Twenty-five years ago, a consultant-turned-entrepreneur began hawking a new beer to Boston bars out of a station wagon. Jim Koch hoped he could build a modest local business with a high-priced brew that was heavier on hops and malt than most domestic beers.

Boston Beer Co., the maker of Samuel Adams Boston Lager, is now a publicly traded company with a market capitalization of about $790 million. Mr. Koch, chairman of Boston Beer Co., has helped foster a revolution in small-batch American brewing.

Today, "craft" brewing, which includes the likes of Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. and Deschutes Brewery Inc., represents 7% of the dollar sales of beer in the U.S. Craft beer is beer produced in small batches  Read more...

It is a frustrating aspect of wine tasting in Napa Valley: Too many tasting rooms are closed by 5 p.m.

This summer, however, a handful of wineries will change that, keeping tasting rooms open into the evening so that visitors can experience two of Wine Country's best features at once: great wine and glorious sunsets. Most begin new hours May 1, unless otherwise noted.

Silverado Vineyards

Fridays will be the night to be at Disney-owned Silverado Vineyards. From 5:30 to 8 p.m., the winery will open its terrace - a spacious patio with breathtaking views of the valley. Read more...

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) – Lloyd Flatt was a man who lived life large and had a passion for large bottles of wine. One of those bottles - a six-liter Methuselah of Romanee Conti 1976 sold for $42,350 at Sotheby's New York more than double its presale estimate.

Flatt, an eye-patch sporting American who began collecting wine long before there were wine critics and magazines such as the Wine Spectator, died in January 2008 after amassing a collection that became almost as famous as he was.

The total sale of his some 1,500 bottles netted more than $1.18 million, handily beating the $573,000-$824,000 pre-sale estimate range at the auction Saturday. Sotheby's said the winner of the Methuselah   Read more...

The monster that is threatening to turn premium Napa Valley wine into rotting slime was quickly plucked out from underneath the peeling bark of a grapevine.

The white cocoon containing the beast was barely large enough to cover biologist Monica Cooper's fingertip, but its presence is no more welcome in Wine Country than pod people from outer space.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, of European grapevine moths are now emerging from cocoons in dozens of vineyards in the heart of the world famous wine-growing region. It is the first time the pest has ever been seen in North America.

"This one is in the pupal stage," said Cooper, Napa County's viticulture farm adviser and the director of the UC Cooperative Extension   Read more... 
 

British brewer Peter Fowler, has made the world's most bitter beer after a friend challenged him to produce a record-breaking tipple.

Tests showed that Mr Fowler's creation, "The Hop", registered 323 International Bittering Units (IBUs), beating the previous record of 200 held by American beer Devil Dance Triple IPA.

Mr Fowler, 58, who runs the Pitstop Brewery in Stove, near Wantage, Oxon., said: ''It is always nice to beat the Americans and put a British flag on the bitterest pint.

''To be honest, I can only drink it in halves. To finish an evening, it is fine, but the taste lasts with me for four hours at a time.''   Read more...

Fess Parker, a TV icon of the 1950s and '60s who later helped Santa Barbara raise its profile as a world-class wine region, has died. He was 85. Parker had been in failing health in recent months and was under hospice care at his home in the Santa Ynez Valley when he passed away this morning.

The Texas-born Parker first made his name during the dawn of the TV era playing Davy Crockett, serialized on the popular Disneyland show. Parker and the show became so popular in the mid-1950s that boys across America wore his trademark coonskin cap. Parker followed that in the 1960s with a successful run on TV's Daniel Boone.

By the late 1970s, Parker was focusing on real-estate investment in Santa Barbara and developed numerous projects over the years  Read more...

CHICAGO—Brewing giant MillerCoors LLC plans to test-market a new beer called Batch 19, which is based on a pre-Prohibition recipe, as part of several initiatives aimed at rejuvenating sales in the sluggish U.S. market.

MillerCoors will start selling the new brew next month in draft in bars and restaurants in Chicago, Milwaukee, San Francisco and Washington, said Peter Swinburn, chief executive of Molson Coors Brewing Co., which co-owns MillerCoors.

Mr. Swinburn said in an interview that Batch 19—named for the year, 1919, before Prohibition began—is designed to attract consumers looking for "a true, authentic, original beer." He said Keith Villa, master brewer at MillerCoors, found a recipe in the archives of Coors Brewing Co. Read more...

Boulder, CO (March 8, 2010) - The Brewers Association, the trade association that tabulates production statistics for US breweries, today released 2009 data on the U.S. craft brewing industry. In a year when other brewers saw a slowdown in sales, small and independent craft brewers saw sales dollars increase 10.3 percent and volume increase 7.2 percent over 2008, representing a growth of 613,992 barrels equal to roughly 8.5 million cases.

Overall, U.S. beer sales were down approximately 5 million barrels (31 gallons per U.S. barrel) in 2009.

"Beer lovers continue to find great value and enjoyment in fuller flavored craft beers," said Paul Gatza, director of the Brewers Association. "Americans have an increasing appreciation of craft beers  Read more...

(CBS) New research suggests women who drink a moderate amount of alcohol on a regular basis, particularly when red wine is the drink of choice, are less likely to experience long-term weight gain than non-drinkers. 

The study, conducted by researchers at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, surveyed almost 20,000 women and asked them about their drinking habits over the course of 13 years. The alcohol-free women gained the most weight.

The research, published Monday in the American Medical Association's Archives of Internal Medicine, says there's no clear link between alcohol consumption and weight gain -- a claim that flies in the face of long-held medical thinking. 

Experts, however, are quick to remind women  Read more...

Reporting from New York - Quick, which of the following is not allowed in New York: riding the subway without pants, performing a play in public while naked, or buying wine at the grocery store?

If you chose the last option, perhaps you've been following one of the liveliest debates to emerge from otherwise dry budget talks in the state capital, Albany, where politicians struggling with a dire fiscal crisis see wine as an antidote.

New York remains one of 15 states that limit wine sales to liquor stores. But the proposed 2010-11 budget would open sales to grocery stores to generate an estimated $250 million in revenue from new liquor licenses.

In this bastion of liberalism -- home to the city that never sleeps, a burgeoning local wine industry, and a mainly urban populace  Read more...