Kevin Kosar
We all have heard the story: manufacturing is dying in America. All the good blue collar jobs are moving to Mexico and China. America’s middle-class employment has been hollowed out — the few get lucrative white collar jobs, and pretty…
Where better to start a tour of the American Whiskey Trail than at Mount Vernon? George Washington often has been called the father of our grand nation — the prototype of this new man, the American. Appropriately, he owned a…
Steven Grasse’s Colonial Spirits (Abrams Image, 2016) is the wackiest drinks book I have ever read. (I state this with admiration, and a bit of jealousy.) And I’ve read more than my share, and written a couple. It starts with the 19th-century-like…
When you think of Texas alcohol, you usually think of good ole Shiner beer. The state is more famous for its beer than anything else. However, some new spirits have come out of the Lone Star State that might change…
What comes to mind when one reads the word “Sardinia”? Sardines? That island where Napoleon was exiled? (Actually, he cooled his heels in Elba.) Anything? The difficulty of mentally associating much of anything with Sardinia is understandable — it’s a…
The U.S. drinks business is booming, despite the finger-wagging by neo-prohibitionists. Last year’s liquor volume sales climbed 2.4 percent to 220 million cases, and the revenues were up 4.5 percent to $25.2 billion according to data released by the Distilled…
When you think of Mexican beer, light lagers like Corona, Pacifico, and Negro Modelo probably come to mind. But American-style craft beer also has been gaining market-share for years. With 60 million potential customers and $20 billion in annual revenue,…
I am a seasonal drinker. What tastes best to me in the summer swelter is not what I hoist in the chillier months. Since the cold began its bite some weeks back, for example, I have not had a single…
December 5 was Repeal Day. Eighty-three years have passed since that dreadful social experiment, Prohibition, was killed. We think we are living in strange times — but what a weird era that was. Politics makes strange bedfellows, and what an…
One of New York City’s oldest bars recently was shut down for a few days. McSorley’s Old Ale House has operated in the East Village for 162 years and even kept its doors open during Prohibition. (It peddled “near beer” during…
