bottles. I live in a place where it is really hard to find a bar with a clean draft system, so, if I’m at a dive, I prefer ordering bottles. I also don’t like cans; I feel like they get warm too fast. And I prefer High Life because it’s a bit more dry and it has less residual sweetness than the other macro beers — it’s the Champagne of beers after all! Their marketing got me!” —Maria Shirts, head brewer, Tin Roof Brewing Co., Baton Rouge, La.

“Favorite macro is probably Modelo Especial. Make it a Michelada with a heavy pinch of salt and a lime squeeze, and you basically have a Pedialyte for your next hair of the dog (note: I am not a doctor).” —Luke Fuhrman, owner and brewer, Weaver Hollow Brewery, Andes, N.Y.

“I wouldn’t be true to my culture if I didn’t say Presidente.” —Del Hidalgo, brewer, Fifth Hammer Brewing Company, NYC

“Pacifico! Mostly what I drink all the time. Besides its clean and refreshing taste, something about the brown bottle with the yellow label always brings back memories of family and friends and good times.” —Jovan Gonzalez, brewery manager, Societe Brewing Co., San Diego

“I would say my go-to macro beer is Coors Banquet. It’s really crisp but has a more robust malt character than most of its peers. Plus, I’m a sucker for the cute, stubby bottles.” —Luke Thorley, head brewer, Personal Best Brewing, Ithaca, N.Y.

“My go to macro has to be High Life with a splash of Campari in it. It’s a delicious drink and gives more structure and bitterness to the malt water.” —Andrew Schwartz, co-founder, Human People Beer, Seattle

“Bud Heavy when I’m in a bar with questionable draft line cleanliness. I prefer Miller High Life, but it’s not always fresh.” —Chris Lohring, founder and brewer, Notch Brewing, Salem, Mass.

“My go to macro is Guinness. I worked in Irish pubs from age 14 to 21, so despite drinking a lot of craft beer at the time, Guinness had to be my first legal beer. It’s low-ABV and always an enjoyable and comforting pint.” —Brendon Boudwin, brewer and co-owner, Carbon Copy, Philadelphia

“Go-to macro beer would be Miller High Life: It’s just easy, crisp, and refreshing. Modelo Especial is a close second.” —Bobby Rolandi, head brewer, Kings County Brewers Collective, Brooklyn

*Image retrieved from Steve Cukrov – stock.adobe.com

The article We Asked 12 Brewers: What’s Your Go-To Macro Beer? (2024) appeared first on VinePair.

According to Expedia’s annual travel trend report, more than 40 percent of travelers are expected to go “dry tripping,” a.k.a. abstaining from drinking while on vacation. And yes, for many that includes at the airport. Sure, we get that skipping the airport bar’s house red may help avoid a post-flight headache. But does traveling sans booze qualify as a trend, or is this yet another push from the NA sect to give pricy, zero-proof beverages a new place to land?

There is certainly a benefit to creating more beverage options for those who don’t wish to imbibe for any reason, and we’re happy to see their options expand. But it’s just as likely that this “trend” speaks to the larger perpetuation of wellness and self-optimization, where these up-and-coming NA brands function more as accessories than bonafide beverage options. And as long as people will pay premium prices for non-alcoholic drinks, vendors will stock them.

On this episode of the “VinePair Podcast,” Joanna and Zach discuss how airlines and hotels increasing their non-alcoholic options is being spun as a totally new form of travel. Tune in for more.

Zach is drinking: Casamara Club Fora
Joanna is drinking: DeGroff Bitter Aperitivo

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The article The VinePair Podcast: Expanded NA Options in Travel Is Capitalism, Not a Trend appeared first on VinePair.

Though the days of backyard barbecues and impromptu beach trips are far behind us (for now), there’s still plenty of cold-weather fun to look forward to. 

When hosting, choosing which cocktail to serve is integral to throwing a soirée guests won’t soon forget. To keep things simple, opt for a tried-and-true classic cocktail. 

Timeless and straightforward pours like the Campari Negroni or the fashionable and rich SKYY Espresso Martini are excellent crowd-pleasers. If you’re throwing a party and want guests to have options, a mix of lighter, citrusy drinks like the Grand Margarita and cozy cocktails like the Wild Turkey 101 Old Fashioned may be best. And, of course, nothing conveys an easier, breezier attitude when catching up with friends than an effervescent Aperol Spritz.

Classic drinks never go out of style. As you wait out the winter, keep this chart handy when contemplating which drink suits your party needs best. 

The article 6 Party-Ready Classic Cocktails That Never Go Out of Style [Infographic] appeared first on VinePair.

The Manhattan is easily the most famous of the cocktails named after New York’s five boroughs and, many would argue, the best by some margin. A carefully balanced mix of whiskey, sweet vermouth, and Angostura bitters, with a cocktail cherry garnish, it is a timeless masterpiece.

As with many of the so-called “classics,” the Manhattan seems to inspire debate among the cocktail cognoscenti — namely over whether rye or bourbon should hold the role of base spirit. To them, we say: Use what you damn please! But if it’s historical accuracy you seek, reach for rye, no ifs, ands, or buts.

The problem with this debate is the detraction from a more pertinent discussion: which vermouth to choose. It’s easy to overlook this component of the cocktail, as vermouth is cheaper than whiskey; the options at most liquor stores are generally fewer; and given the fortified wine’s lower ABV content, it’s easy to dismiss vermouth as a supporting actor at best. The latter may be true to some degree, but for as long as the Academy Awards continue to dole out golden statues for the role, we will continue to argue the importance of choosing the right vermouth for your Manhattan.

In this case, the golden rule is that the bottle should be a sweet style of vermouth, arriving with an amber — if not vibrant red — hue, and infused with an array of botanicals. Beyond that, it’s a case of diving into the details.

The myriad styles, profiles, and countries of origin of sweet vermouth actually make the whiskey selection quite simple by comparison. This is why we took on the task of tasting more than 40 bottles to highlight the best of the best.

Listed in alphabetical order, here are the 15 best sweet vermouths for your Manhattan.

Antica Torino Vermouth di Torino

This is a stellar example of floral and aromatic sweet vermouth. The palate starts sweet, but is countered by a complex bitter finish. While its aromas suggest it may be a step too far for such a delicately balanced cocktail, this vermouth delivers a Manhattan that is more perfumed than one might imagine possible.

Average price: $30

Calissano Vermut di Torino Superiore Rosso

Gavi and Langhe Nebbiolo provide the majority base for this clean, lively, and balanced sweet vermouth. Intense wormwood is balanced by caramel and vanilla notes, translating to a Manhattan that’s full of character but doesn’t stray too far from the profile you might be familiar with when mixing with more mass-market offerings (in a good way). Its herbs and spices — particularly the wormwood — serve to amplify the herbaceousness of the rye, bringing out a vibrant and enjoyable green note.

Average price: $28

Carpano Antica Formula 1786

A burly bartender staple, Carpano Antica serves the archetypal sweet vermouth profile, but with extra layers and nuance — like drinking a great bottle of red wine that’s spent some time in a decanter. Just as it does when mixed in a Negroni, Carpano Antica hits all the notes you’d expect from a classic Manhattan but dials them up a notch. The result is a cocktail that delivers all that you crave, and then some.

Average price: $37

Cocchi Storico Vermouth di Torino

Distinct vanilla aromas quickly indicate this vermouth will complement those gained by the whiskey during maturation, while its bittersweet palate seems the perfect match for Angostura. Those predictions are soon confirmed, though what is surprising is just how effective this vermouth is in allowing the rye whiskey to shine. When you’re pulling out a baller bottle of rye to mix in cocktails, look no further than Cocchi.

Average price: $27

Conde de Artoiz Vermouth de Garnacha

Despite its darker hue and the fact most sweet vermouths arrive in bottles adorned with red labels and detailing, this style of aromatized wine is typically made using a white wine base. Not here, though, with juicy and fruity Spanish Garnacha (Grenache) employed instead, alongside the usual secretive blend of botanicals. It serves a surprisingly chocolaty Manhattan, which prompted us to opt for an orange twist garnish instead of a cherry.

Average price: $26

Contratto Vermouth Rosso

Produced in Piedmont, Italy, this is a vibrant sweet vermouth with a noticeably fruity and floral character. Those flavors and aromas make it an ideal candidate for highballs made with mineral water or tonic, but then you’d be depriving yourself of a lean, expressive Manhattan that’s perfect for summertime.

Average price: $27

Dos Deus Red Vermouth

Produced in Spain’s famed (red-winemaking) Priorat region, this herbaceous, spicy-sweet vermouth contains 40 botanicals and is aged for six months in red wine and sherry barrels. Mixed with whiskey and bitters, it yields a Manhattan so rich and concentrated that the final cocktail verges on Old Fashioned territory. With a chocolaty finish, this is another that could benefit from an orange or citrus twist — along with a cherry, if you so wish.

Average price: $30

Guerin Vermouth Rouge

A blend of Pineau des Charentes and red and white wines, Guerin’s sweet vermouth pops with notes of candied apples, quince paste, and tart red candies. The bright and fruity Manhattan it mixes therefore comes as no surprise, and if the season allows, we’d even be tempted to finish with a fresh red cherry garnish.

Average price: $22

Mata Vermouth Tinto

Despite its northern Spanish origin, this sweet vermouth is more akin to French offerings, with a drier profile, vibrant herbaceousness, and little in the way of oxidative notes that sherry-based vermouths typically present. Those characteristics set up an equally dry Manhattan, with intermittent bursts of spearmint and piney wood notes.

Average price: $21

Mulassano Vermouth Rosso

Tasted on its own, this Vermouth di Torino begins with subtle aromas of alpine herbs and botanicals, and just a hint of fruit and sweetness. The palate — much like the Manhattan we ultimately enjoyed it in — is another story: intense, concentrated, with astounding balance. If you sit for a moment to contemplate, you can decipher each component of the cocktail, but the marriage is so harmonious that the drink is ultimately much greater than the sum of its parts. This is a stunner.

Average price: $32

Noilly Prat Rouge

Twenty-nine different herbs and spices sourced from around the world contribute expressive aromas to this French vermouth. It’s pleasant and approachable on the palate, absent of the grippy bitterness that can be challenging. The vermouth’s herbaceous character elevates the rye whiskey’s dill pickle aromas when mixed in a Manhattan. It’s a solid pick for mixing textbook versions of this timeless cocktail.

Average price: $14

Poli Gran Bassano Rosso Vermouth

Another red-wine-based vermouth, this Italian expression is crafted from Merlot grapes in the heart of the Veneto, close to the home region of Grappa production. The base wine is evident in its bright ruby hue, while its fruit-forward profile is tempered by complex herbs, spices, and bitterness. Opt for this if you’d like a rich, ripe red-fruited Manhattan that finishes surprisingly dry and tannic.

Average price: $25

Punt e Mes

The name Punt e Mes translates to “point and a half,” and loosely refers to the vermouth’s composition: one part vermouth, half a part intensely bitter liqueur. The latter really stands out: This vermouth is exceedingly bitter, with pronounced wormwood, herbs, and spice notes. Punt e Mes mixes a notably dark Manhattan that looks like an aged oloroso sherry. Despite this being a distinctly bitter vermouth, it integrates seamlessly with the Angostura bitters and the rye, providing an added layer of textural complexity in a cocktail that grabs your attention.

Average price: $27

Vermouth Routin Rouge

Like a decadent winter dessert bottled as aromatic fortified wine, Vermouth Routin exudes notes of fruit cake, brown sugar, and baking spices. Slightly fuller-bodied than other vermouths, it lends the Manhattan a plush, velvety texture. Meanwhile, its confectionery character riffs wonderfully against the spiced Angostura bitters.

Average price: $22

Lustau Vermut Rojo

Most producers promote their proprietary mix of herbs and spices when marketing their vermouths. This blend of nutty amontillado and luscious Pedro Ximénez sherries proves that a high-quality base wine is just as important. Rich and decadent — even before the cherry enters the equation — the bite of rye is present in this Manhattan, but it’s softened by the Lustau. This combination is balance, exemplified.

Average price: $23

FAQ

Why do you use sweet vermouth in a Manhattan?

Sweet vermouth adds subtle sweetness, bitterness, and spice to a Manhattan.

What kind of bitters go in a Manhattan?

Angostura bitters are typically used in a classic Manhattan recipe.

Should you refrigerate sweet vermouth?

Absolutely! While it’s slightly fortified and contains sugar, sweet vermouth’s relatively low ABV means that it will begin to oxidize as soon as the bottle is opened. Storing in the refrigerator will help slow down the degradation process and allow you to enjoy it for longer.

How long does open sweet vermouth last?

The lifespan of open sweet vermouth varies depending on a number of factors, including whether it’s stored in the refrigerator or not. Following all best practices — including placing in the fridge when not in use — allows sweet vermouth to stay in good condition for up to a month.

The article The 15 Best Sweet Vermouths for Your Manhattan (2024) appeared first on VinePair.

When planning some of the first recipes at Dallas’s Vector Brewing, head of brewing Tomás Gutierrez looked to beer’s origins.

The earliest beers made thousands of years ago were a kind of porridge or beer soup made from cereal grains. So, in collaboration with nearby Intrinsic Brewing, Gutierrez started designing soup-inspired beers. There was a tom kha hazy IPA, based on the Thai coconut soup. There was a Mexican pozole-inspired smoked beer, with a full hog’s head in the boil.

But the one that has stuck around and become a crowd favorite started with one of Gutierrez’s favorite comfort foods: pho.

“All the spices and aromatics in that really play well,” Gutierrez says. “The first one we did was just lemongrass, basil, and Thai chili.”

But the key ingredient that keeps his spiced Pho Sho lager clean and crisp is also an ancient one: rice.

And like Gutierrez, craft brewers across the country are tapping the grain for their latest creations, finding inspiration in global and local flavors, and drinkers are unsurprisingly on board.

Can rice go craft?

Rice beer has roots in civilization’s earliest fermented beverages, and is a key part of some of the world’s top-selling beer brands. (Bud Light proudly touts rice as one of its four ingredients.) But despite — and in part because of — its mass-market appeal, rice has largely been overlooked by the craft beer industry.

“There definitely is a stigma around using those adjuncts like rice or using corn,” says Shawn Oberle, the head brewer at Broadway Brewery in Columbia, Mo. “For a long time, they weren’t cool to make. Everyone was making the big IPAs or sours and things like that.”

“It just feels right as being part of this community, part of this area, to utilize something that’s important to so many people.”

But in the last several years, more craft brewers have begun embracing light lagers, from “crispy boi” pilsners to other adjunct-based brews that appeal to both craft and non-craft drinkers.

“People love lagers and light beer, but they’ve always been pushed as non-craft,” says Aaron Weshnak, the head brewer at Dokkaebier, a Korean-owned brewery in Oakland that focuses on Asian-inspired flavors and ingredients. His Rice Kolsch is one of the brewery’s flagship beers. “Why don’t we just make a good craft beer with rice, and instead of it being this garbage adjunct, it’s a valued ingredient?”

When brewed with other malts, rice can boost alcohol without boosting the body of a beer. Japanese rice lagers utilize rice to keep the beer ultra-light and dry. It’s also a key ingredient in light American lagers, giving them a pale straw color and a clean, neutral flavor profile.

For Ryan O’Donnell, the head brewer at Crying Eagle Brewing Company in Lake Charles, La., brewing a light lager with rice is a chance to salute the region’s cash crop. There are rice festivals in his part of southwest Louisiana, and the rice industry employs a lot of the people who drink his beer locally.

Every year, he goes to a local rice mill, where he picks up a truckful of milled rice grown, harvested, and processed right in his backyard. It’s part of what makes his Louisiana Lager a best-seller, he says.

“It just feels right as being part of this community, part of this area, to utilize something that’s important to so many people,” O’Donnell says. “It’s very important to me if I say something’s in a beer, that you taste it in the beer, and you taste it properly in the beer.”

Experimenting With Flavor

Other brewers, like Oberle and Gutierrez, are using that light lager base as an opportunity to experiment with other Asian-inspired flavors.

During the pandemic shutdowns of 2020, Oberle wanted to make a beer version of dashi, the broth that’s used for dishes like miso soup and ramen. A traditional dashi uses a dried kelp called kombu and katsuobushi, fermented fish flakes.

“We are seeing people go back to those lighter lagers or something that’s a little bit more approachable.”

Oberle swapped the fish flakes for lemongrass in his Dashi rice lager, but kept the kelp for added salinity and umami. He first brewed it as a one-off small batch, but it quickly became a crowd favorite, and is now on the brewery’s seasonal rotation.

“There’s enough of that characteristic to it that people can kind of grab on to while also providing some uniqueness with the lemongrass and brightness,” Oberle says. “We’ve had it on tap at different sushi restaurants, and it’s gone over really well. It pairs well with what they’ve got going on.”

Oberle makes another adjunct lager with corn, and says he is finding that all kinds of consumers are looking for lighter beers, not just the palate-crushing IPAs and barrel-aged stouts that have defined much of the American craft beer movement.

“We are seeing people go back to those lighter lagers or something that’s a little bit more approachable,” Oberle says. “They’re not drinking Coors Light at home primarily, but still are willing to kind of go out and drink [a light lager] at the restaurant or pick it up off the shelves.”

In the few years since first brewing his pho lager, Gutierrez has continued working on the recipe. He tried several broths from some of his favorite pho restaurants, and went on a shopping spree at a Vietnamese grocery store near the brewery. He ended up spicing this year’s Pho Sho lager with more than 15 spices and herbs, including Thai basil and Thai chilies, cardamom, galangal, shiitake mushrooms, and black peppercorn — all with a flaked brown rice backbone.

He’s also brewed a lager with sake-grade Yamada Nishiki rice grown in Arkansas and inoculated with koji spores to add additional citrus and umami flavors.

“It lends a little bit of a lighter body in conjunction with lending lighter flavor profiles,” Gutierrez says. “Having like a cool little spice note or something subtle enough in something so crushable is kind of cool.”

Weshnak says those flavors leave ample room for experimentation, especially as more craft brewers look toward Asian ingredients for inspiration. Along with the Rice Kolsch, he also makes a Kimchi Sour, a Lemongrass Witbier, and Yuza Blonde Ale.

“You have these like untapped resources of all these Asian ingredients that are just not in the traditional beer world,” Weshnak says. “It’s just fun. I mean, these beers are just interesting.”

The article No Longer Just For Macro Lagers, Craft Beer Is Finally Embracing Rice appeared first on VinePair.

It’s no coincidence that the same people who say they love Sauvignon Blanc are also satisfied with a Sancerre, or that fans of Pinot Noir also have an affinity for Burgundy. That’s because these wines are actually made from the same grape variety.

In fact, it’s not uncommon to be unaware of which grapes you’re actually enjoying when you order a glass of wine. Inconsistent naming practices across the world of wine constantly stir up confusion, which proves to be one of the greatest barriers to wine education: each country, and sometimes even individual regions, have their own labeling laws.

For example, if you buy a wine from France, it’s typically classified by region under the appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC) system. Therefore, the most well-known French wines are names of places — Burgundy, Bordeaux, Champagne, Sancerre, and so on — not grapes. In the U.S., and other countries outside Europe, the wines are generally labeled by grape variety, some of the most popular being Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, and Sauvignon Blanc. But in countries like Italy, some wines are labeled by region and others by grape, and a few are a combination of both. (Take Dolcetto d’Alba: Dolcetto is the grape, and Alba is the region). When the bottles that line wine shop shelves flip flop between region and grape, it’s no wonder why wine labels are so frequently lost in translation.

Without taking a full-on sommelier certification course, it can be difficult to keep track of all of the varieties and regions you might see on labels out there, so we figured we’d help you out with this easy-to-follow guide. Read on to discover which grapes make up the most iconic wines from around the world.

Champagne: Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier

Though it’s tempting to use Champagne as a blanket term for all sparkling wine, this specific type of bubbly can only be made in its namesake region in France. To earn the label of Champagne, the vines need to be grown within the boundaries of the small northern appellation, and made from a certain set of varieties in a specific style. The primary grapes used in Champagne production are Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Meunier. Even though these three varieties make up the majority of Champagnes, there are actually seven grapes permitted in the wine and are used on occasion, with the additional varieties being Arbane, Petit Meslier, Pinot Blanc, and Pinot Gris.

Sancerre: Sauvignon Blanc

Sancerre is a small appellation in the Centre-Loire subsection of France’s Loire Valley. The vineyards in the region surround their namesake town in an area renowned for both wine and goat cheese. The white wines here are made from Sauvignon Blanc and are known for their crisp, acid-driven profiles with notes of citrus and hints of grass. Other small towns that surround Sancerre like Pouilly-Fumé and Menetou-Salon are also known for their fresh and flinty styles of Sauvignon Blanc. It’s also worth noting that red wines from Sancerre are made with Pinot Noir, and though they are more difficult to find, they’re delicious.

Muscadet: Melon de Bourgogne

Muscadet is a bit of an outsider when it comes to France’s naming conventions. While French wine labels typically correspond with region, the name Muscadet has nothing to do with the town the grapes are grown in or the grape variety. Muscadet wines come from around the city of Nantes in the Lower Loire Valley near the Atlantic coast, resulting in fresh, mineral-driven wines beloved for their easy-drinking crispness, ability to pair extraordinarily well with seafood, and approachable price tags. The grape used to make these wines is called Melon de Bourgogne, which is rarely found outside the Loire, but there are some examples we love from the U.S.

Vouvray: Chenin Blanc

Vouvray is the most recognizable of several appellations across the Loire Valley known for making wines from the Chenin Blanc grape. This variety is known for its great range, producing wines that can be dry, off-dry, sweet, or even sparkling. If you’re a fan of Vouvray and are looking to explore the Chenin Blanc grape from other regions, you can try other appellations from the Loire Valley like Savennières or Anjou or you can mix it up with a bottle from South Africa, which is also known to produce high-quality Chenin Blanc.

Chablis: Chardonnay

Not to be confused with the cheap California jug wine that, ahem, “borrowed” its name, Chablis is the northernmost subregion of the prestigious Burgundy. It’s known for its cool climate and distinct soils that make it ideal for growing crisp, high-acid expressions of Chardonnay. Compared to other regions farther south in Burgundy or in California, these wines are generally unoaked, so Chablis can even appeal to the most adamant anything-but-Chardonnay drinker.

White Burgundy: Chardonnay

White wines from Burgundy labeled as Bourgogne Blanc or a more specific village name are made from Chardonnay. So yes, even though Chardonnay can get a bad rap in California, it actually makes up some of the most sought-after white wines in the world. The style can vary from village to village, and while many enthusiasts enjoy parsing out the individual differences between each appellation, overall these wines are known to have a bit more richness and oak influence than Chardonnay from Chablis, but still show elegance and restraint.

Red Burgundy: Pinot Noir

Similarly, if a wine is labeled as Bourgogne Rouge or a more specific village name from within Burgundy, this wine is made from Pinot Noir. These wines are known for their light red fruit flavors, earthiness, and complexity. They’re also renowned for their ability to express terroir, or a specific sense of place, and are often labeled according to the exact vineyard area where they are grown, which can make them some of the most expensive bottles in the world. So if you’re a fan of red Burgundy but are looking for a similar wine at a more approachable cost, seek out Pinot Noir from cooler-climate regions like Santa Barbara, the Sonoma Coast, New Zealand, or Germany as good alternatives.

