cdh

Mycology might be a fun adventure. As to Eastern PA mushroom gatherers, I know that many years ago in Reading there was a restaurant called Joe's (whose son Jack has picked up and moved to Oregon) that specialized in mushroom cookery. I wonder who the people who supplied him were, and if they're still around. Jack has been on Oregon for nearly 10 years doing business as The Joel Palmer House...

I'm there.

That does sound wonderful! The fall fruits plus the spices sound like wonderful stuff indeed. Pie in a glass. Raises two questions, however: 1) A link to the recipe for Drinkboy's homemade bitters? 2) What do you mean by clove tincture? How numbing should the stuff be? How many cloves to how much vodka aged for how long? Or how many drops of clove oil to how much vodka?

Well, since this thread features pictures of Dover Canyon Zinfandel Port, you clearly don't mean to say that all users of the semi-generics are big plonk houses. Just because the big plonk houses (amongst others) benefit is no reason to oppose the treaty. The article sounds like a petulant luxury marketer indulging in a bit of sour grapes. His surprise that he enjoys the Cook's Grand Reserve is quite amusing. Jaymes is totally right as well. Any publicity is good publicity. Sherry producers and Port producers benefit from the increased exposure of their style of wines, even when they are the cheap California plonkified versions. They raise interest and visibility. They get onto supermarket shelves when the real thing does not. If 90% of the US wine market said "Huh?!?!" when asked what Chablis was rather than said "white wine" would that be better for the Burgundians? I kind of doubt it. Everybody knows there is the real thing and the plonkified version... when folks have the cash to put down for some of the good stuff, I'd bet the familiar names get more custom than the obscure ones. The labelling laws do require honesty in claims about origin... my bottle of cake dousing sherry is clearly labeled "New York". It's not fooling anybody. There's not even an attempt at deceit. The "so-called 'semi-generics'" have been used as descriptors for more than a hundred years... under the law, there is a doctrine called laches... it means that if you don't speak up and enforce your rights for a long enough time, you've waived your rights. This treaty is a nice way of sort-of undoing the application of laches to this situation, while not placing undue burdens on the companies that have relied on the semi-generics as descriptors.

This thread got me doing a bit of research, and it would appear that the restrictionists are about to win quite a victory in the battle. A treaty is about to be signed between the US and the EU that will grandfather current usages of "semi-generic" terms like Port amongst others (Annex II is where the list is) and disallow future usage of the terms. So, winemakers, if you have plans for a port-esque wine, get it bottled and labelled before this treaty comes into effect! Actually, given a bit of thought, this treaty seems reasonable and well balanced to me. It recognizes the strong feelings of those across the pond that have been demonstrated in this (and other) threads on the topic, but it doesn't place an unreasonable immediate burden on winemakers who have been using the semi-generic terms we've been discussing. Seems a fine solution to the problem. Anybody else have thoughts?

Me neither... but they certainly qualify as "funky".

Maybe they should be made to invent a new word for their grapes altogether, then? After all, pinot noir grown in California doesn't produce commercial results like PN grown in Burgundy, why should those upstart Californians be allowed to piggyback on the legitimate commercial expectations of Burgundy lovers who all know what real pinot noir should taste like?

Well, so long as the actual source of the product is on the labels, what harm is done by allowing the continued generic use of a term such as Port? It really is an indicator of style over here, not a unique identifier of source. There is plenty of Limburger cheese that is not made in Limburg... Little if any Bourbon whisky is made in Bourbon County... there is plenty of precedent for terms that started out as geographic identifiers becoming indicators of style over a period of time.

You might start out reading a few threads here, and then looking at the two eGCI classes on mixology. Read over them, and then ask questions. Easy and funky are both very subjective. http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=26772 -Classic cocktails http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=26775 -Evolving cocktails part 1 http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=26787 - Evolving cocktails part 2 Does your university have a student bartender organization? Back in the day at Columbia there was a student enterprise organization that trained bartenders and staffed various events with trained students. Maybe your university has something similar and you can consult with them about what they are teaching, and what they're observing when they're serving.

We do appear to be encountering a linguistic split amongst English speakers. When a word of commercial significance like Port has very different meanings to different sets of English speakers, how should the anglophone world deal with it? Some argue for universal application of the most rigid rule, protecting any commercial significance the word has anywhere from potential dilution everywhere. This approach ruffles the feathers of commercial users of the word who would have to invest significant money and efforts in rebranding their products for little apparent return in their market. Should the Portuguese, or the British companies that control the market in Oporto, be able to, after many years of neglecting the trademark significance of their word in the American market, suddenly be able to deploy a few lawyers to California to make wineries there relabel products that they've been making for years? Doesn't seem fair to me. The answer would seem to be in the application of local labelling laws in different jurisdictions. Call the California Zinfandel "Port" sold in the US "Port" where the word is an indicator of style, but require that the label not mention the P word when it is imported into other countries where the word does have the ability to serve as an indentifier of source. The US has a set of different labelling requirements for alcoholic beverages that wineries or importers elsewhere have to abide by... our wineries could surely do the same if they desired to export their product to places that protect the word Port. And I'd imagine that even the -esque solution wouldn't work for this application, sadly... But the imposition of rebranding is lifted, as the export market is very different from the domestic market, and would require all of the branding effort anew anyway. Simply put, usage of the word should be regulated in a market-by-market manner rather than universally.

