Category: Uncategorized

On Saturday, April 18, we marked the date of the 120th anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire that destroyed about 80% of the city. I partnered with Argonaut California Brandy and we stopped into three bars (my usual tour only stops inside one) for cocktails and light snacks. It was a great…

The new Bourbon Steak by Michael Mina in the St. Francis hotel in San Francisco’s Union Square is a huge deal. Attached to it is a smaller bourbon lounge, created in partnership with Warriors’ basketball superstar Stephen Curry.  For my first story for SFGate.com (a website that was formerly the website of the SF Chronicle…

For over ten years now I've been making clear ice in an Igloo cooler in my freezer, a method I first developed in 2009. You fill a hard-sided cooler with water, stick in the freezer with the top off, and the ice freezes perfectly clear from the top-down, leaving only the bottom part cloudy if…

The answer is “no.”

Party Trick! Using an insulated cooler and some gift boxes, you can make super clear tall collins glass ice spears with mini bottles frozen inside them. 

And all the information about it is on this page right here.  No recipes, no tasting notes. Just a little history of the bitter highball from 1630 to today.  

You are awesome. 

Note: This book is sold out! Some of the material is included in my book Doctors and Distillers, due out in July 2022!  In the meantime, two books on tonic that I love are Just the Tonic [amazon][bookshop] and Something & Tonic [amazon][bookshop]     The extraordinary and hilarious history of one of the world’s…