Beaujolais: Gamay

Beaujolais is a region just to the south of Burgundy known for making juicy and easy-drinking red wines from the Gamay grape. At their most basic level, these wines will be labeled as simply Beaujolais, which means the grapes could be sourced from anywhere in the region. If the wine is labeled as Beaujolais-Villages, the grapes have to come from any of the 38 villages specifically designated for quality. But the wines from the 10 most prestigious areas in Beaujolais are known as the “crus” and the names of these areas can be listed on the label. So if you love Beaujolais wines, you could also seek out wines labeled as Morgon, Fleurie, Chiroubles, and so on, as these are also made from Gamay. There are also great expressions of Gamay to be found in the Loire Valley, as well as the U.S.

Côtes du Rhône: Grenache, Syrah, Mourvèdre

Côtes du Rhône wines are great crowd-pleasing reds that can easily be found at an affordable price. Their approachable, medium-bodied, fruit-forward blends are typically composed of Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvèdre. Grenache can provide big, jammy fruit characteristics while Syrah and Mourvèdre provide more structure and savory notes, coming together to make a red blend that has something for everyone. Though those three grapes tend to make up the backbone of most of the wines (earning the blend the nickname GSM) small amounts of other local grapes including Carignan, Cinsault, Counoise, and Vaccarese are also permitted. The main trio are also the primary grapes used in the more prestigious appellations of the Southern Rhône, including Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Gigondas, and Vacqueyras.

Hermitage: Syrah

Unlike the blends of the Southern Rhône, the red wines of the Northern Rhône are focused on a single variety: Syrah. The slopes of this region are renowned for their savory, spicy, and elegant expressions. Hermitage is among the most sought-after appellations within the Northern Rhône, along with Côte-Rôtie and Cornas. For slightly more approachable wines, look to the regions of Saint-Joseph or Crozes-Hermitage. Beyond France, there are also great examples of Syrah coming from California and Australia, where it is locally known as Shiraz.

Red Bordeaux: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc

Although the name Bordeaux has become synonymous with a certain style of red blend, it is actually the name of a region in France on the Atlantic coast. The grapes that go into these illustrious blends include Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc, as well as smaller percentages of Malbec, Petit Verdot, and sometimes Carménère. To combat climate change, four new grapes were recently added to the list of accepted varieties: Touriga Nacional, Marselan, Castets, Arinarnoa. Areas within Bordeaux are known for their different styles: the Left Bank primarily focuses on Cabernet Sauvignon-focused blends and the Right Bank is more Merlot-dominant.

White Bordeaux: Sauvignon Blanc, Sémillon, Muscadelle

White wines from Bordeaux can be labeled as Bordeaux Blanc, or under a few high-quality region names including Pessac-Léognan, Entre-Deux-Mers, or Graves. These wines are often blends of Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon with a touch of Muscadelle. The wines can vary in style depending on if they’re Sauvignon Blanc- or Sémillon-dominant, ranging from light and crisp to more rounded and textured. If you’re a fan of Sauvignon Blanc, Bordeaux is a great region to explore for a great value alternative to Sancerre.

Chianti: Sangiovese

Chianti, the ultimate pasta-and-pizza-pairing wine, is a designation in the beautiful hills of Tuscany. The wines under the Chianti classification must be composed of at least 80 percent Sangiovese — the most planted red grape in Italy — and can have up to 20 percent of other red varieties such as Canaiolo Nero, Ciliegiolo, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, or Syrah.

Brunello di Montalcino

Brunello di Montalcino, produced from the vineyards surrounding the charming town of Montalcino, is one of the most reputable, and expensive, wines in Italy, and it’s also made of the Sangiovese grape. As opposed to Chianti, wines under the Brunello di Montalcino appellation need to be 100 percent Sangiovese, so no blending is allowed. Further, they need to use the specific Brunello clone of this grape. Therefore, these wines are often revered as the most precise expression of the Sangiovese grape.

Barolo: Nebbiolo

Barolo is a hilly region in Piedmont known for making stunning and impressively age-worthy wines from the Nebbiolo grape. Nebbiolo is also used in the celebrated wines of Barbaresco, another nearby appellation in northern Italy’s Piedmont region. Since these are small areas, the wines from these designations cost a pretty penny. For a more accessible way to explore the Nebbiolo variety, look for wines labeled as Langhe Nebbiolo, which are made from the same grape but are sourced from the larger, overarching area of the Langhe as opposed to specific high-quality towns.

Rioja: Tempranillo

The red wines of northern region Rioja are some of the most well known in Spain. The Tempranillo grape typically dominates these blends, but a wide variety of grapes are actually permitted to be included, too, including Garnacha, Graciano, Mazuelo, and Maturana Tinta. Tempranillo is also the primary grape of Ribera del Duero, another well-known region in the country.

*Image retrieved from MargJohnsonVA – stock.adobe.com

The article Which Grapes Make Up the World’s Most Well-Known Wines? An Illustrated Guide appeared first on VinePair.

You’ve been invited to a dinner party, how nice. Unless you’ve been asked to bring something specific, like a dessert or your famous seven layer dip, you’re likely going to arrive with a bottle of something in hand. Maybe it’s a nice wine or tequila or a non-alcoholic spirit — it doesn’t really matter. Should you open it and drink it?

Obviously this depends on your relationship with the host and how they might respond to such a gesture. If it’s your younger sibling and their drink offerings are not great, or a very close friend and you know they wouldn’t mind it, drinking what you brought could probably be forgiven. But more generally, it’s rude and you shouldn’t do it.

The bottle you bring to a host — or any gift for that matter — is meant to be a gesture of thanks for their hospitality, and it’s their prerogative to open it for everyone to enjoy if they’d like. If they don’t, and it remains untouched during your evening, consider it a gift given. (And no takebacks, either!)

If, on the other hand, you’ve been told to BYOB or the occasion lends itself to sharing drinks — it’s an open house, there are a lot of people — then it’s appropriate to open what you’ve brought. But you still might consider bringing something separate as a thank you for the host.

*Image retrieved from Евгений Вершинин – stock.adobe.com

The article Ask Joanna: Is It Rude to Open the Bottle I Brought as a Gift to the Host? appeared first on VinePair.

Hop water, the sparkling drink that falls somewhere between a non-alcohol beer and a seltzer, is something of an industry oddball. While it’s made a bang as yet another NA option to sip on, it hasn’t been wholly embraced as a brewer go-to: Out of the almost 10,000 breweries in the U.S., only 27 were producing hop water by the end of 2023. Just last week, Dave Infante’s “Hop Take” column made a plea to the American brewing community to start brewing more of it. While more hop water options would certainly make Dave happy, is it what the drinking community at large truly needs?

Well, that’s yet to be seen. Sure, “brewing” hop water is a less expensive undertaking than cranking out decent NA beer, but some feel that its flavor is too similar to flavored seltzer to fit into anyone’s portfolio. And while hop water’s average price point makes it a lot more profitable than flavored seltzer, that’s a double-edged sword, as it’s much harder to justify the craft-league prices that hop water tends to command.

On this episode of the “VinePair Podcast,” Joanna and Zach discuss the growing prominence of hop water in the NA drinks space. What kind of drinker are these products aimed at, are they hoppy enough for beer lovers, and is their steep price point a barrier to further growth? Our hosts also taste one of the most widely distributed versions, the Lagunitas Hoppy Refresher, and share their thoughts. Tune in for more.

Zach is reading: At the World’s Leading Bars, There Are No Bars
Joanna is reading: Meet Heisler, TV’s Favorite Beer That Doesn’t Even Exist

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The article The VinePair Podcast: Is Hop Water Brilliant or BS? appeared first on VinePair.

Sure, most pastries pair beautifully with coffee, but why stop there? Whether you baked a fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies, saved half a cinnamon roll from your work session at the coffee shop, or stopped by your local patisserie for a croissant to go, you deserve a nice glass of something for your trouble. Better yet, a simple pastry spread feels like a proper brunch when a thoughtful beverage pairing is (literally and figuratively) on the table.

From alpine whites and malty stouts that make butter taste even more buttery, to the sweet, fortified finds that sing with chocolate, we’ve hand-picked the best drinks to enjoy with the treat of your choice. Read on for the wine and beer pastry pairings you shouldn’t miss.

Croissant and Czech Pilsner

You may be surprised to see that our suggested pairing for croissants is not a French wine. But croissants are technically a descendent of an Austrian pastry, which means Eastern Europe is the perfect place to find its match. Croissants, with their flaky texture and buttery, grain-focused flavor make a lovely pairing for Czech pilsners. They famously have prominent flavors of malt and bread, which will amp up the wheat flavors in a croissant, and their extra kick of hoppy bitterness provides contrast to its buttery richness. And, the bit of carbonation in the beer provides extra lightness to the croissant’s texture.

Chocolate Chip Cookie and Boal Madeira

Chocolate chip cookies are the little black dress, the George Clooney, the 72-degree day of pastries: They’re hard to beat, and nearly impossible to tire of. With this staple pastry, in all its forms, we recommend Madeira, particularly Boal. This sweet, fragrant expression of the fortified wine has notes of salted caramel, fig, and baking spices, with a bright core of acidity that prevents the sweetness from becoming cloying. This acid will set off any fruity flavors in the chocolate, and the caramel notes will round out the buttery notes of the cookie.

Blueberry muffin and Bugey Cerdon

Blueberry muffins can be a risky order at a new bakery or coffee shop: Though they can be dry and lacking in flavor even remotely in the berry realm, the good ones contrast a rich buttery batter with tart little berry gems in a way that makes the risk worth it. A glass of pink, bubbly Bugey Cerdon from France’s Savoie region, with its notes of powder-sugar-dusted wild strawberries and hints of rose petals, will flesh out the blueberries’ flavor and the bubbles will make the muffin’s texture feel lighter and more ethereal.

Banana bread and hefeweizen

If you already drink hefeweizen, you likely already know and love its signature note of banana bread, generally complemented by hints of allspice, clove, or ripe pear. But if you don’t, prepare to meet the ideal match for this breakfast staple. Not only do they both bring big banana energy to the table, but they make sense on a textural level too: The slight, fluffy carbonation of the beer helps lighten up this slightly denser pastry.

Ham-and-cheese croissant and Grüner Veltliner

The fun thing about a ham-and-cheese croissant pairing (aside from the already-fun opportunity to eat a ham-and-cheese croissant) is that, given the salty savory character of the star ingredients, you have a wide range of complementary options. Our pick: Grüner Veltliner. With its vivid acidity and notes of lime zest and white pepper, it’ll kick up the salty, savory character of the bake several notches. All the better if Gruyère happens to be the cheese inside, or if the ham is cured, as the brightness of Grüner will amplify the rich, brothy character of both.

Concha and Fino Sherry

Though the world of Mexican pan dulce is broad, perhaps the most iconic member of this family is the concha, an enriched dough in a roll shape, with a crunchy sugary cookie “shell” (or concha, in Spanish) topping. Though the dough is typically unflavored, the shell can come in a range of flavors, colors, and patterns. To bring out the caramelization of the topping and the rich flavors of the dough, pair a concha with a glass of fino sherry, and its notes of hazelnut and almond. Fino, among the dryer styles of sherry, will help balance the sweetness.

Cinnamon Roll and Stout

If you’re looking for a filling, uber-comforting pair, look no further. A rich, pillowy cinnamon roll will find balance in the dark-roasted malt character of stout and its hint of hoppy bitterness. Stouts are famed for their velvety mouthfeel, which will make the cinnamon roll feel extra smooth and dessert-y. The kiss of cinnamon in the filling will also find extra dimension thanks to the notes of caramel in the malt.

Kouign-Amann and Late-Harvest Tokaji

Originally from Brittany, the Kouign-Amann is famed both for being difficult to make and for being emblematic of the magic of caramelization. Sweet, salty, light, and rich, their almost honeyed flavor reaches new heights when paired with the similarly honeyed, golden flavor of late-harvest Tokaji. Though both are sweet and rich, the spiced acidity and ginger-grapefruit notes of the fortified wine and the saltiness of the Kouign-Amann prevent the pair from becoming cloying.

The article The Best Beer and Wine Pairings for Pastries appeared first on VinePair.

In 1822, a young George Ballantine left home at 13, bound for a grocer apprenticeship in Edinburgh. By 1827, Ballantine had opened his own grocery store in Cowgate, an area of Edinburgh a fair distance away from the majority of other grocers. The decision to open in Cowgate proved to be worthwhile, with Ballantine able to provide goods like tea, soap, and even whisky to a new market in the city.

Just 10 years later, Ballantine shifted the focus of his store to wine and spirits, blending and aging whisky in his shop. Today, Ballantine’s is the world’s No. 2 top-selling Scotch whisky (behind only Johnnie Walker) with over 9 million cases sold in 2022.

The brand, which currently falls under the Chivas Brothers umbrella owned by Pernod-Ricard, has since expanded past the spirits market by partnering with pioneers across the music, video game, and fashion industries. Now that you know the basics, here are seven more things you should know about Ballantine’s.

1. It all started with a grocery store.

   In the 1800s, it was common for grocery stores to purchase an abundance of single malts from distilleries to sell themselves in barrels. At the time, though, single-malt Scotch tended to be inconsistent. Many shop owners, like Ballantine, chose to blend the spirits together to achieve a more appealing flavor profile. By 1836, approximately 10 years after opening his store, Ballantine had honed in on his blending practices, and was hand-selecting malts to add to his blends. His whisky operation was so successful that he was forced to open a larger shop in South Bridge to keep up with demand. Furthering the shop’s and the whisky’s successes was the introduction of the “shop and drop” method in 1857, which allowed for customers to place orders and expect free delivery within a 10-mile radius.

   As the business continued to grow, Ballantine’s evolved into George Ballantine & Co., a family-owned business with George’s eldest son, Archibald, taking over the Edinburgh shop while the larger operation was established in Glasgow. By the time George retired in 1881, the Scotch was immensely popular and was being exported all over the globe. While Ballantine’s grocery stores are no longer operational, the brand has remained true to its origins; its flagship expression, Ballantine’s Finest, consists of a blend of over 50 single malts.

2. The brand was a favorite of Queen Victoria’s and was beloved by Lord Lyon.

   Queen Victoria was quite the fan of Scotch whisky, having fallen in love with the beverage while on a visit to the Scottish Highlands while on holiday in 1842. Ballantine’s was no exception: In 1895, she even awarded George Ballantine & Co. with a Royal Warrant following a visit to Glasgow, identifying the brand as a trusted supplier to the toyal family. While the brand is no longer a royal warrant holder, it was also beloved by the Lord Lyon King of Arms in the 1930s, which granted the brand its own Heraldic Arms in 1938. The emblem, displayed on every bottle of Ballantine’s whisky, features two horses carrying Scottish flags on either side of a crest depicting the four essential quadrants of whisky production: barley, water, pot stills, and casks. Below each coat of arms is a Latin phrase reading Amicus Humani Generis, or “friend of all mankind.”

3. The bottles’ shape harkens back to American Prohibition.

   Relatively short, squat, and completely rectangular, Ballantine’s first debuted its unusual bottle design during American Prohibition to prevent the bottles from rolling around and clanking together during transport. At the time, many of Ballantine’s salesmen would travel from establishment to establishment with nothing more than a briefcase, sneakily selling the square bottles of illicit alcohol. The bottle design still helps the brand stick out on shelves today.

   Ballantine’s Finest became the flagship expression of the Scotch brand in 1910, but in the 124 years since, the brand has added 16 other bottlings to its lineup across four collections. Ballantine’s 7 American Barrel, Ballantine’s 12 Year Old Whisky, and Ballantine’s Barrel Smooth Whisky join the flagship in the Core Collection, and the age-focused Iconic Collection features Scotch expressions ranging from 17 to 40 years old. While the brand is known for its blends, Ballantine’s has produced numerous single-malt expressions, including 12-, 15-, and 18-year bottlings. The Drinks Range is where the brand tends to have a bit more fun, offering a lighter expression of Ballantine’s Finest, bottled at 20 percent ABV, as well as a selection of fruit-flavored Scotches.

4. Ballantine’s warehouses were once guarded by a flock of geese.

   In the 1950s, the Ballantine’s Dumbarton warehouses were overseen by Brigadier Ronald Cowan, a civil engineer and avid birdwatcher. Considering whisky’s potential to generate extreme profits, thefts at distilleries aren’t unusual, and those in charge of guarding Ballantine’s stock were looking for ways to protect against potential thieves. Cowan, drawing on his ornithology knowledge, told managing director Tom Scott that geese have excellent hearing and eyesight, and tend to be extremely territorial, loudly honking when they feel threatened. The birds would also be cheaper than guard dogs, considering their diet of mainly grasses would make it easy for them to feed on the greenery surrounding the warehouse. So, in 1959, six white geese were brought onto the Dumbarton campus, where they earned the nickname the “Scotch Watch.” Over the decades, the Scotch Watch expanded to include over 100 geese with the help of a breeding program developed by the West of Scotland Agricultural College. Though the flock was replaced with CCTV in 2012, the birds remain a beloved part of the brand’s history and have even starred in numerous advertising campaigns.

5. Ballantine’s uplifts emerging musicians around the world.

   In 2014, Ballantine’s launched the True Music Series, an initiative that stretches across several categories in the music industry and seeks to create a more welcoming and diverse space for artists and fans. The Scotch brand has partnered with the DJ store Beatport, the Glasgow-based music venue Sub Club, and record label Defected Records to foster grassroots music exploration. Ballantine’s also has a long-established partnership with Boiler Room, a U.K.-based music broadcaster, which has resulted in several live events intended to celebrate underground music scenes and stories from around the world. In 2021, Ballantine’s launched the True Music Fund after watching numerous live music venues shutter their doors following the pandemic. Every year, 100,000 pounds is donated to 10 organizations around the world that are making serious strides to diversify and shake up the music industry.

6. The initiative has even produced limited-edition bottlings.

   The brand also launched the True Music Icons Collection in 2023 to pay homage to some of music’s most iconic artists and bands. In the first release, the Scotch brand celebrated legendary rock band Queen with a limited-edition label of Ballantine’s Finest featuring the crest designed by Freddie Mercury depicted on the band’s Greatest Hits II album cover. A month later, the brand followed it up with its second bottle in the collection, this time paying homage to AC/DC. The bottle design is similarly commemorative, showcasing the band’s archetypal lightning bolt.

7. The brand has participated in several collaborations with RZA.

   Sticking true to its brand ethos of supporting innovators in the music industry, Ballantine’s partnered with Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA in July 2023 to celebrate hip-hop’s 50th anniversary through the Stay True campaign. The campaign has produced three collaborations so far across the music, fashion, and food industries. In the first collaboration, Ballantine’s, RZA, and Crosley collaborated to put forth a limited-edition C6 record player and Montero bluetooth speaker, the release of which coincided with the 30th anniversary of Wu-Tang’s first album launch. Drop two saw a collaboration with Japanese fashion brand Neighborhood, which takes inspiration from vintage motorcycle culture, while the third introduced a Ballantine’s-inspired sriracha. This collaboration with Flying Goose takes inspiration from the notes of Ballantine’s 7 American Barrel (creamy caramel, ripe pear, and red apples) and combines them with siracha’s signature spice.

The article 7 Things You Should Know About Ballantine’s appeared first on VinePair.

“Cocktail College” is brought to you today by Tanqueray. I don’t know about you, listener, but I’m one of those people who needs a mobile app to track my budget. And I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I actually have a line item on mine marked “Tanqueray.” It’s true! Because I’m a gin Martini drinker, and Tanqueray is my Martini gin. I’m not ashamed to admit it — I have a Tanqueray monthly budget. But it’s not just for Martinis. No, I turn to Tanqueray for any of the gin classics because it always delivers on that classic London dry profile. You know, Tanqueray is not like a good friend. It’s like a best friend, a dependable stalwart that always delivers. Now, if you’re looking for cocktail inspiration, well, you know you’ve come to the right place. But if you’re looking for something tailored specifically for Tanqueray, you should head over to www.tanqueray.com now because you know what, listener? When it comes to gin cocktails, you deserve the best.

The word “tuxedo” is derived from the Lenape tribe’s Munsee term for “crooked water” or “crooked river.” How that transformed into the name of a dapper set of threads is far from clear, much like the murky origins of the Tuxedo cocktail.

Some say it was born behind the bar at NYC’s Waldorf-Astoria, but there’s another camp that claims it was conceived in the U.K. Pre-Prohibition classic cocktails are prone to debated specs and recipe disputes, and the Tuxedo is no exception — so much so that it’s even earned itself an official, numbered variation: the Tuxedo No. 2. 

Ultimately, the Tuxedo is a classic Martini peppered with absinthe, Maraschino liqueur, and Angostura bitters. But of course, the recipe doesn’t end there. Shaken or stirred? London Dry gin or Old Tom? To add sherry, or to not add sherry? The number of tweaks and riffs can be head-spinning.

Luckily for us, we’re joined today by the wonderful tutor (and bartender!) Kat Foster. Foster’s an Eleven Madison Park alum and bar manager at Brooklyn’s Margot. She’s here to walk us through the ins and outs of the Tuxedo and everything sherry — from the solera system to flor. Shed those coattails and suit up. It’s time for another installment of “Cocktail College.” Tune in for more.

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Kat Foster’s Tuxedo Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 ½ ounces Old Tom gin, such as Hayman’s or Ransom
• 1 ½ ounces manzanilla sherry, such as Lustau or Valdespino
• 2 dashes orange bitters
• 2 dashes absinthe
• Splash (⅛ ounce) Maraschino liqueur
• Garnish: lemon twist

Directions

1. Add ingredients to a mixing glass filled with ice.
2. Stir for 30-40 seconds until chilled.
3. Strain into a chilled Nick & Nora glass.
4. Garnish with a lemon twist.

The article The Cocktail College Podcast: The Tuxedo appeared first on VinePair.

A reliable punchline in the American craft beer industry is that premium craft lagers are just about to catch on. “Next year is going to be the year of the lager,” Sam Calagione proclaimed with a knowing laugh at the annual gathering of the North American Guild of Beer Writers during the 2023 Craft Brewers Conference in Nashville last April. It wasn’t and it never is, at least not in the way true believers envision it. That’s the joke.

It wouldn’t be fair to say that hard cider is just another joke to the craft brewing industry. There’s a collegial enough relationship between the two segments thanks to some shared values, techniques, and workforces. And cider has enjoyed some buzz over the years, rising on the tide of craft beer’s second boom, and stepping forward as an alternative to malt-based beverages as gluten became protein non grata in trendier #wellness milieus last decade. But even with far deeper roots in American history, the nation’s 1,000-plus cidermakers have never managed to find equal footing to their fermenting brethren on American store shelves, tap towers, or distributors’ trucks. Cider is no punchline, but it simply doesn’t punch at the same weight as the United States’ mainstream beverage-alcohol categories.