I like -esque! Good solution.

The argument made by CtznCane is that Port is not a brand name, but rather a generic. A generic cannot become a trademark. It comes down to a dispute of fact over whether Port in the US market is a generic or an identifier of source. Don't underestimate the power of the geographical illiteracy of the market. If an absurd percentage of the market has never travelled within 500 miles of Portugal, nor could point it out on a map, expecting them to associate the word Port with wine made there is a bit of a stretch. That's how I'd go about making the case that in the American market Port is a generic descriptor.

I consumed my 1.5 gallons of mead this summer. It turned out wonderfully, though I think that the witbier yeast's tart tang overshadowed the honey flavors. About 3 weeks ago I started another batch of mead, this time 7 pounds of honey to 3 gallons of water, and used Lalvin's Narbonne yeast. It has been in the basement bubbling away, and is just starting to calm down. Soon I'll rack it off the yeast and let it sit until next summer. I may toss in some oak chips and/or some fruit too. I've got a while before I have to make those decisions.

Sonny D'Angelo in South Philly can get you nutria... you might ask him about cuy too. http://www.dangelobros.com/game.htm Philly is not that far a trip from NYC if you're really on a mission.

Indeed... in the context of the query, where condensation is assumed to be too much dilution, 20-25% dilution is A LOT. I'm not saying it's fine to water down your booze, but I'm saying that what would be perceived as a huge dilution in the mind of the original questioner would not, in fact, do any damage. And I'll go so far to say that cask strength whiskies, in my opinion, can benefit from near 100% dilution sometimes.

Don't worry about condensation and dilution. You don't want to drink cold gin at full strength, nor any other spirit for that matter. There is no such thing as bruised gin, or otherwise damaged spirits from a little (or a lot) of dilution.

Think tamarind. It is as sour as citrus, but nicely different. And it goes quite well with dark spirits. Just make sure to strain it first, otherwise you might get unsightly fibers in your drink. I've a had fine tamarind margarita, which is indisputably a paragon of the sour drink class.

I have no grounding in the history or traditions, but I think I'd prefer a sour served in a rocks glass. Sours aren't meant to be drunk as quickly as drinks served in cocktail glasses are... A sour in a cocktail glass would probably warm up faster, no? Cocktail glasses are thinner and allow for more heat transfer, don't they. I'd vote for the glass that kept it coldest after 15 minutes. Experiment and figure out which one that is.

My answer wouldn't have much meaning for you... all of the Caol Ilas I've tried have been single cask bottlings... which means essentially unrepeatable. The one that might still be available from the Scotch Malt Whisky Society has plenty of peat to it, with an almost road-tar edge to it. I agree that Highland Park is different from Islays, but it is still nice... but in an very un-Laphroaig-like way.

What makes the "Fair Trade" brand such the gold standard? Why is anything not branded with this mark viewed with such suspicion? Where does the taste of the product come into the equation? And what does this retailer's Canadian status have to do with anything? While the Fair Trade idea is a nice idea, any commerce is good commerce in some parts of the world. If Rwanda is in an economic state where it has yet to develop a class of rapacious middlemen that Fair Trade hopes to circumvent, then boycotting non-Fair-Trade coffee from there is counterproductive. Rapacious middlemen provide an incentive to people to grow things. Fair Trade makes it better for them after they invest the effort into growing stuff for the rapacious middlemen and don't want to cut the quality in order to please the rapacious middlemen.

The Jasmine. http://hotwired.lycos.com/cocktail/98/30/index3a.html A fine bit of alchemy that turns gin, triple sec, campari and lemon juice into magic.

Nobody is too small for a carbonator! What I've got is this... http://www.morebeer.com/product.html?product_id=18291 Cheap enough and quite useful. You get 3 bottles, one of which you can force carbonate with gas in a couple of days, and the other two come with tight tops that will allow yeast carbonation within a week, and then you can hook the tap up to serve them. Beware of root beer, as it gets into the plastic and stays there.. but other sodas are fine.

I'm not a fan of the Ardbegs I've tried. I taste too much seaweed in them. For the sweet & peat effect, I'm quite a fan of the Bowmore sherry-cask aged. I've had 3 or 4 varieties of the Caol Ila, and they're all spectacular. Not so deeply smoky as most Islays in the Laphroaig and Lagavulin models. Try Talisker and Highland Park for more interesting island malts.

Bob- Those cream whippers are the tools that make all of the fancy flavoring foams used by lots of cooks nowadays. There are a bunch of threads on eG about foams and their first proponent Ferran Adria, so read up and figure out if the idea of whipping flavorful stuff into foam is the sort of garnishing you might want to do. The possibilities are endless, if you feel like experimenting.

Add another lamb lover to the ranks. It's my favorite meat. Chops, shanks, whole roasted leg all are incredibly appealing to me. I've been meaning to try to find some of the more obscure cuts like lamb breast, which should braise up into something magical. I've also heard that lamb sweetbreads beat veal ones, but haven't had the chance to try them because I've never run across them in a market.