Recipes: Memorial Day Cocktails 2016
In some circles, it’s the official start of summer. In others, it is a time to pay reverence and salute those who have dutifully served in our United States Armed Forces. Whatever your occasion, we’ve taken the liberty to try out all of the cocktails suggested below and present them for your celebratory consideration. May…
Review: Rums of Rhum Clement – Canne Bleue, Select Barrel, 6 Years Old, 10 Years Old, and Coconut Liqueur (2016)
Rhum Clement is perhaps Martinique’s most distinguished producer of sugarcane-based rhum agricole, but it’s been 8 years since we’ve checked in with the distillery in earnest. After some rebranding and shuffling of products, the lineup still looks fairly familiar. While we didn’t get to check out Clement’s very top-end rums this time, this roundup comprises…
Review: Aervana Wine Aerator
Aervana is yet another wine aeration system, and this one has a twist: It has batteries. Rather than pour wine through the device, the Aervana sits on top of the bottle and pumps wine up through a tube, and sends the air-infused wine out through a spigot, into your waiting glass. Aervana (rightly) claims a…
Review: Ol’ Major Bacon Flavored Bourbon
Another whiskey from Branded Spirits… this one with a major (and obvious) spin. To start with the basics: This is real whiskey flavored with real bacon. The bourbon is an 88% corn mash made by Terressentia, the bacon if from an Oklahoma pork producer. The flavoring and bottling operation takes place in Nashville; this involves taking…
Review: Wines of Mt. Beautiful, 2016 Releases
Mt. Beautiful is a fairly noteworthy New Zealand winery, which we most recently encountered in our tasting report on new NZ wines. Recently we received a quartet of expressions from the winery. Thoughts on each of these 2016 releases follow. 2014 Mt. Beautiful Pinot Gris North Canterbury – A simple wine, with moderate florals embedded into…
Review: South Hollow Spirits Twenty Boat Cape Cod Spiced Rum
Massachusetts-based craft producer South Hollow Spirits has a heavy focus on rum, one of the traditional spirits of New England in the pre-Prohibition era. The Twenty Boat brand comprises both an amber and a spiced rum, the latter of which we review below. Made from organic molasses and sugar cane juice sourced from Florida and…
Reviewing Gluten-Free Beer: Coors Peak Golden Lager and Copper Lager
Despite the science, the “gluten-free” movement still refuses to go away, so that sea of footnotes indicating glutenlessness continues to mar restaurant menus, and gluten-free alternatives to regular products continue to line grocery shelves. Including gluten-free beer. Beer is traditionally made from barley, which is loaded with gluten, so making a beer without gluten presents some thorny…
Review: Cocktail & Sons Fassionola Syrup (2016)
Fassionola is an old school tiki syrup, blood red in color, made from who-knows-what back in the 1920s. The idea was probably a lot like grenadine: Give a drink some bright red color, and in this case, a punch of sugar, too. Some authorities have compared old scchool fassionola to syrupy Hawaiian Punch. There’s no evidence…