2023 was no breakout for the fourth-category comer, either. Cider was up 1.9 percent in off-premise dollars year-over-year in 2023, but down 2.7 percent in volume, according to scan data from NielsenIQ (NIQ) analyzed by industry consulting firm 3Tier Beverages. (Beer was +1.4 percent / -3 percent.) On-premise was uglier: The segment finished down over 12 percent in bars and restaurants, per CGA, the on-premise tracker owned by Nielsen.

2024, though, man? 2024 really could be cider’s year, and not in the craft lager sense. I mean it! The planets are aligning, the signals are encouraging, and the country’s apple-brained acolytes are all abuzz — even as big obstacles still separate the beverage from bona fide mainstream success.

“Cider could not possibly be better positioned to capitalize on where the market trends are going,” Colin Schilling, the chief executive and co-founder of Seattle’s Schilling Hard Cider, tells Hop Take in a recent phone interview. “We are a beyond-beer, full-flavored beverage that has by far the most authentic story. … That being said, I think it’s our opportunity to lose.”

It’s a sentiment I heard again and again from cidermakers and boosters last week in Portland, Ore., at CiderCon 2024, the American Cider Association’s (ACA) 14th annual conference. I buy it: This could be the year that cider shrugs off its reputation as craft beer’s kid brother and becomes a contender for national fridge space in its own right. But Marlon Brando coulda been a contender, too. We all know how that turned out.

(Disclosure: The ACA and the Northwest Cider Association, a regional trade group, comped my ticket to the event, my lodging, and a portion of my airfare to CiderCon. This coverage was produced independently of any editorial oversight from any of the organizations or firms mentioned here — and unmentioned, for that matter.)

The opportunity is considerable. You already probably know this from simply strolling down the supermarket aisle, but just to put a finer point on it: You see a lot less cider in a lot fewer places than beer or wine. To wit: Under 7 percent of the American drinking public bought cider in the off-premise in 2023, 3Tier consultant Mary Mills told CiderCon attendees last week. In the same period, more than 72 percent of shoppers bought beer, despite that category’s doozy of a year. (Wine and spirits clock similar penetration levels.) Cider, argued Mills, has “a huge opportunity to reach consumers that are in a very adjacent category that are drinking alcohol.”

Those consumers are already branching out from the traditional beer/wine/spirits triptych to find other flavorful beverages. Hard seltzer’s deflation and hard kombucha’s stagnation suggests they haven’t yet found what they’re looking for. Zoomers crave authenticity and sustainability and all that good shit (or at least claim to), and cider has it in spades.

These tailwinds and more are blowing through the orchard, reader. But lord, are there headwinds. Angry Orchard, widely considered to have played a similar gateway role for cider as Blue Moon did for craft beer, has left plenty of drinkers with a literal bad taste in their mouths over the years. The American palate is sweet, but not without limit. Boston Beer Company’s once-rising cider now boasts the hemorrhaging sales to prove it. Because of the brand’s sheer size relative to the rest of the pack, it’s dragging the entire category down — another reason those flat-to-down topline stats I mentioned above don’t signal doom for cider writ large.

Still, Angry Orchard’s struggles are old news. Here’s some new news that highlights another major impediment to cider’s apple-based ascendancy. Last week, Congressmen Earl Blumenauer of Oregon and Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania introduced a bipartisan bill to address a wonky system of taxation-by-carbonation that has cider getting hosed by Uncle Sam. “Cider has always struggled because we are taxed as wine, but yet we sell much more like beer in a lot of ways,” says Schilling. (Beer is taxed by volume and tiered to different production levels and other factors, not carbonation.) The Bubble Tax Modernization Act of 2024 would reduce the tax rate for carbonated ciders under 8.5 percent alcohol by volume to match that for similarly carbonated wines below that same strength, and still wines up to 16 percent ABV. That lower levy is $1.07 per gallon, instead of the $3.30 to $3.40 that many ciders pay. If the feds are dinging, say, BeatBox (no carbonation, 11.1 percent ABV) for just over a buck a jug, it only seems fair to take the same rake from ciders, no?

Nobody ever said the American booze business was fair, but while we’re on the subject, we may as well talk about the other big drag on cider’s big year. Cidermakers can’t package product above 7 percent ABV in 16- or 19.2-ounce cans — two of the hottest containers on the market right now — due to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau’s (TTB) current standards of fill for wine, under which cider falls. “FMBs [flavored malt beverages] and Imperial IPAs, they have access to those can sizes, but wine and cider don’t,” says Michelle McGrath, the chief executive of the ACA. “It’s just completely pulling that whole opportunity” off the table for the category.

Voodoo Ranger et al. have proven again and again that drinkers, particularly in the increasingly important-to-craft-beverage convenience store channel, love a high-ABV stovepipe. Imperial ciders, like Schilling’s Excelsior line, can’t capitalize. Updated standards of fill would allow cider to “play against craft beer and FMBs on a level playing field,” says Schilling, “which is really all I ask, as a capitalist.” The ACA petitioned the TTB in 2022 to approve 16- and 19.2-ounce fill standards, and the issue has made it to the agency’s unified agenda, but nothing doing so far.

The last obstacle cider faces on its road to real and lasting relevance is, I think, itself. The category has long struggled to find a consensus on where it belongs on the spectrum between craft-focused specialty and consumer-focused commodity. This is a tough needle to thread, especially in an industry growing so fast on such a small base that CiderCon 2024’s 1,100 attendees represented a 20-percent increase over last year. Craft brewing is both a triumphant tale about how ideological rigor can align and empower a small category, and a cautionary tale of how that can quickly turn into internecine distraction that saps resources and scares off drinkers once the boom hits.

Schilling, whose eponymous firm skews commercial compared to its peers, insists that craft brewing is a model for collaboration, innovation, and growth that cider would do well to follow. (The connective tissue is developing: Brewers Association chief economist Bart Watson attended CiderCon 2024, and Schilling is slated to speak at CBC this April.) How, then, does he square that segment’s struggles over the past few years with his contention that 2024 is cider’s breakout year?

“I think the challenge with craft beer is sometimes you know, they don’t want to listen to the consumer as much,” Schilling tells me. (Agreed.) “I think cider is in a very similar situation. If your idea of what cider is doesn’t jive with other people in the industry, or quite frankly, what the consumer is looking for, that’s fine, but don’t get in the way, either.”

All jokes aside, for an industry full of true believers, that’s always easier said than done.

🤯 Hop-ocalypse Now

Florida man/governor Ron Desantis has finally dropped out of the Republican presidential primary after spending more per vote than almost any other loser to ever do it. Before slinking back to the swamp, the “Pied Piper of Covid” (who took conservatives’ red-assed bigotry toward Dylan Mulvaney’s Bud Light cameo last year as an opportunity to double down on his own sneering transphobia for political gain) recorded a concession speech to presumptive nominee Donald Trump, complete with a quote from Winston Churchill. Only, according to BBC fact-checker Shayan Sardarizadeh, it wasn’t Churchill who said “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it’s the courage to continue that counts” — it was a Budweiser ad from 1938.

📈 Ups…

CiderCon broke its previous attendance record by 20 percent… Smuttynose parent company Finestkind Brewing acquired Wachusett Brewing Co…. Athletic Brewing Co. notched five of the top 25 growth brands last year in Nielsen scan data for the craft segment… Anchor Brewing Co.’s new owner could be announced by month’s end, and one of the bidding parties includes former owner/industry icon Fritz Maytag…

📉 …and downs

Speaker of the House and noted weirdo about checking accounts Mike Johnson (R-La.) once crusaded against booze in small-town Louisiana… Coors Light is already out of Super Bowl ad ideas… ABI shut down Wynwood Brewing Co. in Florida, plus Golden Road’s Sacramento taproom… Just in time for the Super Bowl (?), Truly launched a branded hot wing sauce hard seltzer (??) that’s only available at its Los Angeles taproom or online in five states (???)…

The article Every Year Is ‘Cider’s Year,’ but This One Actually Might Be appeared first on VinePair.

Ominously, the recently released Silicon Valley Bank “State of the U.S. Wine Industry Report 2024” begins with a full-page quote from none other than Charles Darwin:

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, not the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

By invoking such a cloud-summoning introduction, Rob McMillan — founder of the SVB Wine Division and author of the report — launches his much-anticipated annual analysis with a moody implication that the current situation is, most assuredly, not great.

Along with many other issues, consumer trends have been changing rapidly and dramatically, inflation has forced price adjustments, and competition from beverage sectors at home and abroad — wine and otherwise — have combined to stir a combustible brew into an already pressurized scenario. Every aspect of the industry is now being squeezed in some way, and cracks in the hull could soon give way.

Essentially, according to McMillan, this could get ugly — and quickly — for any member of the industry not proactively adapting to avoid an impending implosion.

Wine that makes up the under-$12 selections — representing the vast majority of overall U.S. volume — is now in a state of persistent decline, according to the report. Should this form into the American equivalent of a European wine lake glut, the contagion could spread higher up the price ladder and threaten to decimate large swaths of the industry.

Boomers, Abstainers, and Neo-Prohibitionists

Demand for wine has undeniably been waning, with more problems seeming to show up daily out of the woodwork. Boomers — the absolute rock of ages for the wine industry over the past several decades — are gradually aging out.

What’s left to replace them, according to McMillan’s report, then?

An intimidating lineup of one generation after another, all drastically less likely to buy wine for a social event. And sure, while wine is a “sophisticated” beverage generally associated with increased maturity and a more established demographic, the severity of this cliff is far too sharp to climb via “aging-in” alone. The younger generations just aren’t into wine in the way that boomers have been.

“Younger generations are looking for relatability, [but] what is worrisome to me is that most often, I see wine brands comparing themselves to other wine brands, when really their aspirations should be focused on a competitive set that has expanded dramatically.”

An additional sobering prospect is the surging movement of alcohol abstainers and neo-prohibitionists further dissolving the foundation of demand, and the trend has been given additional fuel from recent declarations by the World Health Organization. “Neo-prohibitionists want to relate wine to cigarettes, and they’re backing into the data in a phony way. It’s become a political thing right now,” McMillan says. Whatever the methodology these recommendations are utilizing — dubious or not — the message has been hitting home. Between the boomer cliff and the re-energized neo-temperance movement, the U.S. wine industry, quite simply, has a rapidly growing demand problem.

Dedicated Wine Growers Are in Danger

McMillan doesn’t mince words when asked about the state of alarm for dedicated growers. “In the early 2000s, I wrote a blog about being careful, or the [California] Central Valley will become Detroit,” he says. “The point wasn’t that the Central Valley was inferior, but they could put themselves in a bad spot if they can’t figure out how to brand themselves.”

He points out that premiumization of wines, combined with the lower harvest yields of the past several vintages, have allowed the industry to precariously sail by without a broadside of damage. This tenuous scenario has so far masked the underlying problems for dedicated wine grape growers who sell to many of the larger wineries. But it won’t last forever.

Eventually, a bumper crop like 1997 or 2012 will storm into this environment and tank grape prices. While this bounty will ease some of the pressure surrounding margins for the wineries — particularly those that are vertically integrated — this inevitability could spell disaster for dedicated grape growers.

To be fair, certain growers — especially in the vast plains of California’s Central Valley — have the relative luxury of transitioning to other crops like nuts, tomatoes, and citrus. However, that’s an expensive proposition, time-consuming, and far easier said than done. And some of these farmers… well, they’re multi-generational wine grape growers. It’s what they know and who they are. The prospect of a grape pricing apocalypse would be a death blow to many of these more vulnerable independent vineyard owners.

Imports Versus Collective Branding

Compared to domestic bottlings, import wine consumption is decreasing more slowly — the declining-market equivalent of growing faster. Angelo Camillo, professor of wine business at Sonoma State University, sees the importation issue as an increasing one. “U.S. producers are competing against government-subsidized foreign producers from [places like] Australia and New Zealand,” he says. “Flavored drinks like Aperol and Campari have also reached a price point of over $32 a bottle. [They’re] in direct competition to many wines.” (Though even Campari and the like also seem to be struggling somewhat.)

“Saying ‘here, drink this’ is a lemonade stand marketing mentality that is not in favor of adaptation.”

As if that weren’t enough, there’s additional looming expansion of competition on the horizon. New players and revived stalwarts will be entering and re-entering the international wine market, further diluting the share available to U.S. producers. “Emerging economies and wine-producing countries like Uruguay, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, and Romania will compete globally and affect advanced economies due to the lower cost of labor,” Camillo warns. This all points to a U.S. industry chaotically scrambling to figure out a stabilizing solution to the eroding berm.

Besides the outlier success of juggernaut Napa, the American wine brand is in desperate need of an overall re-energization — that is, if producers and regions can be coaxed out of their respective corners to cooperate on a collective strategy.

Foreign regulatory institutions and producers seem more than willing and able to apply such an approach effectively, but agreement among U.S. analogs in the wine realm is frustratingly less frequent. ”We need a ‘Got Milk?’” says McMillan. “Collaborative industry marketing would be very helpful if we could get it done.”

The lagging and rather antiquated strategy of the American wine industry is further elucidated by Maryam Ahmed, owner of branding and experience consultancy Maryam + Company, and creator of Field Blends Wine Travel. “Younger generations are looking for relatability, [but] what is worrisome to me is that most often, I see wine brands comparing themselves to other wine brands,” she says, “when really their aspirations should be focused on a competitive set that has expanded dramatically.”

American wineries are still pounding the table with an outdated approach, and further delay regarding advertising and packaging adaptation will only deepen the hole that’s been dug. A messaging shift is long overdue. “Some of the most resonant messaging could be on moderation and broader lifestyle,” Ahmed emphasizes. “Saying ‘here, drink this’ is a lemonade stand marketing mentality that is not in favor of adaptation.”

It’s a sentiment that echoes McMillan’s broader point, regarding a younger customer base that views brand adoption in a wildly different way. “The rotation of [generational] consumers is an unavoidable thing,” McMillan says, referring to the aging-out of the stalwart boomer monolith. “We have to do better consumer research. It’s all the aspects of marketing, and that’s the road to success,” he concludes. “You have to give the customers what they want.”

France: A Canary in the Coal Mine for U.S. Wine

By gazing across the Atlantic to France, the U.S. industry can view the potential chaos that could ensue, should decisive action not be embraced in short order. The French wine industry — outside of those fortunate few occupying the super- and ultra-premium and luxury strata — has taken a beating as of late. The EU wine lake is back, with accompanying protests raging and government bailouts flying.

The cautionary tale unfolding in Europe should induce wringing hands and a cold sweat for American wine interests. “Waiting for a fictive cohort to age sufficiently to discover wine or believing that our strategies ‘have always worked before’ is toxic to adaptation when the context driving demand changes,” the SVB report declares. “That is something the weakest businesses will do. Their lack of adaptation will cause a predictable outcome.”

It’s a direct, steely-eyed, and Darwinian warning from McMillan and his team — and one that all involved in the U.S. wine industry should heed.

The article Survival of the Fittest: Analyzing SVB’s State of the U.S. Wine Industry Report 2024 appeared first on VinePair.

When it comes to my personal social media habits, I have never posted on TikTok and remain a lurker on the platform, where neverending clips of “Star Wars,” vintage Todd Rundgren performances, hoagie hacks, sneak previews of upcoming LEGO releases, unsolicited dating advice, and cat content (so many cats…) lay claim to my For Your Page (FYP) — revealing more about my proclivities than I should probably share here!

One constant is the familiar voice of TikTok’s Trader Joe’s Talia, with her cheerful greeting of “Hey Trader Joe’s shoppers, it’s me Talia, back with more new and returning Trader Joe’s products…” which seems to play in an endless loop on my FYP as she fills up her cart and calls out the Trader Joe’s products that catch her eye, such as new yogurt flavors, scented candles, decorative succulent plants, frozen pretzel bread pudding with salted caramel sauce, and limited-edition seasonal offerings like pink, heart-shaped, ricotta-stuffed ravioli for Valentine’s Day. (And it was through Talia that I became aware of the results of Trader Joe’s 14th Annual Customer Choice Awards, where the supermarket’s Sparkling Honeycrisp Apple Juice took home top honors in the Beverage category.)

My original motivation for signing up to TikTok was for research purposes. And while I still haven’t unearthed a vibrant AmaroTok community, an Instagram DM from amaro enthusiast Neal Hirtzel alerted me to the existence of Pronto!, a new $10.99 amaro exclusive to Trader Joe’s, qualifying his message with, “It’s a little thin on the mouth but not bad.” I was instantly intrigued.

Whether or not your neighborhood Trader Joe’s can sell alcohol is determined by state and local laws. When I lived in Seattle, the Trader Joe’s around the corner from my apartment carried beer and wine but my local Brooklyn Trader Joe’s can only sell beer (the popular Trader Joe’s wine store in Union Square opened in 2006 and was the only one in New York State, but unexpectedly closed in August 2022).

But taking a cue from my “suitcase bottle” habit of transporting back home favorite bottles of amaro from Italy, I was able to secure two bottles of Pronto! after enlisting my dear friend Ali Klooster to mule them to me in Brooklyn from her local Trader Joe’s in St. Louis. As the author of books on amaro and bitters, and a writer who frequently chronicles Italian drinking culture, I’ve had the chance to try countless bottles of amaro over the years and I’m always curious, and often skeptical, of a new release, especially one from Trader Joe’s. I twisted open the cap and tasted it neat, over ice, and in an Americano. The verdict: There’s no worry that it will ever replace Campari, but Pronto! is more than just a novelty, and surprisingly better than it needs to be.

Come si Dice ‘Two Buck Chuck’?

Trader Joe’s has a proven history with wine, launching its portfolio of popular, bargain-priced Charles Shaw wines, produced by Bronco Wine Company, in 2002. Sold exclusively at Trader Joe’s, the $1.99 wine label soon became known as “Two Buck Chuck” — though a bottle will now run you the hefty sum of $3.99 — and has gone on to sell more than 800 million bottles. While some Trader Joe’s do sell spirits, in addition to branded private-label bottles of tequila, vodka, and whiskey, Pronto! marks the chain’s first foray into the amaro category.

Right out of the gate, I admire Trader Joe’s using Pronto! (and that exclamation point) for the name, and remain surprised that no Italian or domestic producer had scooped that up. Pronto is a versatile Italian word, primarily meaning “ready” and is how most Italians answer a phone call as a way to both say hello and let the caller know you’re prepared to talk (something I’ve also since adopted to the amusement and slight annoyance of my American friends). I’m also likely overreaching here, but the word pronto also has a connection to the Trader Joe’s origin story. Before Joe Coulombe opened the first Trader Joe’s store in Pasadena, Calif., in 1967, he was working at one of the convenience stores opened by Rexall Pharmacy to compete with 7-Eleven. After Rexall pulled out of that market, Coulombe took over, naming the store that would later become the first Trader Joe’s, Pronto Market.

One thing that concerned me when first inspecting the clear 750-milliliter bottle of Pronto! is that on the gold-colored label — designed with a small constellation of white starbursts beneath a blue ribbon emblazoned with the Pronto! logo — just above the Product of Italy declaration is a “let’s throw the spaghetti against the wall and see if it sticks” classification of amaro, aperitivo, and bitter. It’s true that some amari are quite versatile and can be served neat and in lighter, lower-ABV applications as well as more spirit-forward cocktails, but Pronto!’s garnet hue and 24 percent ABV is most comparable to Campari, a classic aperitivo bitter. But I do love the brand’s use of Ad Oltranza! (“to the bitter end!”) on the blue neckband label.

As with most amaro makers, Pronto! is cagey with the information on the back of the bottle beyond elliptical marketing copy such as “Made with an intriguing infusion of aromatic herbs and orange peel” and flavor notes of “delicately sweet, faintly floral, and classically bitter.” Eager to learn more about its origin, production, and public reception, I reached out to Trader Joe’s via its online media contact form and surprisingly did hear back from a public relations manager the next day. But, as is the case with many corporations, I wasn’t granted an interview and they wouldn’t comment on any Trader Joe’s products beyond what is featured on their website, Instagram, or podcast. She did acknowledge that Pronto! is made especially for Trader Joe’s by a distiller in Italy but beyond that the exchange was just a punched-up version of the back bottle copy.

“It definitely has a bitter essence to it and the nose is just delicious.”

Though not typically publicly promoted, it’s not uncommon for distilleries to use their facilities to produce custom products for other brands. The 57-year-old Duarte, Calif.-based business D’Aquino Italian is listed as the importer on the back of the bottle, though there’s no mention of Pronto! on its website. As for the producer, beyond a proprietary account code, all that’s revealed is “Sn Donà di Piave (VE) Italy.” After tasting Pronto! with a prominent member of one of Italy’s best-known legacy amaro brands, I asked him where he thought it might be produced. He glanced at the back of the label, punched in a search on his phone and said “here,” showing the results of Distilleria Turchetto, located on Via John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 3, 30027 in San Donà di Piave, a commune of Venice.

It turns out I’m no Columbo when it comes to detective work as his basic search query of “distilleries in San Donà di Piave” led him to his cased-closed conclusion. While other distillers in Venice could be behind Pronto!, my amaro-making friend went all in on the likelihood that it was made by Distilleria Turchetto. The Venice distillery naturally doesn’t have a website or contact information so it can’t be confirmed (and its staff very likely wouldn’t admit they produced it due to a non-disclosure agreement) but this medium-sized distillery does produce several spirits, liqueurs, vermouth, syrups, and cocktail mixers, including Frizzantino Spritz Aperitivo Happy Hour, a ready-to-drink spritz sold at supermarkets around Italy. (Vintage bottles of Distilleria Turchetto-branded Sambuca, cordials, rhum fantasia, and Pruma — a blend of grappa, spirits, and aromatic infusions — pop up on some vintage spirits sites.)

Pronto! In the Wild

Without additional insights from the producer, importer, and exclusive retailer of this new amaro, I turned to social media to see if Pronto! was percolating with other amaro nerds or Trader Joe’s devotees, but this panning for gold mostly turned up pebbles from the river.

Typically, I steer clear of the r/amaro Subreddit but there was some online chatter I picked up mostly placing Pronto! at the crossroads of Aperol and Campari. In a tasting session on his YouTube channel, Los Angeles bartender Zach Zoschke describes the nose as “smells like Campari with training wheels” and notes that its price makes it a “somewhat compelling alternative.” And on a Trader Joe’s review site, Pronto! is rated “surprisingly good,” and “a steal of $11.99.” One commenter even cautions: “Stop spreading the news, let it be a secret or this will disappear fast from Trader Joe’s.”

Patrick Miller, the owner and distiller of Brooklyn’s Faccia Brutto Spirits, is always on the search for special bottles of amari to add to his extensive collection, so it didn’t surprise me when he was among the first people I personally knew who had tried Pronto! during a trip back home to Pasadena. He notes that the $10.99 price tag is a good value within the amaro category and would use it in a pinch to make a Negroni or an Americano but wouldn’t expect the same results you’d get from higher-quality, small-batch amaro. “The nose has a more subtle aroma compared to other products in the category and a notably lighter palate,” Miller says. “The classic bitter orange and herbal flavors typically associated with amaro or aperitivo exist but they’re not quite the same and less distinctive — like meeting someone you know well’s second cousin.”

