A high-profile guest bartender took over at one lucky Atlanta brewery last weekend.

British Grammy-winner Ed Sheeran made a surprise stop at SweetWater Brewing Company on Saturday, according to PEOPLE. The musician, who was scheduled to play a concert at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz stadium that evening, documented the visit in a May 27 Instagram reel:

 

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“So I’m in Atlanta, and I’ve been told there are some breweries that are good in Atlanta,” he says in the video. “I’m going to go to this brewery, serve some beers, play a gig, and then buy everyone in the beer garden drinks.”

And serve he does. The 32-year-old can be seen handing beverages to patrons and pouring perfect pints before performing his new song “Eyes Closed” for the crowd. At the end, he promises to buy the next round of beers.

“For one hour, drinks are on me,” he promises.

SweetWater Brewing shared photos from the visit on Instagram with a quippy caption: “We found beer right where we are.” The visit might not have been entirely spontaneous: The brewery secured an official partnership with Mercedes-Benz Stadium earlier this month. Sheeran’s May 27 concert, the latest stop on the pop star’s “Subtract” tour, reportedly saw a whopping 76,335 attendees — a new record for the venue, per a recent announcement.

This tour has been quite the public venture for Sheeran, who’s been captured performing surprise concerts while promoting his latest album. In May, fellow musician Luke Combs taught Sheeran (only somewhat successfully) how to shotgun a beer.

Only time will tell where Sheeran might appear next.

The article Ed Sheeran Pours Pints and Buys Rounds at Surprise Atlanta Brewery Visit appeared first on VinePair.

Trends largely rely on clever marketing, a spoonful of luck, and a lifestyle angle to back them up. As rosé continues to climb in popularity, we see these three prongs at work in real time with brands like LVMH treating the pink wine like they once did Champagne. It’s proof that lifestyle brands transcend snobbery — the achilles heel of the wine industry.

With summer unofficially kicking off this Memorial Day Weekend, Adam, Joanna, and Zach ponder what this upcoming summer will teach us about drinks trends. Is rosé actually going to skyrocket as predicted? What about cocktails? The Martini seems to be sitting pretty, but will the summer heat pair with the briney, boozy all-star? Will frozen drinks like the Piña Colada make a resurgence or is making the drink too much of a hassle for it to gain traction among at-home mixologists? And what in the world will happen in the world of beer? Many brands missed the boat on promoting a lifestyle, but perhaps Mexican beer still stands a chance.

On this episode of the “VinePair Podcast,” the trio debate potential summer trends and discuss how Red Stripe is poised for a comeback. Tune in for more.

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The article The VinePair Podcast: What Will Summer 2023 Teach Us? appeared first on VinePair.

U.S. breweries have seen an increase in foot traffic over the past two years, and some are bringing in more visitors than ever.

A recent report by parent company Next Glass reveals Untappd’s top 25 fastest-growing breweries in the U.S. The app, launched in 2010, allows beer drinkers to track the breweries they’ve visited, submit reviews, and interact with other users. It also provides data on key players in the brewing industry.

According to the new report, the app’s data reflected an increase in users’ brewery check-ins between 2020 and 2022. Next Glass ranked these breweries based on absolute growth (number of check-ins) and percentage growth from 2020 to 2022. Each brewery on the list recorded a minimum of 500 check-ins each year.

It’s no surprise that breweries are experiencing a boom in foot traffic years after the onset of the pandemic, but some are seeing more success than others. Delaware-based First State Brewing Company recorded the biggest jump in percentage growth in 2022, rising over 3,000 percent to 20,073 visits in 2022. Xül Beer Co. in Knoxville, Tenn. captured the second spot, with an increase of 1,328 percent over 2020 visits. Fidens Brewing Company topped the individual check-in list with a whopping 119,455 check-ins in 2022 — an increase of over 100,000 visits compared to 2020.

Keep reading to see Untappd’s fastest-growing breweries in the United States.

The article These Are the 25 Fastest Growing Breweries on Untappd appeared first on VinePair.

Another beverage shipment has been destroyed by European Union customs agents in the name of protecting the esteemed “Champagne” designation.

French border agents recently destroyed a 35,000-bottle shipment of “Couronne Fruit Champagne” soda from Haiti, according to the BBC. Palates of the orange soft drink were originally confiscated in October 2021 after agents spotted the “Champagne” on the bottles’ labels. The beverages were intended for the consumer market in France, per border agents.

A French court ruled in October 2022 that the bottles should be destroyed to respect the Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC) designation. The Comité Champagne, a French trade organization that represents wine producers, leads advocacy efforts for AOC protection.

“This kind of use contributes to weakening the reputation of the appellation,” Comité Champagne managing director Charles Goemaere said in a recent statement, according to the BBC. “The fight against the abuse of the Champagne name started in 1844 and hasn’t stopped since.”

This isn’t the first time that the E.U. has shown it’s taking the designation seriously this year. In April, Belgian border authorities destroyed nearly 2,500 cans of Miller High Life. The American lager has long been branded as the “Champagne of Beers.”

“[The destruction of these bottles] confirms the importance that the European Union attaches to designations of origin and rewards the determination of the Champagne producers to protect their designation,” said Goemaere.

The article French Custom Agents Destroy 35,000 Bottles of ‘Champagne’ Soda appeared first on VinePair.

Dr. Andrew Huberman says “alcohol” like he hates the taste of the word. The syllables shiver around his mouth like wet shoes in a dryer.

The Stanford neurologist and ophthalmologist assures, over and over again during the course of his two-hour podcast on the effects of alcohol on the body and brain, that he does not hate alcohol itself. Though alcohol is a favorite topic of his to tweet about, Huberman takes great pains to maintain scientific detachment, reporting on peer-reviewed studies and keeping their conclusions in square focus. In fact, the only opinion he expresses throughout the episode, released in August 2022 as part of his incandescently popular Huberman Lab podcast, is regret.

“I feel guilty about telling you this,” Huberman says. “Probably the best amount of alcohol to drink would be zero glasses per week, or ounces per week.”

The episode is filled with shocking, peer-reviewed arguments as to why alcohol, despite its social function, is a toxin that people should avoid. Huberman structures his podcasts as stylish lectures, complete with a bibliography. In this episode, he points to how alcohol decreases cortical thickness, “destroys good, healthy” gut microbiota, affects DNA methylation, increases estrogen levels, and may even cause cancer, leading him to the ultimate hypothesis that there is no healthy amount of alcohol consumption.

Huberman speaks in a subdued Californian register, going deep on topics related to health, human behavior, mental well-being, and biology. He has a boxer’s physique and a skateboarder’s affability, like a mix between Joe Rogan and Henry Rollins. Like the former, his podcast is ascendantly popular.

Since launching in December 2020, Huberman Lab has rocketed to the upper echelons of the podcast charts, now ranking No. 7 on Apple Podcasts and No. 4 on Spotify in the United States and No. 1 in the health and fitness category across both platforms. The YouTube video of his alcohol episode, the 84th in the podcast, has been watched nearly 4 million times as of this writing, and the windfall has carried the scientist — and his scholastic aversion to alcohol — to new corners of the internet. He’s fully out into the mainstream, capitalizing on the nascent sobriety trend, and droves of drinkers are hearing his words about the toxicity of alcohol.

And it’s resonating. But who is this camera-ready brain scientist selling sobriety as the key to unlocking human potential?

A Punk With a Ph.D.

If there is a word that Huberman says lovingly, with almost benediction, it’s “optimize.”

Huberman grew up a skater punk in Palo Alto, Calif., just as the Bay Area city was transitioning into the epicenter of the American tech industry. Huberman — who declined several requests to be interviewed for this story — has said his early childhood was loving and did not include any drugs or alcohol in the home. It wasn’t until his parents divorced and he started running around Northern California with skateboarders that he saw people regularly getting f*cked up. Though he has claimed that alcohol was “never [his] thing” and that drinking only made him tired, he had other vices. He started skipping school to travel to skate and, in ninth grade, ended up getting institutionalized for a month at an adolescent psychiatry facility.

Huberman never planned on going to college, but he ended up following an ex-girlfriend to University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1993. There, he fell in love with science, and though his romance wouldn’t last, he would devote the rest of his life to studying how people can fine-tune their brains to live the most optimized life possible.

Huberman graduated from U.C. Berkeley with master’s in neurobiology and behavior in 2000 before finishing his doctorate at U.C. Davis four years later. After a five-year postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University, he became an assistant professor at U.C. San Diego, where he was awarded a McKnight scholarship as an outstanding young scientist. At the same time, he was freelancing for Thrasher and Slap Magazine.

In 2016, he became a full-time professor at Stanford, where he now leads a lab focused on neurobiology and ophthalmology. In his career, Huberman has published 79 papers, garnering nearly 10,000 citations, and has served on the editorial boards of journals such as Current Biology and the Journal of Comparative Neurology. His work on stress and perception earned him consulting gigs with professional athletes and the United States military, but it wasn’t until 2020 that he started doing guest appearances on podcasts. That year, he made over 50 appearances on high-volume shows like My First Million, The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast, and The Joe Rogan Experience.

During the pandemic, Huberman invested in raising his profile. He hired former DC Shoes and “Transworld Skateboarding” photographer Mike Blabac to help him develop a sleek, serious aesthetic that amplified his already cool demeanor. He bought 26 of the same black shirts and started popping up on male-centered podcasts talking about how everything from mood disorders to physical ailments could be treated with simple, daily practices and eliminating dysregulation. Listeners began to see him as a “badass muscular neuroscientist” whose brainhacking tips could help improve facial structure, prolong sex, and quit cocaine.

In mere months, the neuroscientist went from a relative unknown to the Bill Nye of grindset masculinity. Huberman Lab was a top 10 podcast within the year it launched. In 2021, he parlayed his media exposure into a media company of his own, Scicomm Media, which focuses on helping other scientists achieve the level of fame. As it stands now, Huberman has over 3 million followers on YouTube and Instagram, where new videos score hundreds of thousands of views with each new episode and are frequently remixed into countless motivational compilations alongside testimonials from people like Daniel Ratcliffe, Keith Urban, and Ben Affleck.

“I suppose I lucked out in that I don’t really like the taste of alcohol, and it just puts me to sleep,” Huberman says in one frequently replayed clip. “But I know that people do enjoy it, and I do want to point out that there is zero evidence that … having one drink or two drinks every now and again … is not going to cause major health concerns or major health issues.”

Silicon Valley Sobriety

Los Angeles designer and musician Iphigenia Douleur fell asleep one night listening to YouTube videos about overcoming trauma, and when she woke up, Andrew Huberman was on her phone. She’d been served lots of similar content she didn’t trust, such as Jordan Peterson’s podcast, but Huberman seemed thorough. Structured. His science wasn’t intimidating.

