Welcome to Shelf Stars, The Growler’s cheap wine column in which we discover the best under-$15 bottles in town. This edition of Shelf Stars is brought to you with underwriting support from Central Avenue Liquors. Whenever a wine drinker in the Twin Cities comes across the chenin blanc grape on a menu at a restaurant, … [ Read more]
Shelf Stars: Two Endearing Lambruscos
August 20, 2020 by
Welcome to Shelf Stars, The Growler’s cheap wine column in which we discover the best under-$15 bottles in town. This edition of Shelf Stars is brought to you with underwriting support from Central Avenue Liquors. The height of popularity for lambrusco in the United States coincided roughly with that of the Pet Rock and feathered … [ Read more]
Shelf Stars: Never met a Bobal I didn’t like
August 13, 2020 by
Welcome to Shelf Stars, The Growler’s cheap wine column in which we discover the best under-$15 bottles in town. This edition of Shelf Stars is brought to you with underwriting support from Central Avenue Liquors. Is it a coincidence that many words with multiple B’s are used to describe fun and cheerful things? Bubbles. Baubles. … [ Read more]
Shelf Stars: For great rosé, en Gard!
August 6, 2020 by
Welcome to Shelf Stars, The Growler’s cheap wine column in which we discover the best under-$15 bottles in town. This edition of Shelf Stars is brought to you with underwriting support from Central Avenue Liquors. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, it can be maddening to find the right rosé. Wine stores often … [ Read more]
Shelf Stars: The Magic of Montalcino
July 23, 2020 by
Welcome to “Shelf Stars,” The Growler’s cheap wine column in which we discover the best under-$15 bottles in town. This edition of Shelf Stars is brought to you with underwriting support from The Wine Thief and Ale Jail. Montalcino is what you think of when you picture a storybook Italian town. It’s a tight cluster … [ Read more]
Shelf Stars • A Cheat Code for Summer: White Wine from Gascony
June 30, 2020 by
Welcome to Shelf Stars, The Growler’s cheap wine column in which we discover the best under-$15 bottles in town. This edition of Shelf Stars is brought to you with underwriting support from Central Avenue Liquors. In a mini-fridge in the basement of our home, my dad would keep bottles of a bargain California white that … [ Read more]
Bordeaux Buyer’s Guide
June 16, 2020 by
Wine drinkers and non-drinkers alike know the term “Bordeaux.” Images of stuffy cigar lounges filled with haughty white folk come to mind, or perhaps an expansive and expensive cellar full of out-of-reach wines for us, everyday people. An honest look at the whole of Bordeaux, however, reveals a large winegrowing region filled primarily with modest … [ Read more]
Georgia On My Wine
April 3, 2020 by
A number of countries claim to be the birthplace to winemaking—Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, etc. However, perhaps one of the richest, oldest, and most relevant histories of modern winemaking comes from the Republic of Georgia. Georgian wine has experienced a great many changes to its political and geographical landscape over the years: facing the phylloxera epidemic … [ Read more]
Get On Board with Off-Dry Wine
January 27, 2020 by
I have been working in the food and beverage industry for over a decade now, as a bartender, cook, server, and so on. I truly care about what my guests enjoy and in each encounter I have with a potential consumer about wine, I inquire what they like in a wine or what flavors they … [ Read more]
Next Gen: These young people are staking a claim in the future of their fields
December 23, 2019 by
It’s always entertaining to guess about the future. What are the trends and movements that will define food, drink, and culture in the next generation? But instead of always asking “what’s next?” perhaps we should be asking “who’s next?” These Minnesotans got in on the ground floor of their industries and movements at a … [ Read more]
What We’re Drinking: January 2020
December 23, 2019 by
Welcome back to What We’re Drinking, wherein The Growler editorial staff look back on recent remarkable beverages. What are you drinking, Growler Nation? Let us know on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
2019 Kind-of-a-Big-Deal Readers’ Choice Award Winners
November 26, 2019 by
Who better than the readers of The Growler to nominate and vote for the finest of the finest in Minnesota beer, spirits, food, arts, and culture? We had a tidal wave of votes to determine the winners of the 2019 Kind-of-a-Big-Deal Readers’ Choice Awards, and we’re proud to share the results with you. These are … [ Read more]
2019 Year in Review: Wine & Spirits
November 26, 2019 by
Ready, Set, Drink! Local distilleries mounted a full-scale invasion of the ready-to-drink (RTD) category in 2019. Canned and bottled cocktails are up 40% nationwide over 2018, riding the same wave as hard seltzers and canned wine in which drinkers are gravitating towards new flavors in convenient packaging. Vikre Distillery of Duluth launched Frenchie, a pink … [ Read more]
Wine Time: Blood, Sweat, and Tears – aka, The Grape Harvest
September 13, 2019 by
It’s easy to get cerebral and abstract about wine. But let’s remember one thing: it comes from grapes farmed in a vineyard—it is an agricultural product. And there is perhaps no better reminder of this than the actual grape harvest, which is taking place all over the Northern Hemisphere in these early-to-mid-autumn months. In the … [ Read more]
Wine and Cider Guide 2019
August 29, 2019 by
Each autumn, the branches of apple trees and vineyard vines hang heavy with the fruits of a long growing season. Every ray of sunlight, drop of rain, and nutrient in the soil have been soaked up to produce plump clusters of grapes and swollen apples filled with the juices, tannins, sugars, and acids that the … [ Read more]