“That’s a shredder. I need this in my house now.”

I’ve been ferrying a bottle of Pronto! in my bag on occasions when I know I’ll meet up with like-minded, amaro-loving industry friends to get their take. The first was at my Brooklyn local, The Long Island Bar, with Italian bartender Raffaele Bellomi, who is the co-creator of Volume Primo Vermouth and owner of the bars Archivo and Amaro in Verona. After L.I.B.’s co-owner Toby Cecchini poured out a round of Pronto! Bellomi picked up his glass to hold it to the light. “This color is strange,” he said, thrown off by the equally confusing designation. “An aperitivo would be brighter and an amaro would be more brown. I wouldn’t know where to begin to try to get this color naturally.”

Upon the first sip, my friend Cat Pickei, a cheese buyer who is more into Fernet, described the experience as, “It’s like I smoked a Marlboro Light then ate an amarena cherry.” Tasting it neat, Cecchini experienced a familiar cherry cough syrup sensation, balanced with a dry bitterness from gentian root. But he thought it held its own in a Pronto! and Volume Primo Americano. “It’s not terrible,” he said. “I’m sort of surprised.” Bellomi countered that he thought the gentian was a bit too overwhelming. “It could be worse,” Bellomi said. “As an amaro I would never drink this; I would rather drink this as a red bitter.”

The experience of coming in with low expectations and being pleasantly surprised continued at Caffe Dante, the award-winning Greenwich Village bar that takes inspiration from Italy’s aperitivo culture. “I’m definitely getting that cherry, but it’s a lot softer on the top than I thought it would be,” said my lunch date Benny Ogando, a bartender at Brooklyn’s Red Hook Tavern. “It definitely has a bitter essence to it and the nose is just delicious.” (Ogando was also thrown off by the multiple branding of amaro, aperitivo, and bitter.)

The consensus among most of the bartenders I talked to was that Pronto! lacked the body and character to bring the bitter backbone and herbaceousness needed in a classic Negroni. But Dante head bartender Eloy Pacheco was surprised at the quality of Pronto! compared to the price. “The taste and aroma reminds me of Contratto Bitter,” Pacheco said before giving Pronto! a spin in a bambino-sized Mezcal Negroni (there were no complaints from any of us). An off-duty neighborhood bartender hanging out at the bar was curious what we were up to and after offering him a pour of Pronto! he looked at me and smiled, exclaiming, “That’s a shredder. I need this in my house now.”

In a landscape where many newer brands of amaro can cost nearly $50 a bottle, the value of an affordable and surprisingly good “Eleven-Buck-Bitter” will do just fine.

The article Of Course Trader Joe’s Has an Affordable Amaro Brand — But Is It Actually Good? appeared first on VinePair.

Beloved for producing alluring, terroir-based Pinot Noir and Chardonnay wines, historic Burgundy has bewitched the beverage world for centuries. But with the celebrated French region’s high price tags, it can be tough to enjoy the category without breaking the bank. That said, we’re here to tell you it is possible to find Burgundy wines that are both excellent and affordable.

Thanks to the guidance of our experts below, we’ve got some insider tricks for finding a great value Burgundy. Keep reading to discover producers from lesser-known villages worthy of committing to memory, the under-the-radar grapes you should discover, and a few standout bottles of Beaujolais.

The Burgundies That Offer the Best Bang for Your Buck, According to Sommeliers:

• Domaine Berthaut-Gerbet
• Maison Philippe Pacalet
• Maison Joseph Drouhin
• Domaine du Clos du Fief (Michel Tête)
• Village-level or Premier Cru Chablis from Laurent Tribut
• Domaine Pierre Boisson
• Domaine Agnès Paquet
• Domaine Sylvain Pataille
• 2021 Anne Boisson Bourgogne-Aligoté
• Pierrick Bouley Bourgogne Passe-Tout-Grains
• David Duband Hautes-Côtes de Nuits
• Agnès Paquet Hautes Côtes de Beaune
• Clarisse de Suremain Pernand-Vergelesses Blanc
• Clarisse de Suremain Beaune Vieilles Vignes
• Julien Guillot Mâcon-Cruzille Aragonite
• Julien Guillot Cuvée 910
• Marcel Lapierre Morgon
• Joseph Drouhin Beaujolais Villages
• Jean-Marc Burgaud Morgon Côte du Py
• Domaine Prieur-Brunet Santenay Maladière 1er Cru Rouge
• 2021 Joseph Drouhin Mâcon-Lugny Les Crays
• 2021 Joseph Drouhin Bourgogne Rouge
• Yann Duriex Love and Pif
• Jean-Marc Roulot Bourgogne Blanc
• Denis Bachelet Bourgogne Rouge or Côte de Nuits-Village
• Domaine Larue
• Domaine Henri Prudhon & Fils
• Domaine Vincent Dauvissat Petit Chablis
• Rosé from Domaine Bruno Clair
• Rosé from Domaine Régis Bouvier

“Finding good value in Burgundy seems to be the never-ending challenge! A village that I continue to go back to again and again is Fixin. At the northern end of the Côte de Nuits, Fixin is often overlooked for its more famous neighbor, Gevrey-Chambertin. It is a great area to search out more affordable Pinot Noir. My favorite producer that is consistently over-delivering is Domaine Berthaut-Gerbet. They are definitely worth seeking out.” —Catherine Fanelli, wine director, Mel’s, NYC

“My heart is answering for me — Maison Philippe Pacalet. The house makes about 30 different wines, and each expression decidedly over-delivers.” —Jenna Isaacs, sommelier, Rustic Canyon, Santa Monica, Calif.

“There is always a bottle of Joseph Drouhin in my fridge at home as it is an incredible bang-for-your-buck Burgundy. Although, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that if you like Burgundy you should try wines from Beaujolais, their neighbor. They are the best bang-for-your-buck region in France.” —Tanner Agar, owner, Apothecary and Rye, Dallas

“Seek out Gamay rather than Pinot Noir for reds in order to get the most bang for your buck. Michel Tête makes a few very delicious, very affordable, and very interesting Gamays that are great all year long.” —Reed Adelson, owner, Virginia’s, NYC

“Village-level or premier cru Chablis from Laurent Tribut are absolutely stunning with pure fruit and exciting texture. Another producer I feel consistently delivers compelling wines above their current price point is Pierre Boisson. Based out of Meursault with production not exceeding 4,500 cases, [the wines from] this father-and-son team will not see a price reduction in the years to come. They work with a few lieu-dits with 90- to 100-year-old vines that are declassified to Bourgogne Blanc. They continue to push each vintage while maintaining tension, fleshy, full fruit, and a mineral finish that lingers ever so beautifully on the palate. Supe versatile from a pairing aspect, too!” —Cyrus Schultz, sommelier, Cyrus Alexander Valley, Geyserville, Calif.

“Is it cheating to just say Beaujolais? I mean, technically it’s in Burgundy, and there a ton of delicious, moderately priced wines coming from the region. If I’m choosing one, I’m going with Clos de la Roilette Fleurie. You can find it in the low-to-mid $20 range and it drinks like a much more expensive Beaujolais. It has all the crushable qualities of a light and easy Gamay, but enough body, spice, and leather in the finish to pair with a nice meal of seafood and pastas. Ultimately, it’s a fun yet refined wine at a very reasonable price point.” —Joshua Schwartz, managing partner, Fossetta, NYC

“Haute Côtes de Beaune and Auxey-Duresses aren’t the first locations on the list for serious Burgundy collectors, and that’s great news for the rest of us, because Agnès Paquet is making some gorgeous and expressive organically farmed Pinot Noir that over-delivers vintage after vintage. Which isn’t to say her whites aren’t fantastic as well — if you can find the Bourgogne Blanc Les Lurets, grab it immediately.” —Randall Middleton, sommelier, Esters Wine Shop & Bar, Santa Monica, Calif.

“When searching for value, I love looking at villages that don’t have any grand crus or even premier crus, which generally results in prices staying a touch lower. One of my favorites is Marsannay — it’s packed with fruit and sometimes spice, powerful in its youth, and showcases distinct characteristics of terroir with age. Several producers in Marsannay make truly electric wines, but to me, the standout is Sylvain Pataille, both for his whites and his reds.” —Giulia Dwight, beverage manager, Cucina Alba, NYC

“2021 Anne Boisson Bourgogne-Aligoté. Aligoté is often cast aside in favor of big gun Chardonnay we see from the region, but each new vintage provides more examples of why the grape deserves a more serious look. The Boisson family is responsible for decades of focused, thoughtful winemaking. Anne in particular has dedicated extra attention to Aligoté’s unrealized potential.” —Julia Schwartz, wine director, Claud, NYC

“For me, the true value is a wine called Passe-Tout-Grains, which is a blend of Pinot Noir and Gamay. It’s super easy-drinking, but also very nuanced and structured. We are currently pouring Pierrick Bouley Passe-Tout-Grains by the glass.” —Steven Karataglidis, wine director, Fairmont Royal York, Toronto

“With recent variable vintages and the effects of climate change becoming ever more present in Burgundy, I find myself reaching for wines from Burgundy’s Hautes-Côtes regions. In particular, David Duband’s Hautes-Côtes de Nuits and Agnès Paquet’s Hautes Côtes de Beaune offer premier cru-quality Pinot Noir for almost two-thirds the price. Wines such as these will only improve with future vintages.” —Marianna Caldwell, sommelier and general manager, Cassia, Santa Monica, Calif.

“My personal favorites these days are anything from Clarisse de Suremain, an incredible young producer whose whites are electric and reds are texturally rich yet nimble on the palate, and Julien Guillot, a brilliant producer in the Mâconnais farming vines that date as far back at 910 A.D. While any cuvée from either winemaker would make me very happy, I personally love Clarisse’s Pernand-Vergelesses for white and her Beaune Vieilles Vignes for red, and Julien’s Mâcon-Cruzille Aragonite for white and Cuvée 910 for red.” —Cody Pruitt, managing partner and beverage director, Libertine, NYC

“Beaujolais is seriously underrated as a Burgundy alternative. Sure, some sommeliers argue it’s not ‘true’ Burgundy because the grape variety is not Pinot or Chardonnay, but let’s not overlook the fantastic Gamay which is a cousin to Pinot. Beyond the famous Beaujolais Nouveau, these elegantly crafted wines show depth while being a refreshing red to please most guests. A few of my favorites are Marcel Lapierre Morgon ($30), Joseph Drouhin Beaujolais-Villages ($20), and lastly, Jean-Marc Burgaud Morgon Côte du Py ($25).” —Gabriel Maldonado, general manager, The Wesley, NYC

“A Burgundy I’ve been enjoying lately is the Prieur-Brunet. A premier cru Pinot Noir from Maladière, this wine is sourced from a small 1.5-hectare plot in Santenay, in the south side of the Côte de Beaune. The nose of candied cherries, fresh earth, mushrooms blends seamlessly with toasted oak. Fine elegant tannins makes this wine not only great with food but very approachable on its own. Retailing around $40 this 1er cru wine is a home run in my book.” —Scott Taylor, beverage director, Harris’ Restaurant, San Francisco

“For a bargain, I head straight to the village-level wines of Burgundy. You can find many producers who make insanely expensive grand cru or premier cru wines but have vineyards outside the ones of note that go for a fair price, say $30 or $40. You get all the experience and care of that producer at a fraction of the grand cru price. While plenty of simple Bourgogne Rouge or Blanc out there are delicious, you can step up small in price to the village level and have stepped up big in taste and quality. For whites I love the Mâcon, Saint-Aubin, or Auxey, all slightly overlooked regions that provide huge value for what you are getting. For reds I lean towards Marsannay, Fixin, or Volnay. You’ll rarely get ‘cheap’ Burgundy, but the price shoots up with name recognition, so a village you’ve never heard of might still have affordable prices with outstanding quality.” —Trey Bliss, beverage director, Baxtrom Hospitality (Olmsted, Patti Ann’s, 5 Acres), Brooklyn and Manhattan

“My two personal recommendations for the best bang for your buck from Burgundy are 2021 Joseph Drouhin Mâcon-Lugny Les Crays ($25), which is terroir-driven, extremely precise, with bright acidity, [and] 2021 Joseph Drouhin Bourgogne Rouge ($28). This selection defines what Bourgogne is all about. It’s a blend of different terroirs from Cote d’Or and Chalonnaise. You can’t find a better selection at this price point!” —Fotios Stamos, beverage director, MAZI Food Group, Boston

“Burgundy can be intimidating, but today there is a certain energy coming from younger producers that not only bring quality in the glass, but also great value. One particular name that comes to mind is Yann Duriex. He worked for 10 years at the highly sought-after (and very expensive) Prieuré-Roch before starting his own domaine in Hautes Côtes de Nuit. He works with utmost respect to the land and his wines have no sulfite additions in the cellar. Here at Corima we carry his entry-level Aligoté, Love and Pif, that offers great value for those looking for a white with texture, depth, and minerality ($88).” —Mariano Garay, wine director, Corima, NYC

“For me, the best value lies in entry-level wines from great producers. I look for producers I love or want to familiarize myself with and buy their entry-level, village-level, or Bourgogne Blanc or Rouge wines. They tend to use fruit from younger vines, or wine that didn’t make the cut for their premier or grand cru wines but apply the same expertise in winemaking to those wines at a fraction of the price. Wines like Jean-Marc Roulot Bourgogne Blanc, Denis Bachelet Bourgogne Rouge, and Côte de Nuits-Village tend to punch over their weight class.” —Sabato Sagaria, master sommelier and co-founder, Apres Cru, NYC

“For Burgundy deals, I typically look for satellite appellations (a lesser-known village next to a well-known appellation) and for quality producers that make village or regional wines. Saint-Aubin is a satellite of Pouilly-Montrachet and Chassagne-Montrachet. In Saint-Aubin Chardonnay, one can find similar minerality to the Montrachets, and my favorite tasting note of toasted sesame seed. Producers I love from this region are Larue and Henri Prudhon & Fils. Chablis has amazing deals as well. Vincent Dauvissat is one of the best winemakers in Chablis and makes a beautiful Petit Chablis that you can find for around $25. And finally, if you have a white Burgundy producer that you admire, look for any wine they produce from the Aligoté grape — an excellent wine at a relatively inexpensive price point. A good starting point would be Bruno Colin Aligoté 2019 [that] you can get for $30.” —Michéala Johnson, sommelier, Le Jardinier New York, NYC

“Marsannay rosé. From the northernmost commune in the Côte d’Or, Marsannay is the only village-level appellation in Burgundy that is allowed to produce rosé wine. The best producers use only Pinot Noir in their rosé wine. These are extremely aromatic and delicate rosés, similar to the top wines of Provence, and are also capable of aging for a few years to develop. My two favorite producers are Bruno Clair and Régis Bouvier, both of whom also make exceptional reds from nearby Gevrey-Chambertin.” —Meng Chiang, director of wine and beverage, Quality Branded, Denver and NYC

*Image retrieved from Ricochet64 – stock.adobe.com

The article We Asked 20 Sommeliers: Which Burgundy Offers the Best Bang for Your Buck? (2024) appeared first on VinePair.

This article is part of our Cocktail Chatter series, where we dive into the wild, weird, and wondrous corners of history to share over a cocktail and impress your friends.

Whether or not you can pronounce it right, Worcestershire sauce is a pantry staple. Beloved for its tangy, umami-loaded flavor profile, the sauce can usually be found alongside similar fermented condiments including fish sauce, gochujang, and ketchup. It was conceived with the intention of adding a bit of zing to dishes, many of them classics including Welsh rarebit, shepherd’s pie, and beef stew. It’s even dynamic in cocktails, like the Bloody Mary. But as for how the version of the sauce you’ll find on shelves today came to be? That was an accident.

In 1823, merchants John Wheeley Lea and William Henry Perrins opened Lea & Perrins, a drug store along the River Severn in Worcester, England. Located approximately halfway between the major ports of Bristol and Birmingham, the shop offered food, household products, medicine, and an assortment of products from all over the world that made their way into the shop via the ports. The story goes that one day in the 1830s, Lord Sandys, a former governor of Bengal, wandered into the drug store and requested the two operators make a sauce based on a recipe he had discovered while staying in India. Using the worldly ingredients Lea and Perrins had at their disposal, they made two batches of the sauce — one for Lord Sandys, and one for themselves. But after tasting the sauce they made for themselves, both Lea and Perrins found it foul-tasting, and stashed it in their store’s cellar. Approximately 18 months later, the sauce was rediscovered by a Lea & Perrins employee who realized it had developed into something else entirely: It was sweet yet salty, peppery yet acidic. It was absolutely delicious, and destined to be a hit.

Lea & Perrins released its Worcestershire sauce commercially in 1837. It was instantly beloved for both its flavor and its durability, as it didn’t even need to be refrigerated. Due to the store’s proximity to two of England’s major ports, it became extremely popular among sailors and stewards who brought bottles aboard their ships to improve the bland foods made to survive weeks at sea. By 1843, Lea & Perrins was selling approximately 15,000 bottles of Worcestershire sauce per year, and by 1849, shipments were being delivered as far away as San Francisco.

Given the sauce’s popularity, it wasn’t long before other companies started mimicking the condiment’s flavor profile, which pushed Lea & Perrins to obtain a court ruling in 1906 that allowed them to label their product “Original and Genuine.” Even now, every bottle of Lea & Perrins comes equipped with a label declaring it “The Original Worcestershire Sauce.”

While the Lea & Perrins drug store no longer exists, the sauce itself is now owned by Kraft Heinz, and its exact recipe remains a closely guarded secret. The only ingredients the sauce is confirmed to contain include white vinegar, molasses, sugar, water, salt, onions, anchovies, garlic, cloves, tamarind, and chili pepper extract, though their exact proportions and the recipe’s additional ingredients remain a mystery.

This secrecy has not stopped others from attempting to make a Worcestershire of their own, though it’s unlikely any could ever top Lea & Perrins. Every year, approximately 25 million bottles of the sauce are made and shipped all over the globe, and our Bloodys are better for it.

*Image retrieved from dbvirago via stock.adobe.com

The article Worcestershire Sauce Was Invented by Accident appeared first on VinePair.

If you’ve ever seen “New Girl,” you’re likely familiar with True American. The fictional drinking game — which is as patriotic as it is confusing — is a favorite among the sitcom’s characters, who play it sporadically throughout the show’s seven seasons. The aftermath usually involves horrific hangovers, divulged secrets, and dozens of empty beer cans scattered across the roommates’ loft.

Those bright red cans of suds belong to a brand called Heisler Beer. And though you might be able to cobble together some of True American’s chaotic rules, you’d be hard-pressed to find any Heisler to chug while you play. The beer doesn’t actually exist, but its on-screen presence is so extensive that it’s earned the nickname “the Bud Light of Fake Beers.”

Created in the mid-1990s, the fictional beer is one of dozens created by the in-house graphics team at Independent Studio Services (ISS). The California-based prop supplier creates these on-set brews for use in film and TV given the challenges, and expenses, associated with alcohol product placement. Molly Rummell, assistant manager at Studio Graphics, told Thrillist that as alcohol is often associated with more risqué scenes in media, real-life brands are often hesitant to align themselves with them. But since Heisler and its need for sales don’t actually exist, it’s free of those restraints.

“You can do anything with Heisler,” she says. “That’s part of the joy of it.”

While it can be seen regularly throughout “New Girl” — the show purchased nearly 1,000 cans and bottles of the beer during its run — Heisler Beer debuted in the 1997 film “The Rainmaker.” The brand initially only offered its flagship Heisler Gold Ale, but has since expanded to include Heisler Lite and a vintage Heisler label for scenes taking place before the 1980s. Since its founding, the fake beer — brewed at the fictitious Bilson Brewing Company in Sun Valley — has been featured in over 80 movies and TV shows. Its German-inspired, red-and-gold label can be spotted on cans, bottles, cases, tap handles and kegs in “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” “Parks and Recreation,” “Criminal Minds,” and “The Social Network.”

As for what’s inside those cans and bottles, ISS fills them with non-alcoholic suds to mimic the look of real-life brews should the contents need to be poured into a glass during filming. If the liquid won’t be seen on-camera, many actors instead opt to fill their cans with water or soda to drink.

Given its extensive life on-screen, the makers of Heisler Beer went so far as to legally protect themselves from copycats, becoming the first company to receive a patent for a fake brand. And despite its lack of availability in the real world, Heisler Beer has still managed to acquire quite the fandom, with a plethora of fan-designed merchandise for sale across the internet. Some fans, like those from Brew Your Own, have even developed recipes for homebrewing Heisler Beer. So, the next time you’re watching someone shotgun a brew on your screen, pause and take a closer look at the can in their hands — there’s a good chance it’s Heisler.

*Images retrieved from 20th Century Fox, NBC and @studiographicsprops

The article Meet Heisler, TV’s Favorite Beer That Doesn’t Even Exist appeared first on VinePair.

As we approach the end of our Bordeaux saga, we find ourselves exploring the wines found on the Right Bank, or the Libournais.

This region comprises three main appellations — and a bonus one, tacked on for good measure — all surrounding the port city of Libourne. To the west, we have Fronsac, and southeast of Libourne is the ancient, medieval land of Saint-Émilion. In the northeast, we encounter Pomerol, and just north of that is Lalande-de-Pomerol. The entire Right Bank is largely considered Merlot country, and there’s a lot of Cab Franc under vine as well. But unlike the Médoc, there’s very little Cabernet Sauvignon here.

Depending on the appellation in question, the Right Bank’s terroir is characterized by gravel, sand, clay, and limestone, and given the jaw-dropping amount of diversity in soil and elevation across the region, the wines’ profiles vary immensely. From the age-worthy and pricey offerings from Pomerol to the more rustic, affordable Bordeaux in Lalande-de-Pomerol, the Right Bank has a little bit of everything. All in all, these wines tend to be more supple and fruit-forward than the wines on the other side of the Gironde, but their layers of complexity are not to be underestimated.

Last week, we got into the nitty gritty of the Right Bank’s history and how Libourne evolved over the centuries, but today, we’re going to take a look at the present as we break down the various wine styles found across this region. Tune in for more.

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“Wine 101” was produced, recorded, and edited by yours truly, Keith Beavers, at the VinePair headquarters in New York City. I want to give a big old shout-out to co-founders Adam Teeter and Josh Malin for creating VinePair. Big shout-out to Danielle Grinberg, the art director of VinePair, for creating the most awesome logo for this podcast. Also, Darby Cicci for the theme song. And I want to thank the entire VinePair staff for helping me learn something new every day. See you next week.

*Image retrieved from barmalini – stock.adobe.com

The article Wine 101: Bordeaux: Part VII Wine Styles of the Libournais appeared first on VinePair.

At the world’s best bar, there is no bar.

Sips in Barcelona is the reigning kingpin of the World’s 50 Best Bars, and anyone who’s been inside — they’ll vouch for me on this, I swear — can confirm that within that bar, there is very much no bar. Rather than asking about trees falling in forests and whether or not anyone was there to hear it, we should be holding philosophical discourse on whether or not a bar without a bar is even a bar.

