Drink

Milk and tea seem to be a topic that is popping up on this blog quite a bit lately. From exploring the correct way to add milk to A Tea Drinker’s Experiment with Milk to my own toe-dipping into the whole issue of whether milk should be put in the cup first or not, the […]

I’ve written about that elusive creature known as the perfect cup of tea on a number of occasions now. My most recent thoughts are here. I’m still not convinced that such an item exists. But I guess all we can do is to try our best to get as close as we can to that […]

At Bigelow Tea we are grinning from ear to ear during National Smile Month. We couldn’t be happier to tell you that smiles can make you happy! Yes, smiling begets more smiling, and it has been shown that when you smile more, you are happier.  Some recent studies have suggested that our emotions are reinforced—maybe even determined—by their equivalent facial expressions. That happens to us all the time: drinking our tea puts a smile on our face and instantly we feel happy and content. Or maybe it’s the other way around, indulging in our favorite tea flavors make us cheery, and then we smile more. Whichever the case, we are beaming with joy just because of our tea! On top of that happy news, green tea studies have shown that drinking tea may be one of the best (and simplest) things you can do to protect your teeth!  Tea is a natural source of fluoride, which is known to protect against tooth decay. In addition, Green tea has been shown via many studies to inhibit the growth of many of the bacteria that cause bad breath. A double bonus when we flash our pearly whites! So, whether you grab a delicate cup of Green Tea or a fabulous, hearty Black Tea like our aristocratic Earl Grey, you’ll be doing yourself a favor. It will put a stunning smile on your face and just might elevate your mood. We couldn’t ask for much more from a little cup of tea!  Image via, Flickr

I’m always on the lookout for new tea blends – encountering a new tea blend piques my curiosity.  A few months ago, when I was in San Francisco attending the Fancy Food Show, I visited a mall and noticed a small demo stand providing samples of David’s Tea.  From its bright turquoise logo to its young, chipper demo girls, I knew that this was going to be interesting.  Based on the long line of eager consumers waiting for a taste, it was clear others were just as interested.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered that they also had a retail store in the mall.   I’m not the biggest fan of flavored tea, but when I looked through David’s Tea’s extensive list of tea blends, I realized that was their specialty.  They have the typical classics, like Earl Grey and English Breakfast, but they also carry some concoctions that makes one wonder, “Where is the actual tea?”  One “blend” even included popcorn.  Then it became clear to me.  Looking around their clean, somewhat minimalist store design, their bright colors and cheerful and calming ambiance, and especially their way of presenting teas, it was obvious that this brand was trying to be the next Starbucks.  Oh, and did I mention that their teas are all loose leaf?  With beautiful, almost artistic images of their teas that have names like “Fantasy Island,” “Bamboozled,” and “Countess of Seville,” David’s Tea is marketing to a new niche market of tea drinkers.  Just as Starbucks changed how people view and are willing to pay for coffee, David’s Tea seems to be attempting the same model.  And it looks to be working.   David’s Tea is barely five years old and it’s taking the U.S. by storm.  The company was founded in 2008 by a young, 30-something Canadian, David Segal, and his cousin, Herschel Segal.  They realized a new shift toward and “awakening” to tea.  According to David, “Tea had a stodgy reputation.  It was either very British or Asian. We made it North American and Modern.”  The result is very similar to Starbucks.  In New York City alone, there are four retail stores and I expect to see more by the end of the year.  It’s even becoming somewhat of a tourist attraction for bloggers like this Massachusetts student, who states, “If you are an extreme tea-lover who wants high-quality tea for a reasonable price, David’s is the place to be.” While I am not a fan of their teas (maybe it’s my English side that prefers regular ol’ Earl Grey), I can appreciate what they are doing for the tea industry.  They are bringing a new energy to tea and most specifically to loose-leaf tea.   However, could they disrupt the industry to where the younger/next generation of tea drinkers prefers a “Copabanana” to a nice cuppa Darjeeling?  I’m very curious to see how the brand will expand and what its impact will be on next generation of tea drinkers.  Seeing as how T Ching is a community of tea lovers and experts, what are your thoughts on David’s Tea? The post David’s Tea: The new “Starbucks” of tea? appeared first on T Ching.

It’s going to be a cool and rainy Memorial Day weekend here in the Northeast–boooo! So I’ll spare you the dummer quaffers and hit you with something structured yet fun and gulpable at the same time: Sunier, Fleurie, 2011. It turns out that although Julien Sunier is from Burgundy, he’s not from a wine family. In fact, his mother is a hair stylist. One of her customers was Christophe Roumier who allowed young Julien to to work at the Domaine, where he decided that the whole wine thing was pretty fun. After exploring the wine world’s corners in California and New Zealand he came back to Burgundy and later Beaujolais, starting making his own wines in 2008. He has parcels in Fleurie, Morgon and Regnié that have old vines, which he hand harvests and uses indigenous yeasts in the fermentations in concrete vats. After the fermentation, the wines are aged in older Burgundy barrels from… Christophe Roumier. I bought the 2011 Fleurie for $25 (find this wine). It’s worth seeking out. I give it my highest (Beaujolais?) rating: quickly emptied. The post Sunier, Fleurie, 2011 appeared first on Dr Vino's wine blog.

