Unsurprisingly, the term “cocktail recipes” was searched almost twice as much in March of 2020 as it was in March of 2019, according to Google data analyzed by Upgraded Points (UP), a research-based digital media brand focused on travel. It’s no secret that many have taken up the hobby of imbibing to pass the time in quarantine; self-isolation is made easier with a stiff drink. But not every cocktail is equally celebrated across the map. In fact, popularity is surprisingly divided by state lines. Like most great things (such as sports teams and rappers) each state has its favorite. Among all the drinks that have been trending across the nation, some notable observations: The Vodka Fizz is New York’s Biggie, while The Paloma is Cali’s Tupac. It will surely shock no-one that Alaskans have an affinity for White Russians, given their proximity to its namesake. And we’re pretty certain that the Shirley Temples being served in Nevada’s Las Vegas aren’t the virgin kind, but surely they missed a trick in not mixing up some Grasshoppers? Curious about the rest of the U.S.’s preferences? Look no further. UP compiled a list of the most common cocktails in the U.S. and then aggregated Google Trends data from over the past year to find the most searched cocktail in each state. Lo and behold, here is every state’s favorite cocktail of the pandemic.
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Most people are fairly comfortable shelling out for a nice bottle of wine, but a wine fridge? That may take a little convincing. At VinePair, we believe in the importance of a separate wine fridge — and a beer fridge, and a hard seltzer fridge — but in all seriousness, wine fridges are actually really important for preserving any wine. Different wines call for different means of preservation, so it’s really up to you to make sure you’re picking out the right fridge for your lineup. For example, if you know that you only drink the fullest-bodied, dry Malbec then you’ll have different storage needs than someone who is looking to store a variety of red and white wines. Throw sparkling into the mix and you may need to look into something else entirely, as the bottle circumference and shape of sparklers may be difficult to store on a more streamlined drawer. All of these simple, technical factors often get laid to the wayside when people start to think about storing wines. It’s more fun to think about the flavor profiles or nuances that will arrive as your bottles age, but when it comes to picking out the perfect wine fridge you need to hone in on the basics. Our team knows that it’s best to start out with an entry-level wine fridge when you’re ready to invest in wine storage, and city living can often make this difficult. We trust this fridge to fit all our finest wines — and in any apartment — so it’s a really great choice for first-time buyers. It also comes with “dual-zones” meaning you can store your bottles at different temperatures, and the top rack has plenty of room for sparkling wine or even magnums. The entire fridge sits at less than three feet tall and boasts a stainless steel frame, so it’s an easy, sleek fridge for any apartment, home, or penthouse. Best of all, it comes with a one-year warranty so you can rest assured that any of your early wine fridge concerns will be covered. Beyond that, you’ll also receive a five-year warranty on the compressor (so you can lay personal fridge maintenance to rest). All in all, this is by far the simplest storage option for any budding wine expert and a great present for the most important wine lover in your life. The article Do I Really Need a Wine Fridge? appeared first on VinePair. Via https://vinepair.com/picks/wine-fridge-explainer/ Via https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/do-i-really-need-a-wine-fridge The global explosion of craft brewing and craft distilling has led to an unexpected literary micro-genre: writing that attempts to define just what is meant by the term “craft” when it comes to food and drink. While essays on the subject can be found all over the place, the most significant contribution to the category probably arrived last year with the publication of the book “Craft: An Argument” by the British beer writer Pete Brown, whose attempt to explain the pros and cons of the term craft covers some 200 pages. Brown might have offered the deepest thinking on the meanings, advantages, and shortcomings of the word craft to date, at least in English; but around the world, speakers of dozens of different languages have been working through the same issues. As drinks makers and consumers everywhere promote the idea of craft production, the way they explain or express that concept has interesting connotations and connections — and, sometimes, unexpected difficulties. It’s not easy to find the right equivalent for “craft beer” in Finnish, according to Suvi Sekkula, a journalist, service designer, beer lover, and the chair of Kieliasiantuntijat ry, a Finnish trade union for language and communications experts. “The question is a tricky one in Finnish, as there is no strong consensus,” Sekkula says. Currently, she says, three competing terms are being used in her country: pienpanimo-olut, meaning “beer from a small brewery,” käsityöläisolut, or “beer made by a craftsperson,” and erikoisolut, which means “speciality beer.” The problems? The first term only refers to brewery size, but not to the quality of the beer. The second term has a connotation of coming from a skilled producer, but it is not as widely used or understood as the first term. And the last term has been adulterated through its use by Finland’s state alcohol monopoly to describe any beer that is not a mass-produced lager, no matter the size of the producer or how good the beer might be. “So, a lot of people see ‘erikoisolut’ as referring to craft beer, and that drives beer enthusiasts crazy,” Sekkula says. “I use ‘pienpanimo-olut’ as the equivalent of ‘craft beer’ myself. Someone more pedantic would use ‘käsityöläisolut.’” In other languages, saying “craft beer” can be close to impossible, at this point being “too new” a phrase to have a local equivalent. Apiwe Nxusani-Mawela, a brewer and consultant at Brewsters Craft in South Africa, says that she wouldn’t even know how to express the idea of a craft beverage in a language like Xhosa or Zulu. “The concept is not new — Africans have been hand-crafting various items for years,” she says. “The traditional beers here have different names, but they all mean beer. Like one is called ‘utywala besintu,’ because ‘utywala’ is beer and ‘besintu’ means for traditional people or natives. But craft beer? Craft beer is still a new term. I don’t think we have a word for it.” Missy Begay, co-founder and creative director at five-year-old Bow & Arrow Brewing in Albuquerque, N.M., says there is also no clear way to say craft beer in the Diné (or Navajo) language, even if the Diné word for beer has a wonderful etymology of its own. “The Diné language is generally very descriptive for modern items,” Begay says. “Beer is bizhéé’ hólóní. To a native speaker, the word bizhéé’ in literal translation means ‘with saliva.’ There is no distinction between craft beer and beer.” (Those familiar with chicha may assume there is a connection here, but that isn’t the case: Begay says that in Diné, the word is used to describe liquid with carbonation or a liquid with “spit-like” character.) In countries with a long brewing history, the idea of “craft” production can seem particularly modern — and often quite foreign. The German language might have bier, a word that sounds like (and which means the same as) beer in English, as well as kunst, the equivalent of the English word craft. But instead of making a new word out of those traditional roots, the updated Duden dictionary lists a typical German compound noun with a clear English origin: das craftbeer. Across the border in the lager-loving Czech Republic, Czech brewers and beer lovers have taken a different approach, adopting the phrase řemeslné pivo, a term that evokes řemeslo, which includes traditional handicrafts like weaving and pottery. While it might have sounded weird to many Czech speakers when it first appeared a decade or so ago, it has more or less come into common use, with local producers like Volf, Lobkowicz, and Morava all using the term řemeslný pivovar, or “craft brewery,” to describe themselves in recent years. Some languages have had an easier time, especially the Romance tongues. Italian, French, and Spanish speakers have used their equivalents of “artisanal” to come up with terms for modern craft beer — Wikipedia includes pages for birra artigianale, bière artisanale, and cerveza artesana, respectively — which tend to sound traditional and well established. Beer fans in other languages have had to come up with more newfangled constructions, many of which are less than 10 years old. Rick Green, author of the book “How to Drink Beer in Mandarin: An English-Chinese Craft Beer Glossary,” notes the relatively recent origin of the contemporary Chinese term for craft beer, 精酿啤酒, or jīng niàng píjiǔ. Composed of recognizable linguistic roots, that term only spread after being suggested by Xiao Bian’r of the Beijing craft brewery NBeer in a widely shared article in 2012. “Basically, it means ‘fine’ or ‘skilfully’ brewed beer,” Green says. “Older people unfamiliar with the term may be a little confused at first, but they would know it is some kind of beer.” That term, he says, replaced a couple of earlier phrases for craft beer that didn’t stick, for various reasons. “According to Rocky Wang, head brewer of Bravo Brewing in Guangzhou, craft beer was initially referred to as 自酿啤酒, or zìniàng píjiǔ, which means ‘self-brewed beer,’ as opposed to being made in a factory,” Green explains. “Also in the south of China, they called it 手工啤酒, or shǒugōng píjiǔ, meaning ‘handmade beer.’ But in the current term jīng niàng píjiǔ, jīng means ‘fine,’ ‘refined,’ or ‘excellent,’ as in fine wine. So in Chinese, it gives an impression of what we in English would think of when we use the term ‘craftsmanship.’ Even though 手工啤酒, or shǒugōng píjiǔ, is more of a literal translation to what we think of as ‘craft beer,’ that meaning doesn’t give craft beer a suitable status in people’s understanding. Rocky likened it to the food made by street food vendors — handmade and cheap.” At Four Provinces Brewery in Dublin, Ireland, co-founder Feargal Chambers says that the relatively recent Irish term for craft beer, beoir cheirde, echoes the current rebirth of the Irish language itself. “In Ireland, ‘beoir cheirde’ was something that I started hearing maybe eight years ago,” Chambers says. “I take it as meaning ‘something built with your hands.’ It’s a new term in the Irish language — before, we’d just have used beoir. The people who translate and add the new words to the dictionary are quite sharp, because there’s a growing Irish-language community in Ireland, and they’re very much trying to bring it into the 21st century so it becomes just as relevant as English.” While many tongues still don’t have good equivalents for “craft beer” or “craft brewery,” the growing popularity of craft beverages means that those terms might be found in Diné, Zulu, and every other living language at some point soon. And who knows? Perhaps we’ll see new essays originating in those other languages arguing for and against “craft” and what it means. After all, it’s a great topic to write about. The article How Drinks Producers Are Defining ‘Craft’ Around the World appeared first on VinePair. Via https://vinepair.com/articles/how-global-producers-define-craft/ Via https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/how-drinks-producers-are-defining-craft-around-the-world In the region of Tuscany, between the two ancient cities of Florence and Siena, are 100 square miles of hills reaching their peak at almost 3,000 feet above sea level. These hills, called the Chianti Hills, produce some of the most famous wines in the world. In Tuscany, the Sangiovese grape comes in many forms depending on the region. But in the hills of Chianti, with the advantage of a drainy clay soil called galestro, the wines achieve what I call Italian elegance: the ability to be refined and balanced, with winemakers confident and skilled enough to show off a rustic side wrapped up in a light touch. This is a great time of year for Chianti. The first half of spring brings unpredictable weather that’s just right for the medium cherry and cranberry flavors of these wines. They can be juicy and bright, or broody and dark, but they will always have wonderful natural acidity to lift up any weight that nature and oak want to give. Chianti pairs well with lean meats like skirt steak, as well as roasted chicken. At the same time, it will sit comfortably next to classic pasta and red sauce or an earthy mushroom pasta. Classico wines can age for up to 20 years but are often approachable throughout their lifespan. But the younger examples or a good general Chianti, with a slight chill, can absolutely handle a sunny-day Caprese or carpaccio di manzo. I listed some of my favorite Chiantis below that will get you started. There is a non-Classico, a few Classico Riserva with individual uniqueness, and a big ol’ Gran Selezione. And with options ranging from affordable to pricey, this list is a true representation of all there is to love about Chianti. Giacomo Mori Palazzone Chianti DOCG $15It would be very hard for me to find a straight-up non-Classico Chianti below 20 bucks that can beat this wine. The quality-to-price ratio floors me. It’s so bright and inviting, with lively acidity and smells of peak-season cherries and cranberries, plus a whiff of soil when it wakes up in spring. The palate is so damn balanced, you may want to check your credit card statement and confirm the price. Cecchi ‘Storia di Famiglia’ Chianti Classico DOCG $18This one just hits right. The smells of cherries and cranberries are here, but in a more concentrated form. It feels earthy. Then, the natural acidity comes and blows life into that density — livening the wine up from the core of fruit. You can feel the tannins, but they are subtle and there solely to represent the structure of the wine. Isole e Olena Chianti Classico DOCG $26The refinement of this wine is everything. It has a preciseness due to impeccable balance. Your brain will register the welcoming sour cherry smell, along with hints of an orange peel and maybe a touch of herbs like parsley and the high tone of coriander seeds. Your palate will recognize the tannin as it runs, weaving itself into the wine and resulting in a supple mouthfeel. And before you can even react to the juice, your nose is back in that glass. It’s a wonderful wine. Fontodi Vigna del Sorbo Chianti Classico Gran Selezione DOCG $100Are you a Chianti-head and want to get nice with what this Gran Selezione thing is all about? This wine defines the category and then doubles down. It’s not just estate-grown fruit, but from a single vineyard that is 90 percent Sangiovese and 10 percent Cabernet Sauvignon. “Gorgeous” is the first word that comes to mind here. The core of fruit is deep, with a savory tang of iron. The finesse of this wine cannot be overstated — unleashing balanced aromas and elegant weight with every sip. Marchesi Frescobaldi Tenuta Perano Chianti Classico DOCG $25Sitting around a table filled with food and surrounded by friends; aromas hovering the room making everyone ravenous. The sound of laughter and clanking of utensils on plates. The sharp pop of a cork among the comfy din. Oh, what a feeling. This bottle reminds me of those moments. This is a Chianti Classico for everyone. A soft, evenly balanced palate shines with moderate acidity. That natural lift carries the smells of a juicy plum vibe. Cutting through the fruit core are some earthy mushroom aromas, with a whisper of worn leather. This is a case-buy for sure. Felsina Berardenga Rancia Chianti Classico Riserva DOCG $57Felsina has a special place in my heart. It’s one of those wines you never forget. And it’s not just the beautiful, rusted edges in the glass that show excellent aging, or the intoxicating panoply of plum and sour cherry with a dose of raspberry and a scattering of dried flowers. Not even the earthy leather mint aroma playing off the aged saddle leather (yeah, there’s a lot of smells here). It’s the texture. It sits on your palate like a mousse. The fruit is dense and chewy. But the natural acidity breaks it all apart, releasing aromas on the nose and palate, back to the brain for another round. The powerful, padded structure of this wine will stick in your thoughts for a while.
