#i feel like knowing some context on what erica has gone through the last few years made this episode twice as brutal | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

1989dreamer · 4 years

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FTH-2020-Seventy-Five Percent

For @fandomtrumpshate‘s 2020 auction, big thanks to @evanesdust for bidding on me and for being so patient.

AO3 link

Summary: Stiles and Derek are roommates at college, and living together is going well considering Stiles is harboring the hugest crush on Derek. When Derek needs an emergency date to his sister's tenth anniversary dinner, Stiles agrees. He doesn't expect it to get messy. He's kept his feelings in check for three and a half years. Spoiler alert: it gets really messy.

From this prompt. “We’re fake-dating and I’m supposed to publicly break up with you but you’ve been irritating me lately so instead of dumping you I publicly proposed to mess up your plan and now we’re getting married, fuck” au.

Tags: Friends to Lovers, Fake Dating, Pining/Mutual Pining, Minor Misunderstanding, Human AU (full tags can be found on AO3).

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“I need a date,” Derek says apropos of nothing, and Stiles carefully sets down his brush, leans across the aisle, and stares at his friend. Derek flushes. “I mean,” he all but spits out between gritted teeth, “that my sister is having her tenth anniversary dinner, and I am the only single one in the family. If I don’t have a date, I’ll spend the whole time being accosted by my relatives.”

“And that’s my problem how?”Stiles asks. He goes back to his painting. The life model flexes just a tiny bit, and Stiles rolls his eyes at him.

“It’s your problem now because I will pay you to come with me,” Derek says, an undercurrent of threat in his voice. Or tears. Could be tears. Derek sounds mad when he’s about to cry sometimes.

Stiles sets his brush down again. Of course Derek would hit him where it hurts the most. All of Stiles’ meager earnings from his part-time job go toward keeping his Jeep running so that he can make the trek back up north to visit his dad when he’s on break from school.

“How much?” he demands, hating himself for being this easy.

Derek looks relieved. It’s a good look for him. Although, Derek looking good is any day of the week. “Thanks. Like three hundred for the day of? Maybe fifty for each additional thing that comes up?”

“And how often will things come up?”

Derek shrugs. “Maybe once or twice. I’m sure at least some of my family will want to call you to make sure that you’re real.”

Stiles claps a hand to his chest. “You haven’t told them about me?” he asks, pretending to be scandalized.

It’s Derek’s turn to roll his eyes. “I have told them about you, but in the context that you’re my best friend at college and we live on opposite sides of the state.”

“So they don’t think I’m real?” Stiles asks, not sure if he should be insulted or not.

“The most common thing I’m asked about you is ‘What is a Stiles?’” Derek grins, private and sort of cheery. “I’ve kind of stopped referring to you by name now. Just easier that way.”

“Hardy har har.” Stiles pokes Derek. To be completely fair, their freshman year, when Stiles would go home, he’d complain to his dad about his unfairly attractive, selfish, loud, attractive roommate. His dad had been convinced that Derek didn’t exist until he met him when Stiles was emptying his dorm room.

Now he and Derek have an apartment off campus, and Dad keeps trying to get Stiles to invite Derek to Beacon Hills because he claims he should at least get to intimidate his son’s future husband before their wedding.

Never mind that Derek has never even been seen with any dates, much less given Stiles any hope that he could possibly have a chance with him.

Until now. Except not really, because Derek just needs a pretend boyfriend, not an actual boyfriend.

“Why me?” Stiles asks, squinting suspiciously at Derek as he tries and fails to draw the absolute lounge of the life model. Stiles is recommending that Isaac never model again. It’s too much ego and not enough clothes, although Isaac did keep his scarf draped artfully around his neck when he dropped trou. “Why not Boyd or Erica? I’m sure either of them would be pleased to play Derek Hale’s date for a night.”

Derek shakes his head. “Both of them have already met my family. And so has Isaac. We were all friends in high school. You’re the only one I talk about regularly. It’d seem too weird if you weren’t the guy I was secretly pining after all these years.”

Stiles intensifies his squint. “Am I?” he asks bluntly.

“Are you what?” Derek refuses to make eye contact, making quick lines with his charcoal across his drawing of Isaac.

“Am I the guy you secretly pine after?”

“No…?”

Stiles throws his brush at Derek, not even a little sorry when it smacks against his chest and Derek complains that he’s wearing his favorite shirt. It’s not his favorite shirt. Stiles stole that a year ago and has yet to return it.

He’s a bit of a stalker. It’s a habit he’s trying to break. He will break. When he and Derek have graduated and gone their separate ways. When all they’ll be in a few years is the occasional drinking buddy, living too far to justify visiting more than once every couple years, work and life getting in the way of their friendship.

Stiles shakes himself. “So don’t make it a question.”

Derek sighs in defeat, handing Stiles his brush back. “Look, Laura already thinks that you’re my secret boyfriend.”

“I thought they thought I didn’t exist,” Stiles says, bitterly. He takes the brush and lays it down, turning to face Derek. Then he gives Derek a tissue to at least wipe off most of the paint. Too bad it’s oil and will stain.

“Laura helped me move in this year. She saw you and your dad from a distance and I pointed you out.”

Stiles narrows his eyes. “I could have met your sister?”

Derek squirms. “Yes?” he hedges. “But she was asking all these weird questions like our first kiss, where we go on dates, if we’ve gone all the way yet. I didn’t want you to deal with that, so I distracted her until she had to leave.”

“So I get to meet her now?”

Derek nods. “It is her anniversary after all.”

“Cool.”

Then Stiles ignores Derek in favor of finishing as much of his painting as he can before class lets out.

~ * ~

Lunch is leftover chili with homemade cornbread that Derek made earlier. Stiles taps a pen on some paper, thinking over all the things he knows he should put into a contract of sorts for his and Derek’s arrangement.

Stuff like pet names, PDA, just what they’ve “done” as a couple, how long they’ve been dating, and just how long they are supposed to be together before they break up.

Derek sees the list, scratches out pet names—“Trauma,” he mutters as explanation—and adds the terms of payment as well. He also writes down that the breakup should be public so that Derek can take time to “recover” without his family breathing down his neck.

Overall, there’s nothing really objectionable to pretending to date Derek aside from the fact that Stiles would much rather actually date Derek, but how to tell your presumably-straight roommate that you wanna suck his dick and kiss his lips?

Derek gathers the dishes and starts washing them. “Hey, so, my lab is today, so I’ll see you after 5:00. We can talk more when I get home.”

“Sure thing.” Stiles has to run himself or he’d stay and watch Derek clean up. It’s almost like a dance when Derek really gets into it. Stiles likes to park his butt on the couch and watch him while he pretends to do his homework. If Derek’s lab runs late, it explains why he’s cleaning now. Which means that not only will Stiles miss it because he needs to go to class, but it will be his turn to cook and clean tomorrow.

Ugh.

Stiles had considered Derek selfish freshman year because Derek hadn’t known how to share a room. He’s not sure why though, it’s not like they were each other’s first roommates either. Now Stiles feels selfish because he doesn’t mind cooking or doing chores but he had enough of that at home and was hoping to relax at college.

“Hey, see you tonight?” he asks, Derek waves in response.

Stiles goes to class, the pit of his stomach rebelling with every step. Why are things different now? Derek doesn’t want to date Stiles. He just wants to get his family off his back.

Concentration is out the window, so Stiles just spends all his class time thinking up the various scenarios that his and Derek’s plot could go so, so sideways.

By the time he makes it back to an empty and sparkling apartment, he’s nearer to a panic attack than he has ever been in the last three years including the whole fiasco with his first roommate during freshman year.

Stiles goes to wash his face, hoping that the cold shocks his system enough for him to stave off the attack, but Derek finds him there a few hours later, and Stiles has no memory of it.

Derek gentles him through the remainder of his attack, sets him up on the couch with a mug of hot chocolate and his favorite movie, and then just sits in silence while Stiles tries to process the fact that he just had a goddamn panic attack over pretend dating his roommate.

After another movie, Derek moves onto the couch, letting Stiles snuggle into his side.

“All good?” he asks.

Stiles shakes his head. “I will be though.” He waits for a few minutes, long enough for Derek to lean against him and start drowsing. “Tell me about your family.”

Derek yawns. “Well, you know Laura, the one who’s celebrating. She’s older than me, by like a million years. Made her insufferable growing up. And then there’s Cora, who’s about four years younger than me. We were rivals growing up. Every crush I had, she had too. And she’s kissed about half of them. I have a couple older brothers who are even older than Laura and even more insufferable, but in the way that us younger Hales are the dirt under their shoes. Especially my youngest sister. She’s the baby of the family and the most normal. But I guess it’s because my parents were tired when they got around to raising her.”

“Hmm, so many Hales to meet.” Stiles’ heart beats extra hard at that. Not only does he have to pretend to date Derek, but he has to pretend to date Derek in front of—Stiles counts on his fingers—seven Hales that aren’t Derek. Five sibling Hales and two parent Hales.

“And my uncle Peter,” Derek adds, drowsily. “He’s a dickhead. He’s also as old as my brothers but he was far more invested in causing drama with the younger Hales.”

“Laura too?”

Derek nods. “Laura especially. He almost wasn’t invited to her wedding. I will be very surprised if he doesn’t do something that gets him kicked out of her anniversary dinner.”

“And you want me to meet them?”

“Well,” Derek hedges, and that hurts so much and so viscerally that Stiles climbs off the couch and goes to the kitchen to pretend to drink a glass of water from the tap. Derek follows him after a minute. “Look, it’s not that I don’t want you to meet them. You’re my best friend. It’s just that they don’t have the greatest track record with people I bring home.”

“What, like I’m not good enough for you?” Stiles fans the flare of anger growing in his chest. Anything but another panic attack is preferred.

Derek sighs. “It’s a dumb test. I think everyone goes through it, but I don’t know because I don’t participate. I mean, it’s dumb to make your sister’s boyfriend hate her family when before he wanted to be with her, right? It’s like we’re trying to scare them off.”

“So like they’re not good enough for the family,” Stiles repeats.

Derek’s shoulders fall. “I guess. I always hated it, so I wouldn’t bring anyone home so that they couldn’t do that to them.”

“Partners,” Stiles points out.

“What?”

“You said ‘sister’s boyfriend,’ so this assholery only happens with potential partners. Is that it?”

Derek frowns at him before nodding, understanding dawning on his face. “Yeah. That’s it.”

“So, I’ve never met your family because…?”

The absolute look of panic that flashes across Derek’s face is in parts thrilling and heartbreaking to see.

“I understand,” Stiles says. “Well, it just means that I truly am the right choice of friend to take home to mother.”

Derek barks out a strangled laugh. “Yeah, sure. Please don’t call my mom ‘Mother.’ It makes her unreasonably angry. I think she thinks it makes her sound old. I think she sounds older when my nieces and nephews call her grandma.”

“How many nieces and nephews do you have?” Stiles asks, suddenly, acutely aware of just how much he doesn’t know about Derek. It makes him feel like a chronic over sharer and like Derek doesn’t fully trust him.

Derek shrugs. “I think Laura has three kids and my brothers each have two, but that was last Christmas so they could all have more on the way. I have five nieces and two nephews that I know of.”

“And we’re driving down to Chula Vista, right?”

Derek looks relieved, grabbing at Stiles’ floatation device of a conversation change. “Yeah, yes! Definitely. I mean, it’s about seven hours. We could take a flight down, it’d probably be quicker, but more expensive. And besides, this means that we can leave whenever either of us want to.”

“Yeah, how’s that going to work?” Stiles points, and they head back to the couch. Derek sits, angled so that his knee is brushing Stiles’. “Do I just say, ‘Laura insulted me, I want to go back to college now’?”

“Absolutely yes. If any of my family makes you feel uncomfortable in any way, let me know, and we’ll leave as soon as possible.”

It’s a nice reassurance, and Stiles hopes to assuage all his fears as easily, so he and Derek spend the rest of the night, until Derek falls asleep, discussing the finer matters of how to “date” a Hale.

~ * ~

The rest of the week until Derek’s sister’s tenth anniversary dinner blurs by. Lots of packing for what is essentially just a day and a half, getting Boyd to agree to look in on the apartment even though they have no pets or plants that require sitting, and arguing over whose car they’re taking. In the end, Derek agrees to allow Stiles to drive his Camaro for a short stint, and they depart, happily, on Friday after classes.

The drive is uneventful, even when Derek oversleeps the first leg and Stiles ends up driving two thirds of the way to their destination. Derek doesn’t even grump about it, just smiles dopily until he notices Stiles looking at him, and then he steps on the gas.

They pull into the drive of an enormous house at about 11:00 pm. The whole house is lit up. Stiles snorts awake to stare at it.

“That’s your house?” he squeaks.

Derek shifts, uncomfortable. “My parents’ house,” he says. “They’re rich. I’m not.”

“It’s a big house.”

“Yeah. That’s because my uncle and his family live with them, and I think Cora still lives at home and so does Laura and her family.”

“And you? Are you going to live at home when we graduate come spring?”

Derek doesn’t answer. Instead, he opens his door, shuts off the engine, and pops the trunk.

Almost immediately, the door opens and a very pregnant woman waddles out to stare at them, her hands fisted on her hips. The light from the porch illuminates her perfectly.

Derek hands Stiles his suitcase and then starts up the stairs. When he reaches the woman, he takes a step back.

“Cora?”

“Yeah, dumbass. Who else would it be?”

“But aren’t you dating what’s-her-name?”

“Lydia, and yes. We decided we would use sperm donors.” Cora rolls her eyes. “You would know all this if you talked to us more than just at the holidays.”

Chastised, Derek ducks his head. “Sorry.”

