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…

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…

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…

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…

What’s the difference between a beer can and a mayonnaise jar? It sounds like the opening to a bad joke, but it’s also the basis for a legal and regulatory battle being waged between the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC)…

All too many hotel bars are little more than shoddy afterthoughts, soulless spaces where hotel guests, and almost no one else, may grab a quick drink or two before setting off for — or after returning from — somewhere more…

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…