Posted in G&G Videos, Spirits on Jan 22nd, 2011
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 [...]
Posted in G&G Videos, Spirits on Dec 30th, 2010
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 [...]
Posted in NYC Events, Spirits on Dec 5th, 2010
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 [...]
Tequila Reposado, Casa Noble, Mexico (40% abv) Tequila: it’s not just for margaritas anymore. I’m kind of shocked at the sheer number of people that have never tried good tequila…and I don’t mean expensive Tequila, I just mean the authentic kind. For all those who love it, but have only been weaned off the teet [...]
Posted in NYC Events, Spirits on Oct 6th, 2010
The request was odd. Create a cocktail for a friend’s baby shower. Aren’t baby showers supposed to be about silly games, endless cupcakes and a relentless procession of swaddling devices? And what fun is a cocktail if baby momma doesn’t get to enjoy it? I put the Jack LaLanne juicer to work. You remember him—the overly energetic [...]
Posted in Spirits on Sep 14th, 2010
I guess it was really only a matter of time before I got to my favorite cocktail. After taking this weekly piece around the world via Charles Lindbergh’s plane (the Aviation), or hopping a boat to Cuba (the El Presidente), whirling through the streets of Paris on a motorcycle (the Sidecar) or drifting through New [...]
Posted in NYC Events, Spirits on Sep 7th, 2010
All the birds sing words and the flowers croon. In the Tiki, Tiki, Tiki, Tiki, Tiki Room. That’s how the song went. And really that’s all I remember of the words, but the Enchanted Tiki Room at Disneyland still sticks with me vividly. Images of singing robotic birds, steamy jungles and Polynesian gods made into [...]
Posted in Spirits on Aug 31st, 2010
Forgo the hearty breakfast and start your day with a cocktail before plowing the fields. Who needs an injection of coffee when Bourbon and mint are on hand? For some hardy southerners in the late 18th century, the Mint Julep was part of their morning ritual akin to shaving and pulling on the trousers. John [...]
I had a roommate who loved car bombs. Let’s call him “Patty”. It started as something he would do at bars, but quickly became a habit he brought home. Nearly every night of the week for months, Patty was shooting them off in our apartment. He’d pour some Bailey’s in a shot glass, top with [...]
Posted in Spirits on Aug 17th, 2010
“Daisy had a hint of bedrooms upstairs more beautiful and cool than other bedrooms…of romances that were not musty and laid away already in lavender….It excited him, too, that many men had already loved Daisy - it increased her value in his eyes.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby I’ve read The Great Gatsby many [...]
Posted in Spirits on Aug 10th, 2010
1920-1933. Prohibition sucked the nightlife out of the scene like one does an oyster from a shell. But the party raged on…albeit behind secret doors and fueled by often dangerous concoctions of bathtub gins and white lightning. And so, many American simply crossed the border to Havana, Cuba where the party heated up in broad [...]
Posted in Beer, NYC Events, Reviews, Spirits, Wine on Aug 6th, 2010
Dearest readers, I am stoked to share some exciting news with you. In addition to my vinous, brewish and libatious duties here at Grapes & Grains, I am pleased to announce that I will be expanding my reach further into the realm of the blogosphere… I have been invited to join the staff of the New [...]
Posted in Spirits on Aug 3rd, 2010
The sight must have been incredible. A whir of flashing metal cocktail shakers streaked the bar from end to end as the crowd crushed in around you. There they stood. Thirty-five “shaker boys” all earnestly focusing as their arms screamed from the pain of ceaseless shaking. It is said that to properly make a Ramos [...]
Posted in Spirits on Aug 2nd, 2010
The streets of the French Quarter were given a full shake and an Absinthe rinse for the 5-day fiesta that was the 8th Annual Tales of the Cocktail. Bartenders, barbacks, barmaids, bar wenches and bar geeks invaded New Orleans once again this year for what has become the premier yearly gathering for spirit hounds. Just [...]
Posted in Spirits on Jul 27th, 2010
“Miner’s lady, stranger to blue water. Dark and dusty, painted on the sky. Misty taste of moonshine, teardrops in my eye. Country roads, take me home. To the place where I belong.” -John Denver Every country has it’s hillbillies. Its backwaters where the yokels live by their own rules. For Brazil, these people are called [...]
