One of my most vivid alcohol-related memories is going to Kyoto in the summer of 2003 and trying my first shochu drink. I was visiting Japan’s former capital with my dad’s new wife, Sachiyo. Sachiyo is but a memory, but the impact she left on me the moment she casually ordered an oolong-hi (shochu iced tea) for me would last forever. Sitting on the tatami mats in an izakaya (Japanese-style pub) overlooking the Kamo River in Kyoto, our feet were finally free from the confines of our shoes and our throats were parched from a long day of sightseeing in the scorching humidity. Seeing that tall glass of shochu with oolong tea, glistening in the glare of the setting sun, touching down on our wooden table was seductive. The first sip shuttled me back to childhood, when I would come home from school and my mom would pour mugi-cha (cold, [...]

Sometimes you just need to escape. A couple of weeks ago, we packed a small suitcase and headed up to Nick’s Cove on Tomales Bay.  I know you’ve driven by it a dozen times, but next time you’re pining for oysters and driving down Highway 1, you’ve got to make time to swing by.  Even if you’re just taking a pit stop for a warming Bourbon Rosemary Apple Cider ($11), or a dozen of their famous BBQ oysters, you’ll forget that you’re only an hour and a half from San Francisco.  The space is a homey, heavily wooded, elegant lodge with dozens of taxidermied moose and deer heads posted on the walls. It’s everything you want from a warm winter lodge without the hokey-ness.  In fact, the restaurant has a rich history – it’s been in the same spot perched on Tamales Bay for over 80 years – and, legend [...]

When does a monkey stop being a monkey, and become an invitation to riot in the streets? When it’s pictured on the label of a bottle of absinthe, using a femur to beat a skull like a drum. Or so said the federal government in 2007, when it rejected the label design for St. George Spirits’ Absinthe Verte. And as St. George Master Distiller Lance Winters wryly observes, “the government’s job is to prevent riots in the streets.” Having produced the first authentic absinthe for sale in this country since 1912, Lance and his crew expected close scrutiny of their formula by the government, and apprehension by less adventurous consumers. They did not expect what they got: a fight over the absinthe’s label. The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), the division of the U.S. Treasury Department charged with regulating the production, sale and marketing of beer, wine, [...]

sssSSSSBOOM! It roared-up like a runaway train then exploded like Baghdad, blasting clots of 9000 degree lava through the shimmering air in great fiery arcs. This was one hell of a tourist attraction! Vanuatu (formerly the New Hebrides) is about as far as you can go in the South Pacific without bumping into a sea dragon on an olde map. This string of more than 80 islands, with 113 distinct languages, is the site of Mt. Yasur on Tanna island, what tourist brochures claim as “the world’s most accessible active volcano” . Vanuatu is an amazing place of unspoiled, volcanic and coral tropical isles with a vibrant native culture that, while being fully-aware of the modern world, many times chooses to live traditional lives. It was here I climbed a volcano and tried its namesake drink “Yasur Fireup” at the paradise that is the White Grass Ocean Resort. And, at [...]

No spirit has been more misunderstood, vilified, or coveted than Absinthe. It reportedly caused Van Gogh to cut off his ear. That rapping, rapping at Edgar Allan Poe’s door? That was no raven: that was the green fairy. Toulouse-Lautrec, Oscar Wilde, and Alastair Crowley were known absinthe fans. Marilyn Manson produces his own absinthe. It has always had a mysterious and often dark air about it, driving sane men mad, and mad men to their graves. Dr. Valentin Magnan conducted a study on the mysterious spirit in the 19th century and found it to cause seizures and hallucinations. It was later proven that high levels of thujone (a byproduct of wormwood), a chemical present in early absinthe recipes, caused the seizures. The alleged hallucinations were just his way of trying to make the imbibers seem unstable, to prove that alcohol was “degenerating” the French. It was said by one temperance [...]

There are the laws of man and those “of God.” The latter is dependent upon where you stand, literally. In the state of Utah, for instance, legal restrictions and permissions have ping-ponged back-and-forth since before it was a state. Early Mormon pioneers took alcohol along as part of their personal provisions during their treks westward and they used wine as sacrament in meetings and at temple dedication ceremonies. Yet as recently as 2009, LDS-influenced restrictions dictated that you had to be a member of a “private club” in order to get a drink at a bar. Fortunately for those wanting to do so, “joining” cost about $5 and, in some cases, was included free upon registering at a hotel. But Utah is not the only one of the United States to be impacted by religion. In fact, much of America is caught in a duality between “blue laws,” which limit [...]

Our little planet is absolutely rife with liquor laws: the good (don’t drive drunk), the arbitrary (our legal drinking age), and the just plain daffy (in alaska it is illegal to feed whiskey to a moose). Such laws, however, are nothing new. Governments of all types have been seeking to control booze ever since the human race ceased its hunter-gatherer ways and settled down for some serious civilization building. the earliest examples we have of these sorts of statutes are found in the ancient code of King Hammurabi, which dates back to approximately 1750 b.c. Now known as the Hammurabic Code, the 282 laws (originally inscribed in Old Akkadian) deal with almost every facet of life and commerce in the Babylon of Hammurabi’s reign, and the Code probably represents the first time a nation’s legal writs were codified in written language.

The Volstead Act, called the “Noble Experiment” by those in favor of it, was an absolute ban on the manufacture, distribution, and sale of intoxicating spirits from 1920 to 1933. It was brought about by the Temperance Movement: a collection of angry housewives and condemning Christians who believed that drinking alcohol was ruining the fabric of the American family. Noble as their intentions may have been, what ultimately led to the repeal of was the fact that while it did slow down alcohol consumption in America, it also turned the remaining industry into a blood-splattering underworld empire. Convictions rose 500%, federal spending on prisons rose over 1000%, and that immense spike in criminal activity eventually led to its demise. Some of the most famous criminals of all time would have been little more than distributors and saloon owners if not for the law. Distillers became criminals overnight. Corn growers, barrel [...]