The whole idea of the bar isn’t just the place where everybody knows your name, but also the definitive, ingrained setting at which that welcoming encounter occurs — a long countertop lined with stools with customers on one side and the bartender on the other. From your perch, you can view the rows of spirits and selection of beers available, engage the bartender in a bit of banter, and embark on a conversation with a stranger on either side of you.

Such quaint notions are being tossed aside, though. There are bars with no bars, back bars with no bottles, and bartenders who don’t make any drinks — not in front of you à  la minute, at least. Instead, there are bar carts and kitchen counters, as well as feature-rich work stations that seem like they were designed by NASA. In a cocktailing world where rotovaps, fat washing, tricked out ice in dozens of shapes and sizes, and specific glassware for every drink on the menu are the norm, did we really expect the notion of the bar itself to realm static?

Flipping the Bar Script

At Sips, once guests make their way to the front of the line that has probably accrued outside, they enter a space with bottle shelving on one wall and a row of tables on the other. A smattering of other tables are placed in between, among a bar cart workstation with a crew of bartenders working around it from multiple angles.

“The idea was to find a way to have a more open and flexible flow of work at the bar while avoiding the barrier of a bar counter,” says co-founder Simone Caporale. “The beauty was to find out that people trusted us fully the moment they stepped in. It was a rewarding feeling.”

While most standard bar carts could be repositioned around a room, at Sips it’s stationary. “It looks mobile but it doesn’t move,” says co-founder Marc Álvarez.

“Every day we have a guest ask us if it moves or not,” he says. “Sometimes they try to push it, checking if there are any wheels. … It’s crazy to see how a bar can evoke such technical curiosity among the guests!” But of course, when your bar doesn’t have a bar, curiosity is bound to ensue.

The bar without a bar creates a different dynamic for guests, particularly solo visitors. With no bar counter, individual guests are placed at larger, communal tables with other guests. “It creates eye contact with everyone in the room,” Álvarez says. “You’ll never feel alone as nobody is staring at the bottle shelves.”

Sips isn’t the only establishment challenging the notion of what a bar is in terms of where and how bartenders are working, and where and how guests are seated. At Kwãnt in London, the bar is more akin to a chef’s table — dubbed the bartender’s table — with cocktail stations on three sides and guests seated at the front, immersed in the action.

At A Bar With Shapes for a Name, also in London, the Bauhaus movement inspires its quest to match style with form, artistic beauty with utility. The bar, as it were, is more like a seat in a home’s kitchen in front of wooden cabinetry hiding away what would normally be found on a back bar or work station, alongside large, stainless-steel refrigerators. Drinks are batched using house-made distillates, so there’s no mixing being done and neither branded bottles nor cocktail tools to be found. Glassware pre-loaded with fanciful ice is kept queued up in the freezer, and cocktails are dispensed from portioned-out, hand-painted bottles.

Focusing on Functionality

Many of the ways the modern bar is being rejiggered have more to do with logical functionality, and considerations such as ergonomics and efficiency. At Tayēr + Elementary in London, back room Tayēr features a U-shaped counter around a central station that was designed from the ground up with insight from founder Alex Kratena. And when starting from the ground up, Kratena knew he required something that extended higher off the ground than what is considered standard.

“You’ll notice that our work surfaces are taller than the industry norm, to accommodate for the fact that the average adult in the western world is significantly taller than hundreds of years ago,” Kratena says. “Staff work standing upright without bending over and ruining their lower back and posture.”

The bar stations are built to be kitchen-grade, with easy-to-clean and long-lasting stainless-steel components, with each station consisting of hexagonal components that can be used in myriad ways. “When standing upright, these perforated hexagons act as a work top, if you flick them upside down they act as a storage,” Kratena says. “Bartenders have at their disposal three types of inserts to build a station to the needs of the menu and season, but also to their individual preferences.”

Other features include drawers for garnishes, as well as refrigerated drawers for glassware filled with ice that could instead be set up to use as fridge or freezer units. Behind Bars Agency, which manufactured the setup, was nominated as a 2024 Créateurs Design Awards finalist for the project.

“The service is way quicker, as two bartenders are working in a mirrored space, sharing the drinks order-making, and cutting the making time by 70 percent.”

Its function-first central bar station is designed to boost productivity and guest experience, with stations operated in two-person teams consisting of a bartender and host. “Menu items are assigned to individual stations, meaning the whole night, each drink is prepped and executed by one person in the most consistent way possible,” Kratena says. “The host role ensures there is genuine hospitality with all the small details, while bartenders make sure they’re delivering the best drinks in the fastest manner.”

The team at Sips, meanwhile, says its bar cart does more than alter the vantage point and guest experience, also providing more efficient service. “The service is way quicker, as two bartenders are working in a mirrored space, sharing the drinks order-making, and cutting the making time by 70 percent,” Álvarez says.

A few blocks down the road in Barcelona is Galileo, where founder Andrea Civettini knew he wanted an adaptable bar that was built with his precise needs in mind, and worked with the Spanish group Cocktail Stations to get it done. “I measured the length of my arm,” he says. “No more problems with the back!”

His work station features sliding, grated covers over storage units for garnishes and tools, with deep bins holding several trays of ice in different forms. The bar is designed so that the guest’s portion of the counter extends at the same height as the bartender’s working area, as opposed to dropping off to a lowered well or hidden station. “We wanted to do something to be at the same level with the customer,” Civettini says. Guests get a good view of the process, while staff enjoy a versatile setup with improved ergonomics.

Look at the Bartenders. They Are the Captains Now

While a greater number of noted bars are now throwing tradition out the window to create different and dynamic spaces, it’s not a brand-new concept. Civettini says he was inspired by The Old Man in Singapore, and the first bar I remember seeing that flipped the script to such a great degree was The Old Man‘s original locale in Hong Kong, which opened in 2017. Founder Agung Prabowo designed a space with an I-shaped bar counter, with bartenders at the top of the capital I — in front of the now famous mosaic mural of Ernest Hemingway — and guests lining each of the other sides.

Prabowo drilled down to the most devilish of details, taking steps such as measuring the height of the countertops in Starbucks in an effort to divine factors that might lead guests to be comfortable and stay for a longer time (103 centimeters), and installing an ice-cold copper strip lining the counters for guests to rest their glasses, keeping drinks cold. The Old Man reopened after Prabowo and his team moved onto other projects and is now run by Nikita Matveev.

“When it comes to bar design, listen to the bartenders.”

At Gen Yamamoto, which has now been open for more than a decade in Tokyo, cocktail making is performance theater. There is no back bar, and for that matter, no bar back to provide assistance. There is no music playing and no artwork on the walls. There is Gen Yamamoto, making you drinks. Guests book seatings for seasonal, omakase cocktail tasting menus, grabbing one of eight seats at an L-shaped bar constructed from two thick slabs of 500-year-old Mizunara oak. His workstation behind the counter is recessed, leaving him at eye level with guests as he offers one elegant drink preparation after another.

Tayēr also features a label- and branding-free back bar, while prepping a lineup of produce-driven cocktails that changes by the day. “The choices of what products we carry are dictated by seasons, availability, and creativity of the R&D team,” Kratena says. “Corporate deals or listings don’t work for us.”

Kratena points to a few of the favorite concepts he’s seen elsewhere around the world, including Byrdi in Melbourne, Sakurai in Tokyo, Kink in Berlin, Room by Le Kief in Taipei, and Uni in Lisbon. “It’s important that the industry continues to evolve and explore and innovate, and it is fine to make mistakes on the way, otherwise we would still be using typewriters to write our recipes, and instead of iPhones we would use telegrams,” he says.

Rather than sticking with conventions for the sake of it, bartenders are now seizing control of their bars for themselves. Whether it’s in order to change the guest experience, provide a more ergonomic environment for bartenders, increase efficiency, or turn cocktail venues into conceptual art shows. Even — perhaps especially — if it means removing the bar in the process.

“When it comes to bar design, listen to the bartenders,” Caporale says.

The article At the World’s Leading Bars, There Are No Bars appeared first on VinePair.

As long as humans have been drinking alcohol, we’ve been searching for ways to mitigate our hangovers. In fact, a papyrus scroll dating back to the first century A.D. recommends that hangover sufferers simply wear Alexandrian laurel, a plant worn by Greco-Roman athletes and orators.

In the almost 2,000 years since then, we’ve settled on some hangover cures that sound more sensible than that. But as it turns out, plenty of modern methods are also medical myths. In most cases, remedies like hair of the dog or eating a greasy breakfast will only worsen your hangover.

But what about other factors that can increase a hangover? It turns out caffeine is another culprit here. And although many people turn to caffeinated coffee when they’re hung over, caffeine is far from the salve most people need.

The Effects of Caffeine on a Hangover

When we drink alcohol, our liver breaks it down into acetaldehyde, a toxic compound that causes the headaches and nausea that come with a hangover. Alcohol also causes dehydration. This happens because alcohol essentially tricks your kidneys into frequent urination, which deprives the body of much needed fluids.

When you drink caffeinated coffee while hung over, the caffeine you ingest can worsen these symptoms. The British Medical Journal holds that caffeine will worsen your dehydration, because it also acts as diuretic, and it may also worsen your upset stomach.

Caffeine can also increase your hangover-induced headache. This occurs because caffeine temporarily constricts your blood vessels and increases your blood pressure. This exerts pressure on your cranium, creating a painful headache.

It’s important to note that caffeine can also have some positive effects on your hangover. One study identifies caffeine as a helpful way to ease the pain of morning-after alcohol withdrawal.

What to Drink Instead

Ultimately, if you are a regular caffeine drinker, you should go ahead and have a cup of coffee (though probably best not to overdo it). If you drink caffeine daily, the headache you’ll get from caffeine withdrawal will make your hangover a lot worse.

For those of us who aren’t regular caffeine drinkers, though, the morning after isn’t the time to make an exception. The positive effects of ingesting caffeine won’t be worth the stronger headache, increased nausea, and anxiety that can come with it.

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have coffee. Today’s decaf options are miles away from the Sanka older generations grew up with. On the contrary, decaf is having something of a renaissance right now, with roasters creating incredibly high-quality beans using all-natural decaffeination methods.

With that in mind, here are nine great decaf coffees to try when you’re hung over. Whether you prefer light roasts, dark roasts, espresso, or even cold brew concentrate, there’s a broad range of options to match pretty much any personal taste.

Counter Culture Decaf Urcunina

Roast: medium-light
Origin: Narino, Colombia (single origin)
Decaffeination Method: ethyl-acetate (sugar cane)
Taste: orange peel, stone fruit, light caramel

This offering from Counter Culture is for anyone who enjoys an approachable cup of coffee. Highly versatile and easygoing, it’s fruity on the palate with a complex citrus finish.

Intelligentsia Decaf House Blend

Roast: medium-light
Origin: Mexico (blend)
Decaffeination Method: Swiss water process
Taste: milk chocolate, grapefruit, almond

Intelligentsia’s flagship decaf packs a ton of flavor. It’s plenty juicy and bright, but it also offers a smooth milk chocolate finish.

Pete’s Decaf Mocca-Java

Roast: dark
Origin: Java and Ethiopia (blend)
Decaffeination Method: water process
Taste: caramel, bittersweet chocolate, nutmeg

When it’s cold out, there’s nothing more comforting than a hot cup of coffee with rich, warmly spiced flavor. If you’re a regular drinker of dark roasts, this is a great option for your morning cup.

Philly Fair Trade Roasters Decaf Mexico

Roast: medium-light
Origin: Chiapas, Mexico (Single)
Decaffeination Method: Swiss water process
Taste: milk chocolate, cherry, caramel

This impressive offering from Philly Fair Trade is a carefully sourced single-origin that will please both casual drinkers and the biggest coffee heads alike.

Explorer Cold Brew: The Daydreamer

Origin: blend
Decaffeination Method: Swiss water process
Taste: chicory, milk chocolate, brown sugar

Explorer specializes in cold brew and chai concentrates, including a decaf concentrate called The Daydreamer. If you’re somebody who needs a smooth iced coffee to start the day, this is a great choice. It’s also low-acid, even by the standards of cold brew, so if your stomach is sensitive, this is a good option.

Stumptown Trapper Creek Decaf

Roast: medium
Origin: blend
Decaffeination Method: Swiss water process
Taste: toast, cherry, chocolate

Stumptown’s Trapper Creek Decaf is smooth and flavorful, and it offers plenty of complexity despite being another low-acid option.

Savorista Brazilian Moment Decaf

Roast: medium
Origin: Brazil (blend)
Decaffeination Method: Swiss water process
Taste: caramel, pecan, date

Savorista is a “caffeine conscious” roaster, and this is one of its best decaf offerings. Sourced from the Cerrado region of Brazil, this blend is smooth and sweet, with lots of dried fruit and nuts on the palate.

Reanimator Colombia Desvelado Decaf

Roast: light
Origin: Huilu, Colombia (single-origin)
Decaffeination Method: ethyl acetate (sugar cane)
Taste: lemon peel, praline, honey

Reanimator is a roaster that knows its way around light roasts, and this single-origin Colombia decaf packs a serious punch, with a delicious lemony finish. If you like to start your day off with a bright, fruity cup, this will get you going without any jitters.

Equator Coffees Decaf Eye of the Tiger Espresso

Roast: medium-light
Origin: Ethiopia, Colombia, Brazil (blend)
Decaffeination Method: water processed
Taste: toasted sugar, dried fruit, pecan

For those who prefer espresso, Equator Coffees makes one of our favorite decaf espresso blends. These carefully sourced beans make a flavorful shot that goes down smooth.

*Image retrieved from Prostock-studio via stock.adobe.com

The article Why You Should Avoid Caffeine When You’re Hung Over (and 9 Decaf Coffees to Try Instead) appeared first on VinePair.

As the category of non-alcoholic beverages continues to expand, it can be easy to get lost in the sea of booze-free wine, beer, and spirits. But amongst the ruckus, there’s a simple non-alcoholic option with a long history in the category that deserves to be on your radar: verjus. You might be familiar with the term from cocktail recipes or product labels, but what exactly is verjus, and how is it made? We called upon expert Roman Roth, winemaker at Long Island’s Wölffer Estate, a winery that makes a full lineup of verjus in addition to their portfolio of wines.

Verjus is a crisp and fruity liquid that lies somewhere between wine and Welch’s grape juice. It’s made by pressing unripe grapes to extract a bright, acidic juice. Since the product doesn’t undergo fermentation, it’s naturally non-alcoholic. However, it’s a bit different than your typical grape juice as it’s made from wine grapes and picked extremely early in the growing season, so it’s fresh and light on the palate instead of sweet and cloying. Roth says Wölffer’s version is produced with grapes from its estate vineyards (Chardonnay for the white and Merlot for the red).

“Normal grape juice is very sweet, with little acidity, and is usually pasteurized to be sterile,” Roth says. “The Wölffer verjus is vibrant and fresh with bright acidity and balanced sweetness, and is cold-sterile-filtered in order to protect the delicate fruit.”

In addition to being bottled solo, other producers are using this product as the base for their non-alcoholic wines, adding other extracts and botanicals to replicate the flavor profiles of your typical bottles. Kally’s Golden Sparkler, which was featured on VinePair’s list of best non-alcoholic wines for 2024, is made with Chardonnay verjus, organic apple juice, green tea, black tea, jasmine, and spearmint to add complexity.

Roth mentions that chefs and adventurous at-home cooks enjoy using Wölffer’s expression when cooking as a substitute for vinegar, lemon juice, or wine in sauces, mustards, or salad dressings. He also suggests trying it out as a component in a refreshing spritzer or no- or low-alcohol cocktail.

“Although dating back centuries, verjus is enjoying a resurgence among creative chefs in search of natural and healthy ingredients to enhance a range of dishes,” he says. So the next time you’re looking to add some zest to your salad dressing or a tart kick to your NA spritz, try the OG non-alcoholic wine product.

*Image retrieved from FOOD-micro – stock.adobe.com

The article Ask a Wine Pro: What Is Verjus? appeared first on VinePair.

After 13 years of consecutive growth, tequila exports have finally fallen, according to a report from the Tequila Regulatory Council (CRT). Exports of the Mexican spirit measured in at 401.4 million liters in 2023, signifying an overall decrease of 4.2 percent by volume compared to 2022.

Tequila exports first started seeing substantial growth in 2009, when Mexico was shipping 136.4 million liters per year. Since then, tequila’s popularity took off in key markets like the U.S., accelerating the category’s growth. In 2022, the Mexican spirit seemed unstoppable, surpassing American whiskey in terms of value and becoming the second most valuable category of spirits in the U.S. after vodka.

Still, new export data suggests that the tequila bubble might be bursting. In 2023, the U.S. remained the largest export market for tequila and experienced a decrease of 5 percent in volume compared to the previous year. Following the U.S. in liters of exports is Spain and Germany, which saw decreases of 7.1 percent and 21.9 percent, respectively. The smaller markets of France and the UK, however, did see increases of 16.2 percent and 6.8 percent. The CRT report suggested that the fall in U.S. exports could be attributed to a slowing U.S. economy, competition in market distribution channels, and a higher price of agave.

The premiumization trend continues to take hold of the category, with premium tequila brands made with 100 percent blue agave taking up more and more share. This could explain why the Mexican tequila exports by value actually increased 4.5 percent from January to November of 2023, compared to that same time frame of 2022.

Even though exports dipped in 2023, the report suggests that expert consultants remain positive on tequila’s future in major markets such as the U.S.

The article Tequila Exports Fell 4.2 Percent Last Year in First Drop Since 2009 appeared first on VinePair.

Pope Francis hasn’t been shy about his love for wine, Scotch, and even Pappy Van Winkle. On Monday, he took another opportunity to remind the masses that Italian wine is worth supporting.

At the Vatican Apostolic Palace, Pope Francis addressed an audience of over 100 wine producers and trade representatives as a part of an initiative titled “The Economy of St. Francis and the World of Italian Wine,” according to a press release. The discussion was organized by Veronafiere-Vinitaly, the company responsible for hosting Italy’s biggest annual trade show.

Throughout his address, Pope Francis advocated for the democratization and accessibility of wine, as well as the importance of ethics and respect across the industry.

“Wine, land, agricultural skills, and enterprise are gifts from God,” Pope Francis said in his opening remarks. Later in the discussion, the leader of the Catholic church urged that respect is mandatory in all facets of the wine industry, from “attention to the environment” to “work and healthy consumption habits.”

“The mere application of industrial techniques and business logic are not enough to ensure quality products,” he said. “The land, vineyards, cultivation, fermentation and maturing processes require consistency, attention and patience.”

The president of Veronafiere, Federico Bricolo, echoed Pope Francis’s remarks, agreeing to “ensure that wine continues to be an aspect of social cohesion and open dialogue that inspires conviviality to bring people together.”

In an industry often chastised for snobbery and exclusivity, it’s reassuring to hear that efforts are being made to make wine approachable for people of all creeds and socioeconomic backgrounds. Pope Francis isn’t alone in emphasizing the importance of this shift, and we can only hope the tides continue to turn, making wine more welcoming to everyone.

The article Pope Francis Addresses Crowd at Vatican: ‘Wine is For Everyone’ appeared first on VinePair.

Coors Light Beer Train first barreled through the American landscape in 2005, bringing ice-cold refreshment to the nation’s 21-and-uppers through the brand’s iconic commercial. Now, after 12 years out of transit, the Beer Train is making its anticipated return for the 2024 Super Bowl.

To sweeten the comeback, the brand is giving fans the chance to book a virtual seat on the Coors Express. Through CGI, the selected passengers will be portrayed “riding” the train during a new commercial set to run during Super Bowl LVII. That means they’ll sign a contract and be compensated with $500 in talent fees and limited-edition Coors swag, according to a press release.

Since the train will be moving at roughly 900 miles per hour in the game-day ad Coors Light will release a slow-motion version of the commercial online. There are 100 seats available, and the brand will open up limited booking slots each day at 1 p.m. EST from Jan. 28 through Feb. 2.

“We can’t wait to introduce the Coors Light Chill Train to the next generation of Coors Light drinkers, giving our fans a front row, or window seat, to the action,” says Marcelo Pascoa, vice president of marketing for all Coors brands.

Between 1989 and 2023, Anheuser-Busch laid full claim to all beer advertising space during the Big Game. In June 2022, the beverage giant forfeited its exclusivity deal, freeing up space for MillerCoors to swoop in. There was much speculation over which beer giant would secure the 30-second slot of screen time during the 2023 game, but when the day came, MillerCoors killed three birds with one stone by advertising Miller Lite, Coors Light, and even Blue Moon in a tightly-packed ad snippet.

The Chill Train’s return aligns with an upward trajectory for Coors. Last spring, the brand was on a sales hot streak, netting an over 17-percent growth in overall volume sales, according to data from Circana. With major competitor Bud Light having a rather rough year, Coors and Miller could very well continue to soar.

The article Coors Light Brings Back Classic Beer Train For Super Bowl LVII appeared first on VinePair.

It’s well known that wine was an essential part of ancient Roman life. In fact, many sources suggest that Roman citizens were drinking about 100 gallons of wine per year. But how that wine largely looked, smelled, and tasted has been a mystery — until now. A new archaeological study of Roman pottery is providing insights into the winemaking techniques of the time, and how these methods likely impacted the liquid’s flavor profile.

In the study, published in the journal Antiquity, archaeologists Dr. Dimitri Van Limbergen from Ghent University and Dr. Paulina Komar from the University of Warsaw compared Roman clay jars called dolia to the modern winemaking vessels we use today. The shape of the dolia appears similar to that of the qvevri, the clay vessels used in Georgia, making a connection between ancient Roman wine and contemporary Georgian wine.

“By burying the dolia in the ground, temperature and pH could be controlled, encouraging the formation of surface yeasts and a chemical compound called sotolon,” the study reveals. “This gives wine a slightly spicy flavor with aromas of toasted bread and walnuts.”

The clay vessels used by ancient Romans were also porous compared to the modern, stainless-steel tanks popular in wine production today. Steel tanks are completely sealed, limiting oxygen exposure during the winemaking process, but the small holes in dolia allow oxidation throughout the fermentation process. This can impart richness and complexity, with flavors like roasted nuts and bruised apples. The mineral-rich nature of the clay also likely added a drying sensation to the wine.

The varying sizes and shapes of the storage containers that have been discovered from this time period also suggests that the ancient Romans were aware of the various techniques they could use to manipulate the flavor profile of their wines, and had substantial control over the final product.

“The value of identifying, often unexpected, parallels between modern and ancient winemaking lies in both debunking the alleged amateurish nature of Roman winemaking and uncovering common traits in millennia-old vinification procedures,” Dr. Van Limbergen said in the study.

The article Archaeologists Uncover How Wine Likely Looked, Smelled, and Tasted in Ancient Rome appeared first on VinePair.

Woodford Reserve’s Double Oaked Bourbon is already one hell of an oak bomb, but the folks down in Kentucky are upping the ante again with the release of Double Double Oaked. The bourbon, released Tuesday as part of the brand’s Distillery Series, was crafted by finishing fully-mature Woodford Reserve Double Oaked for an extra year in a new heavily toasted, lightly charred oak barrel.

