Is Boxed Wine Any Good? Tasting Boxes from The Naked Grape, Vin Vault, and Liberty Creek, 2017 Releases
Don’t look now, but boxed wines have come leaps and bounds since you last snuck a sip from that box of Franzia in your parents’ refrigerator. Designed for big groups, low budgets, beach venues, or for folks who just want a glass every now and then without a whole bottle going bad (most large-size boxes…
Review: El Tesoro Tequila Reposado
Carlos Camarena is an icon of the tequila world, and of the several brands he shepherds, El Tesoro is his baby. A few months back I had the pleasure of dining with Camarena and hearing all about how this tequila is made, from harvest to bottling, and today we finally take a formal look at…
Review: Beers of East Brother, 2017 Releases
Richmond, California, is a rough-and-tumble suburb north of San Francisco, and it’s also the home of the new(ish) East Brother Beer Co., which was founded with the goal of creating “familiar, classic styles with precision and a modern sensibility.” No grapefruit IPAs here: East Brother uses traditional ingredients to put its own (modest) spins on…
Review: Yellow Snow Peppermint Schnapps
It’s perhaps not the most elegant of products, packaging choices, or even spirit coloration decisions, but let’s give Yellow Snow, from the creators of Throttle 2 Bottle whiskey, a hand for originality at least. Yes, that’s a yeti peeing the name of the product into the snow. While the color is off-putting, the nose is…
Review: Joseph Magnus Murray Hill Club Blended Bourbon, Cigar Blend Bourbon (2017), and J. A. Magnus Reserve
DC-based Joseph Magnus Distillery seems to have a lot at its disposal when it comes to crafting its whiskey. Besides the list of industry icons that have formed its distilling team, it is sparing no expense in sourcing the very best aged whiskeys as well as the finest used European oak casks in which to…
Recipes with Dry Sparkling Sodas
Dry is an increasingly popular brand of sparkling water/soda — recently revamped and now focused heavily on using as a mixer in cocktails. Here are some recipes to try out with Dry, some twists on classics, some new inventions — and all easy and refreshing for summertime. The L&L 4½ oz. Lavender DRY 1½ oz. vodka…
Review: St. Mayhem Craft Wine Cooler – Ginger Loves Company
It’s hard to hear “wine cooler” without thinking back to the 1980s when virtually every major liquor company mixed cheap wine with fruit juice to make a party alternative to inexpensive beer. St. Mayhem’s newest wine cooler bears virtually no relation to the earlier beverages with which it shares a name. Ginger Loves Company is…
Review: Throttle 2 Bottle Canadian Whisky
Throttle 2 Bottle is one of the most patriotic whiskeys I’ve had in months, not to mention the most manly. The front label alone has a motorcycle, an ATV, a snowmobile, and a stunt plane — all decked out in red, white, and blue, of course. There’s a lot of text about living extreme, the…