In Decorah, a trendy college town in Iowa, residents enjoy their drinks and calming farmland ambiance. The local watering hole, La Rana Bistro, may be another weekend meetup for these folks, but city slickers coming into town will be surprised. It’s no order-a-drink-watch-tv-and-leave type of bar. It has a small-town kind of friendliness––regional Iowa cocktails…
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King Spirits is both inspired and inspiring. The boutique distiller recently released Hope Town and Walker’s Cay, two new labels with a lot going for them and the communities they support. When I taste the smoke of the Kentucky barrels used in its bourbon, or feel the chill of the South Carolina springs in its…
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Fiorella Pizzeria is National Harbor’s unofficial pizza joint, known for its supreme pie with tasty homemade fennel sausage, meatballs, roasted peppers and olives. But I really needed a drink. A manager at the Club Wyndham National Harbor recommended the cocktails at Fiorella and introduced me to its general manager. He was right––I discovered it had…
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Salt Lake City is a pioneer town owing its foundation to the brave men and women who broke the trail to this fertile valley in the 1800s. But, when it comes to spirits, the land has grown into a valley of unrest. In the ides of August 2021, I visited a local distillery about 15…
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Everyone has tried hard ciders, and chances are my impressions of them are shared among many: they are a tasty novelty, and you pick up a six-pack every few months just as a change of pace or to refresh your memory of their delicious sweetness. But perhaps too sweet to consume on a regular basis.…
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Emphasis on delicious since the market is saturated with cocktails in bottles, cans and bags, whose origins of ingredients are questionable at best. I was hesitant to go through a taste test for each of these alcoholic options in the slow march of trial-and-error because 1: it’s a lot of work, and 2: I’ve never…
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I once tried some of my older brother’s homemade kombucha. He pulled it out from beneath his kitchen sink, and that should have been my first red flag. The floaty chunks should have been the second. That was a common way to brew it a decade ago, but this flora-diverse and fizzy drink has come…
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Look, I may not be able to tell if a coffee blend is mostly Peruvian or Columbian beans, but knowing “good” coffee is sort of like being the ONE in the Matrix. No one can tell you it’s good coffee, you just know it when you have it (have I lost the post-millennials already?). So…
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