Double Double Oaked first debuted in 2015 with the launch of the Distillery Series, and its double-barreling process imparts further soft oak influence to an already rich and flavorful bourbon. A press release states that the extra year in barrel makes for a bourbon that’s distinctly spicier than the standard Double Oaked expression. It‘s bottled at 90.4 proof, and according to the brand, it dishes up a generous nose of maple syrup, butterscotch, chocolate, and hickory smoke. The liquid itself is a testament to master distiller Elizabeth McCall’s unwavering commitment to craftsmanship and innovation.

“This is the perfect bourbon for both new and experienced drinkers with tasting notes of burnt marshmallows, dried cherry, and bittersweet chocolate,” McCall says in the press release. On subsequent sips, notes of chai tea begin to emerge, evolving into clove and spice on the finish.

Double Double Oaked will be available in limited quantities at the Woodford Reserve Distillery in Versailles as well as select Kentucky retailers on Tuesday. There’s a limit of two 375-milliliter bottles per customer, with a price tag of $79.99 per bottle. All sales must be made in-person, so if you’re in bourbon country this week, consider a detour to the distillery to snag a bottle.

The article Woodford Reserve Re-Releases Fan-Favorite Double Double Oaked appeared first on VinePair.

From microbrew soaks to full-on sudsy retreats, beer spas were once a stateside novelty and a travel wellness destination for those visiting Eastern Europe. Now, hops-inspired retreats can be found nationwide, and more are on the way. Much like wine baths in the early aughts, beer baths have become a full-fledged staple in the world of wellness tourism, and the timing makes sense: With the rise of adaptogenic “social” RTDs, non-alcoholic aperitifs, and even hype-y insulated mugs for staying hydrated, the drinks-wellness Venn diagram often feels like a circle.

While a beer spa might sound like a gimmicky product of the times, it’s a time-honored, 2,000-year-old tradition that finds its roots in Prague circa 921 when King Wenceslas had his servants prepare him cold brewery baths with wort from the nearby abbeys, explain the owners of Denver’s Oakwell Beer Spa, Jessica French and Damien Zouaoui. They seek to offer bathers beer’s purported wellness benefits (more on that in a minute), but also to share the relaxing experience with a larger audience.

French and Zouaoui became enamored with the concept of beer spas after visiting one in Poland during their 14-month, 25-country travels in 2017. They’d just quit their corporate jobs and weren’t necessarily on the hunt for a new business venture, but the draw of sipping Polish brews in a warm bath left them with a burning desire to craft their own resort for wellness, craft beer, and good company.

“After that first experience in Poland, we investigated spa and bathing cultures globally. We went to thermal baths in Budapest, jjimjilbangs in South Korea, and onsens in Japan,” they say. Eventually, they opened Oakwell, which combines “a day spa and a taproom into one.” Providing what they like to call “beer therapy,” Oakwell Beer Spa guests unwind in a private spa suite. There, they’ll find a giant tub filled with foamy medicinal herbs, including fresh hops and barley sourced from local breweries, as well as beer-infused bath products including a hydrating hair mask.

For award-winning brewer Jeff Tyler of Denver’s Spice Trade Brewery, he’d first visited Oakwell as a guest, but after talking with the owners, he set out to craft an alcoholic brew that was worthy of the beer-inspired experience and could only be enjoyed at the spa.

“[We wanted to create] a beer that was more true to spa life,” Tyler explains. “You think about normal spas and their cucumber water or their tea selection [comes to mind]. We started brainstorming some fun ideas for a custom beer that they could have on tap year round.”

After testing several iterations—including one with eucalyptus—the trio landed on a concoction they’d eventually name Spa Sidekick. Tyler says the beer is best described as a lemon-cucumber sour that’s refreshing, bright, and acidic. “It’s got fresh cucumber juice and lemon peel — really fresh, natural ingredients — and it tastes like what you want to be drinking when you relax in the spa,” he says.

This is another aspect of the curated beer-themed experience that’s making spots like Oakwell so popular: It’s helping to introduce a larger male clientele to a new aspect of wellness. “For whatever reason, the culture of masculinity in our country makes it seem like men and spas are incompatible. And that’s unfortunate, because they’re amazing,” Tyler says. Oakwell’s founders add that they also want to help break the stigma of spa-going being a purely feminine experience.

“We want everyone to feel comfortable,” they say of the near-$200 ritual. “In fact, nearly half of our guests are first-time spa-goers, typically coerced to come by their partner with the promise of beer. But by the end of their experience, that person is often the one begging their partner to come back.”

“They have the hops and everything in the bath, and you’re able to drink [beer] straight off the draft. Whatever combination they use definitely feels more silky, smooth, and comforting than actually spilling beer on yourself. It’s a cool concept.”

While customers are able to sip on pints as they soak, there remains the common misconception that they’ll be bathing in alcohol. That’s not the case, explains Barbara Corzo, the co-owner of The Beer Spa in Orlando, Fla. Though these baths contain most of the ingredients that produce beer, they aren’t brewed to complete the beer making process. Corzo says her proprietary blend of hops, barley, and brewer’s yeast took a lot of trial and error to nail, as the aroma of her blend was particularly important: It had to be something light and citrusy that would enhance the aromatherapy benefits for guests as they relaxed.

At The Beer Spa, the tubs are 150 gallons each. With nine appointments daily in each room (and some rooms having more than one tub), the establishment goes through over a thousand gallons of beer-like ingredients daily. And that doesn’t even include the actual brews they source from Ivanhoe Park Brewing, a local Orlando beer company, for their guests to enjoy throughout their afternoon. The brewery’s owner, Glenn Closson, says he’s enjoyed the spa himself.

“Beer is incorporated everywhere,” Closson says of his experience. “They have the hops and everything in the bath, and you’re able to drink [beer] straight off the draft. Whatever combination they use definitely feels more silky, smooth, and comforting than actually spilling beer on yourself. It’s a cool concept.”

Unlike other beer spas, Corzo’s establishment adds its alcohol-inspired blend directly to the tub loose, without the use of tea bags to hold the grains in place. It’s an unorthodox approach that adds a unique texture to the bath water, and Corzo believes in letting the grit of the hops help exfoliate your skin while soaking.

That’s just one of the many supposed benefits of bathing in the distinctive elements of beer. The act of bathing itself is restorative at its core. “We know that stress impacts our skin and hair for the worse — increasing inflammatory conditions, causing acne exacerbations, breaking down collagen, reducing hydration, and contributing to hair loss,” says Dr. Blair Murphy Rose, a board-certified dermatologist. While she’s not aware of any well-designed clinical trials investigating the benefit of soaking in beer for the hair and skin, she believes hops may have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and antimicrobial effects, while bathing in brewer’s yeast may provide topical skin benefits such as the plumping of skin and reduced inflammation. Hops are also considered a mild sedative that can help you feel more relaxed.

“In essence, we expect you to feel refreshed, rejuvenated, and replenished after a soak,” Corzo says. “Between the benefits of the soaking ingredients, the aromatherapy, and hydrotherapy, you’ll feel better.”

The article The Inevitable Rise of Beer Spas appeared first on VinePair.

Overrated can be a loaded word, and it’s often hurled at whatever style the latest tastemakers have deemed to be on its way out. Among them are some of the more hype-y styles shaking up the industry since the craft beer boom. Some people scoff at these popular beers, while others line up to snag the first tastes of them. Some brewers just see them as filling up tank space that could have gone to something more exciting and innovative.

The beer industry had a difficult year in 2023, and perhaps some of its stalwarts are beginning to feel a bit stale. Is beer simply facing massive growing pains? And if the industry is entering a new stage, does it need to leave behind some styles to make room for the new? Here, we asked 15 brewers which beer styles they feel are the most overrated. From hazy IPAs to pastry stouts to smoothies lactosed within an inch of their lives, here are the ones the pros believe have been given more credit than they’re due.

The Most Overrated Beer Styles, according to brewers:

• Hazy IPAs
• Heavily fruited smoothie beers
• New Zealand pilsners
• Sweet, opaque double IPAs
• Non-alcoholic beers
• Lactose-heavy beers
• Pastry stouts
• Kettle sours
• Sour IPAs

“This is a tricky question. Although I think there are a lot of overrated hazy IPAs around the world, I respect this style because it’s an ‘entrance door’ for a lot of non-craft beer drinkers. With that being said, my vote would go for New Zealand pilsners. Although it’s seen as an original or hyped take on a crispy and refreshing beer, I find them often unbalanced and annoying since I can’t enjoy neither the pilsner aspect of it, nor their overpowering and hoppy taste.” —Maria Shirts, head brewer, Tin Roof Brewing Co., Baton Rouge, La.

“Anything in the heavily fruited or smoothie territory. Of course it tastes good, it’s full of fruit.” —JP Boudwin, head brewer, Native Son, Los Angeles

“I’d say sweet, opaque double IPAs. Not because they don’t deserve a place in the market, but the ubiquity detracts from the availability of drier, more nuanced counterparts. Give me more hoppy offerings in the 5 to 7 percent range with enough translucency to suggest a profile beyond just hoppy.” —Luke Fuhrman, owner and brewer, Weaver Hollow Brewery, Andes, N.Y.

“In my opinion, the hazy IPA is the most overrated beer. All you see in the market nowadays are IPAs or hazy IPAs. I think this causes breweries to focus only on this style and limits them from making anything else because ‘it won’t sell.’” —Jovan Gonzalez, brewery manager, Societe Brewing Co., San Diego

“For me, the most overrated beer style has to be smoothie sours, and by that I mean beers where the flavor is completely dominated by unfermented fruit puree. The sight of those chunks floating in barely carbonated fruit soup honestly kind of turns my stomach. Of all of the hyped beer styles, I think they’re probably the least beer-like and also the least difficult to make, and I say that having done a few myself. For all of their many evils, even pastry stouts are at least fundamentally a beer underneath the candy coating.” —Luke Thorley, head brewer, Personal Best Brewing, Ithaca, N.Y.

“I think the most overrated styles have to be NA beers. They, by and large, do not hit the mark on flavor. It’s a very nice sentiment, but I prefer a sparkling water, or Diet Coke, as a treat.“ —Andrew Schwartz, cofounder, Human People Beer, Seattle

“I think beers that are heavily reliant on lactose (classic milk stout excluded) are overrated. I think they brought up the expected level of sweetness in some styles of beer, like the IPA. People have been chasing a sweeter and sweeter profile and losing balance.” —Brendon Boudwin, brewer and co-owner, Carbon Copy, Philadelphia

“Hot take, but heavily fruited sours have to be the most overrated beer style — if you even call it that. I think I die a little every time I have to push drums of fruit puree into a fermenter.” —LaTroya Butts, brewer, Resident Culture Brewing Co., Charlotte, N.C.

“I’m gonna sound like a typical brewer and say hazy IPAs. They are overrated all across the board.“ —Del Hidalgo, cellarperson, Fifth Hammer Brewing Co., Long Island City, N.Y.

“My most overrated beer style is pastry stouts. I hate pastry stouts because they are really painful and laborious to make and they are so filling, rich, and over the top. And they’re not something I enjoy drinking a full glass of, but are nice to taste in 4-ounce portions.” —Bobby Rolandi, head brewer. Kings County Brewers Collective, Brooklyn

“Kettle sours, because they upset my tummy. They’re also usually packed with a bunch of fruit and adjuncts that just taste like those adjuncts instead of the actual beer underneath. And I can only drink one of them, if that.” —Theo Castillo, founder and brewer, No Seasons, Miami

“I might get some hate for this one, but I’m going to say it: pastry stouts. I think any style that’s trying to mimic a meal is very odd. I don’t have a problem with a rich, decadent, balanced stout, but why would anyone want to drink a dessert? I think there is beauty in nailing flavors when making beer, but we really don’t need more mint chocolate chip cookie, caramelized banana, cosmic brownie, peanut butter cup, coconut macaroon, and tiramisu beer. At first, it was pretty interesting what processes help to enhance and really bring out those specific flavors, but it’s gone pretty overboard in the last few years.” —Andreina Uribe, cellarperson, Grimm Artisanal Ales, Brooklyn

“‘Sours as a category. It’s killed traditional lactic-fermented styles in the U.S., as now lactose and fruit have become the norm in ‘sour’ beer. So when a consumer comes in and asks for a sour, they are really asking a different question. I hate sweet beers, so anything with lactose is a no-go for me, and I think they are for consumers that don’t really like beer.” —Chris Lohring, founder and brewer, Notch Brewing, Salem, Mass.

“I’m over fruited IPAs or sour IPAs. I just don’t think it’s what IPAs are for, and I don’t think they’re achieving what people want them to achieve.” —Sydney Atkin, brewer, Other Half Brewing, Brooklyn

“I know that a lot of folks will probably say hazy or New England IPAs, but I actually do like a lot of hazies, though I can’t say that I drink them all too often. I’m going to take it a step further and say that triple IPAs in general are overrated from many standpoints. As a brewer, do we really need to make an IPA with that much grain — oats in some cases, talk about a slow runoff — and hops? From a beer-tender standpoint, I have seen people crush TIPAs as if they were Sierra Nevada pale ales, and then they wonder why we had to cut them off. I’m not going to let you down three to five 10-percenters before you drive your wife and kids home. And from a consumer point of view, they are almost always overly sweet and thick, so overall, it’s just a big no from me.” —Molly Flynn, brewer, Tripping Animals Brewery, Miami

*Image retrieved from cabecademarmore via stock.adobe.com

The article We Asked 15 Brewers: What’s the Most Overrated Beer Style? (2024) appeared first on VinePair.

Ever hear the story about how water was turned into wine? For one Oregon winemaker, that story has a different twist – the turning of smoke-tainted wine into brandy and, by extension, a whiskey/brandy blend.

In September 2020, the winemaking team at Oregon’s Patricia Green Cellars, led by winemaker Jim Anderson, was setting about the annual ritual of harvest. At the same time, fires raging throughout much of the state were generating a lot of smoke that found its way into the Pinot Noir and other grapes that were set to be picked. The end result? Tens of thousands of gallons of wine impacted in varying degrees, ranging from slightly tainted to downright full ashen-tasting.

Anderson and associate winemaker Matthew Russell pulled out every tool they had in their winemaking book to try to salvage what they had. Some white and rosé wines were still made, as they were less subject to smoke taint. Hundreds of cases of Pinot, from grapes harvested before the fires, were produced as they normally would be. And a lower-end Pinot was produced as well from the least tainted wines after being subjected to some special tricks.

Even after pulling off these small miracles, the winery was still stuck with what was essentially a lot of very acrid and bitter Pinot (“hot garbage,” as Anderson describes it). Anderson and Russell had no desire to just dump what was left and write it off. Instead, they learned from a fellow winemaker about that person’s attempt to distill some ruined wine into brandy at an Oregon distillery. They tried it and were not impressed.

Enter into the story now maverick distiller Lynsee Sardell, who Anderson met while visiting a different winery. Conversation was struck up and Sardell convinced the winemaker to let her try her hand at distilling a small amount of it. What she came back with wowed the folks at Patricia Green so much they asked her to take on the project on a contract distilling basis.

Fast-forward to the end of 2023 and what’s now known as Patty Green Whiskey Distillers is out of the gate with its first distilled spirits releases. Sardell, alongside producing a Pinot Noir brandy, has also turned to locally sourced Pacific Northwest barley types to craft a handful of whiskey-type spirits that make use of the brandy in an 80 percent whiskey, 20 percent brandy blend (other products with other blend ratios are in the works).

We sat down with Anderson, Russell, and Sardell recently over samples of the spirits in a makeshift speakeasy on the Patricia Green Cellars grounds to get their takes on their out-of-the-box distilling adventure.

1. Let’s start with a little background on the project. Take us back to what was the beginning stage of this, why did it occur, and go from there.

Anderson: In 2020, the early stages of September, the wildfires in central Oregon really started to take off. And for anybody who lived in Oregon in the Willamette Valley at that time, there was a couple-week period where the smoke in the valley was simply unbelievable. The AQI, the air quality index in Oregon, was over 700 at one point. From our winery, you couldn’t see the top of our vineyard because of the smoke. It was really something else.

We were three-quarters of the way through harvest before we knew that there was an issue. We did everything that we could, everything that we thought of, every scrappy idea that we had and little of it really worked. We just had this stuff, and we didn’t know what to do with it.

I met Lynsee and I told [her] the story about how we went and tasted some brandy at this other place, and it wasn’t very good. And she was just like, “You should let me try.” And so she came on over and took away a few gallons of this really tainted wine and brought us back different cuts in all these little Mason jars. And it was unbelievable. It’s just this pure, beautiful, clear, clean, sweet, buttery-textured brandy.

2. What do you have to do to get the smoke out of the wine? What’s the distilling process like?

Sardell: I distill in a very particular way. I control temperature and pressure very meticulously, and by hand, not a computer. It’s very time-consuming — it’s a 27- to 36-hour process, each batch, because of the way the still was designed. I don’t sleep a lot. But it’s just by taste, by feel. And then I also take very specific cuts of the distillate, and that means a few things. It means not only watching the foreshots and the heads cut, but it also means every couple of minutes you’re tasting. And I’m not actually tasting, I’m smelling and I’m aromatizing everything as it goes, so that it’s not just about what’s in the mouth, it’s what develops over time and smell and taste.

3. So over 36 hours, how much wine did you go through?

Russell: It was like 12 or 13,000 gallons, I think. We’d load up one of those plastic totes and drive her down to the distillery and drop it off, take the distillate back with us. We’d bring it back here and Jim and I would water it back to barrel strength and we would taste and decide what we liked. The thing that really struck us was just this richness in it that was unusual.

4. And you noticed no smoke?

Russell: Oh, no. None. Not at all. It was incredible how pure it was.

Anderson: When that brandy first came back, it was the first time since it was picked that it smelled like fruit again.

5. So here we are, early 2024. You’ve released these products, a standalone brandy and some whiskeys with brandy blended in. What are you looking for from a flavor profile when you bring brandy and a grain-based product together?

Sardell: I think the grapes and the brandy help to just carry it along. Single-grain, single-malt, single-strain barley can be thin. I think as American whiskey drinkers, we’re used to something that’s resonant — it stays on the palate a little bit longer, and that brandy really helps contain that characteristic nicely. It’s a complement, not a detriment.

Anderson: We just started trying, like, 90 percent grain, 10 percent, 80 percent. And we did lots of iterations, things we knew we’d probably reject. What we were trying to do is find the fine line between where you could feel the brandy’s texture while still getting the grain to be all the force of the flavor.

We put it together and we came up with this 80-20 amount of grain distillate to the brandy, and it tasted like what we were looking for, this balance between the grain showing the flavor and the brandy giving it enough of the structural lift and the mouthfeel and texture and depth to it.

6. For a winery, why whiskey?

Anderson: This winery is one of the weirder wineries in the state. We produce as many as 36 different Pinot Noirs in any given vintage. We’re seen for using the highest-quality grapes from old-vine grape sources using organic farming. Moving into a place where we could be like, hey, if we’re going to do this, we just don’t want to have [any] whiskey. We want it to be something that’s tied back to what the winery [values are].

Having these single strains of barley that really spoke to us would be something that we would be able to not only be interested in, but if it’s going to be as good as we think it’s going to be, it’s going to be a natural fit in terms of selling it, people will understand.

Not every wine person is a whiskey drinker. Not every whiskey drinker is a wine drinker, but there is obviously a Venn diagram where the circles overlap pretty heavily. And so that’s why we felt like we could not only do it as a one-off, but as an ongoing project.

The article At Oregon’s Patricia Green Cellars, Smoke-Tainted Wine Finds New Life as Whiskey appeared first on VinePair.

When a person is unfamiliar with a beverage, the last thing you want them to feel is shame for not knowing what it is. It’s a phenomenon that should go without saying, but in reality, it often feels like a lot of people who work in the drinks business let their egos get the best of them. A conversation that could introduce a customer to their next favorite spirit often devolves into a long-winded, didactic spiel. We’ve seen it play out in the sommelier sphere, but these days, is it becoming pervasive among bartenders as well?

In most industries, exclusivity draws people in. But in food and drink, people don’t always want what they can’t have. In fact, the intimidation and standoffish nature that comes with exclusivity often winds up being more of a deterrent than anything else.

Perhaps this is due to a discrepancy between how industry workers talk among themselves and how they interact with the public. Not everyone knows everything about amaro, and that’s OK. Curiosity and questioning should be encouraged, not condemned. Plus, whenever you let your ego get in the way of making customers happy, you’re leaving money on the table.

On this episode of the “VinePair Podcast,” Adam, Joanna, and Zach discuss whether bartender snobbery is a real issue, and if it threatens the ascendency of cocktails in the American drinking firmament. If we concede that sommeliers, and the entire culture around them, turned some drinkers away from wine, will bartenders do the same? Tune in for more.

Zach is drinking: Western Cider Strawberry Dolgo
Joanna is drinking: Sage Rat Ramato
Adam is drinking: Clos des Bretèches “Les Belouines” Anjou Blanc

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In September a couple threw a wedding in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts with a less-than-subtle theme. It started with the engagement photos, which captured the pair at various iconic New York City restaurants drinking Martinis, followed by illustrated save the dates featuring them sipping Martinis in front of New York restaurant institution The Odeon. Guests’ welcome bags and hangover kits featured an illustration of — you’re catching on now, aren’t you? — a giant Martini.

Yet all of this paled in comparison to the showpiece that awaited them in the reception tent: a four-foot Martini ice luge. Attendees chose their spirit and dirty-to-dry ratio, which was stirred and poured into the luge, whose winding, carved tunnel sufficiently mixed said contents before depositing them, perfectly chilled, into each guest’s waiting glass.

“It was taken that the Martini was the main theme of their wedding, but in this really funny way,” says wedding and event planner Melissa Sullivan, who owns Studio Sully, a Los Angeles-based event design and production studio. “I think everyone is feeling like they can more joyfully express themselves and what they like at their wedding.”

Dividing her work mainly between New York and L.A., Sullivan is no stranger to the bespoke side of wedding drinks. For years, her clients have seemed ahead of the curve, incorporating premium spirits into their well-stocked bars and featuring seasonal cocktails to complement food menus. But one trend is proving particularly stubborn, she says: “People are Martini-obsessed.”

Blame (Thank?) the Espresso Martini

Sullivan reckons it began a few years ago when the Espresso Martini craze hit as Covid’s grip was loosening. Caffeinated, boozy, and ’90s chic, the cocktail represented the extravagant zenith of our post-pandemic re-entry in some ways. Wedding planning site and vendor marketplace The Knot has labeled this vibe the “night-luxe” aesthetic — as in, prowling the scene-iest scenes in sleek, all-black ensembles with a caviar bump on one hand and a Martini in the other, à la “Sex and the City.”

“After two years of being in the pandemic, we’re really seeing people return to pre-pandemic norms and celebrate in bigger ways,” says Chapelle Johnson, The Knot’s associate editor. Night-luxe is a natural fit for a wedding theme, as is its caffeinated Martini mascot, which has been cropping up as miniature signature cocktail-hour openers or passed at the end of the dinner hour with dessert for an “energizing boost” before the dancing commences. Couples also adopted Espresso Martinis as a “unique morning cocktail” at their post-wedding brunch to coax hungover guests back to life, Johnson says.