“I was looking for a reason to stop drinking,” Douleur says. “I’ve been trying to get sober before in my life, but I just never had a concrete reason, especially to my peers, who were like, ‘You’re not an alcoholic, so you can keep drinking.’ I couldn’t argue with that logic.”

Since quitting alcohol, Douleur says she has much greater control of her emotions. She also follows another Huberman tenet and makes sure to get sunlight in her eyes early in the day, and the combined effect is that her “life operates so much better.”

Dmitriy Strunin, a 37-year-old professional poker player, found Huberman after a fellow poker player shared a viral clip where Huberman explains that delaying coffee drinking to 90 minutes after waking can increase caffeine uptake. Strunin was already having trouble with his sleep, and when he heard Huberman discuss how drinking can affect circadian health, he was convinced to try sobriety to fix it.

“I like the fact that [Huberman] doesn’t really push anything,” Strunin says. “That’s why a lot of people listen to him. He’s not like, ‘Do this, do that.’ He explains everything and lets you make a decision.”

Huberman is an effective podcast host. The combination of his scientific excellence — one former colleague contacted by VinePair referred to him as “an absolutely brilliant” neuroscientist — and his use of sales tactics like the tritonal close make for a seductive experience. The kind that startup junkies immediately recognize, and as such, Huberman’s growth has been partly fueled by his resonance with fellow Palo Altonians looking for a biologically defined advantage to help code the next billion-dollar app.

Take tech investor Marc Andreessen, who found replenished energy by quitting alcohol, even though he never listened to the full Huberman Lab episode; or Dan Go, a fitness guru for entrepreneurs whose zero-alcohol journey apparently resulted in better sleep, more introspection, and increased LinkedIn followers. Dozens of other founders, business leaders, and venture capitalists have blogged, tweeted, or otherwise committed their experiences to the internet, citing their sobriety as the one simple brain hack propelling their success.

Since its release nine months ago, Huberman’s lecture has seemingly helped dozens of others like Douleur and Strunin explore sobriety as a path to better wellness. And there is no apparent scientific flaw in his accounts. Though he may, at times, dip into condescension and pronounce the word “alcohol” like it’s a curse, his argument is supported with current, highly cited research. Scroll through the posts on r/stopdrinking and you’ll see more testimonials of people — from casual listeners to tech’s elite — dumping their booze and thanking Huberman for giving them the wherewithal to do so.

“I thought I was just an impulsive person,” Douleur says. “I thought I was just kind of a stupid person. Andrew giving me the permission to put my wellness first showed me that I wasn’t.”

And Now, a Word From Our Sponsor

Huberman’s podcasts tend to be sponsored by the kind of wellness-promoting supplements and doodads that entrance these same entrepreneurs — powders for supporting immune resistance, pills that promote mental sharpness, and electronics to induce deeper sleep.

Though it may not have been his target when he launched his podcast, Huberman has entered, and no doubt profited from, his association with the keynote-speaker human potential crowd. His success is partly due to his approachable breakdown of scientific concepts as well as his Palo Alto upbringing. He’s inserted himself into a network of performance-minded — and often hyper-masculine — optimization gurus like Peterson, Tim Ferriss, and polarizing MIT computer scientist Lex Fridman, whom Huberman credits with the idea for starting Huberman Lab. He has also helped David Sinclair, a Harvard University genetics professor who has drawn great scrutiny for his work on reversing aging, launch a podcast that has received equally fanatical uptake.

Huberman’s network spreads outward to include other high-powered talking heads, like Rogan, Kanye West, and Elon Musk. The rings extrapolate outward from there, into the Manosphere, a community of ideologues with a tribal focus on improving the position and influence of men in society. Huberman has never, on his podcast or others, engaged in any misogynistic behavior. But his commentary on topics like pornography, ideal face shape, and, specifically in the case of alcohol, hormone optimization are easily weaponized by Andrew Tate types as a solution for beta male subservience. From there, the sales pitch is inherent. It works just like Gary Vanyeurchuk pimping crypto plays to wannabe venture capitalists. As Ben Rich and Eva Bujalka write in their manosphere explainer in “The Conversation”:

Since its inception, the manosphere has been rife with predatory influencers seeking to profit off the anxieties unleashed by this ambiguity.

Driven by a desire to reassert a romantic masculine aesthetic ideal in a world of social media unrealities, members of the manosphere often become willing consumers of a wide variety of products and services to “solve” their problems. These range from vitamin and gym supplements to personal coaching, self-help courses, and other subscription-based services.

On a guest appearance on My First Million, Huberman is demure when talking about his financial success. He doesn’t talk numbers. But there are, as with so many things with the Huberman Lab, implications.

Huberman’s increased coziness to sponsors like ROKA and Athletic Greens has led listeners to begin questioning his credentials. Scrupulous listeners have decried Huberman’s podcasts as profit-chasing “bro science.” “I need a fucking rest from optimization,” one representative Redditor said. “F*ck all this constant hamster wheel of self-improvement.”

Huberman certainly has a financial stake in promoting sobriety. It’s a message that resonates with his most engaged fanbase, and it fits squarely in the straightedge-punk-becomes-renowned-scientist aesthetic he’s worked hard to establish, regardless of the few it may alienate. But the threads of Huberman’s life are starting to tangle. Caught up in it are dozens of people he’s helped and uplifted, being drawn into knots with some of the most troubling minds on the podcast circuit.

Alcohol is a toxin. The evidence is scientifically significant, as Huberman has said. But there is a level of toxicity beyond the biological. One that Huberman, in his finely hewn focus on growth and optimization, has not yet engaged with.

The article How Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman Became Sobriety’s Biggest Zealot appeared first on VinePair.

If you’ve ever made cocktails at home, you probably have a bottle of Angostura bitters hanging out in the cabinet or on your bar cart. You know enough to shake a few drops of them into your Old Fashioned or Manhattan, but have you considered the bitters beyond? There are literally hundreds of kinds of bitters on the market, with flavors ranging from celery to mole and almost anything in between. But how do you know what’s worth adding to your selection with so many options? To track down the most interesting bitters, we asked bartenders to share some of the most underrated bitters out there. Here’s what they said.

The most underrated bitters, according to bartenders

• Bitter Queens Tobacco Bitters
• Black walnut bitters
• Bittermens Elemakule Bitters
• Bogart’s Bitters
• Gran Classico
• Cardamom and celery bitters
• Yamazaki’s The Japanese Bitters in shiso and umami
• Bogart’s Bitters
• Cardamom bitters, lavender bitters, and celery bitters
• Scrappy’s
• Firewater bitters
• Scrappy’s Cardamom Bitters & Scrappy’s Firewater Bitters
• Bittered Sling Lem-Marrakesh
• Bittermens Xocolatl Mole Bitters
• Chicory pecan bitters

“Bitter Queens Tobacco Bitters is a favorite bitter of mine that always seems to be overlooked. It adds an umami quality that is hard to find in beverages. It also pairs well with smoky flavors that peated Scotch or mezcal bring to the table.” —Jonathan Pizano, beverage director, Lazy Bird, Cira, Cabra, Chicago

“Black ealnut, or any walnut bitters for that matter, are super underrated to me. They add a little bit more depth than your typical Angostura or Jerry Thomas bitters, and that richness goes so far in a cocktail — especially a stirred bourbon drink. I also kind of love a dash or two with bright shaken drinks like a Gold Rush or a Mojito.” —Alex Cuper, beverage director, El Che Steakhouse & Bar, Chicago

“Bittermens Elemakule Bitters bring versatility and island flavors to a cocktail, adding layers and depth that elevates the drink from good to great. We don’t see these bitters used in the wild as often as we’d like!” —Lukas Garrett, head bartender, RT Lodge, Maryville, Tenn.

“Bogart’s Bitters was the first-ever bitters mentioned in what is regarded as the world’s first cocktail book, published in 1862. It has a welcome complexity, with notes of licorice, coffee, dark chocolate, and hints of spice. I’m a fan of the flavor and unique history. I’m surprised more bars aren’t using it!” —Shiva Thapa, head bartender, Miller & Lux, San Francisco

“Gran Classico is my go-to bitter to bring in an exceptional layer of flavor to any cocktail. It is a very dynamic bitter and can be applied in ways to amplify sweetness, provide a pleasant bitter backbone, and add an extra touch of body due to its viscous nature. It can be easily integrated into shaken cocktails to complement citrus, add a beautiful color and body to a spritz, or be stirred into a spirit-forward cocktail to complement bitter notes. And of course, and its core, is lovely on rocks with a splash of soda.” —Anna Thorn, bar manager, Boka & Alla Vita, Chicago

“Cardamom and celery bitters are full of flavor. They add such cool nuance to cocktails and should be reached for more often.” —Michael Carlisi, beverage director at Barrio, San Francisco

“Yamazaki’s The Japanese Bitters in shiso and umami would be the two I would highlight and recommend.” —Alicia Perry, beverage director, CH Projects, San Diego

“Unless you’ve been fortunate enough to have an Old Fashioned with Bogart’s Bitters, you’ve never experienced the cocktail how it’s meant to taste. The flavor profile of dark spice, coffee, rich cocoa, orange peel, and herbs create a wonderfully complex cocktail that draws no comparison from any other bottle of bitters. If you have yet to experience the pleasure of enjoying an Old Fashioned with this bottle, I suggest you make it a point to do so.” —David Miller, beverage director, Pennydrop Bar + Kitchen, St. Louis

“Cardamom bitters, lavender bitters, and celery bitters are some of my favorite bitters to use as they pack a nice punch of flavor. The names aren’t as interesting as their origin of flavor, such as cardamom bitters being from a seed pod of a plant in the ginger family. In the bitters game, less is more.” —Nicolas Albertini, mixologist, Reforma, Palm Springs, Calif.

“Scrappy’s didn’t make great forays into the professional bar scene until a few years back, but I was gifted a sample set of the Seattle, Wash.-based company’s bitters 12 years ago and I was immediately hooked. Their grapefruit, fire tincture, and chocolate varieties are tough to beat, though Bittermens Xocolatl Mole Bitters are a personal favorite for chocola-fying cocktails, particularly Negronis.” —Christopher Struck, beverage director, ilili NYC, New York

“My favorite underrated bitters are firewater bitters, which add an intense habanero heat to your cocktail. They are a must-have for your bar if you are a fan of cocktails with a kick. I love to pair it with sweeter, fruitier flavors to round out the profile of a drink.” —Lindsey Karlsson, beverage director, Wilson Hardware, Arlington, Va.

“I recommend having Scrappy’s Cardamom Bitters and Scrappy’s Firewater Bitters in your bars. The firewater saves you from having to run to the kitchen when you need to make a spicy cocktail. No need to get spice in your eyes; firewater has your back. I recommend adding one dash of firewater to a citrus- forward cocktail, the spice can round out quite well. I also like to have the cardamom because it adds depth in flavor in a short period of time. You can make any cocktail taste marvelous with these two additional bitters in your bars!” —Judy Elahi, bar directors, 101 Hospitality, Washington, D.C.

