The Spirit World

 
In the UK the pressure group CAMRA, the Campaign For Real Ale, has just released new research showing that a shocking 26.6% of pints served in pubs are short measure by more than 5%. This is costing consumers a whopping £1.3 million every single day. 
It might not sound like much but over a busy week, stretching over […]

The UK’s chief beer competition, the International Beer Challenge, has just opened their website. The competition bills itself as the largest packaged beer competition in the world.
Each year, the Challenge discovers and rewards the finest beers from across the globe and, in association with Off Licence News, a UK trade newspaper, publishes it’s list of […]

The first time I encountered batidas were in a college Spanish class.
If you have ever had the pleasure of studying another language you probably remember textbooks filled with ostensible scenes of the culture in which you are immersing yourself. These pictures always show people happily milling about the areas that need to be learned, and […]

When thinking of something to do for my first post, I immediately thought of Greek drinks.
My mother is Greek and I thought it would be easier to attempt to fill Brenda Pederson’s shoes if I started with something familiar. Ouzo seemed too common, so I chose retsina wine.
Retsina has been produced in Greece for over […]

IDOL Vodka is made from wine-quality Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes, something that has never been done before, and combined pure water from Cote d’Or, Burgundy France. 
IDOL Vodka is the latest creation from notable wine aficionado and producer, Jean-Charles Boisset. It has taken him over seven years of experimenting with a variety of grapes, waters, filtration […]

When The Spirit World came online Rosanne was our writer for this column. When she left I took over the column and unfortunately we had a little snafu that caused her columns to be deleted which was really too bad. The site is now missing some really interesting and informative posts. Hopefully […]

Recall that in my article last month, I summarized the history and production process of the Spanish wineskin, or “bota.” And then I hit you with a teaser–that I would, during the following month, provide enlightenment by means of the ten commandments of bota care and use–as told to me by 80-something year old […]

Well, here we are at Valentine’s Day again!  And once again I find myself drawn to the liqueur with the name so very suited to this day, Parfait Amour.  This French liqueur is really just a fancy-pants version of Curaçao but its violet color and flowery almost marshmallow scent and feel are not to be dismissed […]

After a couple of side trips we are back to our tasting of Swedish snaps thanks again to my friend, Henrik.
For this week’s taste-off I decided to pair two aquavits/akvavits that were made with the same herbs. Now the difference in spelling is a little confusing to me as I had thought […]

This was not the post I intended to write today. After Sal’s entertaining post on the Bota bag (stay tuned for Part II!) I was set to get back to my Swedish smörgåsbord of spirits. But then I got caught in a spell - and it must have been cast by a very […]