Stiles thinks it’s been awkward long enough, so he sticks out his hand. “Stiles Stilinski. Pleasure to meet you, Ms. Hale.”

“What kind of a name is Stiles?” Cora asks.

Derek clears his throat. “He’s my boyfriend. And Stiles is a nickname.”

Cora gives Derek a flat look. “Your boyfriend?”

Derek nods. He looks so nervous. He hasn’t looked this nervous since he and Stiles were paired together after the first rooming fiasco.

“Well,” Cora eyes Stiles with a disapproving glare, “I guess you’d better come in and meet the rest of the family. The ones that are awake anyway. Be extra quiet: the kids are asleep.”

Inside is just as opulent as the outside, perhaps more because inside is completely lit up and doesn’t have to battle the darkness of night.

There are portraits of what must be the Hales and their families everywhere, tasteful crystal décor, and polished marble floors.

It’s very austere, and Stiles understands why Derek said his parents were rich but not him. Stiles has seen how Derek chooses to decorate, and it’s in warm tones with soft surfaces and very limited bits of chrome.

Twin sweeping staircases stand guard at the end of the foyer, leading up to what presumably is more austere marble and crystal, severe lines of cold.

Two handsome people, the woman is an elgant black gown, the man in a black suit, Windsor knot in his silver tie, stand in front of the staircases. Cora stops next to them, says something lowly, and then heads upstairs. Nervously, Stiles clings to his suitcase and follows as Derek walks, spine straight, face blank, toward what must be his parents.

His mother lifts her head, and Derek stops in his tracks.

“Wonderful of you to join us, Derek,” she says, like she’s a queen surveying her subjects and finding them very lacking. Stiles had thought his clothing, a dark t-shirt covered with an open blue flannel shirt and khakis, was fine in Berkeley. Here, it’s completely out of place. Derek’s outfit of a maroon shirt and dark slacks looks a little less out of place, but far too casual for this foyer.

“Mom, Dad,” Derek returns, and it is so incongruous with the image they’re presenting that Stiles has to stifle a hysterical laugh.

After a few more moments, Derek’s parents break, and smiling, they all but run to Derek and hug him at the same time. Derek’s father disentangles himself first, turning to Stiles and offering his hand for a shake.

“So this is the man who’s caught our little Derek’s heart?”

Derek flushes at his father’s words, but he doesn’t disagree.

Mr. Hale grins, using Stiles’ hand to tug him into a quick hug. “Welcome to the family, Stiles.”

“Uh, thanks?” Stiles doesn’t wriggle free, but it’s a near thing. Derek must realize how out of place he’s feeling, still reeling from the complete change in demeanor, because he laces his fingers through Stiles’, grounding him.

Talia nods at their hands. “And how is the relationship? Single rooms?”

Stiles coughs to cover another laugh. He and Derek share a bedroom in their apartment—it was cheaper than two bedrooms—so they should be okay sharing a room. A bed might be another matter, but they’ve been living together at college, so if they’re dating, they should already be comfortable with seeing each other naked, having morning erections around each other, and all those other embarrassing things no one ever talks about happening when people start having sex with each other.

Derek blushes. “It’s a little new, the relationship, but it’s strong. We can be trusted to be in the same room.”

“It’s late,” Derek’s father says. “Let’s get you boys settled, and then we can all talk tomorrow.” He looks at Derek with kindness in his eyes. “I can’t wait to hear what you’ve been up to.”

The room he and Derek are deposited into is medium sized. Stiles would have thought all rooms in the house would be enormous. Derek watches him studying it before explaining, “I went through a phase where I didn’t want anything from my parents, so they moved me in here. It used to be a closet, but it was the smallest they were willing to let me be without me moving out.”

“How old were you?”

Derek shrugs. “I was ten.” He frowns at Stiles’ sudden chuckle. “I was very self-righteous. I thought we were bad because we were rich and I didn’t want to be.” Quieter, he adds, “I was very bullied in school.”

“So was I,” Stiles reveals. “I always pretended that it didn’t bother me, but it did. It’s why I chose Berkeley. Close enough to go home to see my dad, but far enough away that I didn’t have to see my tormentors again.”

“I’m glad we found each other,” Derek says. He points at his bed, a single twin. “You can have the bed. I’ve got an inflatable mattress around here somewhere. I can get that blown up and sleep on that.”

Stiles is too tired to argue. It’s only a little after 11:00 pm, but they’ve been driving for most of the day, and he just feels under stimulated and uninterested in anything except brushing the gnarly taste of garlic pretzels out of his mouth and collapsing into a deep, refreshing sleep.

“Bathroom?”

Derek points down the hall, and Stiles takes his travel bag with him. He’s not sure what he’s expecting when he opens the door, but it certainly isn’t a soft coral pink bathroom with matching rugs, toilet cover, and shower curtain. It’s hideous. Stiles loves it.

Everything was getting a little too marble for his liking. This shows a human side to the Hales.

Because he’s Stiles, he snoops a little. Finds magazines in a holder on top of the toilet. Gross. Finds extra soaps and feminine products hidden in the cabinet under the sink. Cool. Other spare products and towels are kept behind a closed door. Good.

Overall, the bathroom passes muster enough that he feels comfortable scrubbing his teeth clean, scraping his tongue, and washing all evidence down the rose quartz-colored sink.

Derek comes in before Stiles finishes drying his hands on the fluffy, rose-scented towel.

He does a double-take at the room, digs under the sink for a little while, and stands up. “We’d better leave no evidence that we were ever here,” he says, ominously. “The bathroom’s been redone since I was last here at Christmas. I think that means, especially because her favorite color is pink, that this bathroom is Lydia’s and we shouldn’t ever be caught in here.”

“How unhygienic,” Stiles replies, pointing at the magazines. Derek claps a hand over his mouth to stifle the sudden bark of laughter.

“I agree. But honestly, it’s probably a lot more hygienic than your phone.”

Stiles bumps shoulders and then heads back to the room. Derek has indeed found and inflated an air mattress. Stiles crawls onto it to test the bounce, and oh, there’s his pillow. For some reason it’s on Derek’s bed. He grabs it, tucks it under his head, and just like that, out like a light.

~ * ~

Stiles wakes up to a warm body next to his, someone’s leg wound around his, someone’s head on his shoulder. He blinks up at the ceiling, watching as the sunrise fills the room with a lovely, rosy glow.

Then he remembers where he is and what’s supposed to be going on and sits up, arms flailing as he tries to dislodge himself from a very deeply asleep Derek.

He hears a clicking sound, and his head snaps around to find an elegant strawberry blonde in very tight blue wrap dress aiming a phone at him.

“Whasit?” he grumbles, glad that both he and Derek apparently decided to sleep in their clothes. Usually, they’re both strip down to boxers kind of guys. It makes it hard for Stiles to sleep sometimes when he just really wants to lick Derek’s abs or jerk off over him. And apparently there goes his morning wood.

“It’s just payback,” the strawberry blonde says, loud even though it’s obviously early. Derek jerks awake, snorting, and gasping like someone doused him with cold water.

It doesn’t help Stiles’ inappropriate boner at all.

“Payback for what?” Stiles asks. He’s never met this woman. Why does she need payback?

“Oh hey, Lydia,” Derek says, gruff. Sexy morning voice alert. “What brings you to our room today?”

“Someone used my bathroom.”

“Didn’t used to be your bathroom,” Derek responds. He turns to Stiles. “Stiles, this is Cora’s fiancée, Lydia. Lydia, this is my boyfriend, Stiles.”

“Hmm, so he is real,” Lydia remarks. She snaps another picture, says, “Stay out of my bathroom or I’ll expose your sleeping arrangements to Mom and Dad.”

Derek yawns, lazily slipping an arm around Stiles’ shoulders and using the lax grip to tug him back down. “Mom and Dad already know we’re sharing a room. It stands to reason that we’re comfortable sharing a bed too. After all, we’ve been living together for almost four years now.”

Lydia huffs and flounces out of the room, but Stiles saw on her face; she lost and she knew it. And she didn’t mind.

Derek adjusts his grip, nuzzles into Stiles’ neck again. “Hope this is okay?” he murmurs.

Stiles swallows hard. “Yeah,” he grits out. “This is perfect.”

Still, Derek rolls away from him. “I’m going to get up now. It’s the perfect time for a quick run. There’s a bathroom down stairs, third door on the left. Ask my mom or dad if you can’t find it. Don’t trust anything Lydia or Cora tell you.”

He grabs a pair of shorts and a t-shirt from his suitcase and heads out.

Stiles flops back on the bed, wondering if he’d done something wrong. Derek’s leaving feels like dismissal and Stiles isn’t sure if it’s because he was being a little too enthusiastic, i.e. the boner, or not enthusiastic enough.

It feels horrible, like a pit is growing in Stiles’ stomach, and he realizes that he won’t be able to maintain the charade of being Derek’s boyfriend without someone on his side.

But he’s in Chula Vista, not Beacon Hills. His dad is a whole ten hours away, and Stiles hadn’t realized that he only has one friend in the whole world.

How Derek is more sociable than him, he doesn’t know. All he knows is that if he doesn’t spill to someone, he’s going to break down, and the public breakup won’t be public nor a breakup.

He’s sort of saved when Cora knocks on the door and comes in before he can do more than say, “Yeah?”

“I just wanted to apologize for Lydia,” Cora says. She sits on the bed, cradling her stomach. “Mom and Dad are humoring her because her parents just got divorced and she’s not taking it well.”

Stiles studies her. “You weren’t this nice last night,” he says, hoping that she isn’t offended. When she throws her head back and laughs, he lets out a little sigh of relief.

“No. I’m not a night person.” She rubs at her stomach, catches herself, and sits on her hands. “Look, the baby likes to tap dance on my bladder, and whoever said morning sickness was only morning or just in the first trimester lied their fucking head off. I was startled when Derek brought you home. He’s been talking about his roommate nonstop. I actually thought you were dating before now, but he never said your name, always claimed we’d think you were imaginary if he did that.”

“I get it,” Stiles says. “Whenever someone stumbles over my real name, I tell them I go by Stiles, and every time, I get, ‘What kind of a name is Stiles?’ instead of ‘Cool, something easier to say.’ It’s discouraging.”

Cora’s hand comes up to pat at her belly, and she frowns down at it. “I swear I’m not usually this tactile.”

“It’s okay. It’s your body. Hormones and all.”

“Tell me why you decided to date my brother. Did he finally get his head out of his ass and ask you?”

Stiles coughs. “Uh, sort of?” He winces. “I mean, yeah, he finally asked and we made it official, but I mean, I haven’t dated anyone since high school, and Derek’s never been with anyone else as far as I know.”

“That’s it exactly.” Cora points at Stiles and he looks down at himself. He’s not bad looking—if his dad can be trusted—and he’s been making more of an effort with even his casual clothes since he and Derek began living together. “Derek doesn’t date. So why you? No offense.”

“Some taken,” Stiles replies. He shrugs at her. “I don’t know why.”

“Oh, I think you do.” Cora hauls herself up, shakes her head, and sinks back to the bed. She pats next to her, and Stiles hesitantly joins her.

She leans in close. “So, how much is he paying you?”

“Wh-what?”

Cora has a gleam in her eyes that makes Stiles entirely uncomfortable to be trapped here with her. “I’m guessing that you and he aren’t really dating, but since it’s Laura’s tenth wedding anniversary this weekend, he doesn’t want to be bothered by the copious aunts and grand-aunts that like to pinch his cheeks and ask when he’s bringing home his bride. Ergo, you, because my brother may be many things, a coward, spineless, and utterly useless at getting dates, but he does have a soft spot for you.”

Stiles stands up. “Derek isn’t spineless or a coward,” he says, angry at her. “Why would you even say that? Do you even know your brother? He was terrified to come to college. I don’t know why. He hasn’t shared that with me yet. But when I needed a roommate after my first roommate turned out to be the biggest bastard on campus, he stepped up. We’ve been friends since. It was a natural progression of our relationship because, yeah, we fell in love with each other.”

Cora grabs his wrist. “Don’t leave. Not yet. I’m sorry.” She tugs, and he sits. He’s breathing hard, heart beating a little too fast. He doesn’t know why he got so angry except for the fact that he knows the true Derek, the one who likes cooking and cleaning and studying microbiology and taking life art with Stiles just so he’d know someone in the class.

Cora takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry I said that about Derek. I just needed to know.”

“Know what?”

“That you love him too.”

Stiles blinks. Derek doesn’t love him. Not like that.

“I can see that you don’t believe me, but it’s true. Derek loves you. He won’t admit it but it’s in his voice when he talks about you. It’s in the way he won’t let anyone call you imaginary but also won’t reveal your name, because he’s trying to protect you. I don’t know. I do know my brother, and I know that he loves you, and you love him too.”

Stiles doesn’t even know where the tears come from, but he finds himself sobbing on Cora’s shoulder as he confesses that Derek did actually hire him precisely for what Cora accused.

She listens patiently.

Then. “You’re both the biggest idiots.” She throws a roll of toilet paper at him. “Kleenexes get a little rough on the nose when you’re prone to hysterical fits,” she explains to his raised eyebrow. “Quadruple ply is a Godsend.”

Once he’s dried his face and blown his nose, Cora takes his hand again. “Look, I get it. I do. Our family can be overbearing. It was hell keeping them off Lydia’s and my backs long enough to have the discussion about children. And we’re not even married yet. But trust me on this: Derek does love you.”

“So how do I get him to ask me?” Stiles asks. “I mean, after all this. We’re supposed to have a public breakup after this weekend.”

Cora laughs. “Mom and Dad are going to be so pissed they let you sleep in the same room if you do that.”

“I’m serious. I’m supposed to break up with Derek so that he can, I don’t know, save face with his family. I guess because they’ll never see me again.”