“My absolute favorite bitters are Bittered Sling Lem-Marrakesh and Bittered Sling Cascade Celery. The entire Bittered Sling bitters lineup offers beautiful complexity and depth to cocktails while helping highlight existing flavors in your cocktail.” —Kate Boushel, director of beverage and education, Groupe Barroco, Montreal

“They do get some love deep in the beverage community, but any form of chocolate bitters can add complexity to a wide variety of cocktails. I’ve used Scrappy’s and Fee Brother’s off and on for different stirred beverages, Manhattan and Negroni riffs, tiki drinks, takes on Daiquiris, etc. The bitterness hearkens to the complexity of cacao in its raw form, and using that specific chocolate flavor lends itself more to savory drinks as opposed to a dessert cocktail (though it would be effective in one of those as well). It works brilliantly with agave spirits, especially mezcal. Try an Oaxaca Old Fashioned with a couple dashes of Bittermens Xocolatl Mole Bitters.” —Caden Worley, beverage manager, Don Angie, New York

“Living in New Orleans and being exposed to the amazing products by El Guapo, I would say their Chicory Pecan bitters. They provide a bite and spice to any drink they are invited to. I personally love them in our Daiquiri machine (what we call frozen drink machines here in NOLA) concoction called Double Feature, which is an ode to the Coca-Cola Icee at your favorite movie theater. It features bourbon, Liquore delle Sirene, Coca-Cola, and, of course, El Guapo Chicory Pecan bitters.” —Roxy Eve Narvaez, beverage director, The Chloe, New Orleans

The article We Asked 15 Bartenders: What Are the Most Underrated Cocktail Bitters? appeared first on VinePair.

In 1978, would-be gaming giant Taito Corporation released “Space Invaders” in Japanese arcades. The game, which was launched in the United States by arcade manufacturer Midway, was an instant success and sold over 400,000 cabinets, grossing over $3.8 billion by 1982. That’s nearly $12 billion in today’s money, making it the highest-grossing video game in history.

“Space Invaders” was developed by Tomohiro Nishikado and arguably changed the direction of video game programming by kickstarting the arcade boom. In fact, the arcade game became so popular in Japan that it led to a shortage of coins and led the nation to ramp up its 100-yen coin production. The goal of the game — to point and shoot at descending aliens before they reached the bottom of the screen — inspired several spin-offs and innumerable shooting video games, cementing “Space Invaders” as one of the most iconic video games of all time. That’s why it may be a shock to learn that the Taito Corporation actually got its start distilling vodka.

Founded in 1953 as the Taito Trading Company by Ukrainian refugee Michael “Misha” Kogan, Taito was the first producer to distill and market vodka in Japan. Branded as Troika Vodka, the spirit was then described by a Taito spokesperson as “very high-quality” and as having a “good reputation,” though the exact details of its production are still relatively fuzzy. It’s unknown whether Kogan opened a distillery to produce each bottle, or if he recruited the help of a shochu distiller who made the product for him. While vodka was a seemingly random spirit to produce in a country that is so tied to sake and shochu consumption, the timing of Troika’s release couldn’t have been better.

Following World War II, Japan was decimated, having lost millions of lives, $56 billion, and nearly 40 percent of all infrastructure. However, in the post-war years, Japan experienced what is known as the Japanese Economic Miracle, with the economy growing two times faster than the prewar standard by 1955.

With the unprecedented economic boom, bar culture in Japan was flourishing, and natives were excited to get their hands on as many foreign products as possible. As a former Soviet still retaining his penchant for vodka, Kogan took to selling the spirit to a market he thought may be interested in imbibing. Though distillation ceased just two years later in 1955, the product was apparently tasty enough to land it a spot on the Imperial Hotel’s back bar — one of the most luxurious hotels in Japan.

Troika may have been a quality spirit in its own right, but given the massive success of “Space Invaders,” we think Taito made the right choice in switching over to video game production.

The article Two Decades Before Releasing ‘Space Invaders,’ Video Game Giant Taito Distilled Vodka appeared first on VinePair.

Do you love to mix drinks, connect with other industry professionals, and be merry? Then you’ll be glad to hear it’s almost time for Bar Convent Brooklyn, the leading international trade show for distillers and mixologists alike. Jackie Williams, the event director, is thrilled about this year’s lineup: “We’re really excited about this year’s schedule and can’t wait for our attendees to experience it.”

On Tuesday, June 13, and Wednesday, June 14, Bar Convent Brooklyn returns to Brooklyn’s “creative campus,” Industry City. The show will bring bar and beverage industry experts, professionals, and brands together for two days (and nights) of education sessions, networking experiences, and other fun events.

Bar Convent Brooklyn began in 2018, and it’s back bigger than ever this year with more space, exhibitions, and experiences to enjoy. In other words, the event’s fifth in-person iteration will offer more opportunities for professionals to learn about industry innovations, connect with like-minded beverage enthusiasts, and celebrate the wondrous world of drinks.

“The continued growth of Bar Convent Brooklyn has been absolutely incredible,” Williams says. “Last year, we reached pre-pandemic numbers, and we know this year will be even more successful. We have really compelling programming and education sessions that will be sure to delight and inspire attendees. Bar Convent Brooklyn has been and always will be a place for industry friends to come together to learn about the newest trends, try the newest spirits, rediscover some old favorites, network, and much more. I’m excited to welcome everyone to this year’s show.”

Can’t-Miss Events

This year’s educational programming includes 55 seminars and expert panels handpicked by a committee of top industry professionals. Highlights include “Aperitivo and Amaro — The Future of Italian Spirits in Modern Mixology” with industry legend Dale DeGroff; “WTF is Singani: Bringing the Newest Spirit Category to the United States,” hosted by film director Steven Soderbergh, acclaimed bartender and author Ivy Mix, and Luis Pablo Granier, CEO of Casa Real; and “Beyond Visibility — Indigenous Collaboration in the Modern Bar Space” with experts Chockie Tom, Alex Francis, Acadia Cerise Cutschal.

Day One: Carajilos, Speed Rack, and a Party at Public Records

So, what else can you expect from a day at Bar Convent Brooklyn? Following a welcoming Carajillo cocktail at the Licor 43 coffee cart, you can explore Wilderton’s alcohol-free spirits at the Wilderton Non-Alcoholic Botanical Spirits Spotlight in Industry City’s courtyard. From there, experience the fast-paced excitement of Speed Rack, a femme-focused speed bartending competition that aims to raise money for breast cancer research. That evening, medals will be awarded to leading bartenders in categories like Sustainability and Women-Owned at the Chilled 100 Spirits Awards. From there, put the orange-peel garnish on the day at the Opening Night Party at Public Records, sponsored by William Grant.

And that’s just day one.

Day Two: Mezcal, Garden Games, and House of Yes

On the second day of Bar Convent Brooklyn, you can also sample Pierde Almas Mezcal at the courtyard bar before participating in the Hendrick’s Gin Grand Garden Games, a series of unique games accompanied by edible and drinkable treats. Return to the courtyard bar to browse non-alcoholic offerings from Boisson, and then dance the night away with curated cocktails and ice-cold Jägermeister shots at the Closing Night Party at Bushwick’s buzzy venue House of Yes.

Until June 10, you can pre-purchase tickets for Bar Convent Brooklyn via the website for $80 for one day or $130 for both days. Starting on June 11, tickets can be purchased at the door, upon availability, for $100 for one day or $160 for both days.

If you RSVP ASAP, your future self will thank you — for saving money on pre-purchased tickets and for getting ready to celebrate a holiday-worthy experience in the middle of June.

Let’s get festive! It is, after all, the best time of the year.

This article is sponsored by Bar Convent Brooklyn.

The article Bar Convent Brooklyn Is Back and Better Than Ever appeared first on VinePair.

Classic cocktails earned that distinction for a reason, but just because they’re tried-and-true recipes doesn’t mean they’re perfect for your palate. The Bar is here to level up your drinks knowledge by teaching you how to seamlessly swap spirits so you can enjoy cocktails you truly love that are uniquely yours.

Knowing the flavor profile of key spirits and a few basic recipes allows you to customize drinks to your preference and impress your friends with your creative home bartending skills. Here’s how you can take a few standards and tailor-make them for nearly endless possibilities.

Old Fashioneds

If you like to keep your Old Fashioned old school, stick to American whiskey. Use bourbon if you prefer vanilla and caramel notes, and try a rye whiskey to spice this classic up with black pepper notes; a peated Scotch lends a smoky, woody edge to the cocktail.

If whiskey isn’t your kind of spirit, no problem. Opt for a new take on an Old Fashioned by using an aged rum. The rich notes from the molasses transform this classic into something richer and honeyed — it will appease your sweet tooth without losing any bold flavor. If you’re an agave lover, an añejo tequila’s earthy base and bright spice notes work wonderfully with the bitters and orange zest. For the ultimate smoke show, use mezcal. 

Shop the spirits:

• Bulleit Bourbon 10 Year Old Whiskey
• Bulleit 95 Rye
• Lagavulin 8 Year Old
• Zacapa No. 23 Rum
• Don Julio Añejo Tequila

Martinis

Martinis are one of the easiest cocktails to customize. More vermouth increases the herbaceousness of the drink, and preferences vary: A 1:1 mix of London Dry gin and French vermouth creates a lighter version of the classic Martini, while super-dry versions contain just a splash of vermouth. A gin base adds complexity, but the gin you choose can impact the flavor in a big way. Use Tanqueray No. TEN for a citrus-forward Martini or Tanqueray London Dry for more of an herbal, juniper-forward Martini. Vodka Martinis are more simple and straightforward. Garnishes are another way to make the Martini yours, whether you prefer it “dirty” thanks to the salinity of olives and olive juice or bright with a lemon twist. 

Shop the spirits:

• Tanqueray London Dry Gin
• Tanqueray No. Ten
• Ketel One Vodka

Margaritas

If tequila isn’t your favorite spirit, but you still want a Margarita, we’ve got options for you. Swap tequila for whiskey and you’ve got yourself a sour — the lime juice works especially well with the vanilla notes of the whiskey. Vodka serves as a great base, especially for flavored Margaritas like mango or strawberry, thanks to its smooth, clean profile. For a Margarita with a little extra kick, use mezcal instead of tequila. The smoked quality of mezcal lends itself especially well to spicy or sweet fruit Margaritas, like pineapple, with a chili-salt rim. Speaking of rims, there’s no need to limit yourself to just salt or sugar — feel free to experiment. This is a great way to customize from herbal tea leaves to chocolate sauce.

