Patrick Comiskey

Christmas, and the dark season it accompanies, requires spirits to ward off chill. I was thinking this on Christmas Day as my father-in-law brought out brandies for us to try, as the last course of the evening was cleared. For me, it was one of those rare occasions to try......

It never ceases to amaze me where microbreweries turn up. You can be in a shithole town in Texas, in the shadow of Miller Brewery's hulking complex in Milwaukee, you can be in Utah, so far off the beaten path that you're wondering if you can even buy beer in......

It's something of a pity that most Americans think of sparkling wines as wines of celebration -- that extraordinary act of niche marketing has rendered these complex and versatile wines into an unfortunate pigeonhole, when they can, and should be enjoyed anytime, anywhere. Nevertheless, here we are, in the thicket......

Ah, Christmas. It comes but once a year, but the drinking it inspires is, well, inspiring. So too the spending on said drink, on bottles that otherwise might not justify such expenditure. But why not? There's hardly a better occasion than the holidays to drink something good or give something......

In a stunning turn of events, the Wall Street Journal reports that Robert M. Parker Jr., the single most driving force in the wine industry in the last 30-plus years, wine's most influential critic and populist, is stepping down from editing his influential journal The Wine Advocate. According to Lettie......

Drinking wine is not the sort of activity known to inspire scholarship. The pleasures of writing and the pleasures of wine seem to work mostly at cross-purposes, despite the latter's renowned capacity for loosening tongues. But several books on wine's history, as well as its appreciation, hit the bookshelves this......

Happy Repeal Day!! Are you celebrating wildly? Are you drunk yet? On this day in 1933, Utah was the final state to overturn statewide restrictions on alcohol, thus ratifying the 21st Amendment, ending Prohibition in America. Woot! All across the country, Americans legally celebrated Repeal by drinking, an activity that......

In the glass depicted above is a scotch whisky from The Balvenie, a highland distillery that specializes in single malts with lustrous wood finishes. This particular scotch went into a barrel in 1962, and did not emerge until late last year, when the company decided to release it as a......

Last week, millions of bottles of 2012 Beaujolais Nouveau were uncorked all over the world, from Villefranche to Lyon, from Tokyo wine bars to New York cafés and Los Angeles bistros. Beaujolais Nouveau Day is held the third Thursday of November each year, a juggernaut of marketing that vaults the......

To embrace the jumble of flavors of Thanksgiving the wines, whether white or red, should always inhabit the middle register: broad but not flabby, rich but not too rich, fruity and full but not too full, tannic but not too gripping. They have to support like a mattress and give......