Review: TastingRoom.com’s Food-Friendly Wine Sampler, 2012
We’ve written about TastingRoom.com several times before. Recently the company sent us one of its mixed samplers, designed (as the name may imply) to be consumed with food. Which I did. Thoughts on each follow. (All bottles are sub-$20 retail.) 2011 Lake Chalice Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc – Extremely tropical. Lots of acid to back up that…
Cocktails for National Rum Day
National Rum Day — that’s today! And yes, we make rum in the U.S. Recipes and photos courtesy Flor de Cana. Chichigalpa Old Fashioned 2 oz Flor de Caña 18 year old rum 1 teaspoon maple syrup 2 dashes orange bitters 1 dash Fee’s barrel aged bitters Stir & strain into a rocks glass. Garnish…
Review: Old St. Andrews Clubhouse Blend Scotch Whisky
Golf and Scotch go together like hand in glove. Another thing they share in common: Novelties. Old St. Andrews is unabashedly a novelty whisky, packaged in various fanciful bottles. This one, the “Clubhouse Blend,” comes in an oversized golf ball. One of the target markets for this whisky, per the company, is a “romantic idealist”…
Review: Smooth Ambler Yearling Bourbon
This West Virgina-based distillery produces a variety of spirits, including vodka, gin, and several whiskeys. Yearling is the company’s entry-level Bourbon, double-distilled from a wheated (no rye) mashbill and aged 2 1/2 years in small American oak casks. (At least, my sample was 2 1/2 years old; the overall age appears to vary over time…
Review: Tullibardine Aged Oak Edition
Tullibardine is an old Highlands distillery (the grounds upon which it is built have been making booze since the 1400s). It’s had ups and downs, most recently being shuttered in 1995, then reopening in 2003 under new (independent) ownership. The distillery is now releasing whiskys produced since the reopening of its doors. This release, Aged…
Review: Patron Citronge Orange Liqueur
Tequila, lime, triple sec – That’s a margarita. So why not use a triple sec that’s made in Mexico, since presumably those distillers know best how the drink should be put together, right? That’s the basic idea behind Patron Citronge, essentially a triple sec (and not, it should be pointed out, a tequila-based product). This…
Wine Gadget Review: Air Cork
Drinking newly opened wine: Fun. Drinking three-day-old wine: Less fun. Myriad tricks to preserve opened bottles of wine exist, ranging from vacuum pumps to nitrogen gas sprays to using smaller bottles to store leftovers. All are designed with a single goal: To get oxygen out and keep it out. In my (exhaustive) experience, the best…
Tasting the Carmenere Wines of Casa Silva, 2012 Releases
Frequently confused in Chile with Merlot due to its strikingly similar appearance on the vine, Carmenere is actually a classic wine of Bordeaux — where it was once the sixth grape used for this most classic of wines. (Carmenere is still permitted in blends there, but no one, to my knowledge, actually uses it.) Today…