Shop the spirits:

• Don Julio Blanco Tequila
• Ketel One Vodka
• Casamigos Mezcal
• Bulleit Bourbon

Neat Drinks

Sipping a spirit neat is the simplest way to appreciate it for exactly what it is. Though Scotch whisky usually comes to mind when you think of a neat sipper, there are plenty of alternatives that can be enjoyed neat. In fact, añejo tequila shares a lot of the same characteristics as a whiskey, like rich caramel and vanilla notes but with an added earthiness and candied yam component from the roasted agave. In Mexico, it’s traditional to sip a blanco tequila neat, and many tequileros consider this the perfect way to experience pure agave flavor: bright citrus notes, grassiness, and earthy minerality. Since rum is distilled from sugar cane, it has an inherent flavor of toasted sugar that makes sipping it neat, well, sweet.

 Shop the spirits:

• Oban Little Bay
• George Dickel Barrel Select Whisky
• Don Julio 1942 Añejo Tequila
• Don Julio 70 Cristalino Tequila
• Don Julio Blanco Tequila

Negronis

The gin classic, a Negroni, is complex and citrus-forward, but subbing in bourbon makes for a honeyed, rounder cocktail called the Boulevardier. The sweet notes from the bourbon play warmly with the vermouth and bittersweet taste of the apéritif. Swapping gin for mezcal will give this cocktail a touch of minerality and smoke. 

Shop the spirits:

• Tanqueray London Dry Gin
• Bulleit Bourbon
• Casamigos Mezcal

Manhattans

The tried-and-true combination uses rye whiskey, Italian sweet vermouth, and aromatic bitters, but the whiskey you pick will dictate the final result. Bourbon provides the sweetest option, whereas rye adds a bit of spice and Scotch contributes a briny, smoky flavor. Swapping in an añejo tequila adds caramel earthiness, while mezcal lends grounded minerality and a hint of smoldering goodness.

Shop the spirits

• Bulleit 95 Rye
• Bulleit Bourbon
• George Dickel Bourbon Whisky Aged 8 Years
• Oban 14 Year Old
• Don Julio Añejo Tequila
• Casamigos Mezcal

Bloody Marys

One of the most popular vodka cocktails offers tons of room for customization, from the spices you choose to the endless amounts of liquids you could incorporate — a Bloody Bull cocktail uses beef broth; a Bloody Caesar cocktail uses clam juice. Blanco tequila turns this into a Bloody Maria and adds a vegetal earthiness that stands up well to a spicy mix. Whiskey provides a complex backbone with a hint of smoke that plays well with the tomato juice. For a savory, more herbal taste, sub in gin. 

 Shop the spirits:

• Casamigos Blanco Tequila
• Tanqueray London Dry Gin
• Johnnie Walker Black Label Scotch Whisky
• George Dickel Bourbon Whisky Aged 8 Years

Whiskey Sours

A sour is a classic template that offers a single-serving variation on punches that combine spirits, citrus juice, and a sweetener. A classic Whiskey Sour has lemon juice that brightens up the vanilla and caramel notes in bourbon. Another brown spirit that works well is rum — simply exchange the lemon juice for lime and you’ve got yourself a rounded and complex Daiquiri bursting with notes of brown sugar.

If you prefer clear spirits, use gin for something more botanical. Blanco tequila provides a mineral, earthy element, and adding orange liqueur transforms the drink into a Margarita. Want to go a step further? Use vodka instead of tequila and add in a splash of cranberry, and you’ve got yourself a Cosmopolitan. 

 Shop the spirits:

• Bulleit Bourbon
• Tanqueray No. TEN 
• Zacapa No. 23 Rum
• Casamigos Blanco Tequila
• Ketel One Vodka

Once you’ve got the basic flavor profiles down, feel free to experiment. Swapping spirits is an easy way to customize a cocktail and explore what flavors work for you, just how you like them. It’s time to get mixing. 

This article is sponsored by The Bar. 

The article How to Swap Spirits in Classic Cocktails [Infographic] appeared first on VinePair.

At its core, a wine bar is a place where you can walk in and explore a curated selection of wines, have a few small snacks, and maybe learn a little bit about what you’re drinking. However, the range of spaces popping up across New York City described as “wine bars” calls the definition of what a wine bar is into question.

It’s no secret the city has seen an onslaught of new openings hop on the wine bar trend in recent years, with each space offering its own allure — the buzz of a Parisian tabac at Le Dive, tapas reminiscent of a seaside vacation in Basque country at Place des Fêtes, or the comfort of unwinding with a glass of wine on the couch at Parcelle. Some have menus designed by Michelin-starred chefs while others like St. Jardim and Do Not Feed Alligators double as coffee shops. Many, like Gem Wine, maintain a cozy and quiet interior, while spaces like Sauced have leaned into the lively nightlife vibe.

With each new space offering a new take on the original wine bar model, now seems like the time to question: What exactly constitutes a wine bar? Why has the concept morphed into previously unseen forms in New York City? And are there consequences to slapping the wine bar name on just about any establishment?

“A Wine Bar Is a State of Mind”

To define what constitutes a “wine bar” in 2023, let’s start with the basics: Does a wine bar need to, in fact, have a physical bar at all? New York’s newest openings are certainly testing that boundary.

One of the city’s scene-iest new haunts, Parcelle, comes equipped with all of the de rigueur wine bar essentials: a photogenic facade, a compelling list of obscure wines poured into pristine Zalto glasses, and a bites menu featuring the ever-so-trendy anchovy toast and cheeky “chunks of fancy parm.” The one thing missing from this meticulously designed space is, well, a bar. While guests can consider the nuances of a 2003 Barolo seated at a table or enjoy the whimsy of the by-the-glass list’s unidentified “orange wine of the day” while relaxing on an emerald green couch, there are no bar stools to be found.

“We started as a pop-up in a parking lot during the pandemic when people couldn’t be inside. There was no bar. The spirit of the place doesn’t need a bar; I guess all you really need is wine.”

The presence of a bar, specifically one held for walk-ins and not reservations, has been a staple of wine bars in the past, offering an interactive space with opportunity for education. “One of our pet peeves is a bar where you can never get in if you don’t have a reservation,” says Christa Alexander, co-founder of the West Village’s St. Jardim, a wine bar that insists on keeping its bar seats open for walk-ins. “It’s like if you are at an omakase restaurant, you want to sit at the counter and see them doing their thing,” she adds. “Sitting at the bar you are part of the action, befriending the bartenders and getting tastes of things, as opposed to sitting at a table, where you are being served.”

In this scenario a suggestion from the somm can spark someone’s interest in wine, or a seasoned pro can pop in to enjoy a familiar glass with a friend. Either way, an impromptu glass at the bar is undoubtedly one of the most magical wine drinking moments.

Yet, many in the industry think the conviviality of a wine bar can extend beyond the physical feature. “I don’t think a bar is important at all,” says Piper Kristensen, the beverage director of Brooklyn wine bar Place des Fêtes. “We started as a pop-up in a parking lot during the pandemic when people couldn’t be inside. There was no bar. The spirit of the place doesn’t need a bar; I guess all you really need is wine.”

Modeled after French wine bars, but serving unique bottles from the Iberian Peninsula, Place des Fêtes opened in its permanent space in Clinton Hill in 2022 from the team behind Michelin-starred restaurant Oxalis. “We wanted to open something a little more beverage focused than Oxalis, and the category of wine bar is great because it is super versatile,” Kristensen says. He also references a specific energy that wine bars offer compared to traditional restaurants, insisting that “a wine bar is a state of mind.”

The Four Horsemen Effect

This seems to be the guiding principle for many wine bars these days. More important than the seating layout, size, or menu, is the vibe. And it’s clear that operators don’t want to be pigeonholed. On that front, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell the difference between a wine bar and a restaurant with a good wine program. Place des Fêtes was recognized as one of the best new restaurants of 2022 by several prestigious publications, and restaurants like Claud and Chambers are constantly lumped into the wine bar category due to their impressive beverage programs.

The epitome of this is Michelin-starred wine bar The Four Horsemen. The bar made a splash when it opened in 2015, likely receiving extra attention due to owner James Murphy’s LCD Soundsystem fame. However, most of the hype surrounded the bar’s deep list of popular and hard-to-find natural wines. While it was a wildly successful wine bar for its first few years, The Four Horsemen hit peak fame around late 2019 and early 2020 when it received both a favorable review from The New York Times and its first Michelin Star. The Four Horsemen is now regarded as an unmissable culinary destination in the city, even though it still categorizes itself as a wine bar.

In accordance with the overwhelming recognition The Four Horsemen garnered, this business model has taken off in the NYC drinking scene. A flurry of restaurants disguised as wine bars have opened, including LaLou, Fradei, Foul Witch, Bar Bête, Bar Pasquale, and Place des Fêtes — all boasting rotating seasonal menus that warrant a visit based on the food alone. Even wine bars that popped up in the first wave of the natural wine boom have switched things up with new chefs and more elevated menus. Notably, June Wine Bar brought on Chef Diego Moya, formerly of Racines, in 2021, and the bar started receiving more media attention for the new-and-improved food menu.

Is this shift about chasing culinary clout, or is it simply just a better business model? St. Jardim’s Christa Alexander points to the predictability and profit that comes from guests staying for a full dinner as the reason the bar expanded its culinary offerings. St. Jardim opened as a café by day and wine bar by night in 2021, and due to its focus on beverages, the team only worked with a consulting chef to design the original minimalist bites menu. Over time, however, Alexander noticed that those sitting at tables and ordering more food would also order more bottles of wine, so the team has since hired a full-time executive chef. “We serve thoughtful, intentional wines from small producers, and we are crafting a menu that is really well aligned with this approach with more ingredient-driven small plates,” Alexander says.

“We started as a pop-up in a parking lot during the pandemic when people couldn’t be inside. There was no bar. The spirit of the place doesn’t need a bar; I guess all you really need is wine.”

Bars in general started to lean on the reliability of reservations after the unpredictable nature of the pandemic, which has also contributed to the turn to fine-dining-like experiences. Ultimately, if a space has to choose between someone who walked in for a glass or two or a party that made a dinner reservation, the bar will always pick the guests eating dinner.

Hopping On The Trend

While the wine bar sensation was ripping through the city, New York was actually losing some of its top talent. Theo Lieberman, who has worked at iconic NYC drinks spots including the now-shuttered cocktail bar Milk & Honey and La Compagnie des Vins Surnaturels, is now the wine director for Delicious Hospitality. He notes that the pandemic as well as the better quality of life in other emerging markets drew many of the top sommeliers out of the city. “When I worked at Compagnie, the somm team was composed of all award-winning talent,” Lieberman says. “Now there is a very real shortage of hospitality professionals, which has created a lot of new opportunities and made us take time to invest in people — whereas in the past there would be a line of sommeliers in the wings waiting.”

The restructuring of restaurants during the pandemic caused some businesses to rely on servers more for wine service, phasing out the sommelier role at many wine bars. So, while there might be more wine bars now than ever, guests might be less likely to encounter traditional sommeliers in these spaces.

