Subject: Alcoholic Beverage Manufacturing

• Budweiser vs. Stella Artois: A Taste Test

  July 14, 2008

• Breakfast Buffet: Monday 7/21

  July 21, 2008

• Two-Buck Chuck Means Competitors

  August 7, 2008

• Avery Beer tasting tonight at Flying Saucer

  October 13, 2008

• Cellar Rat wants you to taste for a cure

  October 23, 2008

• Jefferson Cup Invitational happening under your nose

  By OWEN MORRIS I stopped by the Jefferson Cup Invitational yesterday. It's one of the premier wine judging competitions in the country, and it just happens to take place right here in Kansas City (at Starlight Theater this year). As luck would have it, I arrived just as the event's volunteers had finished serving judges and were now serving themselves. "We've poured over 2,100 glasses of wine today and hardly broke anything," said Matt Nevinger, head of the volunteers and founder Doug Frost'

  November 21, 2008

• Coming soon: vintage wine over night

  This next invention will change our culinary lives. Not in a two-bit way like the Magic Chopper has, but in the way microwaves or refrigerators did.Scientists have stumbled across a way to make the cheapest of cheap wine taste like a vintage pinot grown in the heart of Burgundy.It's an outlandish claim and people have been hawking various gizmos that promise to do the same thing for years, but this time it's respected scientists who have figured out a method that works -- and to prove it, they f

  December 29, 2008

• To Russia With Food Coloring

  September 7, 2000

• Kansas City Strip

  August 9, 2001

• Best Day Trip

  October 9, 2003

• Best Tribute to Lewis and Clark

  October 7, 2004

• Breakfast Buffet: Wednesday 02/25

  When is a drop in beer sales a good thing? When it comes from the world's biggest breweries and it means people are moving towards craft beer. [Gone Mild]A lively discussion of the worst fast food chains that continue to pedal their greasy wares. [Hot Blog on a Stick]Why do fruit flies prefer certain fruits to others? Screw that scientists -- why don't you study why I hate dates and green apples? [Scientific Blogging]A group of Kansas City bloggers check out St. Louis for Mardi Gras and somehow

  February 25, 2009

• Coming to theaters for one night only: Beer Wars

  Talking about and drinking so much beer from Boulevard, Schlafly, New Belgium and other midsized breweries, it's easy to forget that microbrewers combined make up a small minority of the beer business. Eighty percent of the beer brewed in this country comes from only two giants -- SAB, which owns MillerCoors, and InBev which owns Anheuser-Busch.As the new movie Beer Wars explains, Davids like Boulevard are competing for ever-larger pieces of the pie with the two above-mentioned Goliaths. But the

  April 1, 2009

• Taste for the Cure

  October 23, 2008

• Fairways 4 Fuzz Benefit Golf Tournament

  August 21, 2008

• Bottle Shock

  August 14, 2008

• Monday Spaghetti Feast

  March 6, 2008

• Boulevard still 8th-biggest craft brewer

  Yesterday, the Brewers Association released its Top 50 Breweries List based on sales in 2008.Boulevard ranks as the 16th-largest brewery in the country. When compared to only fellow craft brewers, it rises to number 8, which is where the company ranked last year. Once again Anheuser-Busch is the largest brewer and Boston Beer Company (Sam Adams) is the largest craft brewer.Flickr: HerkieTo qualify as a craft brewer, the brewer must be "small, independent, and traditional." That means it can't pr

  April 15, 2009

• Drink Up

  October 11, 2007

• Bully Wars

  Hometown hero Boulevard Brewery faces a fight for our taps.

  August 2, 2007

• The City Forces the Foundation to Go Sober

  They’ve been selling liquor for decades at the historic Jazz District jam session. Suddenly, the city wants them to stop.

  October 19, 2006

• Made in Missouri

  August 10, 2006

• Creative Bliss 2006 Sponsors

  March 30, 2006

• Beer Wars tonight

  Tonight is finally the night for Beer Wars, a documentary about the rise of micro-brewers and the battle against the two 800-pound gorillas -- SAB and Anheuser-Busch. For some reason, the film is being shown in theaters for one night only and at only one time, 7 p.m. Theaters showing it include AMCs in Olathe, Leawood and North Kansas City, Cinemark on the Plaza, Cinemark in Merriam and the Regal Kansas City 18 Cinemas at Casino Station.After the film, there is a live Web cast with the brewers i

  April 16, 2009

• More to do tonight: wine dinner at 1924 Main

  There's already a beer movie and a bourbon tasting tonight so why not a wine dinner to complete the booze trifecta? Readers of our Pitch Forks newsletter already know that starting at 6:30 tonight, 1924 Main hosts a wine dinner with Oscar Renteria of Renteria Winery.Renteria is a second-generation wine maker. His father, Salvador Renteria, was a Mexican immigrant who worked as a barber and pool-hall hustler before moving to California and becoming a vineyard farm hand. After years in the busines

