Drink of the Week: Honest Tea Mango Green

We love Honest Tea's bottled teas for their pure tea flavor and subtle sweetness, so we were excited to try their newest offering, Mango Green. We find that mango can be a tough flavor to infuse into some drinks, but Honest Tea pulls it off perfectly with a natural mango flavor that complements, rather than competing with, the green tea. This organic tea is smooth and refreshing with just a touch of sweetness—perfect for cooling off during these warm-weather days.

July's Where to Drink Now: Noble Grape

“I’m no sommelier—I just know good wine,” says Alex Basich, co-owner of the Noble Grape, which opened this past week in Chicago’s Noble Square neighborhood. And it’s with that sensibility that Basich runs his 900 square-foot retail shop and event space in which small-batch, boutique wines share shelf space with local artisan spirits and craft microbrews. Noble Grape is eco-friendly, too: the warm, earth-toned walls are coated with VOC-free paint, the floors are covered in sustainable cork and many of the wines on offer are natural, organic or biodynamic. Situated amid a handful of BYOB restaurants—Spanish, Japanese, Italian—Basich stocks wines (and sakes) to complement the local restaurant fare, and in the coming weeks will offer $2 tricycle delivery service to restaurants within six blocks of the shop. Now that is noble.

802 N. Bishop St., Chicago; 312-846-1204; noblegrape.net

New Imbibe Sips Episode: The Hemingway Daiquiri

Check out the newest episode of Imbibe Sips in which Jeff Morgenthaler demonstrates how to make one of the most delicious classics, the Hemingway Daiquiri. This is one of those cocktails with a great backstory and with a recipe that's simple yet incredibly tasty—a perfect drink for a hot summer day.

Drink of the Week: The Declaration Cocktail

“I read somewhere once that, while writing the Declaration of Independence, our forefathers drank eight barrels of beer, wine and spirits,” says James MacWilliams, bartender at Canlis Restaurant in Seattle. “They consumed more alcohol and with less discrimination than we do today. The average was eight ounces of alcohol per person per day. With breakfast, they drank beer and wine; with dinner it was claret and Cognac. And they drank rum all the time.”

With all this in mind, MacWilliams crafted a cocktail that he could imagine the Founding Fathers hoisting to toast their newly minted Declaration of Independence (or to get them through the task of writing it). MacWilliams suggests using a spicy, high-proof rye whiskey like Rittenhouse and a rum with plenty of fruity notes, like Pyrat; for the beer, he suggests “something malty with some body—Firestone Walker Double Barrel Ale is my choice; it’s close to a beer Jefferson might have brewed.”

The Declaration
1 oz. rum
3/4 oz. rye whiskey
3/4 oz. brown sugar syrup (equal parts brown sugar and water)
6 oz. chilled beer
Tools: barspoon
Glass: 12 oz. glass, mug or boot

Build drink in glass and stir before serving.

James MacWilliams, Canlis Restaurant, Seattle

Tampering with Colombian Coffee Wood

Driving past the mounds of discarded coffee wood piled up near a Colombian coffee farm in Concordia, Colombia, gave Brian Franklin, owner of Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Double Shot Coffee, an idea. “[Our guide] said that people in town were experimenting with making furniture from the coffee wood,” he says. “I thought that if the wood was dense enough to make furniture, it could probably withstand being crafted into a custom tamper.” But not just any tamper—one made by Reg Barber, who has been handcrafting handles on espresso tampers for 15 years. “I stuffed a big piece of the wood in my backpack, managed to get it past customs and immediately sent it off to Reg Barber,” says Franklin, who five months later received three tony tampers from Barber. But do they make for a better cup of coffee? “I don’t know,” Franklin admits. “They’re kind of like a museum piece and just too pretty to use. But one of these days I’m going to just have to go for it.”

For more on Reg Barber and his custom coffee tampers, check out Around the World in 20 Cups in the March/April 2009 issue of Imbibe.

Drink of the Week: 2008 Ponzi Arneis

With ideal weather patterns throughout the spring, summer and fall, 2008 is looking like an exceptional vintage for winemakers in Oregon's Willamette Valley, and today's Drink of the Week is a perfect example. Ponzi wines rarely disappoint, and their 2008 Arneis is no exception. Ponzi is the only winery in Oregon producing Arneis, an Italian varietal traditionally grown in Italy's Northern Piedmonte region, and their 2008 vintage is crisp and vibrant with a touch of minerality and juicy notes of fresh apple and pear. This is a great summer wine perfect for pairing with chicken, fish or a fresh fruit salad, and at $20 a bottle, the price is just right.

Two Weeks to Tales

Tales of the Cocktail is only two weeks away, and we're already gearing up for the festivities. The schedule of seminars and tastings looks great this year, but we're especially looking forward to the Spirited Dinners, which we're sponsoring with St. Germain. We've seen all of the pairing menus for this year's dinners, and we're seriously blown away by the creativity. The bartenders and chefs collaborating this year are really taking things up a notch, so anyone planning to attend has a lot to look forward to. A number of the dinners are already selling out, so if you've had your eyes on a particular venue, be sure to get your tickets quickly so you can secure a seat. We have a sneak peek of the menus on our website, but here's another taste of what's in store at the ZOË dinner, which has Willy Shine and Jacques Bezuidenhout creating cocktails to match dishes from chef Roberto Bustillo in what looks to be an incredible a five-course meal.

Corn-Crusted Scallop
U-10 scallop dusted in ground air-dried corn and seared served over pickled watermelon and candied lardon chow-chow

paired with

Sandia Fresca
2 oz. Del Maguay San Luis mezcal
1 oz. sweet vermouth
1 1⁄4 oz. watermelon juice
1⁄2 oz. Averna
Tools: shaker, strainer
Glass: cocktail

Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into a chilled glass.