The article 6 of the Best Chiantis for 2021 appeared first on VinePair. Via https://vinepair.com/buy-this-booze/6-best-chiantis-2021/ Via https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/6-of-the-best-chiantis-for-2021 On this episode of the “Next Round” host Adam Teeter chats with Adam Dunn, owner of The Pheasant on Cape Cod, Mass. The Pheasant is a coastal farm-to-table restaurant set inside a historic farmhouse. Dunn details his life before he became a restaurateur — working in the music industry and then for Greenpoint Fish and Lobster. The latter project served as the catalyst for his eventual relocation to Cape Cod. Dunn explains how relocating to a small town from a big city certainly has its pros and cons. Tune in to hear Dunn explain how he continues to navigate that journey — especially during the ongoing pandemic. Listen OnlineOr Check out the Conversation HereAdam Teeter: From Brooklyn, New York, I’m Adam Teeter, and this is a “VinePair Podcast” conversation. We’re bringing you these conversations as additions to our regular special podcast to give you a better idea of what’s going on in the industry during the Covid-19 crisis. This week I’m really lucky to be talking to Adam Dunn, owner of The Pheasant in Cape Cod. Adam, what’s going on? Adam Dunn: Not much. Enjoying a beautifully sunny day here on Cape Cod. A: Lovely. I don’t think I’ve interviewed another Adam before, so this is going to be fun. Tell me about The Pheasant and your background, because I know you as the owner of a really amazing restaurant in Brooklyn. Can you take me through your career so we can get a chance to know who you are and then a little bit about The Pheasant? D: Sure. My background was in the music industry and entertainment originally. Interestingly enough, I was in college and was booking bands, which I knew that’s all I wanted to do. I moved to New York, started working at a bunch of music venues and live music. I thought that was going to be my career for a very long time. Late mornings, late nights. Go to work at 1 p.m., get home at 5 a.m. That kind of thing. A: You were at Brooklyn Bowl, right? D: Yeah, I did Pianos out of college. Then, I moved from there to Brooklyn Bowl for a number of years. On the side, I got really interested in food and where my food comes from, sustainability. I didn’t eat meat for 13 years in high school and college. Then, I started playing sports in college, and I was eating a ton of seafood. I knew nothing about where my fish comes from. It seems hypocritical to be very concerned about meat and know nothing about seafood, so I started learning about seafood. Growing up, I came to Cape Cod every summer as a kid and was used to being around seafood. I was living in Williamsburg at the time and there was nowhere to get local seafood or any quality seafood for that matter. This is before Whole Foods and before everything else came in. I had to go to Chelsea Market to get high-quality fish. That is a three-hour round trip, at least. This is crazy. Williamsburg being the food mecca as it is or was, it just seemed crazy. There was a local Italian market that was OK, but you go in, ask the guy where’s that piece of fish from? He’d look at a tag and say it’s imported. That’s all he could tell you. I knew there’s got to be something more to this, somebody’s got to do something. I had this idea that there should be a place where you can get local fish and know where it comes from, and there’s a little counter of chowder or lobster rolls, fish sandwiches. I knew nothing about fish or where to get fish or how to source it. In my music industry days, I had worked with a guy who had mentioned at some point during our conversations that his family had a seafood business. Fast-forward many years later, I know one person who mentioned knowing something about seafood. I bumped into him at a holiday party and said, “we got to talk. I got this crazy idea.” He said his family was one of the largest and oldest seafood wholesalers in New England. They’ve been around for about 130 years in Boston wholesale. This wasn’t a little seafood thing, this is a big-time major seafood distributor. He said you have a concept, I can source us probably the best fish in New York, if not the best fish in the country. We said, “let’s see where this goes.” We started on the side. We’d rent out the backyard of a bar out in Greenpoint or Williamsburg. We throw a party and promote it like a concert. We make fliers, make Instagram accounts, and Facebook events. We branded the hell out of it. Got a friend who designed a really fantastic brand and sold merchandise, hats, shirts, oyster knives, koozies, you name it. We started building some traction, and it started taking over. It climaxed when we took out one of those New York Harbor boats, and a buddy of mine ran concerts on those boats and gave me a deal on a boat. We put 300 people on the boat, open bar, lobster rolls, oysters, ceviche, and we had a DJ named Jonathan Toubin. A: I love Jonathan Toubin. He did a party of mine because I was in the music industry, too. I think we crossed paths. D: Oh man, there’s so much here especially to make connections with you. A: Yeah, I used to do A&R for J Dub. D: OK, so we definitely crossed. A: We used to throw parties at Brooklyn Bowl. I think you booked one of my bands there. D: It gets so fuzzy between the two. A: It’s crazy — I’m going on a tangent here — but were you there at the same time? Now I just blanked on his name, but the guy who was involved in signing MGMT and stuff. D: Oh, Will Griggs. A: Yes, Will Griggs! Were you there at the same time? D: Yeah, I took over when Will left. Will was there the first two years, I think, of Brooklyn Bowl. Then, he was focusing on his label and various other projects. Then, a buyer and I were involved in Brooklyn Bowl as a consulting partner for booking. I met those guys early on in my Pianos days. I started hanging out with them. When the time came, they said hey, you’ve got this 800 to 1,000-capacity venue in Brooklyn, and he’s a booker. I’ll do that. A: That’s amazing. D: Yeah, Jonathan Toubin is where we left off. Jonathan Toubin actually DJ’d my wedding here on Cape Cod. He was our first ask and he said “yeah, I’ll come up and do it.” A: Very cool. You’re trying to source great seafood, throwing parties. D: We were throwing parties and we said to each other, “let’s see how far this goes.” At some point, we expected to stop. There’s going to be some barrier and we can’t go any further and let’s see where that is. It never stopped. We just kept going. We kept finding ways around these barriers and managed to put some investors together because we had built a brand. We wanted to show that we had some traction and engagement. We managed to get some friends, family, private investors, random folks that we had come across that were interested. Before we opened up on June 30, 2018, we opened up this little brick-and-mortar fish market counter and raw bar. We did that for a number of years, expanding into wholesale. My partner Vinnie Milburn was the business brains behind the whole thing and grew and built this wholesale machine. That’s really the direction the business started going, it was wholesale. We realized we weren’t going to add more restaurant locations. The amount of debt you incur to open a new brick and mortar in New York was one step forward, two steps back. We were like, “How are we ever going to get out of this?” We decided wholesale was a lot easier to scale. You have to deal with customers and there are some benefits for certain types of personalities. We started going in that direction. Then I hit a point where I really like the customer-facing side. I really like creating experiences. I’m a promoter at heart. Back when I was booking bands, I was trying to find obscure bands and introduce them to people and grow them. I love that feeling of showing somebody something they haven’t seen before and then people are like “holy shit, that was awesome. Where do I get more?” That’s my drive. The wholesale thing, as awesome as it was to be knee-deep in razor clams at 4 in the morning and lugging 80-pound halibut around before dawn in New York City, it was exciting, but it was brutal hours and it wasn’t where my passion was. I was looking for opportunities and my wife and I were looking to start a family. We’re trying to forecast our life in New York. Then, we thought there might be an opportunity somewhere else. We fantasize, like everybody does who lives in New York, about where you would go. Upstate New York, Vermont, Maine. Then, I realized my family has a house in Cape Cod in South Dennis. I knew the Cape really well. I came here for 25 years with my family, so we asked, “What about Cape Cod?” What’s going on up there? We were looking for businesses for sale. We saw that this famous restaurant called the Red Pheasant Inn was for sale. My parents rented a house every summer from across the street from this restaurant. A: Oh, wow. D: I don’t know, for 11 or 12 years. That was where every summer my parents and friends of theirs would go out for an anniversary or a birthday and would leave the kids at home. It was a fancy restaurant on Cape Cod, and it had a massive wine list, white tablecloths. However, it