Although Sullivan saw demand for Espresso Martinis start to trail off in 2023, The Knot says otherwise. According to a recent Instagram poll asking followers to weigh in on what’s in and out for 2024, some 60 percent of respondents said Espresso Martinis will still be popular this year, Johnson says.

Chicago-based Lola Event Productions doesn’t see the trend slowing down anytime soon, either.

“The Espresso Martini is somehow everybody’s signature drink,” says Lola event and wedding planner Michelle Vining. “Yeah, you and every other millennial and Gen Z-er.”

Even so, the craze has given way to a broader love affair with classic Martinis, which are taking up such inauspicious forms as Martini (instead of Champagne) towers, passed mini Martinis, and dedicated Martini lounges featuring gin and vodka with all the fixings to suit guests’ preferences.

“If someone has a Martini in their hand, like a glass of Champagne, they’re more willing to pose for the camera; there’s something about it that just always makes people feel glam.”

It’s one indicator of how important food and drink have become at weddings, not just for the sake of throwing a finer party, but as forms of self-expression in their own right. More than half of Vining’s clients say the food and bar are the most important part of their wedding “because it is so much a part of their life,” she says. This mirrors the results of a survey of almost 12,000 couples who married in 2022 by The Knot; 61 percent named food and beverage as the most significant aspect while planning their wedding, up 4 percentage points from 2021. Additionally, 57 percent said they offered an open bar.

“These stats speak to couples recognizing the value of investing in alcohol and bar services, as it gives them a creative way to highlight their personalities and likes,” Johnson says.

The Martini represents a piece of the “retro obsession” that’s overtaken our broader culture, resurrecting cassette tapes, choker necklaces, and film and flash photography in its wake. As Vining points out, couples are always tossing around the words “timeless” and “classic,” but it means something different to each. “It’s all about their perception; right now, classic means the ’90s,” she says.

When Classic Bucks Stodgy Tradition

Regardless, people are leaning hard into classic cocktails again, like the Martini and the Old Fashioned, she adds. The Martini seems to transcend these trendier flings with its timelessly celebratory feel, like the little black dress and red lip of the cocktail realm. As the Berkshires wedding proves, it makes for an iconic — if cheeky — symbol of celebration. Indeed, Sullivan finds that guests embrace the festive environment when they’re holding a Martini.

“If someone has a Martini in their hand, like a glass of Champagne, they’re more willing to pose for the camera; there’s something about it that just always makes people feel glam,” she says.

“It used to be a no-no to call a Martini or an Old Fashioned a specialty cocktail.”

It can actually help couples from a cost-savings standpoint. A well-known signature drink is generally a safer option. “To push a signature drink that’s super different on people can be a big waste of money,” Vining says. “They’ll take one sip and just put it down.”

It’s also easier on the bar — since it doesn’t require special syrups or juices or advanced prep like infusing shrubs. A full-sized Martini can, theoretically, satisfy a guest for longer so they don’t need to go to the bar as many times, Sullivan adds.

Then again, dispensing such a high-octane cocktail at an open bar does come with the risk of guests getting sloshed early in the evening. Fortunately, people love miniature things, even more so if “a tiny cocktail is paired with an hors d’oeuvre,” Vining says.

She’s found it can take some coaxing to let couples know that they can not only serve a Martini (or, hell, a Miller High Life) as their signature drink, but make it miniature if they want. Yet enduring the existential horror of the pandemic has only given further credence to the already dying notion that a wedding should be dictated by stuffy traditions or the “proper” way of doing things.

In fact, wedding trend forecasters have predicted that the “non-wedding wedding” will be one of the biggest trends of 2024. A report co-authored by Pinterest and wedding planning site Zola and published in May 2023 found that searches for “nontraditional wedding dresses” were up 110 percent, while those for “nontraditional wedding vows” shot up 205 percent. The phrase “anti-bride” likewise increased by 480 percent. This ethos has, unsurprisingly, carried over to the drinking end of things — where, for now, the Martini is king.

“It used to be a no-no to call a Martini or an Old Fashioned a specialty cocktail,” Sullivan says. Since time immemorial, wedding signature drink meant fruit. People have dispensed with that old chestnut, instead featuring classic cocktails they like.

“I was joking to someone about doing a chocolate fountain, which maybe in the past sounded so tacky,” she says. “But now people aren’t shying away from things that once seemed passé. They want to enjoy pure celebration.”

The article Something Borrowed, Something Blue, and Something Boozy: The Martini Is This Year’s Ultimate Wedding Accessory appeared first on VinePair.

It’s Saturday morning and you feel a cold coming on, but you’re meant to have dinner with a friend that you planned weeks ago. What do you do? Do you bail now? Or see how you’re feeling later and then decide? Canceling on someone is never a great thing to do (unless you have no conscience), but when you cancel can make all the difference. Which is to say, the later you do it, the worse it is. But how late is too late to call off plans?

By most restaurant standards, canceling 24 hours in advance of a reservation is enough to avoid a penalty, so it feels like an appropriate window for social plans as well. However, if canceling is a matter of changing circumstances and not just because you don’t feel like going — i.e., you’ve come down with the flu or your basement is flooded — canceling up to a few hours before your plans can still be acceptable, provided you’re sufficiently apologetic and suggest another time to reschedule.

Unless there are truly extreme and unavoidable circumstances, here’s what you shouldn’t do: wait within an hour of the time you’re supposed to meet and then bail. If you’re canceling after your friend has theoretically left to meet you, it’s too late. Any later than that and you’re a monster and should probably avoid making plans in the future.

*Image retrieved from alexkich via stock.adobe.com

The article Ask Joanna: How Late Is Too Late to Cancel Plans? appeared first on VinePair.

In 2021, Uber purchased Drizly for a cool $1 billion. Just three years later, the alcohol delivery platform announced that it is shutting down, and there are more questions than answers. Namely, why in the world would you spend that much money on something only to shutter its operation almost immediately?

The biggest argument many in the industry are making is that the Drizly shutdown must be an indication that on-demand alcohol delivery isn’t working. But this could not be further from the truth. Uber Eats has a very robust alcohol delivery service of its own, which makes it all the more likely that the real reason behind the shutdown was simply to eliminate its biggest competitor.

There’s also the timing of the closure to consider — after all, the FTC has been investigating Drizly for several months due to a massive data breach. As such, Uber will not be folding in the data from any Drizly users onto Uber Eats, and it’s been speculated that Uber chose this moment to close the company to halt the investigation.

On this episode of the “VinePair Podcast,” Adam, Joanna, and Zach explore the possible reasons behind Uber’s surprising decision to shut down the alcohol delivery platform Drizly shortly after acquiring it. Does this mean that there’s no market for alcohol delivery, or did Uber just want to eliminate a competitor? Tune in for more.

Zach is reading: Ask a Wine Pro: Is It a Red Flag if the Somm Doesn’t Present the Cork?
Joanna is reading: Mastering Extracts and Essences With Sunken Harbor Club’s Garret Richard
Adam is reading: Tequila-Spiked Yerba Mate: Clubbing, but Make It ‘Healthy’

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The article The VinePair Podcast: Why Did Uber Dump Drizly? appeared first on VinePair.

Today, there are new and exciting restaurants opening their doors every week, eager to serve their dishes to guests. But what about the establishments that have been standing for decades? After all, with many restaurants closing just as quickly as they opened, there’s certainly something to be said for these restaurants’ impressive longevity.

The majority of the oldest restaurants in the nation were established sometime in the 19th and 20th centuries, and sometimes before their home states even joined the union. Others, like Rhode Island’s The White Horse Tavern and Virginia’s Red Fox Inn predate the United States itself and have an ambiance to prove it. Given their historic nature, many of the venues below have retained their original names, declaring themselves taverns, saloons, or inns.

While many states proudly tout their oldest restaurant, other states have much murkier histories, leading to some conflict over who actually claims the title. In order to determine the oldest restaurant, we narrowed down the first year food was served in the establishment as well as whether or not the restaurant was closed for a substantial period of time. Curious to know what the oldest restaurant is in the state you call home? Keep reading to find out.

Alabama: The Bright Star (1907)

Bessemer’s The Bright Star first opened its doors just a few blocks away from where the restaurant is currently located. The original family-owned Greek establishment was able to seat just 25 guests, but has since upped that number to about 330 guests across five dining rooms and a bar. The restaurant is still part-owned by the founding Koikos family.

Alaska: Olivia’s Alaskan Bistro at the Historic Skagway Inn (1950)

Originally constructed in 1897 during the Alaskan gold rush, the Historic Skagway Inn has served a handful of purposes over the years, including a brothel, a family home, and a bed-and-breakfast. The Skagway Inn is still an operational inn during the summer, and guests are welcome to eat at Olivia’s Alaskan Bistro, which opened on the first floor of the establishment in 1950. At Olivia’s, fresh-caught Pacific seafood is served alongside Alaskan delicacies like elk chili and wild game, along with vegetables and herbs harvested from the inn’s own garden.

Arizona: The Palace Restaurant & Saloon (1877)

The Palace Restaurant & Saloon is both Arizona’s oldest restaurant and its oldest bar. Known to be frequented by lawmen and gamblers Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp, the original Palace Restaurant & Saloon burned down in 1900. Not letting a night go to waste, patrons carried the magnificent mahogany bar out of the flame-engulfed building and brought it outside to continue the party. The Palace Restaurant & Saloon reopened a year later and is  where that mahogany bar still lives today.

Arkansas: White House Cafe (1907)

White House Cafe was founded by Greek immigrant Hristos Hodjopulas in 1907. Open 24 hours a day and located just off the railroad tracks, the cafe was a popular stopping point for travelers passing through Camden and seeking a hot meal. While the restaurant is no longer open around the clock, guests can still enjoy lunch and dinner five nights a week.

California: Tadich Grill (1849)

Opened by Croatian immigrants, San Francisco’s Tadich Grill actually predates California’s statehood. Originally a small coffee stand on the Long Wharf pier that also sold grilled fish, the restaurant claims to be the first in America to serve seafood grilled over mesquite charcoal — the traditional method of cooking fish in the founders’ home country. Though it’s since relocated to the city’s Financial District, Tadich Grill is California’s longest continuously operating restaurant and now serves a classic steak and seafood menu.

Colorado: Buckhorn Exchange (1893)

Downtown Denver’s Buckhorn Exchange once attracted countless miners, railroad workers, and cattle ranchers responsible for building up the Old West. As the city’s oldest steakhouse, Buckhorn Exchange has served five seated presidents in its 130 year run: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Dwight Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan. Politicians or not, guests are welcome to try the restaurant’s classic offerings as well as more unexpected options like rattlesnake, fried alligator, and buffalo sausage.

Connecticut: The Griswold Inn (1812)

While The Griswold Inn itself dates all the way back to 1776, it didn’t start serving its weekly Sunday Hunt Breakfast until 1812. Still, The Griswold Inn remains the oldest restaurant in Connecticut. It was even attacked during the War of 1812 when British soldiers ransacked the establishment, demanding breakfast before stealing the bar’s rum stocks. Today, the restaurant within The Griswold Inn still serves its famous Sunday breakfast every week alongside daily lunch and dinner.

Delaware: Kelly’s Logan House (1889)

As the nation’s first state in the union, Delaware has no shortage of historic bars, though Kelly’s Logan House in Wilmington takes the crown for the eldest of them all. The building itself was constructed in1864 as a residential home, and was named the Logan House for Civil War general John A. Logan. The Kelly family purchased the building in 1889 and transformed it into an Irish tavern. Generations later, the restaurant is still owned by the Kellys, and operates as the oldest family-owned Irish pub in the U.S.

Florida: Columbia Restaurant (1905)

Not only is Columbia Restaurant the oldest restaurant in Florida, but it’s also the largest Spanish restaurant in the world, occupying an entire city block in Tampa. Founded in 1903 by Spanish-Cuban immigrant Casimiro Hernandez Sr., Columbia Restaurant started as a small, 60-seat cafe and expanded to a full-fledged restaurant two years later. Dishing out traditional Spanish and Cuban fare, there are currently five Columbia Restaurants and two Columbia Cafes across the state of Florida, though the Tampa location remains one of the most popular.

Georgia: The Plaza Restaurant & Oyster Bar (1916)

When The Plaza Restaurant & Oyster Bar opened, the small Greek restaurant could only serve 26 people at once. The restaurant has expanded rapidly in its century of existence, currently able to accommodate up to 500 guests at once. The restaurant was purchased by restaurateur Michael Regina in 2007 and has since revamped its menu to include steakhouse classics and a few Greek-inspired dishes.

Hawaii: The Manago Hotel and Restaurant (1917)

Located in Captain Cook on the Island of Hawai’i, The Manago Hotel and Restaurant was opened by Japanese immigrants Kinzo and Osame Manago. Prior to becoming an official hotel, the couple sold easy-to-make foods out of their own home and, once the hotel was operational, they offered beds and a warm meal to travelers passing through. In World War II, the hotel and restaurant was even contracted by the U.S. military to feed soldiers stationed at the Konawaena School just a five-minute drive away. Today, the restaurant serves up classic Hawaiian dishes and was even awarded the James Beard American Classics award in 2023.

Idaho: The Snake Pit (1880)

Nestled deep in the Silver Valley in Kingston, The Snake Pit was once a booming watering hole for loggers and miners. In addition to its 100-plus- year history as a restaurant, The Snake Pit has also served as a railroad layover spot, a hotel, and something of a brothel. Now, it serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner on a daily basis alongside a healthy serving of live music.

Illinois: The Village Tavern (1847)

Originally called Zimmer Tavern, Long Grove’s The Village Tavern still serves drinks on its original mahogany bar. When it comes to the food menu, the tavern is known for its half- pound burgers and lengthy assortment of sandwiches.

Indiana: The Log Inn (1825)

Not many restaurants in America can say that they served Abraham Lincoln, but The Log Inn, opened in Haubstadt, can. The Inn is one of the oldest stagecoach stops in the U.S. and was visited by Lincoln in 1844, 16 years before he became the 16th President of the United States. In the present day, the restaurant is known for its family-style dinner service that includes a protein, mashed potatoes, gravy, vegetables, slaw, hot rolls, and butter.

Iowa: Breitbach’s Country Dining (1852)

Opened in Sherrill with a federal permit issued by President Millard Fillmore, Breitbach’s Country Dining was purchased by Jacob Breitbach in 1862 and has remained family-owned ever since. Since its birth, a number of accidents have threatened the restaurant’s longevity: A gas explosion destroyed the building in 2007, and after rebuilding was complete, the restaurant burned down once more just 10 months later. Reconstruction was completed for the second time in 2009, and Breitbach’s Country Dining was able to resume operations that year.

Kansas: Hays House (1857)

Not only does Hays House claim to be the oldest restaurant in Kansas, but according to the National Parks Service, it also lays claim to being the oldest continuously operating restaurant west of the Mississippi River. Founded in Council Grove by Seth Kays, great-grandson of Revolutionary War officer Daniel Boone, Hays House dishes out classic Southern comfort food like deep-fried beef tips, fried mushrooms, burgers, and sandwiches.

Kentucky: Talbott Tavern (1779)

Referred to as the oldest stagecoach stop in America, Talbott Tavern was established to house and feed travelers passing through Bardstown. The restaurant has gone by several names in its 245-year history including the Hynes, the Bardstown Hotel, and Chapman’s House. Just like The Log Inn, it’s had the privilege of serving Abraham Lincoln, though the future president was only 5 years old at the time. Still operating in the bourbon capital of the world, the Talbott Tavern serves lunch and dinner and has a bourbon bar with over 200 whiskeys to choose from.

Louisiana: Antoine’s (1840)

Famous for inventing Oysters Rockefeller, New Orleans’ Antoine’s has been serving French-Creole fare to the French Quarter since 1840. Currently operated by Rick Blount, great-great-grandson of founder Antoine Alciatore, the NOLA hotspot has served countless celebrities, along with George Bush, Bill Clinton, FDR, and even Pope John Paul II.

Maine: Palace Diner (1927)

Not only is Palace Diner Maine’s oldest restaurant, but it’s also one of the most interesting in the Northeastern state. The small diner operates inside an old Pollard Company train dining car, one of just two that remain in existence. Though it was once open 24/7, the Biddeford diner now serves up classics for breakfast and lunch from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Maryland: Middleton Tavern (1750)

Located in Annapolis, the building that now houses the Middleton Tavern was constructed sometime in the 1700s and was sold to Horatio Middleton in 1750. Middleton operated the establishment as an “Inn for Seafaring Men” and was a crucial stopping point for those looking for a meal and lodging (including George Washington), as they traveled along the Chesapeake Bay. The restaurant was remodeled and expanded in 1983, putting forth a brand new Tavern and Oyster Bar.

Massachusetts: The Union Oyster House (1826)

The Union Oyster House is not only Massachusetts’ oldest restaurant, located in downtown Boston, but it’s also the oldest restaurant in America that has offered continuous service, according to the National Parks Service. Originating as a small, subterranean oyster cellar, the oyster merchant flourished into a hotbed for politicians and the town’s social elite. The restaurant was renamed The Union Oyster House in 1916 and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2003.

Michigan: White Horse Inn (1850)

While the original New Hudson Inn may have been established in 1831, it was originally operated as a bar only. The White Horse was founded in 1850 as a stagecoach stop and once held the record for Michigan’s longest-operating restaurant, though lost it in 2012 when it closed temporarily for remodels. Today, the restaurant serves classic tavern fare daily.

Minnesota: The Hubbell House (1856)

Established in Mantorville two years before Minnesota was granted statehood, The Hubbell House originally operated as a saloon and was once visited by Ulysess S. Grant and Dwight D. Eisenhower. The restaurant fully transformed into a fine-dining establishment in the 1930s, though still retains a Civil War-like atmosphere for diners to immerse themselves in.

Mississippi: Weidmann’s Restaurant (1870)

While Weidmanns’s Restaurant is now able to serve dozens of customers, it was just a counter and four stools when it was founded. The Meridian restaurant moved to its current location in 1923 and focuses on serving classic Southern comfort food like shrimp and grits and fried green tomatoes.

Missouri: J. Huston Tavern (1834)

When Arrow Rock, Mo., was founded in 1829, the town quickly grew into a popular rest stop for settlers traveling along the Santa Fe Trail. Opened in 1834 by Joseph Huston Sr., an early citizen of Arrow Rock, the J. Huston Tavern housed thousands of immigrants traveling to New Mexico, and as they passed through town offered meals to travelers and locals alike. Now listed in the National Register of Historic Places, the J. Huston Tavern still provides hungry guests with homestyle cooking.

Montana: Pekin Noodle Parlor (1909)

The oldest restaurant in Montana also happens to be the oldest Chinese restaurant in the U.S. Butte was once home to a booming Chinese population, and Pekin Noodle Parlor reflects the cuisine’s roots in the state. Opened by Hum Yow and his wife Bessie Yong, Pekin Noodle Bar remains family-owned and operated to this day.

Nebraska: Glur’s Tavern (1876)

Opened in Columbus in 1876, Glur’s Tavern was originally named Bucher’s Tavern after the original owners, William and Joseph Bucher. The establishment was purchased in 1914 by Louis Glur and renamed, and is now known for its straightforward burger-and-beer offerings and laid-back dining experience.

Nevada: The Martin Hotel (1898)

As the name suggests, Winnemucca’s Martin Hotel was originally operated as a place to buy a room, though the Basque restaurant inside opened its doors in 1898. The first-floor, Basque-style dinner house was originally intended to serve the Basque sheepherders working in northern Nevada. While the hotel no longer accommodates overnight stays, the restaurant remains, churning out traditional dishes alongside sandwiches and pastas.

New Hampshire: The Fox Tavern at the Hancock Inn (1789)

The Fox Tavern at the Hancock Inn was founded when the town of Hancock was becoming an integral part of the trade route connecting Boston and Vermont. It quickly became a go-to dining establishment famous for its raucous music and delicious food and drink. In the present day, it’s a fine-dining restaurant, with dinner served nightly beginning at 5:30. While the Inn is currently closed for renovations, it plans to reopen its doors this year.

New Jersey: The Black Horse Tavern & Pub (1742)

Predating the United States of America itself by 34 years is Mendham’s Black Horse Tavern & Pub. While the area that now houses the Tavern has always dished out food and drink, what now serves as the Pub section of The Black Horse was once, as the name alludes to, horse stables. Today, the restaurant attracts guests with classic comfort food like burgers, fried chicken, pot pie, and baked macaroni and cheese.

New Mexico: El Farol (1835)

Located in Santa Fe, El Farol (which translates from Spanish to “the lantern)” has been lighting up the lives of the state’s residents since 1835. While the Spanish tapas restaurant is widely recognized as the oldest restaurant in the state, the eatery is much more famous for its fiery flamenco shows put on by the National Institute of Flamenco every Friday and Saturday night.

New York: The Old ‘76 House (1755)

Built in 1668, its building was a critical meeting place for patriots in the Revolutionary War, and even served as the prison for British spy John André during the war, earning it the nickname “André’s Prison.” The establishment became a tavern in 1755, and today, The Old ‘76 House serves up lunch and dinner daily and a weekly Sunday brunch.

North Carolina: Carolina Coffee Shop (1922)

Located just off the University of North Carolina’s campus, Carolina Coffee Shop has been dishing out breakfast, lunch, dinner, and, of course, coffee, to stressed-out students and professors alike for over 100 years. The beloved community staple, which got its start as the UNC student post office, even turns into a lively bar in the evening.

North Dakota: Peacock Alley (1933)

Peacock Alley was originally opened on the base floor of the Patterson Hotel in Bismarck, N.D., following the repeal of Prohibition. The Patterson Hotel was an ideal place for Peacock Alley to establish itself, considering the hotel’s reputation for serving illegal booze while the 18th Amendment was in effect. The hotel and restaurant was often frequented by the elite, including Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. While guests are no longer able to stay at the hotel overnight, Peacock Alley still offers lunch and dinner Monday through Saturday.

Ohio: Golden Lamb (1803)

Golden Lamb was originally operated as a “house of public entertainment,” and was considered an important stopping point between Cincinnati and the National Road. In 1929, the property was purchased by Robert Jones, who redesigned the hotel and restaurant into what it is today. Still operated by the Jones family, Golden Lamb has been visited by a whopping 12 U.S. presidents, from John Quincy Adams to George W. Bush.

Oklahoma: Cattlemen’s Steakhouse (1910)

Oklahoma City’s Cattlemen’s Steakhouse is known today for hearty breakfasts and, of course, steaks. But in its 114-year history, the restaurant has switched hands numerous times, most notably in 1945 when then owner Hank Frey lost the establishment in a game of dice. Gene Wade became the new owner after rolling a winning hard six, or two threes. This ownership change is forever commemorated in the building’s Hereford Room, with the number 33 branded on the wall.