Along the same line, many of the newest wine bars were opened by those outside of the wine industry. Arguably one of the hottest openings in the past few years was Le Dive, a natural wine bar in the increasingly hip, wannabe neighborhood, Dimes Square. The space as well as the street seating is constantly packed, with a club-like energy buzzing throughout the evening. This is no coincidence as the space was opened up by Golden Age Hospitality, the team behind legendary nightlife spot Acme and, more recently, The Nines.

While many wine bars of the past were opened by notable wine industry professionals like
Terroir’s Paul Grieco or Laura Fiorvanti of Corkbuzz, the trendiness of the “natural wine bar” label seems irresistible to many — even those with no previous industry experience. David Sharma of Do Not Feed Alligators is a photographer by trade, and St. Jardim is the co-founders’ first foray into the hospitality industry — though, they did bring on the wine buyer from The Four Horsemen to design their extensive natural wine list.

Future of The Wine Bar

Don’t be mistaken, there are still a number of reputable wine bars in the city, and with the rate of new openings, New York is in no risk of a wine bar shortage. Reliable spots like Terroir, Corkbuzz, and Somm Time as well as newer additions like Moonflower and Skin Contact, have kept the true spirit of the wine bar alive. However, walking into an establishment and simply grabbing a glass is becoming increasingly harder to do, as the trend toward food-focused wine bars continues to take hold.

While no one’s complaining about the abundance of vibey places where food and wine lovers alike can enjoy the luxury of bluefin tuna and uni toast alongside baller bottles of Radikon and highly allocated wines from the Jura, labeling these spaces as wine bars perhaps adds to the image of pretension and intimidation that wine already grapples with. The preference for reserved-table seating in many new spaces has added another layer of exclusivity. And odds are you may need a reservation weeks in advance simply to walk into any of the city’s trendiest spots, making spontaneous wine bar moments few and far between in NYC.

The article Are New York Wine Bars Even Bars Anymore? appeared first on VinePair.

Feeding a crowd can be stressful, especially when it comes to celebratory outdoor shindigs like barbecues and picnics. That’s why grill-friendly crowd-pleasers like hot dogs are a no-brainer. What’s apparently not so easy, however, is calculating how many bags of dogs and buns to pick up at the grocery store.

In case you haven’t noticed, most hot dogs are sold in packs of 10 while buns come in packs of eight. That discrepancy has been annoying backyard grilling enthusiasts and professional pitmasters for over 80 years. It turns out that the mismatch all boils down to a lack of communication between butchers and bakers.

Meat is typically sold by the pound, and as hot dogs typically weigh 1.6 ounces each, it makes sense for producers to package them for purchase in 10-piece, 1-pound packs. According to Reader’s Digest, companies began selling them this way in the 1940s. Meanwhile, bread-making food corporations typically use baking machinery that holds four hot dog buns. Bakers began packing two sheets’ worth of bread in a package, and from then on, the ratio of dog to bun would be uneven.

Heinz Ketchup actually aimed to solve this issue in 2022 by partnering with Wonder Bread to offer 10-bun packs that better accompany a standard package of hot dogs. The bad news? They’re currently only available in Ontario, Canada.

For now, American consumers can seek ways to repurpose those extra dogs — we could get down with some hot dog hash for a post-barbecue brunch — or just do a little mental arithmetic at the grocery store. If you’d rather skip the math, we recommend purchasing four packs of hot dogs and five packages of hot dog buns to make 40 perfect pairs.

Happy grilling!

The article Why Hot Dogs Are Sold in 10-Packs But Hot Dog Buns Are Sold in 8-Packs appeared first on VinePair.

This is a tricky question, because it’s unclear to me whether this is something your friend does out of a want to do so, or it’s simply easier for them to pay, given their means, than to split the bill and feel badly about what they ordered.

Having that one friend who always insists on covering the tab is nice in theory, but can be very hard to deal with in practice. While the friend may legitimately enjoy treating you, eventually resentment can build, both on the part of the friend and you. Dealing with money and friends can often be a delicate dance, and no one wants to be in a situation where they feel the other is not appreciative, or taking advantage.

If your friend picked the place, did the majority of the ordering, including selecting the wine or cocktails for the table, and they then insist on paying, not only do I think covering the tab is fine, but it’s expected. When a person invites others to dine out, especially if it’s a fancy place, and then they order for everyone, the impression is that they plan on treating. The alternative would be extremely rude. Sometimes people just want companions to come along while they check out the new hot place, so they don’t mind covering it, especially when they know they can afford the meal and others can’t. If you have a friend like this, make sure not only to thank them, but to also invite them to a meal you can afford to cover every so often, and pick up the bill.

On the other hand, if you and your group have picked a restaurant together, and all ordered collaboratively or separately, having that one friend who always insists on paying can get to be a little much. It can start to feel as if the friend is either paying to hang out with you, or assumes you can’t afford the meal, which is demeaning. In this instance, it’s OK to insist that you want to pay, too. Tell the friend that while you appreciate them always offering to take care of the bill, you’d like to contribute. If after this, they still insist on covering the bill, thank them, and try your best to pick up a drink at the bar or the next time you’re out. Then, when you’re out together, tell them that while you appreciate them covering the tab every once in a while, you don’t want this friendship to be one where they are always paying. They should understand, and resentment on both sides will be avoided.

The article Ask Adam: What Should I Do if My Wealthy Friend Always Offers to Pay for Group Meals? appeared first on VinePair.

For some, the holidays are the most wonderful time of year. For others, it’s rosé season. It’s not just that we’re obsessed with the pink wine itself: It’s the warm weather that the cold rosé cools us down from. It’s gathering with friends. Whether it’s at a picnic, on someone’s roof, or inside after a refreshing swim, rosé represents summer’s bounty of friends, food, and sunshine. Rosé is the official sponsor of summer living.

So, in the spirit of rosé and low-lift summertime cooking, we have a suggestion: Save some of your rosé and use it to steam clams or mussels.

“A lot of people think of clams or mussels marinières-style, with the white wine, butter, shallots, garlic, and parsley,” says Joshua Resnick, lead chef and operations manager at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City. “But really, they’re endlessly adaptable.”

Rosé in particular, Resnick says, has a leg up on your traditional white wine in this setting. This is thanks to the florality and bit of sweetness that you’ll find in the typical summer rosé that we like to sip, as the phrase goes, all day. “It helps balance the salinity of that fresh seafood,” he explains.

Any rosé will work, but Resnick says a fruity and easy-drinking rosé with a bit of sweetness is ideal here, especially if you’re using clams. Clams, he explains, tend to be a little saltier than mussels, so a fruitier rosé will help maintain balance. A bone-dry rosé could push the brininess of the clams into harsher territory. That said, because this dish is so flexible, it’s easy to lean into your favorite style of rosé. With a dry, herbaceous Provencal rosé, throw herbes de Provence — or simply a few springs of whatever fresh herbs you have around ​— into the rosé broth at the beginning of the cook. A Grenache rosé, with vibrant red fruit flavors, could be lovely with fresh tomatoes in the broth. If you’re on vacation and get to gather the clams yourself, using a local wine will help bring out the flavor of the local bivalves. “As they say, what grows together goes together,” Resnick says.

“Take a look in your fridge, see what you have. A little of this, a little of that, and you’re done. The most important thing is tasting your food.”

That also means you don’t need to go out on a special shopping trip for a zillion additional ingredients. Fresh clams or mussels release a savory broth after they’re cooked, and that plus whatever you’ve added to your broth usually equals flavor magic. “If you don’t finish a bottle of wine, you’re basically halfway to having all your ingredients for your dish,” Resnick says. Leftover sparkling rosé, too, is perfect here.

“Take a look in your fridge, see what you have. A little of this, a little of that, and you’re done,” Resnick says. “The most important thing is tasting your food.” You can always adjust the broth after the steaming process is finished: Add salt, if needed, or even a bit of sweetener if the broth leans extra briney. Herbs will help bring out the florality of the wine, and alliums will make the clams or mussels more savory. A few seasonal veggies will help add some depth. Resnick’s recipe, shared below, uses ginger to offset the salinity and bring out the fruitier notes in the wine. Ultimately, steamed clams is a quick yet elegant dish that is hard to mess up, he says. Add some crusty bread for dipping in the broth, and you’ve got yourself a lovely meal.

“Have fun, and don’t be scared to try something new,” Resnick adds. “Zhuzh it up how you want. Just enjoy summer — that’s what it’s for.”

Summer Clams With Rosé

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

• 2 pounds littlenecks clams
• Extra virgin olive oil
• 2 shallots, sliced
• 4 scallions, sliced, whites and greens separated
• 6 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoons minced ginger
• 1 Roma tomato, deseeded, diced
• Salt
• 2 cups rosé wine
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, kept cold

Directions:

1. Prepare the clams by scrubbing with a brush or hard sponge, then soak in water for 1 hour.
2. In a pot large enough to hold the ingredients, heat enough olive oil to coat the bottom of the
   pot. Add in the shallots, scallion whites, garlic, ginger, and tomato. Add a dash of salt, stir,
   and cook until the vegetables are softened but not caramelized.
3. Add the clams to the pot, followed by the wine. Raise the heat to high and cover. Steam until
   the clams open. Turn off the heat.
4. Transfer the opened clams to serving bowls. Add the butter to the remaining liquid and
   whisk to combine; do not allow the liquid to boil. Pour the liquid over the clams and garnish
   with the sliced scallion greens. Serve with warm, toasted bread to sop up the liquid.

The article Upgrade Your Steamed Clams With Rosé This Summer appeared first on VinePair.

The Rochester Cocktail Revival is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year.

Did you know it existed?

When one thinks of American cocktail conventions, drinking destinations like New Orleans and Portland, Ore., likely first come to mind. But this festival — which for the entire second week of June will take over the social life of “Flower City” — is one of the most enduring such events in the nation. It may, in fact, be the longest-running, city-centric cocktail convention under the same management in the country.

Well, you might well retort, that may be, but how big could such a gathering be? How many cocktail programs are there in Rochester, N.Y., a city of only 200,000, only the fourth-largest metropolis in New York State, and the 108th in the United States?

At least 28. Anyway, that’s the number participating in the 2023 Rochester Cocktail Revival, all taking part in a wide array of spirited dinners, parties, and seminars. But 28 actually represents a cut-off point. The festival’s founder, Chuck Cerankosky, had to turn some bars and restaurants away this year.

That signifies significant progress. When the festival was launched in 2014, there were a total of six bars. And two of those bars were actually owned by Cerankosky himself.

This information still comes as news to a lot of people in the cocktail world. When cocktail writer and historian Noah Rothbaum was first invited to RCR in 2015, his response was, “That sounds great. Are there cocktail bars in Rochester?”

That’s still pretty much the reaction of anyone unfamiliar with the festival.