  April 16, 2009

• Auggie and me

  Along with about 25 other people, I shuffled into an AMC theater last night to watch the wanna-be cause-celebre movie Beer Wars. People hoping for a first-rate bashing of big business and big beer were not disappointed. From the opening moment, director Anat Baron had Miller, Coors and especially Anheuser-Busch in her bullseye. In an effort to save memory space, I stopped keeping track of the film's reasons Anheuser-Busch is evil but here's a partial list: It makes an inferior product; it's real

  April 17, 2009

• The Grapes of Mirth

  Jonathan Nossiter's wine documentary is subversive, funny and humane.

  June 30, 2005

• Wine Makes Us Wet

  For a state that still clings to its dry past, Kansas makes surprisingly good wine. But don’t try to ship it.

  September 30, 2004

• Ehren Starks and Kate Gurba

  Wednesday, April 23, at the Daily Dose, 135th and Quivira in Overland Park.

  April 17, 2003

• Missouri wines bring home the gold

  Look who's racking up the wins in national and even international competitions. None other than several regional wineries.St. James Winery, about an hour south of Columbia, Missouri, returned from the 16th annual Monterey Wine Competition with three double-gold medals and one gold, for chardonel, concord dessert wine, strawberry wine and country red wine respectively. Flickr: Capn Madd MattThree Missouri wineries and a Kansas winery also took home hardware from California's 2009 Jerry Mead

  April 20, 2009

• Kansas says bring on the booze

  Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius has been busy lately. She signed 12 new bills into law yesterday. Hidden in the middle of the press release her office sent out was Senate Bill 212, "an act concerning alcoholic beverages" and more specifically, "concerning shipment of wines."Let's take a closer look at the eight-page bill (PDF), which significantly changes the wine-law landscape in Kansas.

  April 21, 2009

• The fascinating fate of Two-Buck Chuck

  This week's edition of the New Yorker looks at the man who brought America "super-value" wine. Fred Franzia, the C.E.O of Bronco Winery, is a convicted felon (got caught mislabeling grapes) and a politically incorrect cowboy. Unfortunately the entire article is not online, only an abstract. But if you have any interest whatsoever in cheap wine, you should pick up a copy. Among the highlights:-- Franzia keeps his predecessor's ashes in a wine bottle in his trailer office. Yes, he may own more tha

  May 15, 2009

• Border Wars for Autism

  May 28, 2009

• Beer enemies join forces

  The film Beer Wars painted the world of brewing as a ferocious battle between little guys such as Dogfish Head and New Belgium being bullied by the multi-national giants of Miller, Coors and especially Anheuser-Busch. One of director Anat Baron's targets was the powerful lobbying group the Beer Institute, which she implied was the bane of the small brewer, pushing only the agenda of Anheuser-Busch. According to The Atlantic, though, The Beer Institute has now joined forces with its arch-nemesis,

  June 10, 2009

• Natural wine and a hangover, or genetically modified wine and feeling great?

  Love it or hate it, genetically-modified crops are here to stay. You probably eat them all the time but since companies aren't required to state which foods are made with GM seeds instead of natural seeds, it's impossible to know .Now comes ML01, a GM yeast that its creator, a professor at the University of British Columbia named Hennie van Vuuren, claims can cure the headache aspect of the red wine hangover -- and for many white wines too.The science behind the GM yeast is well-known. As Th

  June 11, 2009

• The Sonoma Valleys of the Midwest

  The muddy water of the mighty Mississippi River doesn't immediately conjure up images of wine. But vineyards in four Midwestern states are trying to get their land designated as an official appellation area called the Upper Mississippi River Valley. Appellation law works so that wineries from a certain geographic region can distinguish themselves from wines of another region. Napa, for example, has more than 300 wineries. Those wineries are technically the only ones allowed to use the words "Nap

  June 15, 2009

• USA number one! In bad beer!

  To paraphrase Rodney Dangerfield, America can't get no respect.  There are 1,500 breweries in the United States, the majority putting out good pale ales and porters. But when it comes to the way the rest of the world sees us, it all of that beer might as well be Budweiser. In the travel Web site Titanic's survey of 1,600 people from 80 countries, America received 23 percent of the vote for "makes the world's worst beer" and Budweiser received the most nominations for worst beer. China was s

  June 19, 2009

• Grinders

  September 11, 2008

• Second Saturday in Weston

  February 7, 2008

• Breakfast Buffet: Wednesday, 7/15

  A wonderful post about a Mexican restaurant, sellers at the City Market and the eventual takeover of the U.S. by foreign vodka. [KC With a Russian Accent]If the failing financial firm CIT Group (not to be confused with failing bank Citigroup) does go bankrupt, the results could be disastrous for many small businesses and restaurants. [WSJ]The two largest Japanese brewers are looking to merge, creating a company that would rival InBev and SABMiller in size. [The Economist]Are you rich and single?

