Recipes for National Hot Toddy Day, 2016
With the majority of the country already in or about to enjoy the depths of yet another bone chilling winter, we felt it necessary to provide a classic recipe for a freezing season on National Hot Toddy Day (today, January 11). We start off with the basic recipe and swerve off into two variations worthy…
Review: JVR Spirits Krupnik Spiced Honey Liqueur
JVR Spirits is a small Portland operation, and Krupnik — a homegrown hooch made by the founder’s father decades ago — is the company’s only product. It takes balls to make a spiced honey liqueur your only product (for now, anyway), but who are we to judge? We don’t have any products! Krupnik is an…
Book Review: The Beer Bible
Beer is a huge topic, and indeed it’s one that behooves a creation of a biblical tome. Jeff Alworth’s The Beer Bible aims to be a reference book for all things barley, spending 700 pages to profile over 100 styles of beer, 52 breweries, and hundreds of specific brews. The book is organized primarily by style,…
Review: Wyoming Whiskey Small Batch Bourbon
No, it’s not from Indiana! Wyoming Whiskey is a craft spirit made in Kirby, Wyoming, from a mash of locally-produced corn, wheat, and barley. There’s no aging information available, but it’s on the youthful side. To wit: Fresh on the nose, it’s hanging on to its youth through some lighter cereal notes that become more…
Review: Flora Springs 2014 Sauvignon Blanc and 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon
Two new releases from Napa’s Flora Springs. Thoughts follow. 2014 Flora Springs Sauvignon Blanc Napa Valley – Pale and young, and surprisingly sweet for a sauvignon blanc. Notes of overripe melon and pineapple wash away a lightly minerally backbone, leaving just a hint of steel and slate in the wine’s predominantly tropical wake. In need of…
Review: Gonzalez Byass Brandies – Soberano and Lepanto (2016)
Gonzalez Byass is one of Spain’s leading sherry bodegas — but the company also produces a wide range of spirits, including gin and whiskey. Brandy is the more natural fit, however, as Spain has a long history of producing exotic brandies that don’t much resemble what you’ll find next door in France. Recently the company…
Review: BridgePort Brewing Stumptown CandyPeel IPA
BridgePort’s latest is this IPA, which uses Centennial, Crystal, and the exotic Styrian Golding hops to give “CandyPeel” a “candy-orange” character. A dash of actual orange peel is added to the beer as well. The results aren’t bad, though up front it’s less orange and more woodsy-mushroomy. The finish brings up more of those promised…
Review: Chattanooga Whiskey Co. 1816 Cask and 1816 Reserve American Whiskey
Chattanooga Whiskey may be the only distillery operating in the town of Chattanooga, Tennessee (though the label says the company is based in Nashville), but like many upstart distilleries, the whiskey, at present, isn’t actually made here yet. While it seems white dog started flowing here in early 2015 (when it finally became legal to do…
