Food & Drink

From the beginning, Champagne has never been just a drink, or a region: it’s a celebration, an occasion, a trophy, a reward; a symbol of joyful decadence and glamorous debauchery; the overflowing drink of the American Dream. In short, it’s a boozy cheat sheet for the zeitgeist and the anxieties and dreams of the people who sip it. And, for the past seventy-five years or so, that zeitgeist has been driven by the United States. “American culture pervades everything,” says Christian Holthausen, a dual French-American citizen and founder of the Paris-based Champagne consulting firm Westbrook Marketing Partners. “Driving through Paris just now, I saw a Coca-Cola machine on one street, and a billboard for Apple on the next.

The biggest purveyor of misinformation at the moment isn’t a podcast host or a foreign adversary. It’s a brewery.  Since announcing the release of its flagship Pumpkinhead Ale on August 1, Shipyard Brewing has commenced a cheeky ad campaign declaring that the dog days of summer are actually the perfect time to enjoy a fall beer. As Americans battle oppressive heat and humidity, the Portland, Maine, brewery has flooded its Instagram with photos of people sipping pumpkin ale on boats, and posts boldly declaring “Pumpkinhead Season is HERE!”  It shouldn’t be. Dropping pumpkin beers in the summer is a big mistake, and not because fall beers are inherently bad — quite the contrary.

What’s the best suit? To an American, it’s something from Brooks Brothers. Classical, democratic and made with high quality. To a Brit, it might be something from Henry Herbert or Gieves & Hawkes, a tailor-made garment from Saville Row, cut from perfect navy. But a suit can be just as good when rendered in draped, colorful cloth by the late Edward Sexton, or a hot corset-blazer blend by H&M and Mugler. There is no universal best suit. There’s just the best suit for the man or woman who wears it. And so, I come around to the refined blazer of beverages: the martini. In the pages of our July magazine, Chilton Williamson, Jr. wrote about his effort to “search of the perfect martini.

I was born in Wisconsin and I’ve learned a curious thing traversing it. There appears to be a state law requiring at least one bar at every intersection of its rural roads. I’ve noticed this most often driving at night: there’ll be a neon sign advertising Old Style or Leinenkugel’s hung in the front window of what looks like a farmhouse living room, and several cars nestled up against the house like sucking pigs. There is something homey about a rural bar. The knotty pine, the “first dollar” framed above the cash register, neighbors ironing out local prejudices and asserting the superiority of the Packers despite any evidence — if anyone’s brave enough to produce some.

Quizzed on how best to assimilate a new culture, travel writer and celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain once uttered the famous line: “Drink heavily with locals whenever possible.” I never met the man, but still I miss him and his deft writing. The Opening a Bottle series is about getting pickled with people far cooler than I am, in whatever city I’ve washed up in.  An old bank, complete with deep underground vaults, is an objectively cool place to build a hotel. I remember the buzz around the Ned’s ambitious opening in London in 2017, hiding a clandestine cocktail bar within the original Midland Bank strongroom.

Cocktails, for all their pleasures, rarely become memes. And yet, a variant of the Negroni did that last year, during the press tour for the Game of Thrones spin-off, House of the Dragon. When Olivia Cooke asked her co-star, Emma D’Arcy, what their favorite summer drink is, they replied: “Negroni sbagliato,” before flirtatiously adding, “with Prosecco in it.” Cooke’s response — “Ooh, stunning!” — turned the charming interaction into a viral moment. Bars were subsequently inundated with orders for them. For those unfamiliar, the Negroni is a classic Italian summer cocktail consisting of equal parts of gin (I recommend Bombay Sapphire), Campari and sweet vermouth (preferably Martini & Rossi). A dash of orange aromatic bitters is also a nice touch.

In the historic downtown of York, Pennsylvania, near the courthouse where the Articles of Confederation were drafted and a farmers’ market built in the days of horse-drawn carts, you’ll find a curious building called the National House. Constructed in 1828 as a hotel, its porches and airy galleries recall antebellum New Orleans. In its days as a hotel, it hosted guests like Mark Twain and Martin van Buren. Now it’s the home of my favorite bar. The Hound opened in 2012, in the early days of the craft beer boom. Its thirty rotating taps offer seasonal brews from local favorites like Tröegs and Victory, mixed in with ten-ounce pours of funky sour wheat goses or boozy imperial stouts.