Oregon: Huber’s Cafe (1879)

Founded in Portland, Huber’s Cafe was originally known as the Bureau Saloon, though it was renamed in 1895 a few years after Frank Huber became the restaurant’s sole proprietor. The restaurant relocated to its present location in the Oregon Pioneer Building in 1910 and was able to stay operational during Prohibition by selling illicit alcohol in coffee cups. Today, Huber’s Cafe is known for its flaming Spanish coffee and roast turkey.

Pennsylvania: McGillin’s Olde Ale House (1860)

While the Tavern at the Sun Inn in Bethlehem is a strong candidate for Pennsylvania’s oldest restaurant, having opened its doors in 1760, the hotel and restaurant ceased operations in 1961 and was not restored and reopened for approximately 20 years. But McGillin’s Olde Ale House, located in Philadelphia, is equally historic. It was founded in 1860 by Irish immigrants Catherine and William McGillian, who raised their 13 children in the upstairs area of the bar. Today, McGillin’s still offers traditional pub food and beer and is a hotspot for sports fans on game days.

Rhode Island: The White Horse Tavern (1673)

Founded in 1673, Newport’s The White Horse Tavern is both Rhode Island’s oldest restaurant and the nation’s oldest bar. Moreover, the National Historic Landmark, which was originally constructed in 1652 as a private residence, is considered to be one of the 10 oldest restaurants in the entire world. In the present day, the harbor town eatery is beloved for its New England classics like clam chowder, lobster bisque, and raw bar selections.

South Carolina: Villa Tronco (1940)

Opened in 1940 by Sadie and James Tronco, Villa Tronco (originally called Iodine Grill) is widely credited with introducing pizza to South Carolina. Prior to operating a full-fledged restaurant, Sadie cooked family-style meals for the soldiers stationed at Fort Jackson. Eventually, the Troncos opened a brick-and-mortar restaurant. It got off to a shaky start as not many were interested in their pizzas other than Italians. But it wasn’t long before their pies took off, and today, the restaurant is in its fourth generation of family ownership and continues to dish out Italian classics.

South Dakota: Deadwood Legends Steakhouse (1903)

The historic steakhouse is located in the Franklin Hotel, which was built at the height of the state’s gold rush. The restaurant, which currently serves breakfast and dinner daily, has been visited by several historical icons including Babe Ruth, Buffalo Bill, and Teddy Roosevelt.

Tennessee: Varallo’s (1907)

Nestled just a few blocks away from the Capitol building in Nashville is Varallo’s, a casual chili parlor opened by an Italian immigrant at the start of the 20th century. While the small eatery is no longer family-owned, Varallo’s continues to serve up classic family recipes for breakfast and lunch, and chili remains the main focus.

Texas: Scholz Garten (1866)

Founded by German immigrant and Civil War veteran August Scholz in 1866, Austin’s Scholz Garten was originally intended to serve as a place for Germans in the city to meet up with one another, though it transformed into an eatery rapidly thereafter. The German-Texan fusion restaurant was operated by Scholz until 1891 when it was passed on to his son, and later the Lemp Brewery Company. The restaurant is also an important meeting point for the University of Texas football team. In 1893, the team celebrated their first undefeated season there, a tradition that has continued to this day. The restaurant, which earned a spot on the Texas Historic Landmarks list in 1967, still whips up German classics like Bavarian pretzels, sauerkraut balls, and sausage sandwiches.

Utah: Idle Isle Cafe (1921)

While Utah’s Bluebird restaurant may predate the Idle Isle Cafe by seven years, the restaurant has been closed for several years for renovations. That means Brigham City’s quaint cafe takes the crown as the state’s longest continuously operating restaurant. The cafe offers classic American comfort food and over-the-top milkshakes.

Vermont: The Dorset Inn (1796)

Originally an inn for travelers passing between Boston and Albany, The Dorset Inn was established in 1796 and has been continuously operating ever since. Both the inn and the restaurant inside have been completely renovated over the building’s 228-year history, and the site now serves as a popular wedding venue.

Virginia: Red Fox Inn (1728)

Middleburg’s Red Fox Inn has served numerous purposes over the years, including an inn for travelers and even a medical facility for Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. The historic tavern now serves as a fine-dining establishment offering caviar and Champagne pairings. Despite its renovations, the inn has retained its rustic charm, and has even revamped an old surgeon’s table from the Civil War era to use as the dining room’s bar.

Washington: The Horseshoe Cafe (1886)

Located in Bellingham, The Horseshoe Cafe claims to be not only Washington’s oldest restaurant, but the oldest 24-hour eatery in America. The restaurant was founded in 1886 when Bellingham was a frontier town, and has operated out of its current location since 1958. While the restaurant is no longer open 24 hours a day, it remains a popular late-night spot, offering classic diner food to hungry guests from 9 a.m. to 2 a.m.

West Virginia: North End Tavern & Brewery (1899)

Nicknamed “The Net,” Parkersburg’s North End Tavern & Brewery was founded by professional wrestler Bradford “Zip” Torn. Approximately 100 years after its founding, a microbrewery was added to the restaurant, which was thought to be a poor investment at the time. But it proved to be worthwhile, especially given the craft beer boom just a few years later. Today, one can expect to find a fairly straightforward menu at North End Tavern & Brewery consisting mainly of burgers and beer.

Wisconsin: Red Circle Inn (1848)

Founded by Bavarian immigrant Francis Schraudenbach, Nashotah’s Red Circle Inn is just as old as its home state. Originally called The Nashotah Inn, the restaurant was sold to Captain Fred Pabst in 1889 and renamed the Red Circle Inn after Pabst Brewing Co., which he also owned. Today, the restaurant offers its guests a selection of small plates and comfort food.

Wyoming: Miners and Stockmen’s Steakhouse & Spirits (1862)

Opened in Hartville in the early 1860s when the town was experiencing a mining boom, Miners and Stockmen’s Steakhouse & Spirits operates out of one of the last remaining Old Fort Laramie trading posts. Once a hideout for bank robbers, outlaws, and cattle rustlers, the bar inside was hand-carved in Germany, shipped to New York, and then transported via train to Cheyenne before it was delivered to the establishment via horse and buggy. Today, the restaurant is open Thursday through Sunday, and is known for its classic steakhouse fare.

*Image retrieved from Kenneth C. Zirkel via commons.wikimedia.org

The article The Oldest Restaurant In Every State [MAP] appeared first on VinePair.

Go to any bottle shop these days and you’re bound to be greeted by a respectable section devoted to non-alcoholic offerings. Beer has arguably pulled off the NA feat best, cracking the zero proof code and producing genuinely drinkable options that resemble real styles. The spirits realm is currently trying and, here and there, pulling off wins. But what of wine?

Making a good non-alcoholic wine was never going to be easy. It’s the beverage we tend to fuss over most, shrouded in ritual and tradition. That, and there’s a one-two punch of complexity and mouthfeel in good wine that’s very hard to hang onto after you remove the alcohol. Keep in mind that, while the technology is ever-improving, the act of rubbing the alcohol out of the wine is a highly interventionist move in an industry that usually champions, well, the opposite.

So when I received an email titled “The Quest for NA’s Best Grape Varietal,” I winced a little. Maybe it’s because I was raised on Pinot Noir and revere nuance. Maybe it’s because I’ve yet to taste a non-alcoholic wine that I liked enough to seek out after the bottle was gone (or poured down the drain). But craft beer didn’t pull off the miracle overnight and we probably shouldn’t expect the same from wine. So how do wine producers go about crafting NA wines, and are we overthinking them?

The Quest

Catherine Diao and Dorothy Munholland started Studio Null in 2021. The duo sources fruit from European vineyards and turns out things like Blanc Burgunder, a white made from Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris, and Solo Garnacha, a red made from the eponymous Spanish grape. All Studio Null wines are non-alcoholic, which makes Diao’s and Munholland’s winemaking quest a bit different.

“In general, seeking out varietals known for their highly aromatic nature is a good starting place,” Diao says. “During dealcoholization, the more delicate aromas can sometimes be lost.” The industry is still in the relatively early stages with non-alcoholic wine and there’s a lot of exploring happening in the category. “There’s a lot of experimentation that we do, and much more still to be done,” Diao adds. “We haven’t found any varietals that we categorically reject for dealcoholization, but our general rule is: Quality in equals quality out.”

The brand’s latest release, Grüner Weiss, is made up of Grüner Veltliner and Gelber Muskateller from Austria. The latter is a lesser-known grape of Greek origin related to Muscat. “We found that the quality of the source vineyard, with a strong, multi-generational emphasis on land stewardship and sustainable growing practices, delivered a highly aromatic and expressive profile,” Diao says of the wine.

Making a non-alcoholic wine at least begins much the same way that it does with traditional wine. According to Diao, the aroma, tannin, weight, color, balance, complexity, depth, and finish of a non-alcoholic wine can vary greatly between varietals. “Even within the same varietal, expressions in NA wine can be huge depending on sourcing,” she says. “We work with family-run vineyards with an emphasis on land stewardship and distinctive expression, and we find that intention translates to the finished product.”

The co-founder has found that the zero-proof offerings do pretty well against their conventional siblings. “With Studio Null, we have a focus on transparency, so we list the grape varietal and source vineyard for each release on the bottle, but in blind tastings, sommeliers and wine critics have been able to identify the varietals and even provenance of our NA wines, and we’d like to continue delivering on that,” Diao says.

The dramatic shift, of course, comes in removing the alcohol. Dealcoholization is an intensive process, and removing the alcohol — which sometimes makes up to 15 or 16 percent of a wine’s volume — is like removing a load-bearing wall, Diao says. “During that process, the more delicate aromatics and flavors can be lost, though the technology is evolving and improving. We see exciting developments in retaining more aroma, and in reducing energy usage.”

“I like the idea of making a good product by finding the best raw ingredients rather than riding on the popularity of a few varieties.”

That process generally involves reverse osmosis or a spinning cone column. The former is essentially a hyper-filtration method that uses an advanced membrane to weed out the alcohol. The latter involves separating alcoholic and non-alcoholic versions of the wine via intense rotation. This produces aromatic vapors that are later reintroduced to the finished NA product. It’s a lot for an industry that touts “natural” wine and “hands-off” approaches in the cellar, or minimal intervention so as to hang on to the purity of the fruit and really spotlight terroir. But for producers like Studio Null, it’s necessary to both remove the alcohol and create something that resembles wine as we know it.

The Challenges

Nicolas Quillé is a Master of Wine and the chief winemaking and operations manager at Crimson Wine Group, which oversees several labels up and down the West Coast. He used to work for J. Lohr and had a good immersion in the non-alcoholic approach while there in the mid-1990s (the label launched Ariel, its NA expression, back in 1985).

“I like the idea of making a good product by finding the best raw ingredients rather than riding on the popularity of a few varieties,” Quillé says. “The trouble with wines without alcohol is that alcohol is an essential part of the sensory quality of a wine. It adds body, it allows it to age, and it carries the aromatics and augments the ability to reach your olfactive sensors. Without alcohol, wine is not wine, and it often must have additives to compensate for the lack of alcohol.”

There’s a naming issue as well, at least depending on where the wine is made. “Non-alcoholic wine is a weird term because in most countries you cannot call a product ‘wine’ that is below 7 to 8.5 percent ABV,” says Quillé. “Technically, this becomes a ‘wine product’ and is subject to ingredient labeling and loses its wine privileges — such as naming an AVA or a variety (note the variety part is legal in the U.S.A.).”

Quillé references almond milk, which technically isn’t milk but functions as such. “My personal opinion is that the intent of naming the variety on a dealcoholized wine is to give more information to the consumer,” he continues. “Anyone trying to compare the taste profile of a fully alcoholized wine to the dealcoholized version is going to be disappointed. I lean towards giving the information and not being precious about this.”

“We often taste our non-alcoholic wines against our original, full-alcohol blends, and have been pleasantly surprised with how much original expression we can get out of a non-alcoholic wine.”

As with traditional wines, production will vary based on grape variety and type. “The reds are a big challenge because the lack of alcohol makes the tannins very abrasive and bitter,” Quillé says. “The body coming from alcohol can be replaced by sugar or a gum. Since the alcohol is removed and it is not wine anymore, anything is game, really.”

Studio Null adds sulfur dioxide as a preservative, as do most wineries — and sugar, for the record. But the open-endedness that Quillé mentions — with wine governed by the TTB and NA wine an FDA category — is worth noting as you look up labels and want to know exactly what you’re consuming.

“We often taste our non-alcoholic wines against our original, full-alcohol blends, and have been pleasantly surprised with how much original expression we can get out of a non-alcoholic wine,” Diao says. “Weight and body can be most impacted by dealcoholization, especially with the red wines, and we find some differences there. With a NA sparkling wine, we can bridge that divide more and deliver a similar mouthfeel to a traditional sparkling wine alcohol, so we often recommend people start by trying those if they’re exploring NA wine for the first time.”

The Future

Undoubtedly, NA wine has improved in the past decade and it will likely only continue to do so in the future. The newest generation of imbibers is supposedly drinking less, and many believe the zero-proof sector is flourishing as a result. Perhaps the process will someday become so sophisticated that it will allow something as delicate and nuanced as Pinot Noir to cast its alcohol gracefully aside and walk into the non-alcoholic horizon, still clutching all of its flavor and fragrances. Or, perhaps we will stop comparing and just treat an alcohol-free Syrah as a useful wine alternative.

“We’ve seen some very exciting developments in dealcoholization over the last several years, particularly in aroma retention,” Diao says. “A lot of the innovation is coming from brewers and other experts in food science who are thinking about fermentation in some creative, out-of-the-box ways. We’re excited to utilize these new developments and ways of production for upcoming releases.”

For Quillé, there’s also promise in untapped geography. “I would not be surprised if we see some excellent NA wines in the future from regions that do not have a strong investment in traditional winemaking,” he says.

And there are always other non-wine, non-alcoholic avenues as well. “The curious NA wine producer may want to play with blending NA wine, vinegar, juice, with or without carbonation — I bet there is a product somewhere that hasn’t been created yet,” Quillé says.

For now, the folks at Studio Null will keep innovating and Quillé will opt for a more conventional pour.

The article Making Non-Alcoholic Wine Will Never Be Easy. Can Momentum Carry It Forward? appeared first on VinePair.

Biochemist David Perkins and his wife Jane found themselves in Kentucky for a friend’s wedding in 2001. While in town, the couple stopped by Maker’s Mark for a distillery tour, during which David discovered the similarities between distilling and biochemistry — namely the key ingredient in any distilled spirit, ethanol. It then struck Perkins to open a whiskey distillery of his own.

The Perkins family relocated from California to Park City, Utah, and in 2006, High West Distillery was born. What started as a miniscule operation in a historic Park City stable has since grown to produce expressions including bourbon and rye as well as its beloved, limited-edition A Midwinter Night’s Dram. Known for its blended American whiskeys, High West is currently owned by Constellation Brands and occupies two spaces in Utah: the 25,000-square foot Blue Sky Ranch distillery in Wanship and the original distillery and saloon.

Now that you know the basics, here are nine things you should know about High West Distillery.

1. High West was the first distillery to open in Utah after Prohibition.

   Though Utah had a rich distilling history prior to Prohibition — Salt Lake City’s Main Street was known as Whisky Street until 1870 — the abolition of alcohol production and consumption caused the state’s distilleries to shutter. Utah was left sans distillery until 2006, when High West became the first legal distilling operation in the state post-Prohibition. While Utah may have seemed like an odd choice for a distillery given its large and largely sober Mormon population, Perkins thought it would be ideal to open in a ski town like Park City. As he told Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, he envisioned people arriving at the distillery “to sit and have a glass of whiskey and reflect on their ski visit to the region,” similar to the common comfort of drinking a Corona on the beach.

2. The distillery is currently the world’s first ski-in ski-out gastro-distillery.

   While the majority of High West’s distilling now takes place at its larger facility in Wanship, the brand’s original distillery in Park City (now known as the High West Saloon) is currently the world’s first ski-in, ski-out gastro-distillery. Nestled at the base of Park City Resort’s Quittin’ Time ski run, the Saloon offers each of High West’s expressions neat and in cocktails along with programmed whiskey tastings. The Saloon also has food covered for any guests who work up an appetite while skiing, serving a selection of alpine-inspired dishes that helped earn it an Outstanding Bar Program nomination from the James Beard Foundation in 2012.

3. The High West Saloon operates out of a century-old building in Park City.

   Constructed in 1907, the High West Saloon building was originally built as a horse stable for a mining company that used the animals to transport carts up and down the mine shafts. Over the decades, the building changed hands many times and served numerous roles, serving as a horse stable, a wagon supply store, and numerous auto body shops.

   With each of these changes, the building’s main sign was repainted. But in 1981, the building’s facade was badly damaged when a fire broke out at the Silver King Coalition Mines Company building across the street. The extreme temperatures melted away several layers of paint, resulting in the multi-layered effect still seen on the structure today. In 2008, when High West restored the building, its sign was revitalized and preserved to showcase the site’s historic significance.

4. The horseshoe on the logo pays homage to a piece of Park City’s history.

   While renovating the structure that would become the High West Saloon, a contractor uncovered a horseshoe remaining from the building’s livery days. Discovering a piece of Salt Lake City’s mining history right on its own property inspired David to incorporate a horseshoe into the brand’s logo design, which features an outline of the Rocky Mountains between the horseshoe’s branches. According to the brand, the logo serves as a symbolic reminder that good things, like good whiskey, will stand the test of time. Today, the original horseshoe remains on display at the Saloon.

5. High West demonstrates why distillers shouldn’t shy away from sourcing spirits.

   Given the lengthy maturation period whiskey must undergo before it can be released, it can often take many years for a distillery to become profitable. As such, many brands choose to source finished whiskey from other producers and bottle it under their own brands or blend it with their own in-house spirits, the latter a celebrated practice at High West Distillery. Perkins credits Jim Rutledge, Four Roses’ former master distiller, with giving him the idea for this kind of sourcing as the two consulted while building out the distiller’s business plan. While many brands shy away from admitting where they get their liquid in their bottles, High West is transparent about its production philosophy, disclosing where it sourced its spirits when contractually possible as well as how much of the spirit ends up in the final blend. The brand also seeks to educate consumers on how long it takes to produce a bottle of high-quality whiskey, and why sourcing whiskeys for blending should be a practice that’s championed rather than sneered at.

6. There’s some Scottish influence in the brand’s whiskey making.

   With the exception of High Country American Single Malt and Bottled In Bond, all the distillery’s existing whiskeys have been blended in part with externally sourced spirits. High West master distiller Brendan Coyle, who obtained a master’s degree in brewing and distilling science from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, fell in love with the tradition of blending in Scotch whisky production while completing his studies. According to the brand, he’s now intent on opening up more consumers’ minds to the flavor profiles that can be unlocked when blending. For example, the brand’s Double Rye!, which incorporates whiskey sourced from Indiana’s MGP, emits dried herb, maple wood, and black pepper aromas while Rendezvous, also made with with MGP-sourced rye, leans sweeter with notes of yellow plum jam, cocoa-dusted orange peels, and boysenberry turnover. The brand also doesn’t shy away from blending multiple types of whiskey: Bourye is a dessert-like blend of bourbon and rye, while Campfire combines Scotch, bourbon, and rye to achieve flavors like chai spice, vanilla, orange zest, and spicy gingerbread.

7. The brand uses barrels to give its existing spirits new life.

   While the majority of High West’s exploration with flavor profiles comes down to the final blend, the brand switches up the barrels it  uses, as demonstrated by A Midwinter Night’s Dram, the distillery’s coveted annual release named for David and Jane’s shared love for Shakespeare. The liquid itself is the brand’s Rendezvous Rye, though this expression sees the whiskey split and aged in both tawny port and ruby port barrels before they’re blended and bottled at 49.3 percent ABV. Act 11, 2023’s release, washes the palate in berry, ginger, and baking spice notes.

8. High West is committed to running an ecologically friendly distilling operation…

   The company has prioritized decreasing its carbon footprint wherever possible, offsetting 100 percent of the electricity used across both of its facilities through credits provided by Rocky Mountain Power’s Blue Sky power program. Additionally, all the grain used to distill High West whiskey is sourced from local producers within a day’s drive of the distillery to decrease time spent in transit. After each round of distillation, the spent grain is then offloaded and sent to an anaerobic digester, which produces methane gas used to power the Salt Lake City electrical grid.

9. …and preserving the Rocky Mountain landscape it calls home.

   Since its founding, High West has witnessed decreasing snowfall during Utah’s winters and an alarming increase of wildfires in the summer, which have caused destruction in the landscape. As such, the distillery has pledged to donate $1 million over the course of the next three years to organizations working to protect the state’s natural habitats, such as the Wildland Firefighter Foundation, Protect Our Winters (POW), and American Prairie.

The article 9 Things You Should Know About High West Distillery appeared first on VinePair.

“Cocktail College” is brought to you today by Tanqueray. Make a spectacular something out of almost anything. Let a Tanqueray cocktail elevate your moment from “Oh, nothing fancy” into “DAMN Fancy.” When sipping a Tanqueray Martini, Negroni, or whatever your favorite cocktail is, you can’t help but feel “damn fancy.” It’s no mistake the iconic green bottle is shaped like a cocktail shaker because Tanqueray elevates cocktails to create a unique and memorable experience. Head to www.tanqueray.com today to get “damn fancy” cocktail inspiration from Tanqueray.

Today’s drink heads to London with noteworthy stops in New York and Chicago as we explore the 20th Century Cocktail. Admittedly, the name is a bit of a mouthful — it’s a nod to the 20th Century Limited, “The Most Famous Train in the World,” according to advertisements. The train ran from New York to Chicago from 1902 to 1967, and it provided one of the most luxurious ways to travel to the Midwest. Red carpets were rolled out when passengers lined up to board; gents were welcomed with a carnation and dames with a spritz of perfume. On board, there was a restaurant, a café, and even a nightclub.

It might be the only train with a cocktail named after it, so we can only imagine how spectacular the 20th Century truly was. Its reputation was so far-reaching that the cocktail wasn’t even created in the U.S.: It was invented in London by a British bartender named C.A. Tuck.

The cocktail itself is essentially a Gin Sour variant, but it’s one of the few drinks that incorporates crème de cacao with resounding success. It shows us that chocolate liqueur can exist outside the realm of dessert cocktails. Who would have thought?

To give us the rundown on this drink’s history as well as how to make it — especially since one of its ingredients was discontinued in the ‘80s — we’re joined today by Meredith Barry, the co-owner and operator of Platypus and New Society in St. Louis. All aboard, tickets out, and tune in for more.

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Meredith Barry’s 20th Century Cocktail Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 ½ ounces gin, such as Hayman’s or Plymouth
• ¾ ounce Cocchi Americano
• ¾ ounce fresh lemon juice
• ¼ ounce crème de cacao, such as Tempus Fugit
• 2 dashes (1 dropper) saline solution
• Garnish: lemon twist

Directions

1. Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker with ice.
2. Shake until well chilled.
3. Double strain into a chilled coupe glass.
4. Garnish with a lemon twist.

The article The Cocktail College Podcast: The 20th Century Cocktail appeared first on VinePair.