There is a detail that captures an interesting shift for Japanese tea outside Japan: at Iberkanpai, a sake and Japanese gastronomy fair in Madrid, someone served hojicha in a wine glass and suggested a cold preparation with gyokuro and sakura in sparkling water. Not as a stylistic stunt, but as a practical point of discussion […]
In whisky, the key question is not only what reaches the shelf, but how it gets there. Some labels lean on immediate flavours and an easier entry into the category; others reinforce the credibility of an age statement; still others try to balance heritage with contemporary taste. Three recent launches are enough to show how […]
There is a point when a product stops being a fallback and starts becoming a deliberate choice. For decaffeinated coffee, that shift seems to be underway: not everywhere, not at the same pace, but far enough along to change how part of the industry looks at it. For years, decaf sat in a less glamorous […]
There is a country that has been producing tea for more than a century, consuming it at one of the highest per-capita rates in the world, and only in recent years trying to turn that habit into a more structured export project. Turkey is not the first place most people think of when tea turns […]
There is a generation changing how coffee is chosen and experienced, especially in the United States and particularly in the specialty segment. It is not doing so through declarations or manifestos, but through very practical habits: where coffee is ordered, how long people are willing to wait, which hours of the day matter most, and […]
For a long time, buying quality coffee mainly meant finding the right roaster in your own city, building a direct relationship, and relying on mutual trust. It was a solid model, but one that was inevitably tied to geographic proximity. As ecommerce grew, especially after the pandemic, that balance began to shift more quickly. The […]
There is a moment in wine congresses when the discussion moves away from grape varieties and appellations and turns to something else: language, audiences, and what wine means to people who did not grow up with a bottle on the dinner table. It is a subtle shift, but it says more than any technical debate. […]
Strawberries often appear on summer menus and in seasonal reinterpretations of cocktails. This is not a brand-new idea, but it is an ingredient that keeps finding room because it is easy to read, instantly familiar and versatile enough to work across very different drinking styles. For bartenders, that versatility is the real point. Strawberries can […]
In the tea world, matcha now occupies a place that is easy to spot but less easy to define. It appears on café menus, in more contemporary shelf formats and, increasingly, in ready-to-drink versions. This is not a straight line or a clean break; it is the sign of a category finding new ways to […]
Few drinks seem to ask for a stage quite like the Martini. It has never been only a question of gin, vermouth and ratios: the way it reaches the table, the setting in which it is served and the object that carries it all matter too. In some London bars, that attention is once again […]