Some other things that've caught my eye lately:
- Shaker Faces. Heh. (Someone needs to put these side-by-side with Cooking Issues' Skoal! Project);
- Paul Clarke on the best bourbon cocktails;
- and of course tomorrow is Derby Day. Fittingly, the mint julep, the official cocktail of the Kentucky Derby, just got enshrined in the Cocktail Hall of Fame;
- Throwing a Derby party? HuffPo provides a recipe for mint juleps by the batch. (Still, I prefer Chris McMillian's recipe linked to above, but this might get you through a busy party);
- Neat-looking contest from Bushmills; the winner gets to spend 30 days with the master distiller;
- Another contest, this one involving wine-based cocktails, with the grand prize of a trip to Australia;
- and yet another contest, this one from VeeV, where you can win a trip to Tales of the Cocktail;
- and have you ever wondered about those gold medals from various competitions and expositions that so many brands of spirits seem to trumpet on their labels? Most of them seem to date from long ago, but the new Ultimate Beverage Challenge results are interesting. Some cocktail luminaries (DeGroff, Pacult, Wondrich, Bezuidenhout, Regan, Saunders, Carducci, Lee, Reiner, Seymour, Frost, Olson, etc., etc.) have painstakingly picked the best brands of liquor for lots of classic drinks. Some really fascinating reading here.