Alcademics.com

Find Me in the Penthouse

Penthouse magazine, that is. I have a story in the April issue about my trip to Warsaw and the ancient forest with ZU vodka, the bison grass vodka known throughout the world as Zubrowka. 

But I'm also in Penthouse as a model, again!  

 

 

Of course you'll recognize my hand, sexily caressing that piece of bison grass.  Damn I look good. 

Always.

But if you don't have a subscription to the magazine you can read my write up here on Alcademics.

A Map of the Online Drink and Food World Featuring Alcademics

The spring issue of the magazine SAY: is the Food Issue.

In it they have a map of online food and drink influencers. Alcademics was included, which is awesome. 

Here's the map:

 

 

Alcademics is down on the bottom left. 

A blog post about the map is here, and you can read the magazine online here. Thanks SAY: media!

 

Big Changes at Class Magazine/DiffordsGuide.com

I love to read and am happy to contribute to CLASS Magazine and DiffordsGuide.com. They just announced a big lump of changes that will make it even more unique.

The print magazine will now be given out for free at many bars. Paid subscribers are going to get a single-spirit coffee table book (!!) quarterly along with the magazine.  And there will be a new industry-only section of the website. 

Full details are below. 

 

Items of Interest in The Tasting Panel Magazine

I learned lots of stuff in the August issue of the Tasting Panel Magazine. I write for this magazine but didn't have a story in the current issue. Anyway:

1. Isle of Jura has a 200th Anniversary Edition, a 21 year old single malt aged in an ex-sherry cask. 
2. The Don Julio Anejo Claro that someone gave me a sip of at Tales is a real thing. For the 70th anniversary of the Don Julio being in the tequila business, they are releasing an anejo tequila that is filtere to make it clear, which supposedly will "bring back the bold agave flavor typically found in a blanco." I don't understand how you can filter flavor into a spirit, nor the point of making clear aged tequilas in general, but we'll see.  
3. There is some strange new "botanical absinthe/ green tea liqueur" called Tempest that has suspended drops of absinthe in it. Sadly low ABV of 25% but goofy fun nonetheless. 
4. Phil Adler makes a flavored ice cube inside another flavored ice cube. (Page 114 of the digital edition. )

Bar Eras in San Francisco and Beyond

I have a great-looking four-page story in the August Eat + Drink issue of 7x7 Magazine. 

The story splits up old bars and new bars inspired by old bars into five types/eras: Barbary Coast, Speakeasy,  Martini Bar, Tiki Bar, and Fern Bar. In each category I list some identifying factors and a few era-appropriate drinks. 

 There are also tons of great pictures by photographer Erin Kunkel, including these yanked from the 7x7 website. 

Read the story online here or pick up the magazine on the newsstand for even more pictures than on the website. 

  
 

Latin, Packing, Pisco: A Few Articles I've Written Lately

I've had several stories come out recently, so I thought I'd share them here. This blog is also my resume, after all. 

Friday I wrote about my recent piece in the daily email Tasting Table San Francisco. This one is about Encanto Pisco, brought to us by a bartender, a sommelier, and a distiller. 

Attention people attending Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans this July: My story about what to pack for the week (for media, speakers, bartenders, PR, and brand reps) in the June issue of Tasting Panel Magazine is now online. 

 In the July issue of Executive Travel Magazine I have a story on the Latin libations that are hot and the ones that soon will be. 

I have recently become a regular contributor to SilverKris, the in-flight magazine for Singapore Airlines. Unfortunately the magazine is not online. Recent stories have focused on new classic cocktails, the return of absinthe, and where to drink in Wellington, New Zealand. 

Content and Social Media versus Traditional Media

Like most everybody, I spend a fair amount of time thinking about the new role of social media and the decline of traditional media. But unlike a lot of people my livelihood depends on one or the other. I'm a freelance writer who blogs, hoping that if money stops flowing to one income stream it will flow into the other.

On the journalism end, companies are spending less on advertising. Since advertising pays for the journalism that surrounds it, there are less newspapers and magazines around, and those still around have reduced their size. Thus there is generally less journalism work around for those of us who freelance. (And a lot of unemployed staffers.)

Many companies who formerly advertised in traditional media are "shifting" to social media, but this shift helps create a content-free world. Here's how:

Because with social media companies/brands can now speak to consumers directly, they play in the social media space by "engaging" bloggers and others online. They may make games or have a blogger of their own. They send out recipes and often samples. They join in the conversation about their brand. This is all good.

But what I see as the problem is that conversations usually take place around content: the weather, a feature story, news of the day. Social media, including most blogging, is a conversational space but not a content generator. 

As brands shift their spending power toward social media, they are hiring bloggers and facebookers and twitterers to talk about their brands. This is internal spending; PR. But they're not so much buying ads in this space or doing much (so it seems) to generate content. It's more "Hey we're here. Talk about us!"

Though advertisements in traditional and social media are very static, boring things, they fund journalism and content creation for the content that goes around them.

Thus in the current model, No more ads = No more content. Imagine Facebook/Twitter if it was only internal. It would be all messages like "I had the best sandwich today!" and no sharing links to news stories or other outside content. Awful.

The internet has devalued ads (thanks, Google!) and also devalued content (thanks, copy-and-paste!), so that in the social media space there doesn't appear to be any reason to bother with content generation or advertising if you are a corporation. 

As someone who makes a living generating content, I'm worried about all of this. One one hand, journalists are being starved out of the industry. On the other hand, are corporations morally obligated to advertise to keep journalists employed? Unfortunately not.

I haven't thought of any workable solutions to this, and neither has anybody else that I know of. In the meantime I am hoping luxury brands who can afford it keep buying ads in traditional media and toss the occasional website sponsorship my way. Right now content isn't seen as a necessity because there is plenty of it still floating around for free. But in the not-too-distant future content may become a luxury item again.

Glossy Booze: Early November Edition

Glossy Booze is a regular Alcademics round-up of booze stories in magazines.

Details (November) has a story on underappreciated red wines.

Imbibe (Nov/Dec) has recipes for homemade eggnog, drinks with figs, and party drink recipes, a comparison of witbiers, a story on Greg Boehm of CocktailKingdom.com,  one on barleywine, another on bargain sparkling wine, fancy hot chocolate, and a travel piece on drinking in Hawaii.

Malt Advocate (Fall 2009) has stories on Japanese Whisky, Australian whisky, water in whisky, GlenDronach, and drinking in Bardstown, KY.

Men's Journal (November) has stories on California blended wines and good Canadian Whisky.

Food & Wine (November) has stories on ten Thanksgiving wines, new wine books, a recipe for mulled wine (to use with leftover bottles), American ciders, and $10 holiday wines.

Delta's in-flight magazine Sky's October issue has a round-up of wine and food festivals, and a big feature on visiting the world's best wine regions. 

Sunset (November) has a round-up of spirits new spirits distilleries in the west, lists their annual Wine Awards, and lists a recipe for kumquat digestif.

Everyday With Rachael Ray (November), in addition to the story I wrote on avoiding hangovers, has a few recipes for simple cocktails.

GQ (November) has a recipe for a 2:1 Martini.

Esquire lists recommended single-malts from Scotland's islands, Highlands, and Lowlands, and adds two new bars to its best bars list: One Flew South in the Atlanta airport, and Dutch Kills in Queens.

In ReadyMade (November/December) Alex Day shares sherry knowledge and there's a project on making a rolling bar out of an old trunk.

And the winner for best booze coverage this month goes to Conde Nast Traveler (November), with its this huge round-up of 38 bars in New Orleans' French Quarter.