A guide to getting out of your beverage comfort zone once a week for a year. Each of the fifty-two chapters features the story behind a unique beer, spirit, cocktail or wine, designed to broaden your drinking horizons. Some correspond with specific seasons or holidays, encouraging you to forget the million-dollar marketing-supported "conventional wisdom" and drink against the grain. It's Cinco de Mayo? There's much more to the celebration than lime-enhanced...

"Elegant man-about-town and the director of Bridesmaids, Spy, and A Simple Favor Paul Feig serves up a beautifully designed cocktail and lifestyle guide with hilarious stories"-- Feig is obsessed with cocktails and cocktail culture. To him cocktails are more than just drinks: they are about having great conversations with friends: staying home, mixing a drink, and sipping it as you watch a great old movie with a loved one or even by yourself. Here...

When 11-year-old Daley's parents separate, she is thrust into a chaotic adult world. Unable to place her allegiance, she vacillates between the liberal, socially committed realm of her mother and the conservative, liquor- soaked life of her father. But when her mother leaves, Daley's father's basest impulses are unleashed and she must choose between her own survival and the charismatic father she loves. As she nears adulthood, Daley retreats from...

Alcohol can be an item of diet, a medicine, sometimes an element in religious ritual. It is a valued object for the connoisseur, a traded commodity and a symbol of national pride (wine for instance in France, whisky in Scotland). The range of social and medical problems associated with alcohol and the history of related treatment methods (including the temperance movement, prohibition, AA and a range of contemporary approaches) are considered here....

Amy Stewart explores the dizzying array of herbs, flowers, trees, fruits, and fungi that humans have, through ingenuity, inspiration, and sheer desperation, contrived to transform into alcohol over the centuries.

From breaking ground to savoring the finished product, every aspect of growing flawless grapes and making extraordinary wine is covered in this classic guide. Fully illustrated instructions clearly show you how to choose and prepare a vineyard site; build effective trellising systems; select, plant, prune, and harvest the right grapes for your climate; press, ferment, age, and bottle wine; and judge wine for clarity, color, aroma, and taste. This...

Tom Standage details the history of the world, from the Stone Age to the twenty-first century, through the lens of six defining beverages: beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and cola. For Standage, each drink is a different kind of technology, a catalyst for advancing culture by which he demonstrates the intricate interplay of different civilizations.

Making your own soda is easy, inexpensive, and fun. Best of all, you can control the sweetness level and ingredients to create a drink that suits your individual taste. In this guide to all things fizzy, Andrew Schloss presents a handful of simple techniques and recipes that will have you recreating your favorite commercial soft drinks and experimenting with new flavor combinations. Try your hand at Pomegranate Punch, Sparkling Espresso Jolt, Slightly...

You're ready to try your hand at home brewing, but you want to try something unique-and you also have no idea where to start. This is the book for you. Broken into three sections-mead, cider, and herbal wine-you'll learn what basic equipment you'll need, what ingredients to have on hand, and author Nancy Koziol will walk you through each step of the process. Along the way, you'll pick up some fun facts about ethical consumption, sustainable farming,...

A Fun and Festive Educational Tool for Both Home Enthusiasts and Bar Professionals! Let's face it: just ten years ago, hard cider was something sipped by expats watching rugby matches or pined for by former foreign exchange students. Heck, many people thought cider was something preschoolers drank in sippy cups before naptime. Not anymore. Hard cider sales have skyrocketed in the last decade, with craft cider sales increasing 49 percent in just...