She nods. “Makes sense.” She tilts her head, chewing on her lip. “Okay, I’ve got it: instead of breaking up with him, you propose to him. Confuse him. If he really likes you, he’ll probably say yes, and you can be engaged for however long you like. If he still wants to break up with you, then he can’t do it without a little shit sticking to him.

“Oh, I know! You can do it when we go to the mall!” To Stiles’ confused face, she explains, “It’s a tradition to do a scavenger hunt in the mall after a celebration. After we celebrate Laura’s anniversary, we’re going to the mall. It’ll be the perfect place to propose. Or breakup.Whichever it ends up being.”

“One problem: how am I supposed to live with Derek if he says no?”

Cora shrugs. “I don’t think he will, but you could make him move out if he does.”

“Another problem,” Stiles says. Cora rolls her eyes. “I don’t have a ring. I don’t even know Derek’s ring size.”

“That’s easy enough. I have everyone’s ring sizes. I’m the official jewelry expert in the family. That’s why.” Stiles nods. The Hales are so weird, but he finds it endearing. He supposes the Stilinskis would be just as weird to the Hales with their traditions. “Anyway, I’ve got the perfect ring for you to use.” She struggles up and then waddles toward a room three doors down the hall from Derek’s closet room. Stiles waits for her at the door. When she comes back, she tosses a small black box at him.

He flips it open and stares down at the silver band set with a single black cubic zirconium stone. Cora’s right, it’s perfect. It’s neutral enough to go with Derek’s wardrobe full of warm tones and dark pants, but also enough of a statement to bring attention to the fact that he’s wearing an engagement ring. Classy but not overstated.

Derek does have a few bright shirts mixed in, but he doesn’t wear them anywhere but around the apartment. Stiles thinks it’s because they’re gifts from him and Derek likes how soft they are. It makes Stiles unreasonably happy whenever he catches Derek wearing one of them.

“Are you positive he’ll say yes?” Stiles asks. He really doesn’t want to destroy his and Derek’s relationship. Although, he has a feeling that they’re already way past that.

“About seventy-five percent,” Cora says, and because they’re at her room, she shuts the door in his face before he can complain about those odds.

Stiles wanders back to Derek’s room. He keeps staring at the ring. It’s too soon to propose, right?

They’ve only just started dating, right?

They’re not really dating. It won’t be a real proposal. Right?

He closes the box and hides it in his pillow. Then, he grabs a change of clothes and his travel bag and heads to the downstairs bathroom for a quick shower.

~ * ~

Over the course of the day, Stiles is introduced to far more people than he ever expected to meet, and is frankly exhausted by the time they all pile into vehicles, he and Derek riding with Derek’s frankly frightening Uncle Peter and his partner, Freddie, to go to the restaurant.

The ring box is secure in his pocket, and he does his best not to touch it, aware that as the “new” significant other, he’s being subjected to a lot of interrogations, hugs, and all around suspicion. Through it all, Derek stays by his side, directing him away from the more prying of the aunts, or having him hide in an empty room until someone can make an announcement that makes Derek’s boyfriend seem like old news.

Finally though, they all sit at six tables pushed together, a buffet against the back wall of the room. The restaurant is owned by a pair of great aunts who insist on Derek and Stiles sitting next to them so they can gossip about the changes at California University-Berkeley.

“You know, Marsha was a co-founder of the first LGBTQ organization,” the more wizened one states. “How’d that go for you, dear?”

Marsha rolls up her sleeve to show off a large scar. “Thirty stitches and an expulsion.” She winks at Stiles. “And I’d do it all over again because it’s how I met the love of my life.”

He smiles politely. “I’m glad times have changed,” he says. “I don’t think I could scar as neat as that.”

“Well, that’s Diana’s doing. Such steady hands even as she berated me for putting my life in danger.” Marsha sighs wistfully. “Some things don’t change.” With sharp eyes, she pokes at Stiles’ soul, and he shudders at the sensation of being seen and known. “You may think you’re not scarred, but you are.” She turns to Derek. “Make sure you treasure this boy, eh?”

Derek nods almost frantically. He grabs Stiles’ and his aunts’ glasses. “Refills?”

“How long have you been together?” Marsha asks, and Stiles knows he should stick to the script he and Derek came up with, but he can’t. So, he leans in, like he’s telling a big secret, and whispers, “Three and a half years.”

Diana whacks at Marsha’s shoulder. “That means they’ve been steady since they met,” she excitedly exclaims. Stiles flushes at the sudden eyes on their end of the table.

“What I meant,” he stutters out, under the heavy, heavy gaze of, like, a million Hales, “is that we’ve been dancing around each other for years. We’ve only just decided to make it official.”

Derek plops down the glasses. “Don’t scare him,” he chastises his aunts, and by extension, all the nosy, nosy relatives. “I actually happen to love him, and I’d appreciate not having to find him again when you all chase him away.”

As if practiced, all the Hales go back to their own plates and conversation.

Stiles leans into Derek, gratefully sipping at his Sprite. Derek leans back a little, and they balance nicely. Until Stiles remembers what he’s planning to do during the after-dinner excursion. Then, he just sits there while Derek chats amicably, offers to refill Stiles’ plate, and almost holds his hand whenever he gets up from the table.

After the meal, Peter and Freddie give them a ride to the mall. Surprisingly, Peter hadn’t done anything to get kicked out, like Derek had predicted. Stiles thinks it’s because whenever Peter opened his mouth, Freddie squeezed his leg. Someday, Stiles thinks, if things work out, he and Derek could be like that, communicating with just a touch.

At the mall, Laura and her husband, Jordan, hand out a sheet of paper with things to find, and the Hales disperse, a literal army of at least thirty people, led by Marsha and Diana on their motorized wheelchairs.

Stiles allows Derek to hold his hand as they follow along more sedately. Stiles isn’t going to participate in the scavenger hunt, too nervous and afraid that if he uses it as a distraction, he’ll forget why he’s really here.

They get to the second level, and Derek points out a few things on the list, but Stiles has had enough. He sees Cora and Lydia in the crowd and makes his way toward them. Cora catches his eye and nods.

Stiles takes a deep breath, drops Derek’s hand, and then kneels down before he can think about it.

Derek turns to see what’s up and claps his hands over his eyes, like that’s going to make Stiles stand up again.

Deep breath in, deep breath out. “Derek, love, can you look at me?”

Derek shakes his head. He’s blushing, hard. Probably because they’re in the middle of a crowd. Apparently neither of them quite care for the public spectacle. Good to know.

Stiles pulls out the ring box. He takes another deep breath, teetering on the edge of backing out and letting Derek think it was a prank.

Behind Derek, Cora and Lydia both stand, hands clasped together, staring wide-eyed. Cora knows it’s not fake, so why does she look so invested?

Faintly, Stiles hears someone say, “Go for it!” So he gathers his conviction and opens his mouth.

“Please open your eyes,” he says, softly. When Derek does, Stiles is surprised to see tears there. “Derek Hale, I love you. I know we haven’t been dating for very long, but I already know I want to marry you.” And suck your dick, but Stiles doesn’t say that out loud. There are children present for God’s sake. “We go together like two things that you wouldn’t think would be good, but then they end up being the perfect pair. And I don’t ever want to give that up. Please say yes?”

Derek is already nodding, his expression goes from obviously embarrassed to fond and soft, in a way Stiles is entirely unused to seeing from him, even after living together for most of three and a half years.

Behind Derek, Cora and Lydia begin jumping up and down, squealing. Startled, Derek glances back at them before quickly focusing on Stiles again. He helps pull him to his feet and then wordlessly extends his hand. Stiles slides the ring onto his finger. Cora was right about the size and about the style. It fits perfectly, and Derek smiles at it.

Something warm blooms in Stiles’ chest, and it’s because he put the ring and the smile on Derek.

And oh fuck. Oh fuck, he just proposed to Derek fucking Hale and has gotten a yes. Fuck seventy-five percent. Fuck being unsure if his love is unrequited. Stiles leaps into Derek’s arms and is met with a completely off-kilter, totally unbalanced, completely perfect imperfect mashing of lips and noses, and they tumble to the ground, Stiles on top.

Derek is laughing, patting at him, but he also isn’t saying get up.

That’s Lydia, tugging at them. “Do you know how many germs are on this floor?” she grouses, but despite the hard edge from this morning, she keeps smiling at them like she actually likes them.

The rest of the Hales appear suddenly—probably summoned by a text—and all of them, not a one of them looks angry, they all look happy, pleased, already singing congratulations.

Cora raises her phone to show them that she recorded it all, everything, including what was their first kiss.

Oh shit. He’s so fucked. But he’s so happy too.

Cora’s right that they can be engaged for however long they need. At least they are engaged.

~ * ~

The rest of Saturday passes in a whirlwind, and Derek never stops smiling. The whole drive back to Berkeley on Sunday is spent in contented bliss, and when Derek isn’t driving, he just stares at the ring.

About an hour from their apartment, Derek pulls over, and Stiles jerks awake.

“What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Derek says, but Stiles can hear it in his voice. Something’s wrong.

“What’s wrong?” Stiles asks again, gentling his tone.

Derek takes off the ring and hands it to him. “Thanks for that. I really liked it.”

“Liked what?” Stiles stares at the ring. It looks wrong in his hand and not on Derek’s finger. It’s only been there about twenty-four hours. It shouldn’t look wrong, but it does. “Is this about the agreement?”

“Yeah.” Derek clears his throat, a clear sign that he’s about to start crying. He looks heartbroken. “The agreement. I’m sorry. I don’t think I can do this.”

“Do what?” Stiles asks. He turns the ring over, grabs Derek’s hand, and slides it back on. “Your sister already told me that you’re in love with me. I’m in love with you. I proposed-proposed to you. If you really don’t want to marry me, at least wait until we’re home before you break my heart.”

Derek just stares at him.

Stiles waves his hand by his head. Maybe he’s just too tired of this damn charade that they never should have done. Maybe he just wants something for himself for once and he’s willing to fight for it. “I know, you told me don’t believe what Cora says, but she also said you talked about me incessantly ever since you met me. Dude, we’re in love with each other, and yes it sucks that it took making up this fake dating thing for us to realize it, but if you think that I’m going to just roll over and say, ‘Hey, that was great, let’s never do it again,’ then you’re sorely mistaken.”

Derek covers the ring with his other hand, watching as it peeks through his fingers. “You’re in love with me?”

Stiles feels like snapping, but doesn’t. “Yes.”

Derek nods. “Thanks. I-I love you too.” He puts the Camaro in drive.

The rest of the drive is spent in silence. Stiles doesn’t feel relief at things being in the open nor at the sight of the ring on Derek’s finger where it belongs.

Instead, he feels dread rising. Something is going to happen when they get back to their apartment, and it might just be the end of them. Stupid, stupid, they just confessed their feelings for each other. Things should be looking up, not down.

Derek parks and immediately goes to grab their suitcases from the trunk. Stiles heads up the stairs to unlock the front door.

“So, I want a redo,” Derek remarks suddenly, his tone forced into easy and cheery.

Stiles pauses where he’s unlocking the door. “Redo?”

Derek moves closer, shoves the suitcases aside, and brackets Stiles’ head with his hands. He leans in until their faces are just an inch apart. “A redo.” And he kisses Stiles, and even though the doubt is still there, warring in Stiles with the warmth of knowing he has Derek’s love, it gets a little smaller when he falls back against the door and Derek follows him in.

“I am gonna suck your cock so good,” he murmurs against Derek’s lips.

“Not if I suck yours first,” Derek returns.

And that is the story of how Stiles and Derek finally stopped pining and started boning.

Cora tells the story of how they got together at their wedding five years later, conveniently leaving out the part about being seventy-five percent sure that Derek was in love with Stiles, but Stiles forgives her because while she may have been only seventy-five percent sure, he and Derek are both one hundred percent in love and getting married.

~ The End ~

#FTH2020 #evanesdust #Teen Wolf Fanfiction #Stiles Stilinski #Derek Hale

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johnboothus · 3 years

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Can BrewDog Outgrow Its History of Alleged Discrimination?

In March, four workers got fired from their front-of-house staff roles at BrewDog Indianapolis, a brick-and-mortar taproom affiliated with the Scottish craft beer brand by the same name. A bit unusual, considering that the bar, located in the city’s popular Fountain Square neighborhood, was then on the verge of reopening for on-premise service after a winter furlough. Moreover, the fired workers said they’d received high performance rankings and gifts from the company prior to termination.

But hey, this is America, where at-will employment is the law of the land in 49 of 50 states (including Indiana) and you can be fired at any time for almost any reason or no reason at all. So these firings could’ve easily passed without much notice in Indy’s F&B community, let alone the broader beer industry. But they didn’t, for two reasons.

First: Three of the employees identify as women, two identify as trans women, and they were all fired on International Women’s Day 2021. Those termination conversations included a conspicuous turn of phrase that stood out to the four, all of whom identify as members of the LGBTQ+ community.

“The new general manager, who none of us have ever met — we don’t even know what he looks like — called us one by one and told us that we were all being fired because they wanted a change in culture at BrewDog,” former BrewDog Indianapolis front-of-house staffer Erica O’Neill told WISH-TV, an Indiana news outlet, last month.