Most of you probably know the highly successful Elements of Islay bottling range by Speciality Drinks. Here the Islay distilleries have been assigned pseudo-chemical symbols, so the bottles look like as if were snatched from the shelf of a chemistry lab. Wouldn’t it be nice to expand this concept to a full-blown periodic table like the ones gracing the walls of school rooms and university lecture theatres? After all, there is a lof of chemistry going on in whisky making, so the analogy is not entirely pointless. After quite a few hours of data collection, brain tormenting and formatting here is the result, downloadable as PDF file: The table contains both working and closed Scottish malt and grain whisky distilleries as well as a selection of important blend brands. Displayed data includes founding and closing years, number of stills (malt distilleries only), production capacity and current ownership. Two major issues had to be tackled: the assignment of symbols and the ordering. The table has more than 150 entries, and symbol assignment was not an easy task. To avoid confusion, the Elements of Islay symbols should not be altered, and there should be no one-letter symbols to avoid the impression that some distilleries or brands were something special or somehow rated above others. Since there are more than 30 “Glen” distilleries, not every distillery can have a two-letter symbol starting with its first letter. Three-letter symbols were out of question. So for some of the Glens the second part of the name was used for symbol assignment. A special case is Glengyle that received the Ki symbol. Suitable second letters after G were running out, so Ki was chosen to represent Kilkerran which is the brand name Glengyle uses for its whisky. Unlike in chemistry the ‘elements’ are not numbered. The number of a chemical element equals the number of protons in an atom, clearly defining it. For a whisky distillery there is no equivalent, only the founding dates could justify a numbering, but then the entire table would have to be based on that. How should the distileries be ordered then? In chemisty the elements are grouped by periodic similarities in the configuration of electrons, so it could be argued that whisky distilleries should be grouped by similarities in style. But while some distilleries like Laphroaig or Glenfarclas do indeed have rather distinctive house styles, others like Benriach or Bruichaddich offer a wide variety of styles. Experimentation with casks and peating levels have steadily increased, so grouping distilleries by style would cause a serious headache. In this table the active malt whisky distilleries are horizontally grouped by geography. The concept of whisky regions has often been criticized, also on this very blog, not the least because of the problems of styles just mentioned. But used simply as a geographic guiding line, it can be useful for an overview of distilleries. Lowlands and Islay take the outer ends – if there are any regions that display at least a minimum of regional character, than these two. Islands next to Islay is fairly straightforward, the remaining distilleries are grouped by a virtual tour across the Scottish Highlands with Speyside in the centre. The grouping is of course subjective because there are no clearly defined sub-regions. Vertical arrangement is by distillery capacity from low to high. Closed malt whisky distilleries as well as grain whisky distilleries and blended whisky brands are ordered alphabetically. Capacity data for closed distilleries is hard to find and thus omitted. And regional grouping would have looked very patchy. Lochside and Loch Lomond are only listed as malt whisky distilleries, even though they produce(d) also grain whisky. Please note that Carsebridge was founded in 1799 as malt distillery, it only switched to grain in the mid-1850s. The limited space of the table does not permit to include sub-brands like Longrow or Ledai

There wasn’t much happening drink-wise in Episode 5. That was fine. There was a lot of heavy history happening in that episode – I’ll forgive them a lack of cocktails. That brings us to episode 6, where Roger starts picking up clients in airport lounges. The orders start with Roger drinking (ewww) water with an onion and ordering a Jim Beam, double, for his friend. I was all set to tell you all about the history of Jim Beam, but then something interesting happened. Bert ordered a spirits of elderflower. Let’s talk about that. Elderflower liqueur is one of my favorites. I love to ask a craft bartender to create a drink for me – whatever they want – using elderflower. I’ve also used it in sugar cookies and it’s quite tasty. The brand you’ll see on the shelf most often these days is St-Germain. If you’re familiar with Paris, you’re probably already recognizing the name of the famous street, St Germain, where Hemingway wrote and Picasso painted. The St-Germain web site describes its signature liqueur as follows: “It has been said that Paris is a mélange curieux, a curious mixture of flavors, styles and influences. So it is with St-Germain.”  Technically, the liqueur is made from elderberries, but you’ll taste everything from flowers to peaches to grapefruits in the liqueur. Honestly,  I enjoy drinking it on its own. It’s also quite wonderful mixed with champagne or sparkling wine. Here’s the classic St Germain cocktail, straight from their web site. I was so tickled by their “variation” that I grabbed the thing as an image instead of retyping. Have a laugh … and have a cocktail.

A month of discussing the book, Canadian Whisky: The Portable Expert reaches its grand finale on Sunday, May 26, 2013, at 3:00 eastern time. Please join us on Twitter for the final installment of #DavinTT. This week we’ll be discussing Chapters 22 through 25 while we sip a wee dram of Canadian whisky. If you want to join in, any Canadian whisky will do. However, this week we are discussing Highwood, Hiram Walker, Forty Creek, and Valleyfield distilleries so if you have a whisky from one of these distilleries on hand, all the better. Search for #DavinTT on Twitter at 3:00 eastern time, Sunday and join in the discussion, add your comments and discuss a Canadian whisky you are tasting. We invite bloggers to blog about the book, the experience, and the whiskies. Let the fun begin! If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch with @WhiskyLassie on Twitter. Canadian Whisky: The Portable Expert is available at Barnes & Noble, Chapters/Indigo, and many other fine bookstores, or on-line at Amazon.com and Amazon.ca. And don’t forget, Father’s Day is just around the corner. There is nothing Dad would like better than a book about Canadian whisky!

Cheap and cheerful. Big fat bubbles, sweet tasting. Fam [...]The post Nino Franco Prosecco. Prosecco but not as you know it… appeared first on The Wine Sleuth.

Issue 168 of the International Wine Cellar, published last week, leads off with our most extensive coverage to date of new releases from Napa and Sonoma, featuring tasting notes on nearly 1,800 wines. The new issue also includes in-depth coverage of Bordeaux 2012 and a special report on the  wines of South Africa. For as little as $19.95 for a two-month subscription, you can get immediate and unlimited access to the current issue, as well as to the easily searchable and sortable IWC data base of over 100,000 tasting notes. Whatever you normally spend on a bottle, the International Wine Cellar will help you become a smarter consumer and drink better wine. READ MORE »