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Survey: after-dinner drink, what’s yours?
If the server came up to you in a restaurant and said that one glass of any after-dinner drink was on the house what would you have? [survey now closed] Or post your thoughts in the comments. tags:...
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XO XO from Cognac with love
Winston Churchill. Kim Jong-Il. Jay-Z. Segolene Royal. What’s probably the one thing they have in common? Cognac! With fans as diverse as this, how could I not know more about this distinctive...
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Cognac Q&A with Eric Felten
Eric Felten is the author of the “How’s Your Drink?” column in the the Wall Street Journal. I enjoy his spirits writing and, in particular, his story “Cognac and its cognoscenti” from last June. So I...
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Cognac word of the day: alembic
The word of the day from my Cognac trip is: alembic. It’s the distinctive still that the wine must pass through–twice–to become the eau-de-vie that is cognac. Known in French as the alambic...
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Barrel sample, cognac style
Domique Touteau, cellar master at Delamain, draws a sample from a 1967 barrel of Cognac. Instead of a pipette, more common in the wine world, he uses a “prouvette.” The prouvette is a glass vial tied...
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The colors of Cognac
When a distilled spirit is 70 percent alcohol, can you taste the difference? In Cognac, the answer is yes. The cellar master receives the samples of the distillate and smells them for their aromatic...
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Mummifying cognac in demi-johns
Perhaps you’ve read about–or even tried–cognacs that are over a century old. But given that it can’t last more than 55 years in the oak barrel, what’s the next step? Demi-johns. These large glass...
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Judge this cognac by its bottle
Cognac bottles come in all shapes and sizes. In fact the relatively new Cognac Museum has a whole room dedicated to their historical evolution. Some look like wine bottles while others look more like...
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A warming whisky on a wintry day
On a frigid day last week, I traversed the frozen tundra bundled in a coat, scarf, hat and gloves to attend a tasting. It wasn’t the ordinary type of tasting I attend: a man with a kilt greeted me. I...
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Blind tasting the hooch: brown bagging three dark spirits
Do you know your spirits? Try tasting them blind. Brown bag optional. Taking a page from the blind wine tasting, we’ve been subjecting dinner guests to blind spirits tastings recently. I pour three...
View ArticleAll quotes edition – Tasting sized pours
How great it is “2005 was my best vintage–until 2006.” Franz Pichler of FX Pichler in Austria told me at a tasting. Why drink wine? “Twenty five years ago people drank wine for three reasons: 1)...
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Proof is not in the bottle: Maker’s Mark waters down
Maker’s Mark has high demand, says Beam Inc., the bourbon brand’s owner. So high, that they will be lowering the alcohol in the bottle from 45% to 42%, or 84 proof. Hey, wait–I thought the consumer was...
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