- Just in time for party and picnic season, St-Germain is releasing a "Summer Soiree" kit, complete with a bottle of the elderflower liqueur, a carafe with measurements for a champagne punch, cocktail stirrer, and poster with summery recipes. Available for about $34 at Astor Wines & Spirits and Union Square Wines, this is bound to be one hot potato.
- Want a free trip to Tales of the Cocktail? There are at least two cocktail contests offering to do just that, with deadlines approaching. Veev and Contemporary Cocktails have partnered up for "Cocktails for a Cause," asking cocktailians to submit recipes here by May 3 using Veev and fresh ingredients. Not only will Veev plant five trees for every recipe submitted, but the top three vote-getters win airfare and hotel for Tales! And if you not only want to win a trip to Tales, but to Australia too, enter Yellowtail's "wine-tail" contest here before April 25. Semifinals will be held the afternoon of May 17 during the Manhattan Cocktail Classic, and finalists will throw down at Tales in New Orleans on July 24 (standard airfaire and one night stay included). Judges will include Doug Frost, Dale DeGroff, David Wondrich and Andy Seymour, and the winner gets a 6-day trip for two to the land down under!
- Soon enough, you might be telling your bartender to "Super Beer Me," as cases of BrewDog's Tactical Nuclear Penguin make their way to NYC and California. With an ABV of 32 percent (six times Budweiser), the beer is made by being frozen at a local ice cream factory at temperatures as low as -6°C (21°F), for 21 days. Alcohol freezes at lower temperatures than water, and removing water from the solution increased the alcohol concentration. Due to the complex brewing process and limited availability, these pups are going for $53 per 11.2-oz bottle!
- And if you've got $1,000 to play with, Tiffany & Co. has designed an exclusive Woodfords Reserve mint julep cup, with proceeds benefitting The Barnstable Brown Kentucky Diabetes & Obesity Center. Owners of the cups will enjoy a mint julep featuring ingredients from around the globe: raw-cane sugar made from 100 percent organic sugar cane grown in Brazil; Kentucky Colonel Mint from Louisville, KY which was grown in a used Woodford Reserve bourbon barrel; ice made of water from a 10,000-year-old glacier in the far northern region of the Pacific Ocean near the Gulf of Alaska; and a small batch of the Master Distiller’s personal selection of Woodford Reserve super-premium bourbon. The 73 silver cups will be presented on Kentucky Derby Day, May 1, at Churchill Downs--you can purchase here.