After BrewDog fired 4 LGBT staff members, 2 of us transgender in the span of an hour, they told us this was due to the bar needing a “culture change.” Now their story keeps changing. This is a multi million dollar corporation abusing at-will employment laws to fire LGBT people. pic.twitter.com/5XfZ4Xbn0z

— jorde (@himbocity) March 11, 2021

Wanting a “change in culture” is simply not the sort of thing you say aloud while axing someone, let alone members of a workplace’s LGBTQ+ workforce. In addition to being needlessly cruel, it’s also potential grounds for a workplace discrimination suit, something the workers told me in a recent interview that they’re exploring with legal counsel. For the record, the company has not denied (either to me, or elsewhere) that someone uttered the phrase when firing the four workers. BrewDog USA’s chief executive officer, Jason Block, issued a statement saying the phrase “was not sanctioned and would not be how we communicate performance issues.” As backlash mounted, James Watt, BrewDog’s highly visible cofounder, posted on the company’s shareholder forum that “the person who instructed these dismissals to happen has now left our business;” according to BrewBound.

(Backbone Media, the Colorado firm that handles BrewDog USA’s public relations, declined to make Block, Watt, or his co-founder, Martin Dickie, available for interviews for this column.)

The other reason these firings generated considerable outrage, I think, is the fact that they happened at BrewDog. The Scottish company, which established its mostly Midwestern footholds in the American market via a U.S. subsidiary in 2017, has courted controversy on all fronts since its founding a decade earlier. Thanks to the marketing savvy of Watt and Dickie, the provocateur-punk schtick has been (mostly) good for business: In 2020, Forbes pegged the value of the privately held company around $2 billion, and this year it made its debut on the Brewers Association’s Top 50 volume-sales leaderboard at #41.

But if the company’s marketing has often toed the line between obtuse “lad humor” and deliberate offense on its path to a billion-dollar valuation and fast-growing U.S. sales, it has regularly trampled that line when it comes to initiatives targeted to or about women and LGBTQ+ communities. Consider the following:

2011: BrewDog invited food writers to a then-new London location for a tasting that included its “titillating” and since-discontinued Trashy Blonde Ale, the label for which promised “attitude, style, substance and a little bit of low self esteem for good measure.” At the tasting, cofounder James Watt reportedly made a few off-color jokes, including one meant to demonstrate the brand wasn’t discriminatory against women or lesbians because his cofounder Martin Dickie had “some DVDs at home of just lesbians.” (This was apparently a rehash of an anecdote BrewDog posted to its own blog in 2009, which has since been taken down; I accessed it via the Wayback Machine.)

2014: The company released “Hello, My Name Is Vladimir,” a self-described “protest beer” that featured the Russian president wearing makeup and the tagline #notforgays on its label. Watt promoted the beer — nominally a critique of Putin’s notorious homophobia timed to the Winter Olympics in Sochi — with thinly veiled homoerotic jokes. The gag (50 percent of the proceeds of which the company said it would donate to charity) read less radical than retrograde to critics like Oli Carter-Esdale, who later wrote that it “bore all the hallmarks of the same masculinity which it attempted to ridicule through the production of russophobia and pop-art.”

June 2015: In a bid to promote the company’s latest round of fundraising, Watt and Dickie filmed a video in which they dressed up as trans sex workers and unhoused people to show potential donors the lengths to which they’d go to solicit fresh capital. The ad, entitled #DontMakeUsDoThis, came in for wide criticism, and a petition calling for its removal netted over 36,000 signatures. Responding to the criticism at the time, Watt told The Drum “it’s a shame some people have taken offence,” and touted what he called his firm’s “history of supporting and championing the LGBT community.”

November 2015: Just a few months later, BrewDog launched “No Label,” a Kolsch it said was “the world’s first ‘non-binary, transgender beer” on account of its incorporation of “hops that have changed sex from female to male flowers prior to harvest.” Stonewall, a U.K. LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, issued a statement expressing reservations over the product’s language, while members of the country’s trans community criticized BrewDog more harshly for trying to “make a brand out of a community … as marginalized and oppressed as ours is.”

2018: Three years ago, also on International Women’s Day, the brewery released “Pink IPA” — a version of its flagship relabeled for women and ostensibly meant to raise awareness and charity funds to address the wage gap between men and women. The marketing stunt may have smarted for the firm’s women employees, who the previous year had earned 2.8 percent less in median hourly pay than their male colleagues, according to data collected by the U.K.’s Government Equalities Office. (To be fair, by 2019, BrewDog’s women workers earned 2.6 percent more in median hourly wages than their male colleagues; also to be fair, that report found women’s average wage still lagged men’s by 6.3 percent at the firm.)

These are just the historical incidents I’ve clocked from coverage over the years. (If you work at BrewDog, or used to, and have more stories to tell, by all means get in touch.) In fairness, BrewDog is hardly the only company in the craft beer business that has released an ill-named beer or launched an ill-conceived advertising campaign in the past. Even on the more serious stuff, including harassment allegations and workplace discrimination lawsuits, the Scottish firm is not alone. These are problems that plague breweries large and small.

But BrewDog, which has long traded on its founders’ line-stepping swagger as both corporate ethos and lucrative marketing strategy, seems to transgress more — or at least, more publicly and deliberately — than many of its craft brewing peers. It does so in spite of its stated values regarding women and the LGBTQ+ community and, crucially, it’s had plenty of success along the way. In addition to the U.S. firm’s placement on the BA’s Top 50 this year (and the $330 million in revenue that put it there), Watt and Dickie announced in an April 10 AGM livestream that the overall group’s revenue grew by 11 percent, and its volume by 32 percent. That’s no mean feat during the pandemic.

Everyone told us it was just stupid for a little Scottish brewery to take on America.??

Everyone told us @BrewDog in the USA would never work. ???????

However, in 2020 BrewDog USA was officially the fastest growing craft brewery in America.?

So proud of our @BrewDogUSA team! pic.twitter.com/9hOzYXxq7y

— James Watt (@BrewDogJames) April 2, 2021

In economic terms, BrewDog’s marketing gambit seems to be working — a troubling notion for the fired former workers in Indianapolis. “I feel like BrewDog and other [craft breweries] have kept safe this dark satire, like, ‘We can make jokes and no one can get mad at them or hold us accountable because we’re punk, we’re alternative, and we’re leading this industry,” Leah Foster, one of the fired workers from Indianapolis, told me. “It’s hiding an entire group of hateful people behind jokes.”

To Foster and her compatriots, the company’s track record is also vital context for their terminations — context they didn’t have while working for BrewDog.

“I really feel like BrewDog is intentionally deceptive to its employees about this,” Jordan Dalton, another of the Indy ex-employees in question, told me. “We had to go through an orientation that was a lot of hyping up of BrewDog and also James Watt and the other founder specifically … so for me to kind of do some digging and find something so shocking and disgusting to me, it definitely made me want to pursue this further.”

“If I knew about those things, I would have never gone to this company, being a trans woman myself,” added Kyrrha Myers, another fired worker. “I’m sure BrewDog and James Watt didn’t want us to know about that. It’s not a good look for BrewDog, and now it comes back to … I see why people have issues with BrewDog.”

Of course, ad campaigns and personnel management are two different corporate spheres, and the U.K. and U.S. are totally different markets. And while most of the marketing stunts began with something nominally good — raising money for LGBTQ+ causes, for example — that wound up boorish in execution, it’s hard to imagine anyone at BrewDog was enthused by the idea of firing workers during a pandemic.

Still, one thing that’s consistent across these incidents is the company’s reaction to accusations of bigotry against women and the LGBTQ+ community. It’s a bit of a two-step, and it goes like this.

Step one: burnish BrewDog’s progressive bona fides. With the ads, this often meant pointing to the charity component of the controversial promotion, and emphasizing its good intentions. In Indianapolis, it meant reframing the conversation around women generally, and the company’s employment of them in particular. “BrewDog USA proudly employs many women — more than half of our retail locations are led by women and 52% percent of our bars’ employees are women,” read Block’s initial statement, emailed the day after Dalton’s social media posts about the firing went viral.

(“Maybe 52 percent of those people who work there are women, but are they being treated well? Are they being sexually harassed by their managers?” scoffed Erica O’Neill, one of the fired workers, when I ran that figure by her. “It’s just such false promises from another rich white guy who has no idea what’s going on in his own company.”)

Step two: if that doesn’t dissolve the backlash mounting against it, BrewDog’s leadership will offer an apology that’s direct enough to provide cover but noncommittal enough that it won’t be seen as capitulating to pressure, which might be bad for the brand’s damn-the-torpedoes public face.

“They always say, ‘Oh, we really want to listen, we’re really sorry, we want to apologize, we’re gonna learn from this,’” Carter-Esdale, a hospitality worker in the U.K. and frequent Twitter critic of BrewDog who in 2019 delivered an academic lecture on the firm titled “Brewing a Neo-Liberal Empire,” told me in a recent interview. “But there are only so many times you can claim that you’re learning, and not learn.”

Of course, as a 1,000-person company, BrewDog contains multitudes, so it’s entirely possible that workers within the company are genuinely trying to help the company grow from its past missteps and use its considerable resources for good. To wit: As this article was being edited for publication, several U.K. craft breweries, including the Queer Brewing Project, announced a partnership with BrewDog to contract-brew and package collaborative beers for Tesco, a popular supermarket chain. It’s a huge opportunity for the Queer Brewing Project, a small U.K. producer that promotes and advocates for LGBTQ+ people in the beer community. Beer writer and QBP founder Lily Waite told me that the partnership “will enable our young brewery to gain visibility and a reach otherwise impossible, as well as having a significant financial impact.” BrewDog’s market access and brewing capacity, in other words, will march Waite’s mission onto store shelves and squarely into the mainstream.

If you'd said we'd have a queer product available to thousands and thousands of people, everything would have been different. If you'd shown me a photo of two queer—one trans—women on a can of beer in major stores, I would have felt so differently.

— Lily Waite (@LilyWaite_) April 14, 2021

“I’ve long had issues with BrewDog and the deeply problematic ‘stunts’ they’ve pulled in the past. These, of course, were taken into consideration, and whilst my feelings on those events haven’t changed, we do believe BrewDog to be a company that is maturing and moving beyond that behavior,” Waite said. Despite the “disheartening” reports from Indianapolis, and the “repetitive questions” they raise about equity in the craft beer industry, in her view, the partnership (which will be managed by proxy via another U.K. craft brewer, Cloudwater) is still a win for the LGBTQ+ community in beer. “As far as our own involvement with BrewDog goes, indirectly working with a brewery with a problematic past to continue our work to combat queer- and trans-phobia in beer, and make the beer world a better space, is a net positive,” Waite said.

It won’t be the first case of odd bedfellows in the beer business, or the last. But the Indianapolis workers are not interested in waiting for BrewDog to mature; they want to force the issue. “Queer Brewing [Project] seems like an important space, and one of the reasons I want to be vocal about our experience is so that queer people in the industry know about BrewDog’s past,” Dalton told me via DM, reacting to news of the partnership.

It’s an echo of what their colleague, Leah Foster, the fourth terminated employee, said in an interview in late March. The workers believe their firings were discriminatory and that BrewDog’s past is prologue to those terminations. They hope to use the legal system to hold BrewDog accountable. “The most important thing to me [in pursuing the lawsuits] is that pressure is put on this company to reflect on how they conduct business, and to be pressured to decide if they want to change, because they are not doing it ethically,” Foster told me. “Making them uncomfortable, and hopefully bringing them to a round table where they question what they’re doing? I don’t have to make any money for that to be worth it.”

Whether the company follows through on its promises to promote healthier workplace culture and “evaluat[e] additional opportunities to ensure we’re a safe and inclusive place for all team members, Equity Punks and customers,” whether it is maturing away from its cringeworthy antics of the recent past, whether the fired workers’ legal action can force its hand on that front — all that remains to be seen. But if BrewDog’s history is any guide… well, let’s just hope it isn’t.

The article Can BrewDog Outgrow Its History of Alleged Discrimination? appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/brewdog-discrimination-lgbtq-women/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/can-brewdog-outgrow-its-history-of-alleged-discrimination

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canvaswolfdoll · 6 years

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CanvasWatches: Violet Evergarden

Ugh, I hate writing about good shows. It’s always so difficult to find something to talk about. With bad or average material, it’s so much easier to point at weak points and say ‘Yes, that wasn’t good. Here’s what I would do.’ Which is my favorite exercise when watching things.

But Violet Evergarden is good. Real good. The only complaint I could imagine lobbying is that Netflix didn’t simuldub it stateside. The villains.

I mean, it’s a show with a blonde protagonist who, out of love, lost limbs and had them replaced by mechanical prosthetics, with the actual story happening in a quasi-european setting approximately after a WWI analogue. Somehow, it’s not Fullmetal Alchemist, nor does it try to be. Freaking Magnus Bride had less superficial similarities, and it still fell into that trap.

It’s laudable.

What Violet Evergarden does do is done amazingly.

Spoilers, by the way. Go watch the show now, it’s that good.

I don’t cry for fiction. This isn’t a macho claim, I honestly view it as a minor failing of mine. I can identify sad and tragic parts of a piece, and I have emotions,[1] but when it comes to fiction, there’s just too big of a separation for me. I can see the strings.

This remains true for Violet Evergarden, but there are some real strong attempts to coax tears. Strong and original.

I like the ‘Girl learning to be Human’ trope.[2] Well, Person learning to be human, but, well, cute girls make everything better.

Point is, there’s a charm to watching someone who, through their personal circumstances, has zero idea how to operate in society, and approaches everything with naivety and a hunger to learn.[4] It’s a good character premise that gives ample comedic potential (Faux Pas, satire, general oddity), dramatic potential (lost time, awkwardness, satire again), and fanservice if you feel the need to provide it. It’s a great tool for side stepping ‘As You Know’ exchanges and still actually teach your audience about your fantastical world![5]

Violent is given this status by, initially, being raised as a tool for war. She doesn’t know her family, her age, nor have a name when she’s gifted to The Major by his brother, and from there begins her journey to learn to be a human.

It’s not until she’s finally removed from the context of war and loses the man she devoted herself to that she can truly begin learning the hardest part: empathy.