was stuffy and dated, and we never wanted to go to the Red Pheasant. I don’t think they let people in under the age of 16. A: It was supposed to be an adult place. D: Exactly. We saw it was for sale and was like, “Oh, that’s interesting.” I think we had just come the summer before and we had walked into the restaurant to have a nice adult dinner. We couldn’t stop thinking about how amazing the floors were. It’s a 250-year-old farmhouse, original wood floors, original post-and-beam. It oozes New England farmhouse vibes. It’s got two working fireplaces. It’s just years, years, and years of firewood into the walls. It’s stunning. It’s a dream place. I remember saying, “Somebody could really do a number with this place.” Anyway, it came up for sale and we couldn’t believe that place was for sale. We kept reading and it said there’s a four-bedroom house attached to it. It’s on an acre and a half. Oh, it’s on a lake. It’s a 10-minute walk to the beach. I know the neighborhood. My parents have a house in the area. This seems like a no-brainer. Let me tell you, money goes a lot further when you leave New York City, as I think everybody knows. It depends on where you go, but we got a lot of bang for the buck. A: Before we kick it off more, ’cause then I want I to hear about the process — that’s how you wound up on this podcast, right? You actually listened to our Monday podcast episode about restaurateurs and beverage specialists moving to smaller towns, smaller cities to open places, and you reached out. Turns out we had these crazy mutual connections and you got to come on the podcast and talk about it. This is something people are doing. I’d love to use you as a way to show other people who might be thinking about it, what you did, and how you figured it out. The one thing that I wanted to ask you is, did you know other people who had already done this? Who had been restaurateurs in New York City? For example, Prairie Whale in the Berkshires, the way you describe your spot sounds very similar to what it’s like in a very old home. Did you go check out places like that? Did you know people who had done this? What was the thought? What happened when you decided to do this. Did you start doing research, or what research did you do? D: We probably didn’t do as much research as we should have. We found the building, the property, and the deal was right. We could live there. We could sustain. I think the easiest thing when people do these moves is finding a business and a residence together. It might not sound awesome to be living where you work, but it makes it affordable. If we were just buying the restaurant, it would have been too expensive to buy the restaurant. If you were just buying a house, it would have been too expensive to just buy the house. When you get them together, it’s an incredible deal. The business fee pays for the house, and it’s a self-sustaining system. You can keep the doors open and cover the mortgage or the lease. I think the best thing is to buy in these types of situations because you’re going all-in on this. I’ve seen in other places, what’s worked typically is when you can find that work-live situation. Otherwise, you’d be buying a restaurant and you need quite a bit of cash to do that. Then, you’ve got to figure out where you’re going to live. Sure, sometimes where you are, you can find cheaper housing. What’s tough about the Cape is the housing market is really expensive here. The Cape is such a weird place, because it’s so seasonal and in the off-season has a somewhat rural vibe to it. It’s really quiet and deserted, but the housing prices are crazy because they get such huge money in the summer. The Cape is actually very difficult, unless you’re coming from gobs of money — and good for you if you can make that happen. You need to find this live-work situation. It’s prohibitively expensive to find a business to buy and then to find a house to buy. That’s been the hardest thing. Affordable housing is such a big issue on the Cape because of the weird dynamics of seasonal vacation waterfront homes. Prairie Whale is in Great Barrington, which was definitely an inspiration for sure. I read articles. I read everything I could about people who have done this stuff. None of it accurately describes what it’s going to be like but it’s exciting. It’s romantic. We were reading about Mark. He was involved in Marlow and Sons in the Andrew Tarlow empire in the beginning. Then, they split and went up there to start a farm and then the restaurant. I was like, “This all sounds incredible.” I’m sure the housing market there is not too dissimilar, but I’m sure there are also pockets of much more affordable housing. There’s just a larger space because the Cape is such a limited, narrow strip of land. There’s only one way on, one way off. There isn’t that much inventory. It’s hard to live 40 minutes away. A: It makes me think of someone who would think about doing this in the Hamptons. D: Yeah, it’s not nearly that same over-the-top wealth in the same way that the Hamptons can be. However, it definitely has that same one long road all the way to the end. A two-lane highway kind of thing. A: You’re not going to live 30 minutes away, 40 minutes away. If you need to get to the restaurant, then all of a sudden there’s a traffic jam, basically. D: Yeah, that’s an issue but there just aren’t that many houses because it’s not 30 miles in every direction. It’s 30 miles north or south, east or west. It just limits how much housing is available in the immediate area. A: OK, so you buy the place. What was going through your head? Did you know what you wanted to do? Were you going to buy it and take it over? What were the people selling it expecting to happen? D: The people who sold it to us had owned the restaurant for 40 years. The father ran it for a number of years and the son took over and ran it. It was an institution, a real icon on Cape Cod. I told my parents we’re buying it, they were like “The Red Pheasant?” They couldn’t fathom that we were buying this iconic restaurant. It means a lot to people, a lot of anniversaries, birthdays, special occasions. It was a special-occasion place where people dressed up. It was a nice dinner out in this area, Cape Cod. They were looking to hand this off. I think they were just grateful to get rid of it. Honestly, we felt that toward the end of the business we saw they were 70, and just getting tired. The customers ran the place at the end. They had a regular clientele. I remember I told the chef-owner that we’re going to put this awesome gourmet burger on the menu. He’s like, “Oh, I always wanted to put a burger on the menu and couldn’t.” I never understood what he meant. “Why couldn’t you put a burger on the menu? It’s your restaurant.” Not to get ahead of myself in this conversation, but we had somebody come in when we had first opened and this older gentleman who was wearing a jacket pulled me aside to say, “Are you the owner?” I said “Yeah.” He said, “This is a nice restaurant, you can’t have hamburgers on the menu.” I had this whiplash, this aha moment. I realized that these customers had been with him for 30, 40 years and they had everything dialed in exactly how they wanted it. A: He wasn’t going to mess with them because they were super-loyal customers. D: Correct. There are some people that he had met. Oh, man, there’s so much here. Every December, all the towns around the holidays do holiday strolls and people walk through town, restaurants give things away, stores give things away. It’s a meet-and-greet kind of thing. Once we knew we were likely to buy it, we made an offer and it was accepted. I came up to do the stroll because he wanted to introduce me to all the regulars. He wanted to introduce me as the new owner so I came up and met all these people and everybody wanted to meet me and were sizing me up. I remember some people were just terrible. He was like, “Yeah, you don’t want those people. I’m so glad to be getting rid of them.” Oh, thanks, appreciate that. They expected to hand off the restaurant to let us run it. They told us to keep some of the menu items, some of the staples on the menu. Then, maybe you can slowly change them out. Frankly, we had no interest in the old menu. The old menu hadn’t changed in 30, 40 years. It was dated, like French-American, but slowly getting further away from being French. It became a weird menu of wasabi mashed potatoes next to seared duck and just got all over the place. A: Right. Trendy food items here from the ’90s, mixed with trendy food items here from the ’80s. I know what you’re talking about. D: We were looking to get rid of that entirely. He said