Happy Hour

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Tech Tool: Find wine tastings in your zip code

Tuesday, October 21st, 2008

LocalWineEvents.com is a helpful website for anyone looking to learn more about wine or just throw back some free sips around town.

On the main page you select your location, and then you will be presented with a long list of current wine (and sometimes food) tastings, dinners, tours, lessons, and classes near where you live.

I subscribe to the newsletter version (“The Juice”), which is emailed to me every week or so. I prefer the layout of the newsletter because I find it easier to scroll down looking for events with “free” in the cost column.

Thanks to LocalWineEvents.com I have discovered some good wine shops as well as nice wines. Sometimes if I know I’ll have an hour to kill in Manhattan between, say, an appointment and dinner, I will look up whatever events might be in that area during that time. Nothing passes the time like a few tastes of wine.

Happy Hour: Cider by the pint

Thursday, October 9th, 2008

There are two types of people: beer lovers and beer non-lovers.

To the exasperation of nearly everyone I know, I am not a beer lover. For many years I thought that I would develop a taste for it, just as I did with coffee, wine, blue cheese, and many liquors. But alas… after years of trying, it’s still not my thing.

In London I discovered that I’m not totally incapable of enjoying a frosty pint with friends on the bank of the Thames after an afternoon spent shopping at Borough Market. Cider. Cider! Refreshing and tasty.  Many pubs offer various types that were fun to sample.

To most beer lovers, cider is overly sweet and… pathetic, maybe? But for me, it works.