It was the first hour of my first shift, and of course, it was a “Manhattan Cocktail.” I pictured the flashcards heavy in my pocket from the cram-session the night before: Rye whisky, sweet Vermouth, and bitters. Don’t forget the cherry. To that point, I had known Vermouth as little more than a grandmother’s drink, the bottle dying a slow oxidative death in wood-paneled curios around the world. So after making the guest’s request, and in the name of job experience, I downed the remaining jigger of inexperienced overpour. Later, I would comment to the bar manager that it tasted a…
After receiving his education at the University of Waterloo in Hospitality and Business, French-Canadian Philippe Grandbois began a career in luxury hotels working on the concept and opening teams of numerous hotels, and restaurant and bar projects around the world. In 2005, Philippe launched Grandbois Consulting with a focus on digitization in the wine and spirits industries. Philippe is a Certified Sommelier and Spirits Specialist and has both competed in and judged numerous international wine and spirits competitions. In 2021, he began producing Vermouths and small specialty wines under the Grandbois Weine label. Philippe’s work can be found in several magazines including Conde Nast, Imbibe, Mixology and Chilled. He lives in the Mosel Valley with his wife and business partner Tanja and new daughter Claire-Anne.
We British are not the world’s most noted linguists, but that doesn’t seem to put off some of us from drinking “German-speaking” wines. That said, the market for these wines has had a rough ride at times, which makes their current increasing popularity all the more intriguing. Germany has historically boasted a well-established presence in the U.K. wine market. In the 19th– and early 20th– centuries German wines were famously on par with Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, and Port in terms of price. After the fall of Napoleon, the Rhineland and the Mosel both entered a period of prosperity, initiated by…...
My socials fill up with harvest photos at this time of year. It’s joyful and a bit primal. Nature controls the parameters of how and when, no matter how hard we try to predict and plan. The act of picking grapes initiates an even more fundamental process. Fermentation is to wine what oxygen is to humans. It’s both essential and deadly at the same time. There is no wine without it, yet fermentation’s transformative effects can destroy as readily as they create. It’s a kind of magic. Smoke, Stinks and Magic It’s magic because you start with fresh fruit, then…...
