Today is July 1st, and what does that mean? NYC CRAFT BEER MONTH BEGINS NOW!
Best Sips
Let the thermometers soar — it’s Eat-Drink-Local Week, people! And here’s my sure-fire cure for mid-week heat deflecting: local beer!
I love a Shandy. And, up until now, I was fairly well satisfied with just your average, work-a-day beer-n’-lemonade combo, if ever for its refreshing, low-alcohol “ahhhh” charms on a warm, sunny day. That is until I was ruined forevermore by talented barman, Eamon Rockey.
At last month’s Manhattan Cocktail Classic, a cowboy-hat wearing Dave Pickerell, Master Distiller for Hillrock Estate Distillery, gave me a “C’mere, kid!” crook of the head, beckoning me to something secret seeming. He pulled from his tuxedo jacket’s breast pocket a small, glass bottle full of an amber-hued liquid and grinned.
With temps in the 80s and 90s, I’m finding myself unendingly thirsty for local grapes. Over some Long Island fluke I’d picked up at the Southold Fish Market on my way back to NYC, I popped a Macari 2012 Sauvignon Blanc, which was great with my butter-seared fish with its crazy, straight-back notes of zingy lime, grapefruit, and tart apples.
It’s time for one of my all-time favorite wine events of the year, Brooklyn Uncorked – a sipping and swirling smorgasbord of Long Island’s fab vinified offerings. But this year in particular is pretty special because it marks a moment in Long Island wine country history – the 40th Anniversary. A glass raised to that.
Last Friday night, I was in Louisville, KY finishing up a week-long distillery trek at an awesome craft spirits sampler at the Distilled Spirits Epicenter. One week to the day later, I’ll get to see Mr. Ralph Erenzo, distiller and partner at Tuthilltown Spirits, again and sip on his lovely small-batch bourbons and such at the kick-off Manhattan Cocktail Classic Gala at the New York Public Library.
It’s kind of appropriate that the Pod39 Hotel is housed in a former, landmarked Salvation Army building, because hanging out on its open-to-the-public rooftop cocktail lounge on a beautiful day (or night) is the kind of open-air rescue that a New Yorker needs every now and again.
Now in its fourth year, the Manhattan Cocktail Classic is like a Davos for distillers and drink makers.
For 26 years, innovation has been the water of life for Aquavit.
For those who decry, “Vodka has no personality! Meh!” the good folks at Prohibition Distillery beg to differ, and have the proof (80%) in their pretty, retro-botanical, stamped glass bottle.
Giants have a funny ability (or, perhaps, curse?) for becoming oddly invisible–or, at least, not considered closely. Especially if that giant is a well-known, massively distributed spirit in a land where the trend is that the tinier in production and more homespun the story, the more imbibers want to sip it and hear the tale told. But everybody starts somewhere, and when you know the story of Bacardi – a name synonymous with Puerto Rican rum – it might surprise you to learn that it began on a different island entirely.