to just be careful. We had learned that two of their items made up about 40 or 50 percent of the menu sales. There was a sole meunière and a seared duck. That was it. That’s all they sold. You can’t run a business like this. If that’s your business, then just open a shack and just sell one item. Don’t open a full-service restaurant with a full menu if you’re only selling two dishes. The logistics and economics of it made no sense. We have to get rid of that, and we have to have a menu that every item is balanced in terms of sales to some degree, at least less than how skewed it is with this current menu. We brought in a chef. We managed to find a chef locally who was really talented, and he wanted nothing to do with the old menu. He was not coming to cook somebody else’s food. We’re like, great, we’re on the same page there. We opened up. The other wrinkle in this whole thing was that Erika, my wife, is pregnant with our first baby. We were told that the due date was July 4th, which, if you know vacation towns in New England, July 4th is a very busy weekend. Easily the busiest weekend of the summer, which therefore is the busiest week of the year. It was also a brand-new restaurant for us. We ended up opening the restaurant on June 1. We had four weeks under us. Then Erika went into labor on July 4th. The baby was born on July 5th. It was insane. I was a zombie the entire year. It was probably the most intense thing we’ve ever done. We were renovating the house and the restaurant. We moved into the rest of the house on May 15, opened the restaurant on June 1, the baby came on July 5th. I don’t recommend it. A: You’ve re-done the entire place, right? D: No, it just needed new paint. It was really dark and drab. Everything was mauve, like red. It was just dark and dated. There are lots of tchotchkes everywhere, people bring them gifts I guess. Old Victorian lighting fixtures were hanging from a low ceiling so the whole place had this cavernous feel, but not a good way. It was stuffy so we brightened the whole place up. We added some new tables. We re-did the whole bar area. The bar needed a lot of work. The bones of the place were incredible but it just needed some love. Frankly, a slightly more contemporary approach to the style of a farmhouse, but modernized it a little bit. I think if you were to walk in, you would get what’s going on in here. A: You basically re-do the place in terms of the menu, etc. What style of cuisine were you going for? D: The stuff that we had loved in Brooklyn, new American comfort. Our favorite restaurants are these cozy new American spots in Brooklyn with a fantastic wine list and great cocktails. Again, like the Andrew Tarlow empire, Jeffery’s Grocery, this style of rustic, new American, but with great technique and a certain level of casualness at the same time. That was a weird thing for Cape Cod that people didn’t understand that you can have a nice restaurant that’s not fancy. They didn’t get that. People were very upset that we got rid of white tablecloths. We changed out all the glassware. We change out these giant Martini glasses for coupes. People lost their minds. They’re like, “What is this? Where’s my Martini glass?” A: They’re angry, though. D: Yeah, they were mad. I’ll tell you, we had people who walked out because we didn’t have a certain type of vodka. That’s all they drank is this one type of vodka and we didn’t have it. They got up and left. Then, they asked us for Limoncello and I didn’t have Limoncello so they left. Cape Cod is a weird place. I love it here, but there’s a weird culture where people overpay for food and underpay for booze. In New York City, there are certain benchmarks, standards for how you price things, and it was inverted on Cape Cod. People are giving away booze and charging stupid money for poor-quality frozen ingredients. A: Whereas you’re taking the margin where you’re supposed to get it, which is from alcohol. D: We are serving better-quality food at the same prices as everybody else. Anyway, our drink prices were not quite New York City prices by any means, but were priced according to the ingredients in the drink. There were quality ingredients and cheap cocktails, 12, 13, 14 bucks, but they were measured. They weren’t free-poured. People were really upset that they weren’t getting these giant pours of wine and giant, 6-ounce Martinis. People were angry, and they called us out for being from New York. We had people writing us letters, angry letters, saying they are never coming to our restaurant. For the check presenters, in the beginning, we’re using postcards. We had somebody write us a letter, a really nasty negative letter on one of our postcards with no return address. We were like, “Cool, thanks. I appreciate that.” It was wild. It was hard. The bar food on Cape Cod is very low. It’s been stuck in this ‘80s, ‘90s thing with seafood shacks with low-quality ingredients. It’s touristy, right? It’s getting your money when you can from people you’re never going to see more than once. Everything was stuck in that. Erika and I, coming from New York, we‘re going to be on Cape Cod. We want to create a place that we would eat on a regular basis, not just a special occasion, but a place that you want to go and see your friends. You want to go post up at the bar. You never know who’s going to walk in and be a neighborhood community spot. We thought we were bringing something that was very much needed to the Cape. It was needed. On the other side of this, people who don’t like change. You get older people, especially on Cape Cod there’s a lot of retirees. You get people who think they know everything, and they like it because nothing changes. As soon as you come in and you’re from a place in New York City, they get very upset. A: It seems as though you thought that you were going to come in and people would say, “Thank you so much, we’ve been waiting for a Brooklyn-style restaurant on Cape Cod.” And they were like “get the fuck out.” D: That was exactly it. There are so many emotions flying, between the move, the baby, going all-in on every penny. Then, to have somebody essentially spit in your face and not care about any of that. It’s the people who wouldn’t even try it, the people who wouldn’t even sit down and taste it would say, “I can’t read any of these ingredients. I don’t know what any of this is.” They were getting offended because they felt radicchio is a novel concept. You don’t want to make people feel small. They want to know and understand, they don’t want to have to ask questions. We were trying to do something where we were introducing people to new things. That’s the fun of it, right? For my wife and I, that’s why we like dining out, to go to new places and try different things and be excited when the menu changes every time we’re there because there’s something new to try. It’s an experience for us, and we’re dealing with a lot of people who just want the same thing every time. They wanted to count on certain things. On top of that, we throw in a seasonal menu, which changes four times a year and their heads really spin. They would say “Oh, I love that dish, where did it go?” We try to do something different that’s not in season anymore. We burned a lot of these old regulars from this restaurant, hard. Honestly, it was probably the best thing that ever happened. A: There’s a silver lining here, Adam. Right now, it sounds all doom and gloom. You go to another place and you open the thing. We’ve got to get there. D: Yeah, we’re going to get there. I’m just trying to say it is hard. It was a roller coaster of emotions. Everybody who’s considering doing this should be prepared for how this can happen. A: Yeah, you don’t just walk in as a conquering hero. D: Yeah, exactly. It took us a minute to recover. That first year, we closed for the first winter. We closed for three months because we were so fried emotionally. We asked, “What are we doing?” We stuck it out. That first year we had to go through that fire because the customers that came out the second year were so much more pleasant. They were people who didn’t go initially because they were nervous about this new restaurant. Then they started coming out and the previous restaurant customers, most of them, had left. It was great. All of a sudden, people are commenting on how much younger the guests in the restaurant were. It was a place where we heard that older and younger people used to call The Red Pheasant “The Dead Pheasant” because it was just so stuffy and old. It’s been taking a long time, but people now are like, Oh, it’s not The Red Pheasant anymore. It’s not like that, it’s not stuffy. It’s new