The Spirit World

If you didn’t have the foresight to attend Tales this year, you missed out on a whole mess of great stuff. Great people, great food, and most of all, great spirits. A number of companies are producing organic or all natural products which make for great beverages all around. One spirit, which I refer to […]

Exhausted and grimy, a cream colored label flashed in front of my eyes. In the lobby of the Hotel Monteleone, a gentleman by the name of Brandon Bach was kind enough to give me a bottle of something I had never seen before. He didn’t tell me much about it other than it was bourbon…he […]

Odd, complicated, and delicious. All three of those adjectives describe a product from Crop Vodka. It’s not what you would expect though: it’s tomato flavored. The wonderful thing about it is that it’s not gimmicky flavored, it’s actually USDA organic. On the nose, tomato really rings out, smelling like V8 minus 7.
 I was also really […]

Well, you may have thought I was done for the evening (as I did), but the bottles started speaking to me as I sauntered by. I don’t have a story that accompanies this drink, other than it was sent to me through the ether……which is enough for me.
 

 
 
I give you the
 
Phoenix
2 oz of Diabolique Bourbon
1/2 […]

Aperol is a product you might be finding appearing on liquor shelves more often these days. You might be intrigued by its slightly festive looking bottle looking classic, without appearing outdated.
I find that the best way to describe Aperol, is that it is a very mild version of Campari. It has that same balance of […]

So mixed drinks have made a comeback and you are thinking “what am I to do with all my brandy, vodka, absinthe, etc. that I have been enjoying neat (without ice, by it’s onesies)? Well, sure you could buck the trend and keep on with being a neat-freak, or you could experiment with ingredients that […]

Being that my throat has been acting a fool as of late, I have a wonderful topic to write about: drinking while under the weather. 
There are a number of whisk(e)y drinks that are meant to cure all that ailes you, such as the hot toddy, Irish coffee, and even the Blue Blazer.  Today, I am […]

If you’re eager for something outside of the norm, our friends in Austria might have something to offer you. Monopolowa has been known for its vodka, which tied the Russian Stolichnaya at the International Review of Spirits in 2003. Some of you might not be informed that they are also offering a potato based gin […]

I’ve never quite figured out exactly why, but “cocktail bitters” is something that has fascinated me ever since I first got into cocktails and mixology. Perhaps it stems when first coming to the realization that there were once far more bitters in use than “Angostura”. Orange bitters was one of the key “missing” bitters that […]

Few glasses present a more iconic representation of the cocktail than does the now ubiquitous “Martini” glass. You know the one, that “V” shaped glass perched firmly atop a slender stem. You see them everywhere, from high-end cocktail lounges to bedraggled dive bars. Every store you go into always seems to sell them amongst the […]