Total Beverage

If you drink sparkling wines often, like I do, there are a few tips and tricks that will help with the logistics of those bottles and funky corks...

Beer is fragile and perishable and should be treated like the fruits and veggies you buy at the grocery store.  Think of it as liquid food...with a short shelf life.  Just like the apple slice that burns brown with exposure to oxygen, freshly bottled beer will one day turn sour and die.  He...

Spaghetti is a long, thin, cylindrical pasta made of semolina or flour, plus water.  It is thought that spaghetti first developed in southern Italy in the 12th century.  By the 19th century, spaghetti had become an emblem of Italian cuisine in its homeland and also in the United States. ...

I have a list: My Top Five Favorite Winemakers on Planet Earth.  And Ales Kristancic of Slovenia (across the border from Friuli, Italy) is at the top of the list.  Ales makes the most sensational wines from grapes indigenous to that part of Europe, often using maverick techniques and e...

First, the wine:  Kijafa Chocolate Cherry is a sweet dessert wine that has been made in Denmark and imported into the US since the 1840s.  You can sip it neat as an after-dinner dessert liqueur, or mix it with cola and pour over ice, or use it as a cooking ingredient.  (I've used this wine to...

Sediments and crystals may be present in your bottle but these may not be indicative of a faulty or "bad" bottle.  If you see these, smell and taste the beverage before concluding you have a faulty bottle.  If the beverage tastes "normal," no worries.  Here's what may be going on ... ...

Did you know that one in 12 bottles you purchase will contain a faulty beverage?  This is because beer and wine are living liquid foods...that can spoil just like produce items from your grocery store.  Faults or defects are unpleasant characteristics resulting from poor production practices o...

In the days before the ready availability of industrialized sports drinks like Gatorade or Powerade, and long before Emergen-C created their electrolytes-and-vitamin powder to mix with water (my fav hangover remedy), people had to resort to the refrigerator and pantry to come up with...

Sparkling wine (including Champagne) is a wine containing carbon dioxide to make it fizzy.  The carbon dioxide can result from natural processes like fermentation, or from the deliberate injection of carbon dioxide into the still wine.  In general, there are FIVE methods for carbonating s...

I drink sparkling wines year-round.  In fact, this is the type of wine that I drink most frequently, since they pair to foods really well and they are not that expensive.  Here's a list of some of my favorites in the store.  (NOTE: These are all brut.  If you want to know my favorite sweet bub...

Nicolas Feuillatte is one of the largest Champagne brands in the Champagne region of France (they sold more than 9 million bottles of Champagne last year).  They make lovely Champagnes that sell for $30 and up.  They also bottle two of their cuvees in cute little 187ml bottles that sell for a...

This is my favorite "special occasion" beer for New Years Eve, anniversaries, lottery winning celebrations, and any occasion where you would expect Champagne but prefer beer.  DeuS (Brut des Flandres) is a Belgian specialty beer fermented by the Bosteels Brewery in Buggenhout, Belgium.  A...

The classic Bellini cocktail is a peachy sparkling-wine cocktail that was rumored to have been created in the 1930s or 1940s at Harry's Bar in Venice, Italy.  Bartender Giuseppe Cipriani combined peach nectar and prosecco and named the resulting drink after his favorite painter, Giovanni ...