Booker’s Bourbon, Dolin Sweet Vermouth, Angostura Bitters.  Oh hells yeah.  The weekend begins.

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Ecstatic to be leaving Europe today.

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Greetings from Amsterdam (and no, I am not writing you from a smoke-filled coffee shop). Tomorrow, we return to NYC after 93 days in Europe.  Along the way, we have met countless inspiring artisans making wine, beer and spirits in the name of craftsmanship. They toil away in nooks around the world, battling the forces [...]

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Rüdesheim is a wine town.  Surrounded by vineyards and perched at the banks of the Rhine River, it is spectacular to see. For two nights, we sat on our hotel balcony watching the boats pass and the sun set over the water (and a ridiculous amount of trains, tracks and barges rumble past–the Rhine is, [...]

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My only request for Kat’s beer run was to include “some interesting boozy thing in a can”.  Along with a cold tall boy of Mythos and one of Fix Hellas, she came back with this beauty. “OriGINal Long Drink”: Gin-Grapefruit drink.  Contains the following:  water, sugar, gin, carbon dioxide, acid, flavours, stabilizer, safflower and lemon [...]

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It rose out of the lagoon. Sometime around the 4th or 5th century, a resilient group of people had been pushed to the brink.  Exhausted and worn thin by constant foreign invasions, they decided to relocate to the marshy islands far out on the water. And thus, Venice was born. And the most magical city [...]

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Lapping it up in Lake Como at a backstreet wine bar.  (Pictured:  Vin Santo del Chianti Classico-Az. Agr. San Felice & Barolo Chinato-Cocchi)

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We’ve sung Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again” ten times more than the average Willie fan can muster in a 3-week period. It’s been an interesting transition being away from home this long.  As each day is so dense, a week ends up feeling like a month.  Learning traffic signs in the moment while zipping [...]

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There could be worse places for an Irishman to get a sunburn than the French Riviera…

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Saw this going around the internet over the weekend and finally hit the play button.  I was well-rewarded. Three cheers to the mastermind behind this one.  Apparently it’s the trailer for a recently-released short film called Las Palmas. I’ll be first in line when it triumphantly washes up on American shores.  Premiere at the Ziegfeld?

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This past weekend, we trekked north to my friend’s place in the fair state of Connecticut for Super Bowl XLV. Being the wondrous party-host she is, Jaime assembled the raw ingredients to make some football-praising, booze-delivering, drinks of delight.  Being the maniacal palate-chemist I am, I worked to put it all together. This is what [...]

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Forget wine. Forget beer. They’re mere newbies in the world of fermented beverages. Mead is the patriarch, the original, the granddaddy that launched the human fascination with alcohol. But, strangely enough, it’s fallen out of fashion. How could this be? This was the drink of Aristotle and the Ancient Greeks; the drink of the brave [...]

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Before setting sail for battle, it is best to drink rum.  And a shitload of it. In fact, why don’t you light it on fire first to add a bit of toasty courage to your gullet (video below)?  So goes the wisdom of the Ron Cremat. This past weekend, my wife and I were once [...]

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As I sit here looking down on the bright lights of the Las Vegas Strip from my 40th floor perch in the sky, December seems like a blur. As anyone who works in the food & beverage industry can attest, the month of December is no short of an all-out waterboarding session.  The hours, the [...]

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Their movements were balletic.  Like robotic apothecaries, they created elixirs in a dizzying progression of steps. They spun on their heels with perfect calibration, knowing exactly the degree of rotation needed to land on their spirit of choice, and spin back while the bottle was upended and measured into a jigger angled over the mixing [...]

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