owners, it’s young, it’s exciting. Those people had started coming out after these, for lack of a better term, crotchety, angry, disgruntled older customers stopped coming because they felt like this is a cool place to be. Every year since then has gotten better and better. People are more receptive to our menus and ingredient choices, style, and drink menus. The second year, we did a CBD cocktail with a weed leaf garnish dropped on top of the rocks, and people were so excited. People came out. We ran that for 4/20 as a special, and people went nuts. This is clearly a new thing here. Then, fast-forward, we got to Covid, and we were panicking. We were closed for six weeks. We were on vacation in Jamaica when the news started coming out in February about this looming pandemic. I was freaking out and having a hard time settling in on vacation. Then, we came back and it was full-blown. We were supposed to open on March 18 for the season. The governor shut everything down on the 16th, I think it was. It all changed. Then, we decided to push everything outside. We just did picnic tables. I’m really proud of how we set it up. There was all counter-service. We ran food out to you. The menu was much faster, and it was really easy for the kitchen to execute. It was a really fun and high-quality menu. It was casual. Everything’s in takeout containers. High-quality, compostable biodegradable containers, but still takeout containers nonetheless. We also had compostable forks and knives. The wine was all in plastic. It was all cans and bottles. We didn’t do anything by the glass, but it worked really, really well. We had a lot of people who were blown away by the experience. We had families coming out, which is great. The restaurant during normal times is probably not a great place for little kids. Their parents are absolutely our regular customers, and we can introduce them. Also, get people in during the summer that will hopefully continue to come. When things get back to normal, they’ll get babysitters and now they discover this restaurant. We had people who would be on vacation for five days and they were coming three or four nights of their trip because they were so excited about being outside and being safe. Everything was really spacious. We started selling all this natural wine that we were struggling to sell previously. I’ve got old ladies drinking Broc Cellars Love Red cans by the case. It was incredible. The casualness that was forced upon everybody really worked in our favor. It really took the pressure off, because we are still known to a lot of people as this special-occasion restaurant, which is a tag label we’ve been trying to shed. It really changed people. I’ve had customers say “I actually really liked your outdoor vibe better than what the restaurant was previously inside.” A: I wonder about that. A bunch of people I know, we’re talking about now doing two different things when things go back to normal. For example, we brought on James who owns Popina in Brooklyn. I don’t know if Popina existed before you left. D: I don’t think so but I’ve been keeping tabs on things. A: He basically went to counter service and the question now becomes, does he become counter service in one part of his restaurant, or is that a during-the-day thing where he’s counter service and then he converts to sit down at night? There are now customers who love that. They love that they could come at 1 o’clock in the afternoon, get a bottle of wine, eat some of your food, sit out in the backyard and play bocce. Also, it’s going to allow him to come back more easily. We talk about this a lot on the podcast, too. What is it going to look like in terms of service and how many people are going to add to your staff and that kind of stuff? I wonder, have you thought about that, too? Would The Pheasant be casual during the day? Then you go to the traditional sit-down at night but outdoors. It’s still the same kind of counter service, etc. you guys were doing? D: The problem with space is that we realize it’s not good to do indoor and outdoor at the same time. It’s one or the other. This past summer, while we were doing all the outdoor seating and everything, we were like, “Let’s do lunch. Let’s try lunch because we’re set up. It’s beautiful out. It’s Cape Cod.” We’ve never done lunch before and we were proven right. We don’t do lunch because on Cape Cod, on a sunny day, no one’s eating lunch. They’re all at the beach. Everyone’s at the beach. If you don’t have a waterfront view, you’re not going to get lunch business. There are a couple of places maybe, but most of them have views. Most of them have some connection with the beach or you can walk on from the beach. We tried for the first two months of June and July, offering lunch. It just didn’t happen. You would get a couple of tables. It’s also hard to change people’s perceptions. On the Cape, the biggest issue we have is marketing and communicating to customers, because so many people are tourists. They come out on the weekends, and there’s no way to connect to them. We hit people on Facebook and Instagram with ads or promote ads in Boston, because we want to get them before they come out here because once they’re out here, they’ve already made their plans. They know where they’re going. They’re going to go to all the favorites. You have to get them talking and thinking about it before they even get out here, get it on their radar. It’s hard to suddenly convince people like, “Oh, by the way, the restaurant is now doing lunch.” They’ve never done lunch in the 40 years they’ve been a business. We didn’t see it. The plan for us, and I’m knocking on wood right now, but we’re less than a mile from our local beach, which is a fantastic beach, very family friendly corporation beach. It’s a 10-minute walk, and they have a killer snack bar there. Well, the operator right now is not awesome. It’s pretty generic, mozzarella sticks and a bad burger. It’s just generic, but the space and layout are awesome. There are all these picnic tables on a cliff above the dunes, looking over the beach. It’s a really great setting, and it comes up for bid every two years. We’re going to put in for it for next summer and try to kill that program. That’s how we’ll do lunch. It’s off-site, but it’s less than a mile away. It’s a different style of food. You get people that way and then transition them, “Hey, come off the beach, bring this flyer and come get a cocktail with us at 5 o’clock or 4 o’clock.” A: That’s awesome. D: That is what we’re thinking is the transition and the next move is to get lunch because you have a captive audience at the beach. A: You guys are closed now because this is the worst time to be open in Covid. What are your plans for when you reopen? D: We were debating for a long time. I was really stressing out about if we’re going to be inside, outside, or if we’re going to do both. I was really concerned that a lot of people are going to want this sense of normalcy and they’re going to want to go back inside. We had a comfortable bar. A lot of regulars and people tell us, “We can’t wait to go back to the bar.” I was thinking, if we don’t go inside, we are going to have a lot of disappointed people, and people want normal. The more we thought about it, there’s just no flow. The building wasn’t designed to do that. The server who is going out with food would have to be sharing the entrance with people coming in. It’s a really long haul from the kitchen. We were talking about putting in new doors and this historic farmhouse cut doors into the side to access outside. It was just getting more and more complicated. We were thinking, all right, we already have all this infrastructure for doing outdoor dining. It’s summer on Cape Cod. Most people are probably going to eat outside. Last summer, everybody had outdoor dining setups, but they were janky. There were a lot of crappy rental tents with cement barricades. Those places are not going to do that again. They’re all going to go back inside because it’s easier for them. We’re set back from the road and we have these lush gardens and it’s very private. There are string lights, and you feel like you’re somewhere else. We’re thinking, “Let’s just stick with outside, we have the model down. We can build upon it and let’s take a chance on being the only game in town doing extensive outdoor seating. We’ve got 20 tables. We can put 120 people outside. It’s substantial. Let’s try that again and own it.” Massachusetts is operating differently than New York, from what I can tell. There’s a reopening, and they lifted the capacity limits in Massachusetts. The only restrictions for indoor dining