  July 15, 2009

• Flying Saucers

  July 23, 2009

• Foster's: Australian for luxury beer

  ​Foster's is set to release a $70 bottle of beer today (that would be approximately $58.42 in U.S. dollars) to the Australian market. This is the second vintage of the Crown Ambassador Reserve Lager (CARL), which is sold in a champagne-style bottle and meant to be drunk from a wine glass.Only 6,000 bottles of CARL will be produced from the Australian brewer best known for its trademark blue and gold oil cans of lager. The Foster's Group is apparently hoping to capitalize on the growing luxury

  August 3, 2009

• The chance to play winemaker

  ​The sun sets over the vineyard where your grapes are growing. They're harvested and pressed before being carefully aged in oak casks. These are the dreams of those who have begun to consider retirement. Well, them, and Korean pop music producers. A recent Bloomberg article visits the Bordeaux vineyard of California-based Crushpad, a custom-wine company that has been helping clients create their own vintages since 2004. The French arm of their do-it-yourself wine operation opened in May of thi

  August 4, 2009

• Should American wines have lot numbers on the bottle?

  ​Buying wine you've never tasted always requires a small leap of faith. You can take the words of a trusted reviewer, consider the points awarded or ask the advice of the wine shop staff. Dr. Vino suggests that the United States might be able to improve consistency and help give wine drinkers more confidence in their purchases if the U.S. followed the lead of the European Union and mandated a lot number be placed on wine labels in an effort to track recalls and consumer complaints. Currently,

  August 5, 2009

• You're not a man if you don't drink wine

  ​In the face of declining sales, winemakers are starting to market their product to a new group of consumers: men. Theories as to why men don't drink wine are numerous, including the idea that they don't want to be told what to drink. It's also generally accepted that most men know nothing about wine. Wineries have crafted labels and names like Kung Fu Girl, Red Truck and Maximus. Targeted marketing has also led to some unusual sponsorships, like the decision by Bennett Lane Winery (the produ

  August 17, 2009

• Pairing wine and cereal

  ​The finest meals can be happy accidents -- items that were next to each other on a grocery list or the last cans on the pantry shelf. The next time you run out of milk you might find an unlikely substitute in your wine rack! This isn't quite beer in your Cheerios, and you'll definitely want to keep your Merlot separate, but the art of pairing cereal and wine is the last topic on the Wine Library's podcast by Gary Vaynerchuck.He pairs a chardonnay with Cinnamon Toast Crunch, a riesling with C

  September 14, 2009

• Beer prices and a ballclubs' records

  ​Beer tastes better when the home team is winning. It's colder and the Beer Man is always around when you want him. The steps don't seem as steep and hot dogs go down like shrimp cocktail. But when the Royals are losing, the beer can be as stale as a bar floor the next morning. There may be one saving grace to the Royals' recent run of poor seasons -- the beer is likely cheaper. The Wall Street Journal decided to see whether there was a correlation between winners and higher beer prices: A tea

  September 14, 2009

• Breakfast Buffet: Monday, October 26

  A peak at the wine and beer selection at MDL Wine and Spirits in Overland Park. [KC Beer Blog]Thumbs up for Shatto gouda and some thoughts on what beers go well with cheese. [The Liquid Diet]Could you bring yourself to eat a 70-year-old lobster? What if it was covered in melted butter? [Bloomberg]Here's what happens when you get banned from the food co-operative. [The New York Times]

  October 26, 2009

• Amazon scraps plans for wine delivery

  ​You won't be getting happy-faced cardboard boxes filled with cases of wine any time soon, because apparently Amazon.com has decided to end its dalliance with wine delivery. After launching a trial program in March 2008, the online retailer has shelved AmazonWine.  The news sent wine blogs into a tizzy about how the promise of widespread access to small-scale wineries never materialized. Vinography contends that financial difficulties at Amazon's potential fulfillment partner, New Vine

  October 26, 2009

• 7-Eleven makes its own wine

  ​America gets blamed for a lot of things, and now we can add to the list 7-Eleven's decision to produce wine. 7-Eleven and 7-Eleven Japan will stock stores with Yosemite Road Chardonnay and Carbernet Sauvignon. The two vintages, produced by The Wine Group, retail for $3.99 in the United States ($4.99 in Florida). From the release: The winning vintners created a Chardonnay, described as fresh and zesty with notes of apricot, peach and honey, and a full-bodied Cabernet Sauvignon with juicy plum

  November 6, 2009