Hungarian born actor Bela Lugosi cemented our perception of Dracula in 1931 with his iconic portrayal of the vampire. The movie was part of the golden age of Universal’s monster films, and has helped shape our perception of multiple horror icons, including Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, and The Wolfman. Along with the imagery, the vocal […]
Happy Halloween ghosts and ghouls! Just in time for the big night, we’ve got a handful of fun cocktails to help you scare up some good times (and I promise the cocktails are much more enjoyable than the writing!). Leading things off for our Halloween Inspired Cocktails 2019 is Slimer. Halloween Inspired Cocktails 2019 – […]
Rittenhouse Rye Bottled-In-Bond was one of the first, and most affordable, liquors I was able to purchase after I got seriously into cocktails. This standby staple is a go to in our collection, and from a value for money perspective – it’s not particularly hard to see why. Rittenhouse sparkles with a nutty nose, laced […]
Disclosure – This article was written from approximately March through the end of August. The long snapshot let me see Scotch & Soda’s ups and downs over the period. Traveling extensively for work in manufacturing over the years, I’ve found myself in such enticing places as Danville, VA and Tulare, California. In my line of […]
Although I’ve waxed poetic to friends about the amazing cocktail scene in the Bentonville area of Northwest Arkansas, I’ve yet to actually get around to writing about one of the many fine establishments. Although the first I found was Scotch & Soda, a recent trip to the area turned me on to Onyx Coffee Lab. […]
On El Dorado’s website, they have a reference to their use of wood in the process of aging. It reads, “We are patient. Very patient.”. Sometimes it’s hard to remember when you consume a spirit that it takes a long time to get from agricultural raw material to final production bottle. If you’re wondering just […]
Back in 2010 I was fortunate enough to Pappy Van Winkle 23 in a bar in Manhattan. Ironically – and at the risk of being called a heathen – I didn’t think much of it – ranking it a solid 3 points out of 10 below the Sunatory 1984. This probably wasn’t a fair […]
A few days back I posted about Passoa Passion Fruit Liqueur. As I mentioned in the review, there aren’t a whole bunch of cocktails that immediately come to the forefront with Passoa. The most prominent is The Porn Star Martini, a mix of vodka, Passoa, lime, and vanilla simple. To say this drink is sweet […]
Every now and then you just have to give into your impulses. On our trip to Florida, we greatly enjoyed indulging in a great variety of cocktails and liquors, including various rums that we can’t get in the Northeast Ohio. Packing up the bottle luggage* for the flight home, we had a little extra room, […]
Lemon Hart 151 Rum is an iconic rum in the Tiki world. Called out by many great cocktail books (including Trader Vic himself and Death & Co.) I went into this one with high hopes. Coming out of it, I’m not sure I can say Lemon Hart 151 isn’t great, but rather might be a […]
For Christmas last year, I got Ann Marie a copy of Smuggler’s Cove’s book and our rum collection hasn’t been the same since. The book is a fantastic overview of tiki, talking through the history, providing recipes, and more importantly a list of rums to make the recipes. The list of rums is broken down […]
Many years ago – when I was still wrestling with the basics of cocktails, and craft cocktails were still up and coming, I read Boozehound by Jason Wilson*. The book was mesmerizing to me and opened my mind to a broad range of ideas that included Liquor Store Archeology and that Bitter is Bella. Now […]