“We’re super loud for this one week of the year,” says Leah Stacy, associate producer of RCR. “It’s rare to find one that is this old and long-running. It’s a week in a mid-sized city. I think we stand out in a number of ways.”

“These people were barhopping, but it’s all cocktail bars. You couldn’t do that two years ago. Something is happening here.”

The festival might never have happened had Cerankosky, a native of Cleveland, not suddenly found himself a young father in 1999 while attending the Rochester Institute of Technology. To support his new family, he took a position as a regional manager of Java’s, a local coffee chain. When plans to open a Java’s in Brooklyn fell through, he and his partner, Michael Calabrese, instead opened the restaurant Good Luck in a former fabric store in 2008. A third partner, Dan Martello, was handling the food. Cerankosky figured, with his coffee background, he was the beverage guy.

“Let’s have a cocktail program like no other,” he recalls thinking, “because no one in Rochester at the time was doing anything worthwhile with cocktails.”

He schooled himself, studying books like Dale DeGroff’s “Craft of the Cocktail,” reading New York Times articles on cocktails and spirits, studying the spirits list on Death & Co.’s website, and visiting The Violet Hour in Chicago. (Fun fact: Death & Co. founder Dave Kaplan also went to school in Rochester. Cerankosky, who also used to DJ, once spun records at a party at Kaplan’s house.)

He opened Good Luck with a menu of half original drinks, half classic cocktails. It wasn’t easy being a lone wolf in a new market.

“They’d put the menu down and it was like you punched them,” he remembers. “’How dare you! I don’t need a menu. I’m just going to order my drink.’ It took a decade for Good Luck to teach people that it was OK to stir a Martini.”

Slowly, things changed. After Good Luck, another cocktail bar, Cheshire, opened. Then Cerankosky opened Cure in 2012. Momentum was building. Then, one night at Cure, a couple came in. They had plans that night to move on to Good Luck, Cheshire, and The Daily Refresher, another cocktail bar.

“These people were barhopping, but it’s all cocktail bars,” says Cerankosky. “You couldn’t do that two years ago. Something is happening here.” Soon after, he hatched the idea of staging a cocktail convention.

“When people come here from larger markets, it’s almost like a vacation from reality. Mid-sized cities have the advantage of landscape and intimacy when it comes to hosting events.”

Again, it wasn’t easy. Cerankosky remembered the older generation of Rochester bar owners as a cautionary tale. “They all hated each other,” he says. “They couldn’t stand to be in the same room together.” He didn’t want that to happen again. But it took some coaxing to bring his contemporaries in drink-slinging around. “I think we had to have three meetings just to make sure we all liked each other,” he says.

The RCR hit the ground running. Its first guest speaker was none other than the celebrated barman Dale DeGroff, whose book Chuck has been studying. In the years to come, Cerankosky managed to lure such bar-world luminaries as David Wondrich, Gary Regan, Dave Arnold, Ivy Mix, Jeff Berry, and Rothbaum. (Full disclosure: I have spoken at RCR multiple times.)

Cerankosky, who is naturally self-effacing, knows it wasn’t the charm of the city or his powers of persuasion that convinced the cream of the cocktail world to take a sidetrack to Rochester. No, he had a local ace in the hole.

“Joe Fee was the facilitator,” he says. Fee was the face of the Fee Brothers bitters company, a venerable Rochester institution that dates back to 1864. Prior to the festival, Fee Brothers was the only reason anyone in the cocktail world gave Rochester a thought. And everybody knew Joe Fee, a garrulous family scion. Tall, gangly and always wearing a too-small safari hat, Fee cut a familiar figure at Tales of the Cocktail and other drink confabs.

“I don’t think that, without Joe, these guys would have come,” Cerankosky says, “because he was an elder statesman.”

Joe Fee died in 2020 at the age of 55. And yet RCR continues to attract big crowds and name talent. Rothbaum thinks he knows why.

“It’s more than just: airport, hotel, speech, room service, airport,” he says. “It still feels homespun and welcoming just as it did years ago. Many nights end with having dinner with Chuck. It’s homey that way.”

Donny Clutterbuck, who helps coordinate the seminars, and has run the bar at Cure for nearly a decade, has lived and worked in both New York City and Rochester. As such, he possesses special intel on what Rochester has to offer to big-city types.

“When people come here from larger markets, it’s almost like a vacation from reality,” he says. “Mid-sized cities have the advantage of landscape and intimacy when it comes to hosting events.”

He also offers some insight as to why RCR has survived and thrived this long, when so many other, higher-profile cocktail festivals have failed in the past decade — and why it’s in no danger of suddenly imploding. The convention is not viewed by any of its participants as a stepping stone or springboard to something bigger. Rochester cocktailians are at RCR for Rochester. The convention is its own endgame, a way of celebrating the local cocktail scene.

“One thing Good Luck cannot be is new again,” observes Cerankosky. “It’s 15 years old. But what it can always do is be relevant. Once a year, we’re all relevant on the same level.”

The article In Rochester, a Little-Known, Weeklong Cocktail Festival Continues to Draw Top Talent appeared first on VinePair.

On the morning of May 30, 1913, the third annual Indianapolis 500 kicked off with 27 of the world’s most skilled drivers pressing the gas to chase down the largest trophy in professional racing. The race was a historic one, marking the first time non-American drivers faced off in the Indiana competition. Come the final lap, though, this particular Indy 500 would be known for a much boozier reason thanks to French driver Jules Goux.

According to press accounts at the time, the 28-year-old kicked off what would become an afternoon of drinking and driving during his first pitstop. After slashing a tire on the 25th lap, Goux pulled his Peugeot into the pit, hopped out of the car, and reportedly declared, “Donne moi une bouteille de vin, ou je suis fini” (fetch me a pint of wine, or I’m done). It’s no wonder that his first request was something to drink; temperatures exceeded 87 degrees that day, and likely felt much hotter near the burning hot asphalt Goux was driving on.

As Goux’s crew was servicing his car on the sidelines and far from the boozed-up spectators and concession stands, they unsurprisingly did not have any wine on hand. The crewmen dashed to the grandstand to search for the booze, and one of them “happened on a party of millionaires from Pittsburg [who] furnished the excited pitman with half a dozen small bottles containing the most select vintage of la belle France,” according to a 1913 story in The Star. The crewman returned with the loot to the pit, where Goux reportedly snatched a bottle, cracked it open on the retaining wall, and took a healthy drink before hopping back into his car and taking off.

The story goes that during every subsequent pitstop throughout the six-hour race, Goux and his riding mechanic Emil Begin — who was sitting shotgun — would grab and guzzle more Champagne to stay hydrated. By the time mile 500 approached, the two had allegedly consumed nearly six pints between the two of them.

The imbibing clearly had little effect on Goux’s driving, because after six hours and 35 minutes, the Frenchman was the first to cross the finish line with the checkered flag waving to signify his victory. With this win, Goux became the first European driver to ever take home the honor. Adding to his triumph was the fact that Goux beat the second-place driver by over 13 minutes, and he was  also be the first driver to ever complete the race without the help of a relief driver.

While it’s an astonishing story, many historians have questioned how much Champagne Goux and Begin actually consumed during the race. Some speculate that the true amount sits closer to around four or five pints, while others argue they only drank a few sips, with most swigs serving as makeshift mouthwash before it was spit out. Historians, though, generally agree that Goux did down that first half pint the crewman brought to the pit.

Following Goux’s legendary victory, in 1914 the American Automobile Association (AAA) banned the consumption of alcohol during all future Indy 500 races. But regardless of how much Goux indulged, it was a stunning feat to win the race at all — let alone by the largest victory margin in the history of the Indy 500. Goux’s first request post-win was, predictably, yet another bottle of Champagne, after which he delivered his famed victory sign-off: “Without the good wine, I would not have won.”

The article This Driver Drank Six Pints of Champagne During the Indy 500 — and Won appeared first on VinePair.

Spoiler alert: If you haven’t caught up with the most recent episode ahead of the “Succession” finale, we can’t help you.

VinePair is a drinks publication, so we don’t need to delve too deep into what makes HBO’s comedy drama “Succession” so compelling. And chances are, anyone reading this is already a fan. But it is worth noting that, much as the show has with fashion, politics, and media, “Succession” serves up regular insider jokes for those who take an interest in booze.

Ahead of the May 28 finale, we dug deep into the archives and set about some serious rewatching to unearth our favorite drinks-related lines and moments. From unfortunate incidents with flavored water to intertwining tales involving flawed wine and former partners, here are the nine most iconic drinking moments in “Succession,” ranked.

9. Cousin Greg channels his inner Robert Parker on a super yacht.

Season 2 Episode 10 “This Is Not for Fears”

During the finale of Season 2, cousin Greg lounges on an 85-meter super yacht, nonchalantly sipping a flute of pink bubbles. Tom swims over and inquires what his assistant, frenemy, fellow Disgusting Brother, and literal punch bag has in his glass. “This is, I’m not sure, it’s a rosé,” Greg responds. “It’s not my favorite.”

“Oooh you have a favorite Champagne now?” Tom sneers.

“It’s fine, I’ll drink it,” Greg concludes. “It’s just not my favorite.”

How far bumbling Cousin Greg has come.

8. What Greg wants, Greg must have.

Season 3 Episode 4 “Lion in the Meadow”

Logan’s bargaining prowess proves legendary over the course of “Succession,” but the so-called “Old Battle-Toad” barely has to turn it on when coaxing Greg into signing a joint defense agreement.

“Drink!” he tells his great-nephew. “Of alcohol?!” Greg responds quizzically, before quickly coming round to the idea despite the early hour. “Yeah, I think I’ll actually have me a nice glass of, eh, Rum and Coke,” he stutters. Unsurprisingly, the billionaire media mogul’s bar cart is not stocked with Coke, but “what Greg wants, Greg must have,” as Logan says.

“It’s nice and strong,” Greg chokes while sipping his cocktail, failing to conceal a moment of near- vomiting with a badly disguised cough. “Strong one — strong for a man.”

7. Nan Pierce has a peasant’s palate — unless the cocktails are presidential.

Season 2 Episode 4 “Tern Haven” / Season 4 Episode 1 “The Munsters”

Few families have “official” cocktails, let alone recipes retrieved from the wallet of Teddy Roosevelt’s valet. But the Pierce family isn’t most families, as we learn when the Roys pay a visit to their Long Island estate for what will ultimately be a failed takeover bid of Pierce Global Media (PGM). There, we learn of the aforementioned presidential cocktail, the “Break Bumper,” and get to know matriarch Nan Pierce, whose personality is brilliantly captured in a few food-and-drink-centric moments over the course of the show.

During happy hour, Nan implores maid/helper/caterer Rosa to enjoy a drink with the families: “You never treat yourself!”

