Sustainable Happy Hour

scleaver — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 11:01:39 -0400

I had an organic beer the other day and it was delicious, but after a hard week, let’s face it, sometimes you want something a little harder. Enter Eat. Drink. Better’s review of organic vodkas, and not a moment too soon! Here are the four organic, sustainable vodkas highlighted:

Vodka 360 The World’s First Eco-Luxury Vodka is “four times distilled, five times filtered.” The recycled glass bottles come with caps that you can mail back to the factory to be reused. Recommended for use with mixers.

Square One Organic Vodka is made from organically grown American rye and the byproduct ends up as food for cows at nearby dairy farms.

Vodka 14, The Height of Purity, is made in Colorado, 80 proof, distilled with Deep Rock water.

Prairie Organic Vodka is a corn vodka, after the vodka’s made the leftover corn is used as energy to run the factory. Apparently, corn-based vodka has more apple, pear, and melon tones with more creaminess than a rye distilled vodka.

How to drink vodka? Freeze the bottle overnight, let the vodka warm slightly before swirling and tasting. For more tips visit Vodkaphiles.com. And, for specific taste and flavor advice, see the Eat. Drink. Better. eco-vodka blog post. Cheers!

Photo from DK Images.

Wine in a Box -- It's Good and It's Green

scleaver — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 11:52:47 -0400

Boxed wine is shaking off tackiness and gaining a green-reputation instead.

As Serious Eats reported, a standard wine bottle (750 milliliter) traveling from a California winery to New York produces 5.2 pounds of carbon emissions; a three-liter box of wine generates only half the amount of emissions per 750 milliliter. (Here’s the original New York Times Op-Ed on the subject).

Opting for a box is especially significant when you consider that, while the majority of wines are made on the West Cost, the majority of wine drinkers are east of the Mississippi, and the U.S. is fast becoming the largest market for wine in the world, so the lighter we can make our wine shipments, the more emissions we’ll save. According to the NY Times, if we drank the wines that are consumed within a year (that’s 97 percent of wines) from a box instead of a bottle, it would reduce greenhouse gases by “about two million tons, or the equivalent of retiring 400,000 cars.”

One impediment to boxed wine right now is quality: the best wine rarely comes in a box. But, all that could change with a little consumer demand.

happy hour

Sustainable Happy Hour

Wine in a Box -- It's Good and It's Green