are six feet apart, but nobody can get vaccines. The governor is saying, “We know the vaccines are taking a long time, everyone needs to be patient. We’re racing against the variants to get everybody vaccinated but we’re excited to reopen restaurants and businesses.” We’ve gone this far, why don’t we wait until more people are vaccinated or restaurant workers are vaccinated? Going inside is somewhat contingent on hope and a prayer that it seems it’s trending in that direction, but I don’t know. What do we know for sure? Outside, it’s safe. It’s Cape Cod in the summer, people like sitting outside, we know we can execute it. Let’s just do it. And we have this rare opportunity where other towns are giving waivers to restaurants to do extensive outdoor dining in areas that they normally wouldn’t let you do outdoor dining. You have to have patios. You have to have all kinds of infrastructure to do it “properly.” They’ve allowed waivers last summer, and I just checked again and they are going to do it again this year. Let’s run with it. Why complicate it? Everybody can feel comfortable. We can continue doing the kid thing. That all being said, we know that transition back inside in the fall next year is going to be rough, because we have to completely reinvent the restaurant. We’re going to close for a couple of weeks and go back inside because it’s just too cold out here, as it is in New York. I’m not looking forward to that, but I think that’s going to be the play. That’s where we’re at right now. We’re on a break right now, but every day all we’re doing is trying to run through scenarios. If we’re not doing anything inside, we have to do outdoor bathrooms. Are people going to respond to that? Are they going to get angry? How do we do this? How is the flow going to work? It’s a lot of what-ifs and unknowns. It’s stressful, but it’s almost easier now that we decide we’re just going to be outside, as opposed to trying to think about half in, half out. That’s the play. I’ve had fun listening to all the podcasts about your predictions and trends. I was listening to the lemonade one. I’m like, “Huh, I should probably look into lemonade.” We’re doing a lot of research and trying to see, trying to glean as much information as we can to try to have the most efficient and best summer we can. On Cape Cod, summer is it. You make 80 percent of your revenue for the year in three months. A: It’s crazy. D: We’re hoping that this year will start earlier. Last year, it didn’t really take off until August, because everyone was locked down and they weren’t allowing rentals on the Cape until July. It sputtered along until August, and then took off. This year, as soon as the weather turns, it’s going to be on like a firehose. There are no rental properties on Cape Cod. You can’t find a place to stay. It’s wild. They just announced part of the reopening so now you can have outdoor gatherings of 150 people. And so, all the weddings are back on. All the resorts are booked. It’s going to be bananas. You want to be in the right position to receive all that. There’s not a whole lot of room for error, at least for us. We take it really seriously. We take every review seriously. If somebody doesn’t leave telling us how amazing a time they had, we feel like we failed. A: It means you’re a good restaurateur. D: We’re trying to have it all dialed in for this quick hit, and then we’ll cross the next bridge when we get to it. A: Well, Adam, this has been an amazing conversation. I feel like I’ve definitely learned a lot about what you’ve been through, which is awesome. Hopefully, everyone who has listened has as well. I think if you are thinking about moving from a city into a smaller town, much of what you say is encouraging to people. I think you’re also a realist, which is great. It’s not going to be easy. You’re not going to go somewhere and be welcomed with open arms. I think your story is a really, really cool one. I really appreciate you sharing it with me. D: My pleasure. The best takeaway is that the quality of life is incredible. That’s the biggest thing. At the end of the day, on any given day, our son goes to the lake in the morning and goes to the beach in the afternoon, maybe we go fishing. It’s this incredible, magic childhood. We love being here in the winter because it’s so quiet and beautiful. We have so much space, but nothing comes easy. That was our ultimate goal. We will figure out the other part of it. Don’t give up the fight, but just know that it’s definitely not easy. A: Well, Adam, thanks so much again, I really appreciate it. I wish you the best. I can’t wait to come to The Pheasant sometime. I’ve actually never been to Cape Cod, so I’m going to have to go. People talk about how amazing it is. D: Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure. Thanks so much for listening to the podcast. If you love this show as much as we love making it, then please leave a rating on review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever it is you get your podcasts. It really helps everyone else discover the show. Now for the credits, VinePair is produced and recorded in New York City in Seattle, Wash., by myself and Zach Geballe, who does all the editing and loves to get the credit Also, I would love to give a special shout-out to my VinePair co-founder, Josh Malin, for helping make all this possible, and also to Keith Beavers, VinePair’s tasting director, who is additionally a producer on the show. I also want to, of course, thank every other member of the VinePair team who is instrumental in all of the ideas that go into making the show every week. Thanks so much for listening, and we’ll see you again. The article Next Round: Leaving NYC for a Small Town With Restaurateur Adam Dunn appeared first on VinePair. Via https://vinepair.com/articles/next-round-adam-dunn-the-pheasant/ Via https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/next-round-leaving-nyc-for-a-small-town-with-restaurateur-adam-dunn Pinotage began life as cheap wine. Discover how South Africa's winemakers have been taking this full-bodied wine to a whole new level. Wine Folly - Learn about wine. Via https://winefolly.com/tips/wine-tasting-challenge-pinotage/ Via https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/tasting-challenge-south-african-pinotage Applebee’s is toasting to warmer weather and the beginning of Spring with two mega $5 tequila cocktails. One is even garnished with a gummy shark because nothing says “winter is behind us” like a gummy shark, right? Both drinks are served in Applebee’s “Mucho” glasses, and if you know anything about the chain’s drinks deals, you’ll know you’re definitely getting your money’s worth. The Tipsy Shark is made with 1800 Reposado Tequila, Margarita mix, blue curacao, and pineapple juice. The Strawberry Daq-A-Rita is also made with 1800 Reposado and sounds just as sweet. It’s half Daiquiri and half Margarita, and there’s a splash of Bacardi in there as well for good measure. Though days are getting longer, happy hour is still at 5 p.m. and Applebee’s is running the offer from now through May 23. You can check if your nearest location is serving the drinks here. The article Applebee’s Is Toasting Spring With Giant $5 Tequila Cocktails appeared first on VinePair. Via https://vinepair.com/booze-news/applebees-5-dollar-tequila-cocktails/ Via https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/applebees-is-toasting-spring-with-giant-5-tequila-cocktails The Brewers Association has released its annual report of the top 50 brewing companies of 2020. As is customary, the report is split into two lists: the Top 50 Craft Brewing Companies and the Top 50 Overall Brewing Companies. Both lists are calculated using the total volume of beer sales. According to Bart Watson, chief economist of the Brewers Association, Covid-19 entirely changed where consumers purchased their beer last year. “Breweries who had established packaging and distribution capacity were best positioned to take advantage of the boom in off-premise sales and weather market uncertainty,” Watson said. In spite of this disadvantage, many small and independent breweries stood their ground during the pandemic, and craft producers made up 40 of the top 50 brewing companies in 2020. For the sixth year in a row, D.G. Yuengling and Son Inc. came in first place on the craft breweries list, followed by Boston Beer Co., Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., Duvel Moorgart, and Gambrinus. Ninkasi, which placed 48 on last year’s list, was bumped up to 33 in 2020, and the list also welcomes new players like Montauk Brewing Co. New Belgium Brewing Co., which