drinks

Green Your Happy Hour

scleaver — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Gust Organics restaurant in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village is now the world’s first 100% USDA Certified organic bar.

Among their sustainable practices: recycling, using wind energy and only wind energy to power the restaurant, solar lighting, biodegradable containers that are printed using soy ink, energy efficient and water conservation equipment, green cleaning practices, and a restaurant building that’s built using recycled woods. The servers wear organic uniforms, and you’ll have organic flowers at your table.

The menu (Buenos Aires style steak, homemade turkey meatballs, spinach fettucini) looks delicious, and now there’s a fully organic bar to go with it. Eaten at Gust Organics? What was the experience like?

If you’re not in New York, find a green restaurant near you and learn more at The Green Restaurant Association.

Photo from YumSugar and Gust Organics.

Good Green Brews

scleaver — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 11:34:16 -0400

As summer winds to an end, the remaining evenings offer a few final days to enjoy a good beer garden. As you head off to your local microbrewery, look for an organic label on the front of your next bottle.

The main thing that separates organic craft brews from the pack, according to SlashFood, isn't necessarily the ingredients, but organic cleansers that are used to clean the brewing equipment. Apparently, ingredients aren't as much of a concern with organic beers because microbrews and craft beers are known for using good, quality ingredients anyway. But some beers are touting an organic label:

SlashFood found Four+ Brewing’s hoppy Wildfire Extra Pale Ale from Salt Lake City.

Peak Organic Beer out of Portland, ME sells a pale ale, brown nut ale, amber ale, and a maple oat ale that sounds especially delicious.

And, Wolaver's in Middlebury, VT sells ales and stout, including a pumpkin ale to lead us into fall.

As the microbrew trend continues into the winter months, what’s your favorite organic microbrew? Do you think there's much of a difference between your average craft beer and a good organic brew?

Photo from Wolaver's Brews.

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.