And you thought my ‘don’t cry at media’ tangent was unrelated! Ah-ha!

Up until Violet begins her job as an Auto Memory Doll[6] people existed in one of three categories: Enemy (people to kill), Allies (people not to kill), and The Major (Person to take orders from). Sure, The Major gave her a name, and taught her to read and write, but on the battlefield, where most people have to be broken down into a state of “Kill or be Killed”, it’s hard to teach a young girl to be a person.

We begin the story right at the point of transition: Violet has lost both her arms, hasn’t heard from The Major since their last operation, and the war’s pretty much over. And her broach is missing. A lot’s happening suddenly, and she’s being taken off by a retired officer turned postal company president, Claudia Hodgins. It’s a confusing time for those involved.

Here’s a fun trivia fact I had to have explained to me: you may ask yourself ‘Why does Violet bite things? It sure helps make her seem alien, but why did she develop the habit?’ Well, Violet doesn’t have hands anymore, so that leaves her sensitive lips to feel things with![7]

Anyways, per The Major’s wishes, at first Hodgins attempts to leave her with some of The Major’s relatives (The Evergardens), the matriarch of which expresses hope that she and Violent can help comfort the other after losing family to the war.

Violent, of course, misreads the intent and explains she won’t be able to replace to Ms. Evergarden’s son. Violet is also generally uncomfortable with this prospective life of not doing anything or receiving orders, so runs after Hodgins, rejecting the Evergarden home.

She does, apparently, have no qualms taking the surname, which seems like a weak justification for it. She’s closer to The Major, shouldn’t she have adopted that complex noble name instead?

Speaking of which, an anime trope grosser than Student/Teacher relationships: The Usagi Drop![8] It’s a romantic relationship where one of the participants (literally or essentially) raised the other! Ah-ha, what a disgusting abuse of a power structure.

Now, to the anime’s credit, there’s at least ambiguity to Violet and The Major’s exact feelings towards each other. The Major isn’t around to clarify if he views Violet Paternally or Romantically, and Violet’s still working through being emotional stunted. However, it’s ambiguous enough to make both options equally likely.

During the first couple of episodes, the meaning of The Major’s ‘I love you’ being a romantic confession could’ve been kosher, and even expected. But as Violet’s backstory is revealed, and we learn that The Major pretty much raised Violet, romance ceases to be charming and instead shifts into worrying.

This isn’t helped when a parallel is drawn with a diplomatic engagement between a 14-year old princess and a prince at least 10 years her senior.

Surprisingly, when it comes to royal pairings, I find myself a bit more forgiving about more squickier elements. Yes, the massive difference in ages isn’t an ideal depiction, and the princess being underaged by modern standards doesn’t help, and the fact it always seems to be an older man courting the younger woman is troublesome.

However, what the situation does have is extenuating circumstances. It’s not just a precocious crush being exploited; it’s years of bad tradition, diplomatic planning, and the fact that it’s two individuals obviously trying to make the best of a bad situation.

The princess is going to get married off to someone for diplomatic gain, might as well be to someone who’s shown empathy for the princess and the situation.

But for Violet and The Major, I would hope the final call comes down on The Major viewing Violet as an adopted daughter

There’s a second major point of ambiguity surrounding The Major to drive the plot: is he dead? Most of the cast accept that his Missing in Action status after a major bombing of the building Violet was found in means the man’s likely dead, but Violet holds out hope.

In most stories, if The Major was still alive, there’d be more hints than provided by the anime, or they’d just accept he was dead and continue forward.

The Major being dead provides a stronger break and arc for Violet. Not only has the war she’d been existing for ended, but the man she’d been devoted to entirely is also gone. At the start of the series, Violet has nothing and must rebuild herself. To deny closure of that chapter by letting The Major be in hiding would just undermine the entire opening premise.

So, of course, the last shot of the series is an ambiguous shot of Violet arriving at the house of an unseen client and stumbling with her well rehearsed introduction, giving the audience a winking ‘Is he?’.[9]

If he is alive, it’d be a massive jerk move because it’s not just Violet’s life he’s derailing and introducing tragedy to. Major Gilbert Bougainvillea has a family, after all, including a mother who mourns him and a brother with undirected rage over the loss of his younger brother. Also friends probably. We’re not given any real reasons for The Major to crawl out of that final battle, put his fists on his hips and say ‘Sweet. I’m gonna abandon my old life!’ Admittedly the backstory of The Major is very light in the anime adaption, but that lightness also paints a lack of past tragedy.

The rules of ‘show don’t tell’ and ‘write the story about the most interest point in the character’s life’ also implies that which is not depicted is not interesting.

Thus, The Major should be dead and should stay dead.

Which concludes my… review of a single character…

Let’s talk about the show proper.

Much like Isle of Dogs, it ticks off a few items on my favorite things list, but more of the narrative devices.

It’s a series of vignettes with a reoccuring protagonist acting as bridge, set in a light fantasy world that is much closer to modern day than is traditional, and has major emphasis on writing as a narrative device. And alsi fantasy prosthetics, a fondness that will go unexamined today!

Also, one of the other Auto-memory Dolls wears glasses.

It’s produced by Kyoto Animation, which I think is tying with Studio BONES for my favorite studio (based solely on the works they produce), which is a major plus.

The individual episodes are very character-driven, including one about a playwright that made me really want to get back into writing plays myself.[10]

Most episodes explore Violet from the perspective of the episode’s client, while offering some world building. Episodes one and two, as a pair, exist to introduce Violet and the world, and thus don’t have much for Hodgins (who gets his development through the rest of the series) and Erica (who doesn’t actually get much besides explaining the origins of typewriters and the term ‘Auto Memory Doll’).

Episode three is when the series rolls up its sleeves and says “Ah, we’re learning what it means to feel emotions? Get ready to choke!” and sends Violet to school, where everyone’s soul goes to die!

While trying to earn a coveted accreditation, Violet meets Luculia, who lost both her parents in the war while her brother returned home with an injured leg and a chip on his shoulder. During the course, Violet shows she can get the practical skills down easily enough, but when it comes to putting any actual soul into her letters, she turns in only tense reports.

Luculia graduates top of the class while Violet does not. Still, Luculia has decided she’s friends with Silver Arms, and sets to help Violet do better. Luculia’s attempts fail, and instead the two have a short heart to heart. Luculia’s brother has fallen to drink and hasn’t come to terms with coming home from war to find his parents gone, and Luculia doesn’t know how to tell him that it’s nice that they still have one another.

Violet takes that in, writes a letter for the brother, and repairs the relationship! Yay!

But that’s the formula. Everyone knows those beats! Got to earn the heart-wrench.

Episode four, Violet escorts her co-worker Iris back to Iris’s hometown for a surprise birthday party. Iris isn’t happy about this turn around, due to a rejection of her feelings and her parents not really supporting her life path.

Again, Violet writes a letter, makes everyone feel better. As you do.

But we also learn the origins of names: Iris got hers from the flowers blooming when she was born, and Violet… got hers at the training center when The Major awkwardly realized Violet didn’t have a name. Thus strengthening the parent/child relationship of The Major and Violet and they better not make this gross, I swear!

Then we reach the royal engagement. I mostly discussed that in the relationship dissertation, but episode five is a strong examination of making a relationship work, despite distance, age, obligations, and other fragile matters. The episode also gently nods to the fragile state the continent’s in after the war, with dissidents to the results of the war still out there, waiting to take center stage.

Episode six is fine. It is. Massive library, Violet meets a reclusive nerd scared to follow the path of his parents. Reclusive nerd crushes on Violet. Violet is ignorant of his feelings because of course, and she accidentally inspires him to change jobs from researcher to Action Archivist! Roaming the world searching for lost texts! Good world building, not heavy on the emotions.

And so we come to Episode Seven: probably the closest I’ve arrived at crying in years.[11]

Violet is hired to transcribe a famous playwright’s newest play. He’d been out of the public eye for a while, but he’s much lauded. However, his house is a mess, he’s slow to get the work started with Violet, using her as a maid for a bit and inspiring her to try cooking.[12]

Anyways, Oscar Webster is writing a children’s play. His first, I believe. Which is a dead give away for his emotional problems. Still, the snippets we get really showcase the creative writing process and hit me with nostalgia for the Theater for Young Audience class I took once, and the child’s theater summer camp I worked for.

Then we get flashbacks to Oscar and his daughter moving into a new place after his wife’s passing,[13] then watching his daughter progress through what is one hundred percent cancer as we get the snippets of what inspires the play.

And Violet meets him living alone in his ill kept house.

Which is where I’m ending my summary.

Violet Evergarden is a good anime. Beautiful visuals, distinct characters, strong world building, and amazing writing.

Go watch it now.

Though, on your way over, consider supporting my Patreon. Then, after you watch all of Violet Evergarden, come talk to me about it. And maybe check out the other things I’ve written and drawn and otherwise created. Especially since I’ve decided I’ve procrastinated long enough on a certain project.[14]

After all, August 1st is coming. Sounds like a good day to go camping and/or catch a wave.

Kataal kataal.

[1] Often strong ones! [2] A specific variant of the Fish out of Water trope that, unfortunately, TV Tropes doesn’t seem to have an entry for, as it hasn’t been applied to Violet.[3] [3] Wait, found a video essay. “Born Sexy Yesterday”. Which, admittedly, examines the trope’s problemsome aspects, but,eh, I stand by its strengths. [4] This is why Starfire is the best character on Teen Titans. fight me. [5] I keep meaning to use it myself, but the concept I have would spoil a major setting secret for my current project. [6] A scribe with a typewriter. Anime has an ability to give fanciful names to things at a level I hope someday to emulate. [7] Why she did it during the flashback when The Major got her the broach is anyone’s guess. Maybe it relates to that anecdote about a kid eating a letter from Maurice Sendak. [8] Named for a manga that was apparently pretty cute until it suddenly really wasn’t. At all. I haven’t read it, but reputations do flourish. [9] The light novel isn’t as ambiguous, but I won’t spoil it. Also, totally looking forward to picking it up once it gets translated. [10] I guess I do have that play about tabletop rpgs that needs another draft with a better plot… [11] Since I came downstairs after bedtime at exactly the wrong time of a medical drama show. Was like, four or five. Saw a man coughing up blood. Good times. Before my soul froze up and withered to the merry husk I have now. [12] I really like seeing cooking used as a narrative device. [13] Moving after a spouse dies is a very sad and subtle trope. [14] Though a Three Leaves, Three Colors review may pop up first. It’s the current bedtime anime.

#CanvasWatches #violet evergarden #anime #netflix #CanvasReviews

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dailyaudiobible · 7 years

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01/21/2017 DAB Transcript

Genesis 42:18-43:34 ~ Matthew 13:47-14:12 ~ Psalm 18:16-36 ~ Proverbs 4:7-10

Today is January 21st. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I'm Brian and it is great to be here with you today. This is day 21 of our journey through the Bible this year, three weeks in. Well done. It is said that it takes 30 days to create a new habit in your life. Seven more days and we will have made a habit of this for the new year. So well done. We are on our way.

We’ve been reading from the New International Version, which is what we’ll do today and then we’ll go back to Egypt and Joseph and his brothers and the great famine. Genesis chapter 42, verse 18 through 43, verse 34 today.

Prayer

Father, we thank you for another week in your word and as we finish this third week, we feel the rhythm. We feel the things that are breaking free inside of our hearts. We see the way that you have already begun to reshape and reform us. It is beginning to come out. Things are coming back to us as we face situations. And one of the things you have told us from the get-go of this year is that wisdom is very vital to our survival in navigating in this life and to fear you is the beginning of that journey and that you use wisdom. You created this world by wisdom and you have offered it to us. But it is not something that will just happen to us. It is something we have to get. It is something we have to pursue. As you said in the Proverbs today, get understanding even if it costs you everything that you have and cherish it, embrace it. So in the spirit of King Solomon, we ask you for wisdom. We ask you for this. Give us wisdom in our lives. Compile all of the experiences of our story and, Holy Spirit, distill it down into the wisdom. From our mistakes, create wisdom for the future. From our victories, create wisdom for the future. We walk with you, Holy Spirit, and ask this of you. Pour wisdom into our lives and show us where the road goes. Help us to make wise, collaborative decisions with you. Come Jesus, we ask. In your name we pray. Amen.

Announcements

Www.DailyAudioBible.com is the website. Of course, that is home base and that is where you find out what is going on around here. Speaking of wisdom, you might want to check out some of the other channels that are on the Daily Audio Bible player or app, especially I think today of Daily Audio Proverb.

So this is the Daily Audio Bible and we’re going through this rhythm of the entire Bible in a year and that is an epic journey, amazing. If we just look back over the first three weeks, we see it is a very rich and amazing journey to take. But if you really want to pursue wisdom, then so much of the wisdom of the ages is contained in the book of Proverbs. So the Daily Audio Proverb is there. It is about five minutes a day. It is like a vitamin. Daily Audio Bible at the beginning of the day and take your vitamin at night or at lunch or switch it up. Whatever works for your life. But maybe incorporating the Daily Audio Proverb as just this little vitamin would be very helpful. It goes through an entire chapter of Proverbs each day and moves through the entire book of Proverbs every month. So you can go through the whole book of Proverbs and really pour wisdom into your life. This is unfiltered wisdom. It is practical advice for how to live your life and how to have a posture that gives context to life. You can go through it 12 times in a year. It is surprising how that stuff bubbles back up, how wisdom actually does take hold. You begin to face certain sets of circumstances and all of a sudden you remember the proverb and it speaks to exactly what you’re facing and you know what to do. All of a sudden you’re like ‘I'm not confused about this. I know what is right.’ Then we have that choice to do what wisdom dictates and what is right or to avoid it and be foolish. We get to make that choice. So you might want to check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, thank you. All of this stuff doesn’t just happen. It happens because we do it together. Now that we’re in our 12th year, we’ve done a lot together. Thank you for your partnership in helping it to go forward next week. Thank you for supporting the community that is the Daily Audio Bible. There is a link on the home page of www.DailyAudioBible.com. If you’re using the app, you can push the More button in the lower right-hand corner. Or the mailing address is P.O. Box 1996, Spring Hill, TN 37174.

