Scientists in the UK have quantified the beer goggle effect. (via cd)
Winerd (wine + nerd, get it?) is a board game that involves wine tasting and looks like a cross between Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, and Asshole.
Interview with Sidney Frank, the guy who brought Jagermeister to the US in a big way and sold his Grey Goose vodka brand to Bacardi for more than $2 billion.
Steven Shapin reviews Tom Standage’s A History of the World in 6 Glasses, a “social life of beverages”. Standage is one of my favorite technology/culture writers; he wrote about the telegraph in The Victorian Internet.
Steve makes prison wine out of moldy bread, ketchup, grape juice, raisins, garbage bags, and tube socks. “It’s hard to believe this started out as a bag of fruit snacks and grape juice. Yet somehow these ingredients went from sweet and child-like to harsh and alcoholic quicker than Lindsay Lohan.”
This review of Per Se mentions their non-alcoholic wine pairings. “With each course, we were given a beverage - ranging from grape juice to steamed milk - which complimented the tastes in the dish. Libby’s ‘Red Rice and Beans’ was completed by a lime margarita. My foie gras with a gossamer grape juice that was finer than most wines.”