Rosa awkwardly declines, straining under a tray of rosemary-and-orange-garnished cocktails (presumably Break Bumpers), and with an elaborate meal underway in the kitchen. Nan’s billionaire-of-the-people persona quickly cracks when, family meal now ready, she plants a silver dish on the table to growing applause, failing to mention it’s the only hand she’s had in the preparation.

Fast forward to the first episode of Season 4 at the Pierce family’s California estate, complete with rolling vineyards and a palm-tree-lined driveway. “Uncomfortable” to have found herself in the middle of a $10 billion bidding war, Nan tries to shift the focus to some expensive looking bottles of wine, likely from the family estate.

“They might as well be jars of jam to me, but the connoisseurs seem to like them,” she says, barely attempting to conceal the humble brag. “I fear I have peasant tastes,” she adds, noting a preference for the thin and vinegary hypermarché vin ordinaire she first sampled as a 19-year-old.

6. Tom Wambsgans: minion-wrangler, s*it eater, potential prison winemaker.

Season 3 Episode 4 “Lion in the Meadow”

Tom returns for another iconic moment in Season 3 Episode 4, “Lion in the Meadow,” this time in front of a different foil, wife Shiv. The prospect of doing hard time sees Tom go deep into the “prison blogs” in an attempt to prepare for the worst. Things really come to a head when he realizes that, behind bars, there will be no opportunity to enjoy one of the best moments of his day: coming home from work and enjoying a very cold first glass of wine. Yet wine might not be entirely off the menu if he’s willing to consider prison “toilet” wine.

“Turns out you can make it from fruit and ketchup but you have to ‘burp’ the wine back as it ferments,” he tells Shiv. “And I thought, ‘What if I forget to burp the toilet wine?’”

5. Connor introduces the world to hyper-decanting.

Season 2 Episode 3 “Return”

The one “Succession” drinking moment that actually influenced how some people drink in real life arrives in Season 2 Episode 3, “Return.” In a scene with Connor and Shiv, the eldest Roy sibling offers his sister a glass of wine. She declines but seems confused that Connor’s pouring his Burgundy from a blender rather than a bottle. “You don’t hyper-decant?” he asks, seeming genuinely confused. “You’re just doing regular decanting?” The merits of doing so, Connor soon shares, include softening the tannins and heightening the wine’s aromas. “You can age your wine five years in 10 seconds,” he adds. “Truly.”

Connor’s fondness for Burgundy, meanwhile, makes another appearance during the season’s finale. Facing financial ruin from the failed debut of Willa’s broadway play, he approaches Logan for “a little hundred million” loan, adding that he’s “not super liquid right now.” Turned down, he orders a full bottle of Burgundy for breakfast and drowns his sorrows.

4. Greg uses flavored LaCroix for a medical eye wash

Season 4 Episode 8 “America Decides”

During the thrilling Season 4 episode “America Decides,” the most notable drinking moment — though not involving alcohol — features bodega sushi, flavored water, and none other than Greg the Egg.

Brainstorming how the company is going to call Wisconsin for Mencken, though it’s not a “call call,” ATN pollster Darwin Perry moves aside Greg’s container of sushi on a boardroom table before accidentally rubbing wasabi into his eyes.

The very fate of the nation at stake, Greg fumbles into action, cracking open a can of Lemon LaCroix and pouring it into his Darwin’s eye. “Jesus, f*ck, Greg, what are you doing?!” Shiv asks. “It’s natural, like medical,” Greg says in defense. “It’s not that lemony, it’s just a hint of lemon!”

Aas Tom leaves the room to call the state for Wisconsin, he turns around and commands: “Do NOT put any more lemon water or wasabi in his eyes, OK?” Cue real-life internet meltdown and countless articles debating the relative lemony-ness of the LaCroix flavor.

3. Tom takes back what’s his on his wedding night.

Season 1 Episode 10

At Tom and Shiv’s English wedding, which takes place over the course of two episodes at the end of Season 1, guests are well aware of who’s made a contribution to wine: Tom’s parents, who seem keen to remind everyone, much to the amusement and derision of the Roy family at large.

After the nuptials have taken place, however, and shortly after Shiv explains to her husband that she’d like to have an open marriage, Tom confronts Nate, Shiv’s former-boyfriend-turned-lover, before kicking him out

“If I ever see you in the same room as Shiv again, I will pay men to break your legs,” Tom says, before demanding that he also stop drinking his parents’ wine. “Put it back, Nate” he says, snatching a bottle from a nearby server. ”Put my f*cking wine back now.”

2. Tom and Greg break down bottle service.

Season 1 Episode 6 “Which Side Are You On?”

In a tacky, extravagant New York nightclub, Tom declines Greg’s offer of a beer, letting him know he’s ordered bottle service.

Greg seems a little confused by the situation. “So this is what you do?” he asks. “You come to, like, a club and come to, like, this other part where the club sort of isn’t?” Tom confirms, smug smile on his face, and let’s Greg know he paid $2,000 for a bottle of Gold Leaf vodka.

Never mind that they’re being “totally ripped off,” Tom raises a shot glass. “Drink the gold, my friend,” he says. “And then later you and I can have a 24-karat piss.”

1. Weingut Wambsgans: Tom and Shiv’s failed natural wine project.

Season 3 Episode 6 “What It Takes”

In a Virginia hotel room, taking some time away from picking who will be the next president, Tom and Shiv finally get a chance to open a bottle of Spätburgunder from their very own German vineyard. The experience soon turns sour when Tom realizes the wine is closed with a screw cap.

Ever the optimist, he rallies on. “So it’s biodynamic,” he tells an uninterested Shiv. “It has quite a funk to it,” he adds, hope starting to dissipate. “You kind of have to meet it halfway, right?” Tom says, after both have taken their first sip. “It’s earthy, kind of Germanic?” Shiv replies.

“There’s lots to unpack,” Tom agrees. “It’s not floral. It’s not sugary, or vegetal. It’s quite agricultural, you know, it’s, it’s, uh…” Finally, he accepts defeat. “It’s not very nice, the wine, is it, Shiv?”

The wine makes a wonderful reappearance in the final season during an election eve party at the couple’s apartment. Tom instructs servers on how to push it to guests: “Don’t say it’s biodynamic, don’t say it’s German. Just say it’s a light fruity red, and yes, the fizz is normal — it’s sophisticated.”

This moment would be great enough on it’s own, but the show’s writers have more in store for us, as Nate eventually arrives. “Won’t drink too much of your wine, don’t worry” he says, awkwardly. But Tom actively tries to force it on him, delivering one of the all-time great Wambsgan-isms:

“No, don’t you worry, you gobble my gravlax, pal, there’s plenty more where that came from. It’s light and fruity and it’s the kind of wine that separates the connoisseurs from the weekend Malbec morons.”

The article The Most Iconic Drinking Moments in ‘Succession,’ Ranked appeared first on VinePair.

It’s the best time of the year — that’s right, Bar Convent Brooklyn is back from June 13 to 14 at Industry City. If you’re in the drinks industry, this is a great chance to network with peers, learn about new trends and techniques, and listen in on panels led by industry experts. Get your tickets at barconventbrooklyn.com. We’ll see you there.

Punches have been around for hundreds of years. From their roots in the Polynesian islands to modern fraternity party “jungle juice” concoctions, they’ve remained the universal go-to vessels for communal drinking.

There’s an old, reliable, sing-song recipe for building a punch: One of sour, two of sweet, three of strong, four of weak, and a touch of spice to make it nice. However, today’s punch leaves out the “weak,” resulting in a punch that definitely packs a punch. The drink in question? The Pisco Punch.

As a testament to its booziness, when Duncan Nichol first made the Pisco Punch famous at San Francisco’s Bank Exchange bar, he enforced a strict three-drink limit on the cocktail — a rule that only added to its allure. Though Nichols took his signature recipe to the grave, bartenders have since reinvented the Pisco Punch, and we’d like to think they’re all doing it justice.

Here to walk us through the first punch we’ve ever covered on the “Cocktail College” podcast is Jay Pouliot, bar manager of Daytona Beach’s Mama Foo Foo. Tune in for more.

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Jay Pouliot’s Pisco Punch Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 ½ ounces Acholado Pisco (or aromatic like Italia or Torentelle)
• ¾ ounce fresh lemon juice
• ½ ounce pineapple gum
• ½ ounce Dubonnet or Lillet Rouge
• Garnish: candied pineapple wedge

Directions

1. Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker with ice.
2. Shake until chilled.
3. Double strain into a chilled Nick & Nora glass.
4. Garnish with a candied pineapple wedge.

The article The Cocktail College Podcast: How to Make the Perfect Pisco Punch appeared first on VinePair.

Sherry-Lehmann, the New York City wine shop that evolved into a national purveyor of high-end bottles, has allegedly failed to deliver $1 million in paid inventory to customers, according to the New York Times. The May 25 article reports that the company allegedly owes New York State $2.8 million in unpaid sales taxes, and details a history of financial trouble, tumultuous management turnover, and rapidly-decreasing inventory over the last 15 years.

The company, founded by Jack Aaron in 1934, has been a mainstay in the New York wine industry for almost nine decades. But around 2016, the Times reports, the company allegedly began failing to deliver purchased wines, with some buyers waiting years to see their bottles — if at all. Now, customers have reported issues acquiring their paid-for wines from Wine Caves, a separate storage service managed by Sherry-Lehmann owners. Former employees allege that Sherry-Lehmann may have sold lucrative bottles from its Wine Cave storage to other customers.

One of the most expensive debts in question involves a $385,000 invoice for an order of several vintage wines, including bottles of 1995 Domaine de la Romanee Conti (DRC) La Tache priced at $7,995 each. Sherry-Lehmann temporarily closed its Manhattan brick-and-mortar shop in March 2023 after its liquor license expired, according to The Drinks Business. Wholesale clients have also since reported delinquent payments from the purveyor to the state liquor authority.

Sherry-Lehmann and CEO Shyda Gilmer have not released public statements in response to the Times’ story.

The allegations come on the heels of another industry scandal involving high-end wines being withheld from buyers. Wine reseller Underground Cellar is currently facing $25 million in debt and 37,000 unsecured claims, as former customers allege they never received their purchases before the company went bankrupt.

The article Luxury Wine Purveyor Sherry-Lehmann Allegedly Owes Customers $1 Million in Missing Wine appeared first on VinePair.

Long before Michaels was around for craft runs, artists got a bit more creative when prepping their materials.

A recent study found that several paintings from mid-19th century Denmark were created using remnants of the beer-making process, according to Science News. The report, published in academic journal Science Advances on Wednesday, details the discovery of cereal grains and brewer’s yeast in the base layers of historic Danish art pieces.