As always, if you have a prayer request or comment, (877) 942-4253 is the number to dial.

And that is it for today. I'm Brian. I love you. And I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer Requests and Praise Reports

Hi everybody. This is Alicia from Kansas. It's Friday the 12th. I have to humble myself because I know I’ve called a few times already this year, but I’m really looking for widening the margin within my life and not having such high expectations of myself, getting rid of perfectionism, and humbling myself is a part of that process. I'm calling. Brian at the first of the week talked about letting go of our dreams and giving up. It's been almost 18 years, but I’ve been divorced from my husband who I left, him and my children, in my alcoholism and I quit believing. I believed for five years and waited for his forgiveness for me and maybe he will never forgive me, but you know, Brian, I'm grateful for that. It has reestablished and reignited within me having dreams again and trusting in what I’ve heard the Lord say to me and not thinking I'm just crazy or did I really hear that. So I hope for everybody else and my prayer will be that those of you, whatever your dreams and desires, that you will trust that the Lord will fulfill those. They may not look the way that we think that they should look, but that he is listening and he will fill the desires of your heart. I am going to come before him today, just as Brian said, and just be me and talk to him and not be concerned about being perfect or trying to be what I think he wants me to be. Everybody have a blessed weekend and I love you all. Take care. Bye-bye.

Hello my Daily Audio Bible. I’ve missed you so much. This is Erica, Erica M., aka what my momma calls me, Sunshine, so that is what I’m going to go off of. I am from New Hampshire but living in Arizona currently and I just thought I’ve been listening the last couple of days and God has given me time, the time to be him and the time to be with you guys. I just have to say it has been so wonderful. So wonderful. I'm going to be calling more. I have not called in a long time, at least a couple of months, more than a couple of months. But I’ve been through so much and one of the reasons I am doing so amazingly is it is the prayers of this family. It has been the prayers of you guys reaching out and praying for me and listening to your prayers praying for each other, so I'm just grateful. I went through a major surgery last year and that was hard. That was really hard. And I'm going to get another one, but I know that God is going to be there. That is what I want to impress upon you. If you guys need me, I am willing to pray with you. I am willing to be your friend. I’ve met so many amazing people now because of the DAB and because I was willing to reach out. You know, Satan, I think was keeping me in my tiny little box. That is where he wants to keep us. So reach out. I'm about out of time. I love you all. I'm going to be calling more. Don’t let Satan keep you in your little box. Reach out. Love on people. This is Erica signing out. Let sunshine rule over your life. Bye, you guys.

Hi, this is Denise from Cincinnati. Brian, my heart was breaking for you as soon as I heard your voice. It is January 14th. I knew something was wrong and my biggest fear that your mom had passed had indeed happened. I am so sorry. My heart is breaking. So I am praying for you today and for Jill and for your family. Brian, I thank God for you. I had an accident three weeks ago and in the hospital for surgery. All I did was listen to Daily Audio Bible over and over and over and over again, every single day. Thank you for that gift. Thank you for being a lifesaver for me. We are all here for you. We’re praying for you and praying that the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your heart in Christ Jesus and praying for joy and love and the outpouring of love and encouragement from this family to you. We love you, Brian. Take care. God bless.

Good morning DAB family. This is Dawn from Los Angeles. It is January 14th and my heart is just with Brian this morning, with Brian, Jill, and the entire Hardin family. I am just covering you all because you have covered us. You have supported and nurtured and built up and taught and equipped and trained us and it is our turn to as a community send all our united love and our strong force your way to wrap you up and to pick you up. So we just want you to know that your DAB family loves you and that we have you. I pray this morning that the heart that Brian shared with us after and before he read today's word would inspire all of us to make that call, to make that connection, to give that grace and that mercy and that forgiveness to your mom, your dad, your brother, sister, friend, son or daughter. There is someone in your life that tomorrow they literally could be gone. They are but a vapor, a mist. So I pray that all of us in turn would use the heart connection we have from Brian, through Brian today, to say I hear God and God is asking me to have a better relationship with my mom. Value her life. Value her role Value her existence and value her relationship. I love you DAB family. Ten years strong now. Loving you and keeping you lifted in prayer. Be well and be in love with Jesus as always.

Hello Daily Audio Bible family. This is William and Beatrix S. from Vienna, Austria. I'm calling today for a prayer request for a lady who has an 11-year-old daughter. The daughter's name is Zoey and the mother's name is Sunshine. They live in Florida. Sunshine, it appears, has been diagnosed with cancer and we don’t know the severity of it, but she is due for a CAT scan today. This daughter found out unexpectedly and by accident and is having a very difficult time right now, so please pray for Sunshine and Zoey B. Thank you so much, Daily Audio Bible family. Greetings from Vienna, Austria. Have a good day. Be blessed. Bye-bye.

Yeah, hello Brian. DAB family, my name is Derek from Vancouver, British Colombia, Canada, also aka Christophilus. It is my first time calling. I’ve been listening to DAB for the last year and I have procrastinated so much. It is Sunday, January the 15th, and Brian, I just want to pour out my heart to you, brother. I heard of your loss and I just want to say I am weeping with you. I thank you for being so faithful, even at this time and I want to thank you for all my brothers and my sisters in the DAB family. I have not called before. This is my first time and I pray, Father, I just pray for the entire DAB family. I pray for Brian and Jill and the family. I pray you keep your hand upon them. Lord, I thank you for this ministry. I thank you for their faithfulness. I thank you that you have great rewards for them, Father, and great blessings in the future. We give you the praise and glory for all you are doing in our lives. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

Hey DAB brothers and sisters. This is Byron out in Florida. I set aside a day this week to fast and pray for the situation in Aleppo because I was stirred by Sam in Western Australia's challenge to us to do just that. But the thing is I don’t watch the news. The only way I really know that is something is going on is when people around me start talking about it. So when I took that time to pray, my first order was to figure out what I was praying for. I was stirred to pray for something I really didn’t know what it was about. So I started to do some research in the situation in Syria and then to Aleppo and what I came across reminded me as to why I don’t watch the news. The situation is tragic, obviously, and a humanitarian disaster, but what is even more striking and scary is that why this is the case. It seems that Aleppo and Syria have become the center of a geopolitical conflict between situations that are much larger than that country itself. As the day went on, I just got more distressed thinking about what is the prayer for this place? And I couldn’t think of what it would be. I don’t really have time to go into how the Lord showed me, because it was really quite coincidental and funny, but when it came to me, it struck me that there is no political resolution for the problems in Syria. There is no situation that is going to keep from there being long term issues. What Aleppo needs and what Syria needs is the gospel. They need people to go there, go to preach. The harvest is ripe there. For me, at least, that is going to be the prayer. So thank you, Sam, for challenging me to pray. Love you guys.

Hey family, this is Salvation is Mine in San Leandro, CA. Today is January 13th, 2017, and the news I didn’t want to receive I received today. I do have breast cancer. There will probably be surgery involved. I don’t know when, but it is coming. But even with all that being said, I know that by his stripes I am healed and by his word I am made strong and I will have the comfort of the Holy Spirit with me. Jesus is always praying for us to his Father, God. He is keeping us in his heart, in his prayers, in his mind, in his spirit. I know it says that he does not give us more than we can handle, so obviously this is something I can handle even though it is something I don’t want to handle. But I'm going to have to find some peace in it one way or another and I'm determined to do that. This is a season in my life and it will be a short season no matter what I think. So family, right now I am just asking for your prayers, prayers, prayers, and prayers over me, over my spiritual need, over my mental need, over my body, that this will be eradicated and will never return. I don’t know how this is going to affect things because I do have lupus as well, so I definitely have to figure out that with my rheumatologist. Anyways, God bless you. God love you. God keep you in perfect peace in your life no matter what storm you are going through. Know that he is there and he will get us through everything in our lives. Love you family. Take care. Bye-bye.

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wineanddinosaur · 4 years

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VinePair Podcast: Fall Drinks Trends LIVE From Tales of the Cocktail

Although New York City is somewhat solemnly celebrating extended outdoor dining through winter and year-round, Covid-19 is still threatening restaurants, bars, and the public across America. With fall officially here, most of us will soon face the end of outdoor dining and drinking, or at least a greatly limited version of it for the next four to six months, if not longer.

On the flip side, that means the trend toward home bartending we saw in spring and early summer will undoubtedly accelerate — perhaps with new, seasonal focuses. Instead of the Margarita and its many variants being the most popular drinks to make at home, will bourbon-based drinks like the Manhattan or Old Fashioned stake their claims at the top of the DIY drinking list? How can bourbon producers and beverage brands, bars, and bartenders alike find ways to contribute to — and potentially profit from — this emerging trend?

What flavors, spirits, and emotions will color fall and winter drinking habits? That’s what Adam Teeter, Erica Duecy, and Zach Geballe discuss on this week’s special episode of the VinePair Podcast, recorded live as part of Tales of the Cocktail’s virtual conference last week.

Listen Online

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

Or check out our conversation here

Adam: From Brooklyn, New York, I’m Adam Teeter.

Erica: From Jersey City, I’m Erica Duecy.

Zach: And in Seattle, Washington, I’m Zach Geballe.

A: And this is a live Tales of the Cocktail edition of our podcast. Guys, what’s going on?

E: Hey. Excited to be here. I see you guys on video now. Usually, we’re just doing audio.

Z: I know. And I’ve long wanted to go to Tales of the Cocktail, so now I can say I’ve been, even though it does not involve going to New Orleans or necessarily doing more than putting on a shirt. You don’t even know if I’m wearing pants — which may have been the case if I had gone to New Orleans.

A: Zach, have you never been?

Z: I’ve never been.

A: Erica, what about you?

E: Yeah, I’ve been several times. I’ve presented a couple of times, and it is very hot but so much fun.

A: I actually can’t imagine what it would have been like this year if they would have done it this time of year, because I’m sure it would have been lovely. July in New Orleans is definitely super warm, but it’s always a great time. There are so many people that you get to meet, so many connections that you get to make, so many amazing bars that you get to sample cocktails from which are doing pop-ups across New Orleans. It’s a pretty amazing experience. It’s hard to replicate almost anywhere else, I think, given New Orleans’ attachment to cocktail culture and the fact that the United States is the birthplace of cocktails. Let’s be real: It fits there in a very different way than other conferences in other parts of the world. It’s a very cool experience, and I obviously can’t wait to get back to Tales next year in real life.

Z: I can’t wait to sweat my ass off with you all next year.

A: Before we kick into everything, I know we all made cocktails because it is Tales of the Cocktail. Zach, what are you drinking?

Z: I got back in the house just in time for our recording, so I had to settle for just grabbing something off the shelf. But fortunately, I have some selections back here and I’m drinking my favorite, which is also what I named my dog. This is Willett Bourbon, a classic Kentucky distillery — and it’s delicious all the time, including right now, in the middle of the afternoon here in Seattle.

A: Definitely a lot of Willett is consumed during Tales. Or just a lot of bourbon in general. Erica, what about you?

E: I have a very cool new liqueur from Forthave Spirits. It’s a small Brooklyn distillery. Dan Daylon, who owns it, is someone I’ve known for about 20 years. And it’s been so cool to see this distillery come out and make a bunch of amaros and digestifs. This new product that they just released that I’m drinking is called ‘Yellow.’ It’s yellow, and it’s a really gorgeous liqueur that you can drink yourself. One of the things that I find tough about aperitif culture is sometimes there’s so much sweetness. But this is a really incredibly well-balanced liqueur that I actually have just been drinking over the rocks and it’s gorgeous. It has some bitterness and some floral qualities. I received it in the mail a couple weeks ago, and I’ve just been drinking it over ice pretty consistently. So cheers to Forthave Spirits.

Z: What about you, Adam?

A: I’ve got this awesome new tequila called LALO that is actually made by the grandson of Don Julio. It’s a pretty cool tequila. It’s out of Austin. It’s the only place it’s available right now. It’s a group of three guys who started it. The grandson, whose nickname is Lalo, he was making tequila for fun in Mexico and then was going to visit friends in Austin and kept bringing what he was distilling and all of them were like, “This is really good.” His whole idea is sort of returning to blanco as the premiere place to showcase tequila. While reposados and anejos are interesting, he really feels as if the pure form of tequila is blanco, so that’s all they do. And they do it really well. And they take the agave they’re harvesting really seriously, so they want old agave that’s at least seven years old, they’re not going for the really young stuff that a lot of people are using just to keep up with demand right now. And they really want all of those floral and herbaceous notes from the agave to really come through. Their belief is that when you get to reposado and añejo, you lose a lot of the flavor of the true agave and it gets covered by wood. So they’re really just trying to highlight agave because tequila wouldn’t exist without it. It’s a super-cool spirit. And I love the packaging, I think it’s just gorgeous. I’m drinking Ranch Water because it’s still too early in the day.

E: I was so excited when I was just looking through our cocktail recipe database and I saw that Ranch Water is now in our top 50 cocktails.

A: I know it’s crazy. It’s a cocktail that has come out of nowhere. It’s blown up.

Z: I also want to put in a note that if you are interested in LALO, Adam did an interview with the guys who founded and it is available on the VinePair Podcast feed.

