This new Thai spirit is made mostly from sugar cane and rice and is infused with a special blend of indigenous Thai herbs and spices. The highly secret Mekhong recipe delivers a distinctively rounder texture, delightful aroma and a smooth and more balanced taste than many golden spirits.
At 35% ABV, Mekhong makes some fun and flavourful cocktails. Mekhong has a golden, dark amber and reddish copper appearance and its flavour and aroma is both spicy and sweet with hints of ginger, honey, toffee, vanilla, floral, herbs and citrus.
If you’re lucky enough to have a bottle of Mekhong on hand, try …read more

I’m still working on my full-fledged “cocktail geek” status, but I’m starting to get into making my own syrups. Nothing too crazy at the moment, but I’m working on it! The Mixoloseum has a fantastic guest post by Chris Stanley about where you can source all of the weird ingredients to make all sorts of funky syrups and fun tinctures.
Chris lists all of my usual haunts – farmer’s markets, ethnic grocery stores and alternative or whole foods markets. What Chris did list, that aren’t usual haunts for me, were several different sites around the wild wild interwebs that offer several …read more

Brix26, a personalized wine recommendation service located in San Francisco at the crossroads of Napa and Sonoma. Created in 2005 by Peter Langenstein, Peter works
directly with many of California’s boutique wineries, obtaining the unique opportunity to taste hundreds of the finest varietals available. Brix26 clients are able to browse and purchase single wines or mixed cases on the website, and are encouraged to call or email Brix26 directly for one-on-one recommendations. Each bottle will be shipped directly to home or business, complete with customized tasting notes and the option for individual gift-wrapping.
Peter has put together some suggestions for wine lovers and …read more

There’s very little on my wish list for Christmas this year, a new tattoo (or contributions towards it!) would rock my world. That generally proves difficult to obtain however – the bigger ticket, non-tangible items, despite the fact that those are always the ones that are the most personal or the most appreciated.
In starting to build a list of actual tanglible gifts that someone can feel like they actually gave something comes the Fee Brother’s 6 pack of  hand selected cocktail bitters – West Indies Orange, Peach, Lemon, Grapefruit, Mint and Old Fashioned. These are unique and hard-to-find cocktail mixers.
Opened …read more

Tis the season for Bordeaux, the beautifully complex wine that collectors vie to get a single bottleof. In fact, a bottle of 1787 Chateau Lafite became the most expensive wine ever in 1985 when it sold for $210,000 at Christie’s.
The reason for this? Bordeaux completely embraces the concept of terroir: the idea that wines taste of their place. You can taste history in every single bottle of Bordeaux.
The weather is vital in Bordeaux, because these wines taste like their place and it’s that soil and weather that makes the ultimate grape. Each year, the Bordeaux region prays for serious sunshine, …read more

No trip to Las Vegas is complete without a sneak peek at the way “the beautiful people” live. Deep within the depths of the Luxor Hotel resides Noir Bar. The Luxor site doesn’t offer much information, except “private entrance, reservations required, dress code in effect.”
We were at LAX, which is one of the Luxor’s hot spots, (see my review of LAX coming soon), and were getting buffeted by the crowds. The manager pulled us aside and said “come with me…”
Leading us to a private elevator, we went swiftly and quietly up to another floor. To this day, despite the fact …read more

(image, Life’s a gasp)
Yep, that’s exactly what it looks like. A snake in a bottle of alcohol. Snake Whiskey.
What is snake whiskey? Well, it’s madness, a bottle of whiskey with a dead cobra inside,pieces of snake skin floating around in it, nasty! [source]
I, personally, didn’t find it nasty. I experienced it in a very weird way.
The Tall Ships came to Vancouver in the summer of 2005. I was working for one of the major sponsors of the festival and as such, got to go on all sorts of cool events pertaining to …read more

When I was in Seattle recently meeting Gary Vaynerchuk, I got to talking to my bartender. We talked cocktails, as is my wont, and he told me about this little place that I’d never heard of before. Called the ZigZag Cafe, it was apparently the place in Seattle for cocktails.
He told the story that these two young bartenders opened this place so that their friend, this older, rockstar bartender would have a place to shine. He told me that the ZigZag Cafe had, hands down, the most well stocked bar in the city.
I stopped in to check them out, and …read more

For that one person in your life who has everything, why not drop almost two million dollars on a bottle of booze?

Henri IV Dudognon Heritage Cognac Grande Champagne
This cognac comes in a crystal bottle dipped in more than four kilograms (almost 9 lbs) of 24K yellow gold and sterling platinum and encrusted with 6,500 certified brilliant-cut diamonds. The Dudognon Heritage Cognac Grande Champagne that has been aged in barrels for more than one hundred years.
Think I’m kidding? Check out the list of the most expensive bottles in the world over at Divine Caroline.
(image source: most-expensive-cognac.com)

I suppose after this post, I was opening the door for other wine-centric pet accessories. Charms and wine themed shampoo seems tame when you compare it to actually enjoying a glass with Fido.
Alice Wang has created a line of products that “explore how people treat their pets as human surrogates”. This includes a set of wine glasses for the happy couple. Creepy? Yeah, kind of. Humorous? Absolutely.
But wait…there’s more.
Hop on over to Dog Lovers Gift Baskets and you’ll find wine varietals like Pinot Lesheo and Meowlot. While I can’t comment on the taste and don’t think I’ll be running out …read more