placed fourth on the craft list last year, now features at number 11 on the “Overall Brewing Companies” list, following its 2019 sale to Kirin subsidiary Lion Little World Beverages. On that list, the top five overall remain unsurprisingly unchanged from years prior: Anheuser-Busch, MolsonCoors, Constellation, Heineken, and Pabst. Craft breweries begin at number 7 with Yueling. The full report can be viewed here, and 2019’s results can be seen here. The article These Are 2020’s Official Top 50 Craft Brewing Companies appeared first on VinePair. Via https://vinepair.com/booze-news/top-50-craft-breweries-2020/ Via https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/these-are-2020s-official-top-50-craft-brewing-companies No matter what natural wine or craft brewery they’re in love with, most consumers have a favorite macro brewery on the side. For those who love Bud Light, the world often feels like your oyster, as you’ll never have to worry about getting your hands on the “latest release” or “perfect pet-nat” the way other beer or wine nerds may. That being said, there are still ways to elevate your experience and drive everything you love about your favorite beer home. The easiest way to do this is to find the proper glassware for your drink, and for beer, it’s all about beer style. Just as a hazy IPA aficionado probably has IPA glasses on hand, so should any lager or pilsner fan. The right glass will help amplify your tasting experience by ensuring you can taste and smell every flavor in your beer, but it will also preserve the body your brewer worked so hard to create. At VinePair, we reach for this Spiegelau Lager glass anytime “beer o’clock” strikes, and it’s a great piece to have on hand for any beer fan. If you’re skeptical about what it can do to really elevate your beer, consider this: the next time you’re sitting down to dinner with a group of wine lovers, you’ll be able to grab a Bud from the fridge, pour it into this glass, and simply drink it in style — and peace. Beyond this great hack, the glass is also great because it’s made with non-leaded crystal and totally dishwasher safe. Crafted in Germany, these glasses are great for casual drinkers or experts and will definitely deliver the optimal aromas and flavors in your beer. The article The Proper Glassware for Bud Light appeared first on VinePair. Via https://vinepair.com/picks/bud-light-glassware/ Via https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/the-proper-glassware-for-bud-light When faced with another long, cold, dark winter this year, many American brewers turned to smoky flavors to amplify new seasonal releases. Pulling inspiration from places and flavors around the globe, these creations ventured far beyond the traditional beechwood-smoked malts of Bamberg, where German rauchbier gets its bacon-like character. Instead, brewers from Boston to Bend, Ore., are expanding the spectrum of smoked beer flavors by using a variety of techniques and histories. One of the more widespread smoked winter specialty beer releases this year came from a collaboration between Harpoon Brewery and Big Spruce Brewing, a Belgian-style ale brewed with oak and cherrywood smoked malts. It first premiered in December 2020 and is still going strong throughout the tri-state area. (On Untappd, it’s checked in regularly in Massachusetts and New York.) “It’s a smoked abbey ale that we brewed with spruce tips and aged in Glen Breton [Canadian] whisky barrels,” says Al Marzi, chief brewing officer of Mass Bay Brewing, parent company of Harpoon Brewery. Named From Nova Scotia with Love, the inspiration for the Belgian-style ale is the close relationship between the city of Boston and the people of Nova Scotia: For more than a century, Nova Scotia has sent a spruce tree to be decorated and lit in Boston Common each winter as a display of gratitude for the aid Bostonians provided them after the Halifax Harbor explosion in 1917. Just like this heartwarming tidbit from history, Marzi says, this special release “will definitely warm you up on a cold night.” The flavor profile of Jólabókaflód from Deschutes Brewery was also guided by northern inspiration. Assistant brewer Kyle Matthias set out to “capture the essence” of an Icelandic celebration in a beer. Jólabókaflód translates roughly to “yule book flood,” the tradition of giving books as gifts and spending Christmas Eve reading with your family. To achieve a flavor reminiscent of that holiday scene, he used a blend of Special B malt, a dark and fruity Belgian malt; Victory malt, which brings toasty and nutty flavors; and oak-smoked wheat for just a touch of smoke to mirror the experience of reading by a fire while being cozy and warm. A version of the beer has been made for the past several winters and is growing in popularity at Deschutes’ Portland and Bend taprooms. Matthias isn’t sure about Jólabókaflód’s future as a wider release, but says it will continue to be brewed for the taproom annually. Although released annually as a winter warmer, the beer is dosed with fresh spruce tips in place of dry hops, a step that provides aromas of citrus and melon. Because of the melding of flavors from all of these special ingredients, the beer benefits from smoked notes without tasting like a “smoked beer.” “The smoked wheat definitely provides a layer of complexity and nuance to the overall beer,” says Matthias. He also notes that the flavor intensity of smoked wheat is much more subtle than the smokiness of beechwood or cherrywood smoked malt. He says “Jola” as the brewers call it, is still a great beer well after the holiday season because of the nuanced smoke flavors. “When it gets too cold outside for campfires, you can bring the smoke in with you and get a similar sensation to cozying up around a fire,” he says. It was an idea closer to home that pushed Seedstock Brewing Company head brewer Jason Abbott to brew a smoked porter this January. “It is inspired by my grandpa’s pipe. He was in Europe during World War II. He didn’t talk about the war much, but he did talk about the smokey beers [from wartime],” Abbott says. He also brought back a number of tobacco pipes that have been passed down through generations. Abbott says the beer lands somewhere lighter than a porter but darker than a traditional rauchbier. It isn’t Abbott’s first time working with smoked malt and he’s comfortable balancing powerful flavors from the rustic malt. Seedstock has released a Gratzer, a traditional Polish style known for low gravity and clean smoked flavors, brewed with 100 percent smoked wheat malt, and also uses smoked malts as a twist in its Wee Heavy, a malt-forward Scottish style. Because smoke can impart everything from meaty to roasted and even spicy flavors in beer, Abbott reminds his customers, “Smoked beers vary greatly, and just because you don’t like one smoked beer doesn’t mean you won’t like another.” Our Mutual Friend Brewing Company may have made the most unique smoked malt profile of the specialty beers by using a single type of smoked malt for the entire grist. The phrase “traditional smoked beer” often conjures visions of German brewing heritage and the rauchbiers of Bamberg, but Jan Chodkowski, Our Mutual Friend’s head brewer, was chasing a different historical style: the Stjørdalsøl of Norway. Classic Stjørdalsøl is made with 100 percent alder wood smoked malt. To achieve this particular grist, Chodkowski teamed up with Colorado Malting Company to grow and malt its own barley and smoke it over alder wood. The result is a dark 9 percent ABV ale with “wonderful smoke character as well as toffee and dark fruit attributes,” Chodkowski says. Handcrafted malt is the star of the show here, so there are no additional flavors from other ingredients. “Smoked beers are perfect for winter and cold weather because they can provide perceived body and warmth without added alcohol or sweetness,” says Chodkowski. As the weather warms and customers look for brews made to enjoy in the springtime, Our Mutual Friend releases One Sunday Morning, a light smoked wheat beer with only 3.2 percent ABV — proving that smoke can bounce between cozy and refreshing. The article The Subtle Evolution of American Smoked Beer appeared first on VinePair. Via https://vinepair.com/articles/smoked-beer-evolution/ Via https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/the-subtle-evolution-of-american-smoked-beer |
John BoothHi I am John Booth,36 years old from California,CA,USA,working in Whole Seller market,we supply different types of Beverages to the market.Here I am sharing some special tips about it. Archives
August 2021
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