Join Cockburn in a thought experiment. Close your eyes — and think of the phrase “toxic masculinity.” Who is the first person that you picture in your head? Recently charged Andrew Tate, perhaps — or maybe Floyd Mayweather. French Member of Parliament Sandrine Rousseau sees someone a little less likely: Monsieur Le President Emmanuel Macron. Macron was filmed downing a bottle of Corona this weekend in the dressing rooms of the Stade de France, after Toulouse had beaten La Rochelle in the French rugby final. Urged on by victorious Toulouse players, the president necks the bottle of beer in a modest seventeen seconds. https://twitter.com/chufl3t3r0/status/1670501095502757888?

Ask anybody who’s really been in a band what being a musician is like, and they won’t tell you about the moments that make it into the Hollywood biopics. To them, the experience is not the hero-shot onstage, or the girls they picked up after a killer set, or anything you saw in Ray or Bohemian Rhapsody. The reality of being in a band is of driving from place to place. Think of Bob Seger’s baleful “Turn the Page” with its opening lyric setting the place: “On a long and lonesome highway, east of Omaha,” where he’s “ridin’ sixteen hours and there’s nothin’ there to do.” This raises an issue of where to drink in Miami.

As the Bud Light War enters what feels like its fifth year, Cockburn has further evidence that America’s "wokest" brew has an unlikely ally, giving it beachheads at some of the world's swankiest properties. The Trump Organization, which boasts properties in several continents, offers Bud Light and/or Bud Heavy at its properties in locations ranging from Chicago to Los Angeles to Scotland. A Cockburn review on Trump Organization menus show that the beer goes from £6.50 in Scotland, to $7 at his iconic Trump Tower in New York City, to $9 in Chicago, to $10 in Vegas. Trump’s Bud Light offerings go beyond just his hotels. Want some suds while you’re golfing? Trump National Golf Club in Los Angeles, for example, has you covered at only $7 a beer, or a six-pack for $35.

Foie gras doughnuts, check. Rooftop location, check. Framed collection of fountain-pen nibs on the wall, check. Where should a scribbler with aspirations to the higher life turn his feet in Toronto, if not to the Park Hyatt Writer’s Room? At seventeenth-story level, the higher life seems within easy reach. The Writer’s Room is the renovated and rechristened edition of the historic Rooftop Lounge, a famous hotel bar that first opened its doors to the public in the Thirties. Before the renovations, it boasted Toronto’s longest-serving bartender, Joe Gomes, who worked there for fifty-seven years. His fondest memory, he said on retirement, was meeting John Wayne. Everybody who’s anybody seems to have popped by for a drink at some point: Leonard Cohen, Brangelina, Hunter S.

Quizzed on how best to assimilate a new culture, travel writer and celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain once uttered the famous line: “Drink heavily with locals whenever possible.” I never met the man, but still I miss him and his deft writing. The Opening a Bottle series is about getting pickled with people far cooler than I am, in whatever city I’ve washed up in. I land in Stockholm as the leaves start to fade brown, and the mercury is already dropping. My gloveless hands turn alabaster as I doggedly cycle around the island of Djurgården, or "museum island." I gape at the once-sunken Viking boat. I dodge the ABBA tribute. I take aim at hilltop open air museum Skansen, then ditch my wheels (out of bounds). I swear a lot. I get really fucking cold.

The Lincoln Project, a disgraced PAC launched in 2019 “to defeat Donald Trump at the ballot box” and “to ensure Trumpism failed alongside him,” has a new mission: take down Dr. Pepper for advertising on Fox News. Having seemingly taken inspiration from the Bud Light/Dylan Mulvaney boycott that’s seen conservatives abandon the beloved beer brand in droves, the Lincoln Project called out “Texas’s favorite soft drink” on Twitter, scolding: “Your motto is ‘Drink Well. Do Good.’ Your goal is to ‘make a positive impact with every drink.’ Yet you continue to advertise on Fox News, a network committed to telling lies and degrading our public discourse. Time to live up to your promise and drop Fox.

Quizzed on how best to assimilate a new culture, travel writer and celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain once uttered the famous line: “Drink heavily with locals whenever possible.” I never met the man, but still I miss him and his deft writing. The Opening a Bottle series is about getting pickled with people far cooler than I am, in whatever city I’ve washed up in. Lisbon to Berlin, December 2022. I was amazed to fly away unscathed as Storm Efraín reared its ugly head, with more than three inches of rain falling in twenty-four hours. Germany’s capital welcomed me with a cool 32 degrees Fahrenheit, dropping to a bone crunching thirteen degrees by the end of my stint. I kept my puffer coat on in techno clubs and danced in front of lit fireplaces.