Tomato juice is better for you than you think

Airline passengers have always loved drinking tomato juice – basically right from the beginning of commercial air travel when passengers tended to top business executives – rather than tourists- and air travel was still glamorous and exclusive. Tomato juice, along with other mixers such as ginger ale and tonic water, was a staple at the [...]

Enjoy Kefir and enjoy what it does for you

Kefir, or the drink of the centurions, originated in the Caucasus Region hundreds of years ago and attracted a lot of attention because an unusual cluster of over one hundred-year-old residents populated the Caucasus area and   and continues to enjoy enormous popularity in the Russian Federation, the Baltic States and Eastern Europe. It is also [...]

Coffee in Viennese cafés is always worth the wait

It’s not that the service is slow when it comes to serving you. The service is slow in that no one here is in a hurry to see you leave. Least of all yourself, once you come to enjoy this relaxing atmosphere. Vienna’s Kaffeehauskultur has remained an enduring tradition, thank goodness, and drinking these delicious [...]

Enjoying those underestimated, distinctive German wines

Although quite confusing at first, understanding the classification behind German wines is really quite simple. Don’t let acronyms like QbA, QmP and DTW confuse you. Although German table wines are generally all very good, most wines that we will find in our supermarkets will have the QmP classification. This stands for Qualitätswein mit Prädikat and [...]

Berliner Weisse is a beer that even beer haters love

One of the first things that come to mind when thinking about Germany and beer is Bavaria, Munich, and the Octoberfest.  Germany’s capital, Berlin, isn’t particularly well known for its breweries, but it is the home of the extremely popular summer beer “Berliner Weisse.”  In one form or another, Berliner Weisse has been around for [...]

If aroma is what you do, Earl Grey is what you brew

When it comes to popular teas, Earl Grey certainly belongs to one of the world’s most well-loved flavors. And the stress here is on flavor. Earl Grey is not a kind of tea at all, but of a blend of course, a mix of plain black Indian and Ceylon teas and bergamot oil.

Bergamot is what [...]

A Venetian invention that might get you craving for more

The Bellini cocktail was created at the venerable Harry’s Bar in Venice in the 1930s by the bar’s founder Guiseppe Cipriani.  At the time, it was simply a cocktail made from one part white peach puree to three parts of ice-cold dry Prosecco, the sparkling wine from Italy’s Treviso region. In 1948, while Venice was [...]

Do you take your tap water for granted?

One of the most responsible things that you can do for the environment is to switch from bottled water to tap water. Blind taste tests have proven consistently that bottled water, on the whole, doesn’t taste any better than tap water. In the developed world, tap water is heavily monitored; it is tested much more [...]