Author: Camper English
-
Not Everything is a Martini
I wrote a story for AlcoholProfessor on how we’re backsliding into calling things Martinis that are not Martinis, the causes of that, and the previous thinking (circa 1990s) on the definition. Read the story here.
-
Saratoga Water… Now from Texas
I noted in a previous post that Saratoga water was coming from different source now. Well since then I found another different list of springs from the East Coast on a bottle. And then today I opened a new case of sparkling Saratoga and it’s from Texas! That’s quite a switch. I’ll have to take…
-
Vinegar from Bourbon and Eau de Vie
“At the Leopold Bros distillery in Denver, Colorado, brothers Todd and Scott Leopold go to great lengths to create high quality spirits using slow, inefficient, Old-World techniques. And then they dump some of those carefully-made spirits into a big vat filled with bacteria.” I wrote about Leopold Bros vinegars for VinegarProfessor.com: They start with spirits…
-
The Medical Claims of Suze
In my book Doctors and Distillers, I wrote a lot about the medicinal history of bittering agents used in many aperitifs, herbal liqueurs, and amaros. Suze is a gentian liqueur, and gentian is one of the most (if not the most) important bittering agents. The others are cinchona, wormwood, and to a lesser extent, rhubarb…
-
Is the Anti-“Frisco” Movement Racist?
On one of my Bar and Cocktail History tours, a guest asked (or rather suggested) that the whole “Don’t Call it Frisco” thing is specifically anti-Black. I hadn’t thought about it, and decided to investigate. People have been trained on “Don’t Call it Frisco” much in the way that they’re trained to say that shaking…
-
New Water Tasting Class Dates for Fall 2026
I added some dates for my Water Tasting classes. More info is here.
-
Educational Development Around Brands – and Photos from Tales of the Cocktail 2026
I wrote a post for LinkedIn but I’ll cross-post it here as I wanted to share photos from my Tales of the Cocktail Seminar anyway: I create hands-on, interactive learning and tasting experiences around cocktails and spirits (and ice and water) for bartenders and, more recently, consumers. Through my 20+ years leading industry education sessions…
-
Talking About Water Tasting on the News
I was the guest in the newsroom at KTVU, based in Oakland, CA, to talk about my Water Tasting Classes. The segment went super fast, but I overcame my cringe to watch it and I think I did pretty good! (Ignore the fact that I spilled the Gerolsteiner and couldn’t open the first Vichy Catalan…
-
Temperature vs TDS of Water
In my Water Tasting Classes, we use low-end TDS (total dissolved solids) meters to check the TDS of still waters before tasting them. Not only are the TDS meters not the top of the line, another reason they don’t always match the reported TDS (bottled waters put this info on their websites – Fiji is…