The Drunken Botanist - from Bestselling Author Amy Stewart

DIY Chartreuse. Or Something Like That.

Apr 16, 2012 | Distilleries, Featured, Recipes, Travel

The directions from Lyon to the Chartreuse distillery go something like this: Exit the parking garage while trying to fire up your GPS. As it searches listlessly for a satellite (shouting “Look up!” or pointing it at the sky does not help), drive across the river with the vague feeling [...]

Drunken Botanist Gets a Preview at Tales of the Cocktail!

Apr 16, 2012 | Events

The book is done, the copyeditors are having their way with it, and I’m getting a breather–but not for long! In just a couple months I’ll be back in New Orleans at Tales of the Cocktail, giving a sneak peek at some of the crazier botanical booze stories from the [...]

Cochineal in Your Coffee? It’s Okay. Really.

Mar 28, 2012 | History

Uh-oh. Somebody just figured out that Starbucks Strawberry Frappuccinos contain cochineal. This is probably nothing new–what has changed lately is that the FDA now requires that ingredient labels specify whether cochineal is used for coloring. I’m guessing that someone only recently noticed the change to the ingredients listing. Yes, cochineal [...]

Herbs. Now.

Mar 13, 2012 | Botany, Featured

Buying herbs at the grocery store is a sign of defeat. Not defeat, even, because defeat would suggest that you tried and failed. It’s more like inertia. Because really, if you can’t grow a few herbs, you have just given up on having any kind of interaction with the plant [...]

A Summer Drink in February. Because I Refuse to Wait.

Feb 22, 2012 | Featured, Recipes

Frozen berries. Mint. Lime. Rum. Not exactly a February drink. And yet I could not resist. I told my cousin Helen that I’d make a special drink for her birthday when I was in Texas last week. But as it happened, she couldn’t make the drive from Austin to Dallas, [...]

My Love is a Red, Red Cocktail

Feb 13, 2012 | Featured, Recipes

I know, I know. Valentine’s Day! Ick. Heart-shaped boxes of chocolate lined with those weird paper doilies, a card that plays a song—who does that, anyway? It’s a strange holiday. Single people hate it or ignore it, happy old married couples don’t need it, and anyone in a new, untested [...]

Niki Jabbour’s Inspired Cocktail Garden Idea

Feb 6, 2012 | Botany, Featured

Who cares if it’s February? I want my basil mojito and I want it now. Niki Jabbour, author of a new book called The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener, offers these two brilliant bartender-inspired ideas for sheltering herbs and any other tender young green thing. Modeled after the classic Victorian glass [...]

Gardeners Who Drink, Drinkers Who Garden

Feb 4, 2012 | Botany, Featured

Turns out Martha loves them both. Two of my favorite gardeners-who-drink are featured in Martha Stewart’s March issue: the brilliant Ivette Soler of Germinatrix (also author of a very hot book, The Edible Front Yard), and Marie Viljoen of 66 Square Feet, the Manhattan garden blog through which I live [...]

Mexico’s Botanical Foolishness

Jan 22, 2012 | Botany

(via Flickr) This just in: Mexico’s trademark bureau (called the IMPI) has issued a proposal to restrict the use of the word “agave” as it is used to describe some agave-distilled spirits. Under the proposal, which is sponsored by the tequila industry’s trade group, only spirits produced within a [...]