WhistlePig Creates Classic American Rye

Food & Drink Rye, the backbone of the original recipes for the Manhattan, Sazerac, and Old Fashioned, spent much of the last few decades losing ground to bourbon and Tennessee whiskey. Now, the most American of liquors – George Washington distilled the stuff at Mount Vernon – is having a resurgence, thanks to a modern mix of nostalgia and craft. One of the leaders of the rye charge is Raj Peter Bhakta, who founded WhistlePig in 2007 on a farm near the shores of Lake Champlain in Vermont. His goal: Establish the nation's first "farm to bottle" single-estate distillery. And…

Tree Vodka Is Harder Than Hard Apple Cider

Food & Drink If the spectacle of sheep drunk on fermented apples and stumbling around orchards made you jealous in the fall, there is a perfect way to warm up your winter. Packing more punch than cider, Tree Vodka makes a refreshing addition to the seasonal selection. The new spirit is made from fresh-picked apples grown on DeFisher Fruit Farms in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. First, the fruit is brewed into hard cider, which is then further processed, one small batch at a time, into vodka. About 60 gallons of apples go into each potent bottle,…

Roasting Bone Marrow at Home

While it's popular among gourmands to eat bone marrow these days, it's less common to cook it at home, and to make it sweet and crunchy. The rich marrow in bones has likely been eaten since we were hominids, and 18th-century Europeans even had long silver spoons for scooping it out. Today, it's among the most accessible and buttery of offal offerings, but simply roasting bones and setting them down with a piece of bread only offers a one-note prize. That's why we endorse chef Richard Gras's approach to the dish as served at Oak restaurant in Dallas. Gras's marrow…

SoCal's Garden-to-Glass Sipper

MJ Approved: Food & Drink Located in Venice, California, Willie Jane has developed a following among SoCal transplants, thanks to Top Chef judge and Iron Chef America contestant Chef Govind Armstrong's menu of Southern favorites. The emphasis at the restaurant in on fresh produce from the in-house garden in staples like grits, smoked ribs, and fried chicken. The emphasis at the bar is largely the same if a bit boozier. Willie Jane wouldn't be as popular as it is if its cocktails weren't as excellent as its dishes. The reason for the restaurant's outstanding drink service? Armstrong's unique partnership with…

The Best Chianti Wine (Isn't a Chianti)

MJ Approved: Food & Drink Photograph by Michael Pirrocco Our favorite Chiantis don't actually go by the name Chianti. In the early 1980s, Sergio Manetti, the owner of a winery called Montevertine, decided to quit the Chianti appellation because he felt that too many of the wines bearing the Chianti name were crap. He had also grown tired of the constant wrangling over what grapes could be used to make Chianti. Manetti believed that sangiovese, a grape native to Tuscany, was the true "voice" of Chianti, and rather than submit to regulations that would have forced him to dilute the…
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