A: Before we kick off today’s topic, which we’re super excited to get into, a quick word from our sponsors. The 2020 Sherry Wines Mixology Challenge is on. That’s for everyone here at Tales. If you love sherry, get in on this. Sherry, as we all should know, is a fortified wine from southern Spain that has become the secret ingredient of many innovative cocktails for its versatility and complex flavor profile. We’re looking for all mixologists out there to show their skills and enter to win by submitting your very own sherry cocktail creation. There’s going to be prizes of $3,000, $1,500, and $500 that will be awarded to the top three winners. All you have to do is go to vinepair.com/sherry-mixology-challenge for details, inspiration, and how to enter. It’s super easy. Give us your best sherry cocktail. You have a great chance. There’s an awesome slate of judges. I think everyone should get in on this. I love sherry cocktails, and I’m sure a lot of people do as well. Enter at vinepair.com/sherry-mixology-challenge. And now for this week’s topic. I figure because it’s live we wouldn’t do as much of our banter — we kind of did it already. So this week’s topic is cocktail trends coming into the fall. For those who are aware of the VinePair Insights product, a few years ago we started tagging in a very specific way all of the content on VinePair in order to truly understand where the industry was headed. And we then took that data and created an algorithm that’s able to rank an index of spirits, serves, et cetera to see where trends are moving in the world of cocktails. We thought this was a perfect topic to talk about for Tales, because not only are we coming out of Covid (and kind of still in it, which is terrible) but we’re also looking to the fall in terms of what we think the next big cocktail trends are going to be and where we are headed. With that in mind, guys, you want to kick it off? Erica, where are we headed?

E: It’s really interesting, when we look at the data — and I will say that when we started analyzing the insights data from VinePair a lot of it is also supported by what we’re seeing in Nielsen, in IWSR, and other data sources, so there’s a lot of context for some of the trends we’ve been seeing. I think the biggest trend and the real trend to focus on for brands who are listening, as well as producers and bartenders, is the at-home cocktail trend. We are seeing that spirits, liqueurs, vermouths — everything that supports the evidence of the at-home cocktail trend — has just been going up, up, up, up throughout the Covid-affected period. And I think we’re really going to see that continue into fall. One of the biggest trends that we saw this year is during the Covid- affected period is tequila. Tequila blew up, and it continues to keep going. I think bourbon is now starting to take its place back rivaling tequila. But throughout the entire summer, we saw a massive growth in tequila that was supported in off-premise sales data. When you look at VinePairs cocktail recipe database, for example, a lot of those top cocktails are Margaritas and Margarita variations. So I think tequila had a lot going for it going into Covid.

A: Absolutely.

Z: And I think an important thing to note here is when we’re talking about at-home cocktails, we’re talking about two distinct appeals for people. And I think this was the same thing when we did this same topic talking about what we thought summer would be like, and I think, not to toot our own horn too much, but I think we f***ing nailed what summer 2020 was going to be like from a cocktail perspective.

A: Maybe we did.

Z: You can go back and listen, folks, if you don’t believe me. But I think what we identified was that people are going to want a couple of things. They’re going to want comfort, and I think fall and winter is going to be even more about that, and that’s where bourbon and those sort of warm brown spirits are going to come into play even more. But people are also going to want the ability to feel transported. And that, to me, is the place where whether you’re a brand, whether you’re a bartender, whether you’re a bar, you have that opportunity to take people on a journey. And while I think that for the certain kind of home bartender who is interested in comfort, that I think is going to express itself in the classic cocktails. It’s going to express itself in Old Fashioneds and Manhattans and bourbon served neat. But I think that, for people who are looking to do something else, and especially when people are looking for either unusual products or they’re looking for prepackaged cocktails, where that’s going to go is: How can you take someone on a journey while still sticking with the flavor set that people expect in the fall? Tiki is a great place to look. I think bourbon cocktails are a great option or whiskey-based tiki cocktails. I think we’ve talked a lot about Cognac in the last couple of months. I think that’s another opportunity where if you do something a little bit unfamiliar to people, put a spin on it that they may not be familiar with, while still touching those classic flavors. That is a great opportunity. And I think that’s what people are going to want. They’re going to want to be able to feel like they can go on a journey without leaving their house, or at least without going too far out of their comfort zone. But they are going to want to do something other than what they can usually do at home. So if you can step into that void, that’s a huge opportunity.

A: I think there’s definitely a lot of people still doing to-go cocktails and things like that. I do think that the other thing we’re going to see is there’s going to be a lot more interest in the drinks that include vermouth. We’ve seen vermouth sales explode, and what we’re seeing on VinePair is a massive amount of traffic to all of our content about vermouth. So people are saying, “OK, I bought this because of a Negroni and I was told I had to have this because I want to make a Negroni, and now what are the other uses for it?” How do I use this in a Manhattan? I think the Manhattan is going to have a big fall. I think the Martini is going to have a big fall and into winter, because these are actually pretty easy cocktails for the at-home consumer to make. But they are also going to be looking for bartenders and brands to give them information to make them better. So if you have a personality online and you’re on Instagram, whatever, you can provide these tips, especially as a bartender, for how someone can really perfect the at-home Martini or how they can change it up a little bit. “Oh, I recommend that you should add dashes of orange bitters, and it gives it a different flavor profile.” Or, “With your Manhattan try these brands of cherries.” Or, “Try this brand of vermouth, or this rye, or this bourbon.” I think this is what people are really going to be looking for. Because we’re now seeing that they are trying to get comfortable with those ingredients and they’re playing with them more at home. So I think this is a time for a lot of bartenders, especially, to build a profile amongst consumers in their area and become a resource for those consumers. There’s a lot of other things going on in the world of drinks right now in terms of just even being worried about survival, so the first thing you may not be thinking about is also what you can do to serve people who are making drinks at home. But if you do have that extra time I think there will be a lot of wins for people that are able to provide that kind of knowledge, because I think there’s going to be more people making cocktails at home. And then, Zach, you’re completely right, looking for the more advanced cocktails out. OK, so I figured out how to make the Martini, what can I buy out of the home that feels like a treat? And I think tiki is a perfect example. It’s something that I’m not going to try to make at home.

Z: Erica will.

A: It’s a hard category. I think tiki is really difficult to master, and a lot of consumers feel that way. I think tiki is really hard to master, but people still view it as a true treat. And there’s a lot of other cocktails like that as well. And at least in New York, it feels like people are going out to the bars when they can. They’re feeling more comfortable to be outside. They’re feeling comfortable about going to pick up the cocktail and bring it home. And I’m hoping that continues through the fall.

E: A couple good points there. I was just looking through our recipe database to see what are the highest-performing cocktails. Totally fascinating. The top 50 cocktails during the Covid-affected period, even more so than before that, are made with two to four ingredients. So I think for brands, for bartenders, all of them were two-to-four-ingredient cocktails. Those are the cocktail opportunities that you have to put tweaks on. Change them up a little. So that was the top 50 cocktails, and they really were the classics. There are even things that aren’t even that popular normally, such as the gin sour, whiskey sour, things like that, in addition to the ones we all know and love, like the Martini, Aviation, Negroni, Old Fashioned. But then you look at the next 50 most popular cocktails, they are slight variations. So we’re talking the Lemon Grapefruit Martini, Espresso Martini, Paloma. Just adding in one more ingredient. And so I think that’s where there’s another level of opportunity for brands and bartenders. “OK, you’ve mastered the Margarita, let’s take it to the Paloma,” or, “You’ve mastered the Martini, here’s a couple variations.” And that’s the opportunity. I think for rum, I also agree with you that there is an opportunity there with escapism. I think the biggest challenge for tiki is really all of the ingredients. I was talking with a writer today and she is a well-known tiki mixologist and she was pitching some different ideas for tiki drinks, and I said, we have to go to the simple ones. Like grog, for example. Grog is an unheralded, delicious drink, made with dark rum, lime, simple syrup, Angostura bitters — done. That profile of tiki, but make it simple. I think that’s going to be the opportunity for tiki cocktails. What are the simplest variations that you can give so that people can actually embrace rum. And they want to embrace rum. I think they really do. And we saw rum getting some traction this summer as well.

A: I think it’s funny, every time I hear Erica talk about cocktails, I’m like, “Oh, yeah, that’s right. She wrote a really successful cocktail book.” So she actually knows what people want to read and make at home, which I think is really worth explaining. I think about it in terms of even the recipe books that I get where there’s some 20 steps in the ingredients to make the recipe and I think, “This looks delicious, but I’m just not going to do it.” And I think the same is true for lots of cocktails when it comes to at-home mixology. But people are looking for experts. They’re not going to do it on their own. They’ll come to sites like VinePair, they’ll read our recipes, but they also are looking for people they can interact with on all these different social media platforms. I know we have this as an episode coming up in a few weeks, talking about what’s happening on TikTok with everything in the cocktail world and all the people that are creating these really massive followings by showing you how to make drinks. If you look at the drinks that most people are making on TikTok as well, they are super simple. No one is going after these really in-depth drinks. No one’s fat washing. No one’s making Milk Punch, because it’s just too much for the consumer to understand. But I think a lot of people are going to have great personalities coming out of Covid, and we’ll be able to do things because they built these followings, which is really interesting.

Z: I also think the other possibility here and the other opportunity for a lot of brands and bars is to look at how you can interact with the reality for a lot of people, which is a lot of people over the course of spring and summer and into fall did a lot of stocking up. People bought lots of booze. They were like, “I don’t know when I’m going to be comfortable going to a store. I don’t know when there’s going to be shortages.” I mean, fortunately, most of those things have proven to be not such a big deal. But there’s lots of people I know who have lots of bottles of booze kicking around their house. And if you give them an “everything but the booze kit” essentially, I think about this a lot, we probably all have really bad impressions of sour mix or Margarita mix or Bloody Mary mix. But that’s just because what was typically available was crap. It was really mass-produced, not made with quality ingredients. But if you as a bar or you even as a bartender can offer someone an option where all they have to do is stir in or shake in the booze that they already have, they might not want to buy a $15 cocktail from you, but they might want to buy a $5 “everything but the booze” cocktail kit. And you can capitalize on your ability to produce a lot of those difficult-to-make, or time- consuming, laborious ingredients like syrups and stuff for tiki cocktails. I think that’s another possibility. Now, maybe that’s not as big an opportunity as some of what else we’re talking about. But I know that I’ve been approached by bars in the Seattle area who are interested in my thoughts on what to do. And that’s one thing that I’ve offered, is if you offer something like “here’s a Mai Tai, and all you have to do is add the rum.” That’s a lot more approachable than “here’s a $15 Mai Tai.” Some people are out there doing that but a lot of people are not going to go down that route all that often. And it’s also a lot more approachable than “here’s a recipe for a Mai Tai, have fun.” Those kinds of cocktails are, for me even as a relatively confident old bartender, a lot to take on. You can bridge that gap for someone and work with the knowledge that they probably have. They probably have a base spirit at home but maybe not all the other components. That’s, I think, a huge opportunity for bars and a way that they can stay more relevant in people’s lives than the occasional treat.

A: Yeah, I totally agree. It’s funny, before I decided to make the Ranch Water, I can’t remember the brand now but it’s one of these fresh juice cocktail brands that I think was serving the bar industry and then in Covid pivoted, and so you’ve already seen some of these brands do that and they’re going on to Amazon and they’re letting you buy them there. But I think what to your point, Zach, a lot of people, especially in cities, have a great bar in their neighborhood, and if I knew that I could go out and walk to the Rockwell Place — which still hasn’t opened — I could go there and I could get a bunch of different mixers that I could then take home because I already have alcohol, and then can also make it at my leisure. There’s also this pressure when you get that cocktail to-go that it’s to be consumed right now. I think people would be into it because, again, it’s just another way to get into what’s going to happen this fall. This celebratory time, OND (October, November, December) matters for every spirit’s brand. Everybody in this space really is very much focused because we know that people drink more. And we’ve already seen the level at which people drank when Covid happened. And I think it’s just going to come to massive extremes and you’re going to see what we saw in the spring, which was that tequila has always been popular and it just went a thousand times more popular. I think bourbon has always been popping, and in the fall we’re going to see has become a thousand times more popular. And so how do you take advantage of that as well? And think about that when it comes to what you’re serving to the community and how you’re staying present so that when all this blows over, you have a platform to be able to reopen again.

Z: And I think if you’re a producer, if you’re a distillery — and we have distilleries all over the country, so it’s not just for bourbon, it’s not just in Kentucky — I think one thing that you can really think on is how can you give someone a complete package? I don’t think it’s sufficient these days to say, “Here’s the bottle of spirits, and here’s a recipe.” The recipes are great, but as we pointed out, people have a ton of resources for recipes, including VinePair. And if you’re not checking out our drinks catalog, you really should. It’s an amazing repository. I’m an experienced bartender, and I go look at recipes on there all the damn time. I’m probably the one responsible for the Aviation being so popular. But I would say that I think that if you’re a producer, not just the bar or other kind of purveyor of spirits, it’s good to think about how we can channel our ability to produce things at some scale, and maybe you put together three or four. I think cocktail kits are a little played out, but I think if you have “here’s the bottle of spirit and here’s the bottle of mixer” people are going to eat that s**t up because most people, as Erica was alluding to, they don’t want to do more than combine two or three ingredients, stir or shake, and drink. And if you can give them a complex, interesting, pretty-to-look- at, or at least super-tasty kind of cocktail in a couple of packages — especially one that they can, as you said, Adam, access whenever they want, that they can go back to over a period of a few days or weeks — you have an opportunity there to capture some attention and some sales that just doing spirit sales or just doing cocktails may not afford you.

