During Tales of the Cocktail this year, I decided to make a trip down to see Celebration Distillation – home of Old New Orleans Rum. I wanted to get an inside look at how this small American distillery was producing a unique collection of rums that they claim captures the essence of the Crescent City [...]
Rum
Having just spent a week in New Orleans carousing with other spirit and cocktail bloggers, listening to various expert panels discuss the past, present, and future of spirits and cocktails, and sampling a few wares from various producers, one might say I’ve got the Crescent City on the brain.I had so much fun in New [...]
Home safe and sound from Tales of the Cocktail, and I’m still nowhere near caught up in all of my writing…or my detox. It was a dizzyingly enjoyable trip that included a lot of different cocktails that are special to the city that calls itself “The Birthplace of the Cocktail”. I sat in bars with [...]
Tales of the Cocktail may have officially started on July 16, but for several intrepid rum-lovers, the festivities got going on a little earlier.On Tuesday, July 15, Ed Hamilton opened the 2008 Ministry of Rum Tasting Competition. This year’s competition saw 24 judges sitting on a panel to judge more than 60 different rums and [...]
10:27am – Finally got my wireless working so I won’t be using my blazing fast cellphone for this. I don’t think there were this many island shirts and straw hats at Jeff Berry’s tiki-themed Spirited Dinner. Jeff “Beachbum” Berry, Wayne Curtis, Martin Cate, and Stephen Remsberg. Behind the bar toils the entirety of what we’ve [...]
OK, so maybe I’m a little crazy for trying to squeeze in a rum review the day before I start my Tales of the Cocktail adventure. I’ve been called worse. Sometimes though, there’s just a rum that calls to you…that sits there on your shelf, taunting you, flirting with you with it’s curvy bottle and [...]
It’s getting close…so close that I can already taste the gumbo, feel the sticky humidity, and the soothing coolness of the next cocktail in my hand.That’s right, Tales of the Cocktail is nearly upon us. I’m so excited – and so ridiculously busy getting prepared for it – that I can hardly hold still. I’m [...]