It’s not often one can take several weeks off, pile into a car, and hit the open road without any significant responsibilities piling up (or email inboxes overflowing). I was able to do just that in January, before starting my…

In his recent book, Biting the Hands That Feed Us (Island Press, 2016), food-policy scholar Baylen Linnekin exposes many of America’s nightmare food laws. From the so-called “cheese board rule” that contemplated forbidding cheesemakers from aging their cheese on wooden…

Craft distilling may be undergoing a renaissance, but in the shadow of George Washington’s Mount Vernon (home to one of the nation’s first distilleries), you can barely get a full flight of whiskey. Were Washington, our nation’s original craft distiller,…

Virginia may be for lovers, but the state’s draconian liquor laws make nights out on the town not so lovely. The commonwealth is home to some of America’s worst alcohol laws. Up until 2008 sangria was treated as contraband and…