Best Sips

Good Beer, Here!

When we think about all the fantastic, frothy, hoppy goodness coming our way at the end of the month, we can barely stein it! We mean stand it! See? Beer on the brain.

Get Your Passport for NYC Good Beer Month!

The craft-brew fest firm Get Real Presents has teamed up with the New York State Brewers Association for a month-long world beer immersion program, if you will, with great local brewers like Empire, Shmaltz, and Sixpoint participating, too.

Hillrock’s New Single Malt Rocks the Glass

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.

Pre-Game Sippin’: 2012 Macari Sauvignon Blanc

With Brooklyn Uncorked mere days away (woo hoo!), 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.

The Good Stuff at Brooklyn Uncorked!

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.

Bacardi Superior Rum

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.

Eden Orleans Aperitif Cider

When Eleanor and Albert Leger left behind careers in software and teaching chemistry, respectively, they bought a farm in Vermont and discovered something special: the apples of the North Country.