TripAdvisor’s Top 10 Brewery Tours
Getting to wander around a brewery and sample a few beers along the way is one of life’s great little pleasures. TripAdvisor recently scoured its consumer ratings to figure out whose tour is best. These are the top ten. Check out TripAdvisor for more sudsy travel goodness. 1. Beechwood Best: Anheuser Busch Brewery Tour, Saint…
Review: Darnley’s View Gin
Wemyss (pronounced “WEEMS”) is well-known for its line of Scotch whiskys, and now the Wemyss family is taken an enormous leap into the world of white spirits, offering its first ever gin. Darnley’s View is a London Dry Gin, flavored with just six botanicals, a scant number in a world of gins that commonly see…
Review: Michael-David’s Incognito Wines, 2010 Releases
Miachel-David is a winery in California’s Lodi region, where it produces wine under a half-dozen or so labels, especially the Zinfandels for which the region is so well-known. Incognito is a label with two wines, both oddball blends. We tried both of the wines from the latest vintage, which have seen new labeling and branding.…
Review: U’Luvka Vodka
You’ll see U’Luvka from a mile away, its oversized bottle looking a bit like a nearly-frozen water droplet just about to fall from a tree branch. Perhaps that’s romanticizing things. This is, after all, a big bottle of vodka. Hailing from Poland and distilled from rye, wheat, and barley grains, it’s 80 proof and finally…
Review: 2008 Soave from Rocca Sveva and Cantina di Monteforte
Of all the wine regions due for a comeback, who’d have thought Soave would be next in line? Soave has a bad rap. Hailing from the Veneto region of Italy northwest of Venice, Soave wines are made almost exclusively from the Garganega grape. Young and uncomplicated, Soave was popular in the 1970s Blue Nun/Black Tower/Lancer’s…
Review: Southern Comfort Lime
It says on the bottle: “The classic reinvented.” I suppose Southern Comfort is a classic. It’s got its own well-established nickname — SoCo — and the peach liqueur is called for in more cocktail recipes than you’d think. What then to make of Southern Comfort Lime? Take some sweetened lime juice (like Rose’s) and add…
Review: Don Q Cristal and Anejo Rum
Don Q is an unsung hero in the rum world, producing both some extremely inexpensive spirits as well as some highly-regarded, well-aged rums. Based in Puerto Rico, you’ll find these 80 proof rums just about everywhere. Today we took a look at two of the less expensive, more widely-available offerings from the company. Don Q…
Review: 2006 Ventisquero Vertice Apalta Vineyard
From Chile’s Apalta Valley comes Ventisquero’s Vertice, a very rich and extracted blend of Camenere (51%) and Syrah (49%). Amazing depth of wine here, with smoky notes at play with deep plum fruit, black pepper, and a touch of eastern spices. It’s just too bad the wine lacks structure, its creaminess washing away the acidity…