Royal Danish Academy conservator Cecil Krarup Anderson and her colleagues examined paintings from the Danish Golden Age (the early to mid-1800s). The group specifically studied the chemical makeup of 10 individual pieces by Danish painting legend Christoffer Wilhem Eckersberg by examining canvas samples extracted during a previous project. They discovered proteins from Saccharomyces cerevisiae, better known as brewer’s yeast, in seven of the paintings. Wheat, barley, buckwheat, and rye proteins — all staples in the beer-making process — were also present in the samples.

After confirming the presence of these proteins in the paintings’ primer specifically, the group created a similar mixture from modern-day brewing byproducts and found it to be a suitable substitute for traditional primer, which is used to make paint appear brighter and glossier on the canvas.

Anderson says the study could help researchers identify yeast and byproduct proteins in other paintings, enabling preservationists to better understand how to best store and display history works of art.

“It’s another piece of the puzzle,” she says.

Well, there’s one more weird and wonderful use for beer.

The article Here’s Why 19th Century Danish Painters Used Beer Byproducts in Their Art appeared first on VinePair.

“I’ll have a Martini.” Four little words; infinite paths. Gin or vodka? Up or on the rocks? Dirty? Filthy? Wet? Damp? Dry or dry, as in, just show me the vermouth bottle? With a twist? An olive? An onion? A dash of orange bitters?

To the seasoned Martini lover, this exchange presents an opportune moment to flex their carefully whittled preferences. To the uninitiated who grew up in the era of Martini equals cold shaken vodka, or worse, cloying Appletini, calling up a bespoke Martini build is almost as confusing as it is intimidating. It’s no wonder it took me two decades to determine that I indeed have a Very Specific Martini order: It’s a 50:50, but I’ll get to that later.

I’m a ’90s kid; my dad was a salesman whose windfall came in the heady late ‘90s and early aughts, so we started going out to posh dinners at birthdays and Christmastime.

“Dry vodka Martini with an olive!” Dad proclaimed with bravado when the waiter arrived. The cocktail was gorgeous in its conical glass; clear and viscous with a few thin ice shards floating on the surface above a fat green olive — fit for the sculpturally suited type who casually drops “mergers and acquisitions” into every conversation. Once or twice Dad slid the glass over so I could try a sip.

“Now that’s getting your money’s worth,” he said, eyeing my pinched-face reaction. From then on, I was convinced that a Martini was nothing more than a cold glass of booze — its drinker’s sole reprieve a few speared olive snacks.

The ’90s ’Tini

“I started bartending in the 1990s, and I don’t think I even saw a bottle of vermouth for the first few years,” recalls Eric “ET” Tecosky, the former longtime bar manager of Jones Hollywood in Los Angeles who also founded Dirty Sue Premium Olive Juice. “I worked in a lot of clubs, and if we did make an actual Martini, it was probably just shaken vodka.”

This was the heyday of Martini bars; Tecosky worked for a time at an L.A. bar called the Martini Lounge — with nary an actual Martini on the menu. There, “Martini” was a catch-all for the technicolor lineup of sugary, vodka-based concoctions served in a triangular glass, like Appletinis, French Martinis, Lemon Drops, and “Sex and the City”-nodding Cosmos. Places that did serve the classic usually made it with improperly stored vermouth.

“It got away from itself for a decade or so, but the Martini is one of the originals. When you order one, it just feels classier; it echoes of a different time.”

On a brand trip to San Francisco in 2006, where the craft cocktail revolution was already under way, everything changed for Tecosky, then bar manager at Jones. The Bay Area bartenders talked about cocktails differently; they frothed drinks with egg whites and made bitters in house.

“I had been bartending at this point for probably 15 years, and what they were talking about was foreign to me, so I kept my mouth shut,” Tecosky says. Like the bar and fine-dining scene of my early 2000s Chicago, the cocktail renaissance hadn’t yet reached L.A.

Within a week, Jones transitioned to all fresh juices. Tecosky bought Dale Degroff’s seminal 2002 book, “The Craft of the Cocktail,” and re-trained himself and his staff on the classics: Old Fashioneds, fresh Margaritas and, yes, Martinis with (fridge-stored) dry vermouth.

“It got away from itself for a decade or so, but the Martini is one of the originals,” Tecosky says. “When you order one, it just feels classier; it echoes of a different time.”

History repeating

The Martini had indeed been there all along — in print since Harry Johnson published a Martini cocktail in his 1888 “Bartender’s Manual,” comprising equal parts Old Tom gin and vermouth, a few dashes each of gum syrup and bitters, and a dash of curaçao or absinthe “if required.” It originated sometime and some way before. Whether you believe Martini di Arma di Taggia invented it at the Knickerbocker Hotel in New York, that it owes its name to vermouth brand Martini & Rossi, or that it evolved from the Martinez — which itself possibly began in a California bar of the same name during the Gold Rush — is your affair.

Revisiting Degroff’s history of the Martini in “The Craft of the Cocktail,” we can roughly pinpoint how we reached the era of “hold an open bottle of vermouth in front of a fan across the room,” as Degroff cheekily wrote. From the early 1:1 days to Post-Prohibition, “America got wetter” and the quality of available gins improved, so “the Martini got drier,” Degroff wrote. (Not long after, President Franklin D. Roosevelt supposedly popularized the Dirty Martini.) Following the Second World War, gin was still king, but the vermouth portion diminished dramatically — as the horror of war supercharged folks’ need for a stiff drink. “By 1960, the Martini was a lethal 11 parts gin to 1 part vermouth,” Degroff wrote. The Cold War era made the Martini stronger still — and gave us the Vodkatini, as clever placement by Smirnoff helped vodka surpass gin as the white spirit of choice at the time.

“There’s something very nostalgic about the Martini, and I think that’s why it’s having this renaissance right now.”

Fast forward through the Wall Street flexing and ’tini crazed ‘90s and cocktail revolution-fueled 2010s, and American cocktail culture has matured. Martinis are trending again, their age-old riffs (Vesper) and sacrilegious mixing methods (shaken not stirred) buoyed in part by the pop culture baggage of James Bond’s protracted return to theaters. Bartenders aiming for differentiation in a crowded market — or perhaps just having fun — are reviving Martini riffs like the Alaska and Dean Martin’s go-to Flame of Love (vodka and fino sherry) or conjuring Martinis flavored like Giardiniera and Caprese salads.

The ’90s are back in full swing, too: fanny packs, balloon jeans, and Carrie Bradshaw on the small screen; meanwhile, upmarket iterations of the French Martini (featuring house blackberry liquor) and Dirty Peacock (the headline on the menu at newcomer Madeline’s Martini in the East Village). Playful adaptations at Madeline’s — all oversized — also include the Bikini Martini (vodka, coconut rum), Martini By The Sea (mezcal, sea lettuce brine, and bianco vermouth), and a forthcoming Sour Apple Martini (gin, fresh-pressed green apple and cucumber, Midori-honey syrup, and lemon juice.)

“There’s something very nostalgic about the Martini, and I think that’s why it’s having this renaissance right now,” says Madeline’s co-owner Pete Canny. “Everything goes full circle and comes back into popularity; I mean, look how popular Carbone is. I wanted to hate it — I don’t want to pay $95 for chicken Parm my grandfather could make better. Then I went for the first time, and I was like, I get it. That’s how things are going in the Martini world right now.”

For me, this proliferation of bespoke Martinis and derivatives merely represents more options for a cocktail I already find fraught with too much choice. But it’s high time I tried it again.

What should a ‘Martini’ taste like?

“Gin Martini?” I ventured at a bar recently, the self-doubt evident in how my intonation inadvertently formed a question. Then came the onslaught of follow-up questions. I blurted out “Dirty!” to make them stop, knowing full well I’d be stuck getting sloshed on a glass of gin seasoned with old olive juice. A few weeks later, I had better luck with a 50:50 Martini at a steakhouse, though I balked when asked for my gin preference: “Oh, whatever the bartender thinks,” I said.

“Where it gets super tricky for me is if I go into a bar, even, like, a reputable cocktail bar, I can’t be like, ‘I want X-to-X-ratio Martini.’”

Exasperated, I paid a visit to Danny Shapiro at gin-based cocktail bar Scofflaw in Chicago’s Logan Square. Shapiro self-describes as more of a traditionalist, who was mentored by dogmatist Paul McGee and built his bartending foundation on books like “The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks” by David Embury.

“All you need is foundational knowledge of very few cocktails to build out entire menus,” Shapiro tells me. I relaxed a little; already the Martini felt more accessible. I explained a few likes and neuroses: that I don’t want to get drunk off of one cocktail and enjoy a 50:50, that I like all kinds of gin, but I also don’t really like making decisions or seeming high-maintenance in bars. Shapiro started me on a 50:50 Martini with Old Tom gin and Dolin dry vermouth. It was, as he aptly put it, “light, floral, citrusy, friendly,” but also, explicitly, not a Martini the way I thought it should be.

Then I requested Scofflaw’s house gin Martini, which means 2 and a quarter ounces of Brokers dry gin, three-quarter ounce of Dolin dry vermouth, and a dash of house orange bitters, stirred for a solid minute — “a lot Martinis are understirred,” Shapiro says. He set a tiny coin of lemon peel afloat on the drink in its etched Nick & Nora glass. As I sipped it, I delighted in the bite from the slightly heavier hand of gin (but far short of Dad’s boozy specs). The cocktail was clean, elegant and fragrant with citrus; I felt fancier even perched next to it.

Could this be my Very Specific Martini order?

No, but it’s certainly the aperitif I’ll order every time I come to this bar. Therein lies the challenge, Shapiro says, because we simply don’t know what we’re getting from one bar to the next.

“Where it gets super tricky for me is if I go into a bar, even, like, a reputable cocktail bar, I can’t be like, ‘I want X-to-X-ratio Martini,’” Shapiro says. “You might be able to say a gin preference; but you’re certainly not giving a dry vermouth or orange bitters preference without being the most high-maintenance drinker. I’d rather go to a place, try the Martini, see if I like it. If I don’t, I’m never drinking that Martini again.”

That said, his failsafe order is a 50:50 on the rocks. It’s a lower-alcohol aperitif that’s hard to screw up. Even if the bartender understirs, the ice will slowly dilute it. Plus, “it’s the one ratio controller you can do without sounding like a total dickhead,” he says.

Tecosky rightly points out that bartenders are in the business of making drinkers happy, even if we drinkers are real pieces of work. “If someone is a Martini drinker they’re going to tell me, ‘This is how I like Martinis.’ And I’d rather have that than have me guess and they send it back.”

Yet Shapiro and I came to realize that a Martini order isn’t just what we like; it’s a compilation of our generational and cultural baggage, our situation on a particular day, and the type of patron we are or want to be seen as. I discern that perhaps I’m more of an occasional Martini drinker because part of what makes me happy is showing up at a bar or posh restaurant and drinking something that’s already been calibrated to perfection by someone else.

Though when in doubt, I’ll make it a 50:50 on the rocks, ordered with plenty of attitude.

The article How I Found My Flex Martini appeared first on VinePair.