How to Drink at Work
While it’s not technically a professional drinking event, there are some similar tips you can keep in mind when it comes to ordering wine if you’re on a date.
The first rule of drinking on a date is not to get hammered. It can happen easily – both of you are nervous, the drinks flow well, especially if the company is good and before you know it, you can’t stand so good. So watch your consumption, particularly on a first date, it’s not a good look.
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One of the great ways to expand your palate beyond a wine club is by tasting wine with friends. This is one of the ways Sommeliers grow their wine knowledge, they taste a broad diversity of wines – lots of grapes from lots of regions. You can pretty easily emulate this yourself.
A Tasting Group
The simple move is to find some friends that want to expand their wine knowledge and invite them over. The usual rule is that everyone brings a bottle to share with the group and they have to know something about what they brought so they share the wine and the knowledge. This doesn’t have to break the bank. There are lots of wines with great typicity under $20 a bottle.
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Yup, it’s confusing: sometimes a wine is named by the grape used to make it and sometimes it is named by the area that it is grown. Lots of time, there is no indication of the grape used in this second group – you are just somehow supposed to know.
So how does this break down and what are the few things you might want to remember?
Continue reading “Wine Naming: Grapes or Places?”
There has been a rise of the celebrity bartender and the use of local fresh ingredients. I think that’s a great thing and offers a chance to have some fun with a cocktail before we head to dinner and wine. Most of these drinks are not designed to pair with food, but rather they are meant to be enjoyed stand alone.
Even with the explosion of cocktails and craft cocktails, they generally follow the structure of one of the drinks listed below. I picked 20 cocktails that can certainly be called classic but it would be easy to argue more onto the list and I wouldn’t object.
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While I mostly write about wine, the synonymous liquor and spirits are an important part of professional drinking and it’s worth knowing the basics. I am just going to cover a few of the major ones, but there are dozens I am not covering including variations of the ones in this article. Apologies if I missed your favorite.
Continue reading “The Lowdown on Liquors”