E: It’s shocking to me that people still buy simple syrup. But apparently that is a growth opportunity in many liquor stores right now. Those types of things, people are looking for those small variations that they just don’t have to make it themselves. They don’t want to put some lemon peel into some sugar and water and make an infused syrup. So I think that’s another area we as publications, brand ambassadors, whatever it is, just giving people the tools to help them figure out how to make a couple simple drinks. I think that’s actually one of the biggest opportunities I see with Cognac. Which I know we have been blown away by seeing how much it has grown off-premise. Nielsen just released some numbers showing that over the summer, it’s up 61 percent year over year. And a lot of that is the volume shifting from on-premise to off-premise. But I think the bigger point is that there have been so many successful collaborations and spokespeople with people from the sports world, from the music world, but I still think that a lot of consumers have no idea what to do with Cognac. And so we’re still 100 percent giving them some ideas of, “Hey, here’s a product and here’s a couple of ways to use it.” It could be as simple as a French Manhattan, Cognac-based Manhattan, a Sidecar, a variation on an Old Fashioned. These things do not have to be difficult. But I think brands and ambassadors and bartenders just giving those small variations can really make a difference and help those people find a following. And I think that’s one of the big opportunities for drinks professionals right now. Using social media and or newsletters or other platforms to try to build an audience when you can’t have that audience in person.

Z: I think the other piece is, and this is a great opportunity where, whether it’s on social media or just in home education opportunities, one thing that’s really cool is you can really showcase technique when and where technique is appropriate. All of us have smartphones, most of us have a computer that can record a video. Show people how to do this stuff. It’s amazing to me — it’s also not surprising, on the other hand — that my dad doesn’t know how to make a Manhattan. Every time he wants one, he calls and goes, “What exactly goes in it?” And my dad is not an unsophisticated person in some senses, but it’s true that there isn’t that retained knowledge for a lot of people if you’re not doing it all that often. And it’s something as simple as, how do you actually shake or stir a drink? If you can arm people with that knowledge, let alone how to make a drink with an egg white or something like that. That’s getting up there, but just the basics. People are super interested in mastering those skills, but are also very unsure of themselves. And so the more you can give them the ability to feel confident, engage with content that you’ve created, they’re going to be loyal because this sucks, and so we’re all looking for fun, and points of connection, and people that we can feel connected to, even if we can’t see them in person.

A: Yes, I agree. And I think I’d be remiss if we didn’t say we know this is an industry we love, a lot of you are our friends, we’re all hurting from what’s happening right now, and if there’s any other way that we can be helpful, please reach out. You know, you can email us at [email protected] and tell us what we can do. There’s obviously lots of things that we’ve tried, initiatives we’ve started already, but we would love to highlight things that you might be doing if you’re doing really creative things in your city. Or your brand is doing interesting things to give back. We’ve tried to do that through highlighting different interviews throughout the week in addition to this roundtable we do every Monday. So please let us know. Shoot us an email, and we’ll do our best to get back to you and try to shed light on as many people as possible in the industry and how everyone can be helpful.

Z: Absolutely. We love that we’ve been able to be a resource in these times. We hate that it’s come to that, but it’s been really powerful for all of us. I think that we’ve been able to shine some light and hopefully offer some suggestions, solutions, and opportunities for all of you.

A: 100 percent.

E: Definitely. And we are definitely dedicated to highlighting people from the BIPOC community, women, voices that are not often heard or have not had platforms. I think that’s one of the most successful things that we’ve been able to do, is use VinePair as a platform for good in the drinks industry, and we’re dedicated to that. It’s a pillar of our editorial and something that we are dedicated to throughout our programming. So if your voice has not been heard and you are looking for an outlet either to write or to be a source, please do reach out.

A: Yeah. Again, the email is [email protected], it’s the easiest way. Or [email protected] for writing and to be a source in some of our articles. We really would appreciate you to reach out. And guys, my Ranch Water is done, so I think that means the podcast is over.

Z: Oh yeah, I’m going to have my last sip.

E: I’m still sipping.

A: I’ll read a word from our sponsor again. The 2020 Sherry Wines Mixology Challenge is on. Again, I don’t think I need to educate you on what sherry is, but just in case, sherry is a fortified wine from southern Spain and has become the secret ingredient of many innovative cocktails for its versatility and complex flavor profile. Again, if you’ve attended Tales multiple years, you already know this. Show your mixology skills and enter to win by submitting your very own sherry cocktail creation. Prizes of $3,000, $1,500, and $500 will be awarded to the top three winners for the most innovative sherry cocktails. Visit vinepair.com/sherry-mixology-challenge for details, inspiration, and the instructions to enter. And with that, we wish everyone a good Tales. We hope to see you in person next year. And thank you so much for listening. And Zach, Erica, see you next week.

E: See you next week.

Z: Sounds great.

A: Thanks so much for listening to the VinePair Podcast. If you enjoy listening to us every week, please leave us a review or rating on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever it is that you get your podcasts. It really helps everyone else discover the show. Now, for the credits. VinePair is produced and hosted by Zach Geballe, Erica Duecy and me: Adam Teeter. Our engineer is Nick Patri and Keith Beavers. I’d also like to give a special shout-out to my VinePair co-founder Josh Malin and the rest of the VinePair team for their support. Thanks so much for listening and we’ll see you again right here next week.

Ed. note: This episode has been edited for length and clarity.

The article VinePair Podcast: Fall Drinks Trends LIVE From Tales of the Cocktail appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/fall-drinks-trends/

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johnboothus · 4 years

Text

VinePair Podcast: Fall Drinks Trends LIVE From Tales of the Cocktail

Listen Online

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

Or check out our conversation here

Adam: From Brooklyn, New York, I’m Adam Teeter.

Erica: From Jersey City, I’m Erica Duecy.

Zach: And in Seattle, Washington, I’m Zach Geballe.

A: And this is a live Tales of the Cocktail edition of our podcast. Guys, what’s going on?

E: Hey. Excited to be here. I see you guys on video now. Usually, we’re just doing audio.

A: Zach, have you never been?

Z: I’ve never been.

A: Erica, what about you?

E: Yeah, I’ve been several times. I’ve presented a couple of times, and it is very hot but so much fun.

Z: I can’t wait to sweat my ass off with you all next year.

A: Before we kick into everything, I know we all made cocktails because it is Tales of the Cocktail. Zach, what are you drinking?

A: Definitely a lot of Willett is consumed during Tales. Or just a lot of bourbon in general. Erica, what about you?

Z: What about you, Adam?

E: I was so excited when I was just looking through our cocktail recipe database and I saw that Ranch Water is now in our top 50 cocktails.

A: I know it’s crazy. It’s a cocktail that has come out of nowhere. It’s blown up.

Z: I also want to put in a note that if you are interested in LALO, Adam did an interview with the guys who founded and it is available on the VinePair Podcast feed.

A: Absolutely.

A: Maybe we did.

Z: Erica will.

A: 100 percent.

Z: Oh yeah, I’m going to have my last sip.

E: I’m still sipping.

E: See you next week.

Z: Sounds great.

Ed. note: This episode has been edited for length and clarity.

The article VinePair Podcast: Fall Drinks Trends LIVE From Tales of the Cocktail appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/fall-drinks-trends/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/vinepair-podcast-fall-drinks-trends-live-from-tales-of-the-cocktail

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wineanddinosaur · 4 years

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VinePair Podcast: Making a Case for Alcohol Label Transparency

There’s an odd fact you might have noticed about beer, wine, and spirits. Unlike virtually every other consumable, the U.S. government does not require alcohol producers and manufacturers to disclose the ingredients or nutritional facts of their product. Furthermore, the number of beverage alcohol producers that do so voluntarily is vanishingly small. As with many alcohol-related laws, this labeling exemption dates back to the end of Prohibition. It persists because alcohol is not regulated through the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but instead through the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB).

That lack of nutrition labeling has gone largely unchecked until now, when changes in the industry and interests of American consumers could very well bring the era of opacity to a close.

The rise of hard seltzer and its aggressively promoted low-cal, low-carb lifestyle have begun to force the hand of more traditional beverages like beer, while the “clean wine” movement attempts to capitalize on a lack of transparency in the wine industry. The European Union will require ingredient labeling by the end of 2022. Will these forces be enough to overturn decades of inertia? Will mandated labeling privilege large brands over small producers? That’s what Erica Duecy and Zach Geballe discuss on this week’s episode of the VinePair Podcast.

LISTEN ONLINE

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

OR CHECK OUT OUR CONVERSATION HERE

Zach: From Seattle, Washington, I’m Zach Geballe.

Erica: In Connecticut, I’m Erica Duecy.

Z: And this is the VinePair Podcast. Yes, we are without Adam but we are not without ads. This podcast is brought to you by Cognac USA, Speedrack, and VinePair. We’re collaborating to offer 10 $1,000 cash stipend prizes exclusively for professional bartenders. You can enter by creating an original Cognac cocktail and you can even receive bonus points through viewing Speedrack’s Instagram live videos. Visit cognacconnection.com, that’s cognacconnection.com, for details and to enter. The deadline is Aug. 31, and that’s cognacconnection.com. The campaign is financed with aid from the European Union.

Z: Erica, what’s your favorite Cognac cocktail?

E: That’s a good question. If I’m going to drink Cognac I’m probably going to drink it straight. It’s one of those things that if you really enjoy it, that’s one of the ones to savor.

Z: I think there’s a place for the higher end — and trust me, Cognac goes really high end really quick — but the higher-end stuff I wouldn’t mix in a cocktail. Sazerac, which is often traditionally made with Cognac, I think is a delicious cocktail. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on this. A couple of years ago, I created a drink for our bar program at one of the restaurants that I was running and it was my take on Vieux-Carre, which is a split-base cocktail with Cognac and rye. I did that but instead of Bénédictine, it had Strega in it, but I think the Vieux-Carré is a fun one even if it’s not a pure Cognac cocktail.

E: That is a delicious cocktail. In the winter especially, I just really love the idea — even if I don’t have a fireplace — of sitting around the fire with a snifter of Cognac. But really, I just use a rocks glass.

Z: You’re telling me you don’t retire to your hunting lodge every winter?

E: I’m getting there, not quite yet.

Z: When this podcast finally blows up. I have another question for you before we get into today’s topic. We were debating what to discuss this week, and maybe we’ll get back to this in the future, but I was curious, you’re the parent of a couple of kids who are older than my son and right now, my son’s interaction with alcohol is basically learning a surprisingly large number of grape varieties because we teach them to him. His favorite is Roussanne, in case anyone is wondering. But how do your kids react to what you do for a living?

E: I think they think it’s pretty interesting, although my husband has an even more interesting job because he’s playing with clay all day, so nothing really can compare to that. However, they do seem to think that it’s interesting that I’m tasting a lot of wines and tasting spirits and thinking about cocktails, and sometimes making up recipes. … And people seem to get a lot of enjoyment when they’re at our house because I’m always whipping up something, I always love to have a special cocktail that I’m serving if people come over, or, I’m pouring wines. So I think parties at our house, and small gatherings, tend to be pretty festive. I’m always interested in, for example at the end of a meal, pulling out a couple of bottles of Armagnac or Cognac or something. So people are always tasting and testing and talking about it. And the girls do love smelling in the glass. I think one of my proudest moments was when my daughter Gia was about 6 years old and I asked her to smell into the glass of sherry, and she told me that it smelled like nuts! I was so proud of her, and she was very quizzically looking at me like, “Yeah, it tastes like nuts.”

Z: That’s awesome. I can’t believe this never occurred to me before but it feels like the final form of yours and John’s relationship is opening the world’s fanciest pottery, painting, and wine sipping extravaganza. I’m sure you have seen those advertised, [where you] go paint some pottery and sip wine, but yours would be the fanciest of them all.

E: That’s pretty much our house all the time. They tend to have a good time, and we do open up the studio and have little parties up there when we’re not in a social distancing period — and so they are playing with clay and I’m making cocktails. I love to do a Spritz bar when we’re up there. There’s a lot of fun stuff to do and for kids, they’re pretty young so we’re not talking too much about responsibility around alcohol yet. I don’t think they’re quite there yet from a standpoint of really understanding the depth and nuance of that. But certainly, we do not have any sloppy behavior around them. I think that’s our way of presenting what alcohol looks like when consumed in a responsible manner.

Z: That is good. As you probably know, the sloppiness is a trickier thing to manage when you have a young child. There’s no way that goes well for anyone, even if you were tempted to do it. Dealing with a 2-year-old with a hangover is really miserable. Been there once or twice, sadly.

E: Exactly. I’m getting a little old for hangovers, I think.

Z: This would have been a natural segue if we were talking about hangover-free wine, but we are going to be in that general vein, so we might as well move on to the topic for today’s show. I think this is a really fascinating conversation that, hopefully, we’re going to have here, which is about the increased scrutiny potentially being paid to not just wine but all beverages and labeling. Erica, I think you could set the ground a little bit better than I can in this context. I’ll just say, one of the things that are important to understand as we get into this conversation is that in the United States, alcohol has traditionally been exempted from the rules that surround most other consumable products in terms of the requirement to disclose nutritional facts and ingredients. And there’s a real conversation going on in the industry about whether it’s time to give up that special exemption and be more upfront about what is in a bottle or can.

E: I think one of the big things that we need to realize is that virtually everything you can buy at a grocery store or in any other part of your life — at chain restaurants, for example — everything comes with a nutrition label these days. At chain restaurants, you have calories listed on menus, on the soda you’re drinking, any sort of other drinks, except for alcohol, it’s labeled. Why is alcohol exempt? The short answer here is that it’s a legacy of Prohibition. Alcoholic beverages aren’t regulated by the FDA, like everything else, but instead by the TTB, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, and they don’t require nutritional labeling. Consumer advocates have been pressuring the agency for years to add this labeling but it never seems to happen. Most recently, last year the modernization of the labeling and advertising regulations for wine, distilled spirits, and malt beverages Notice No. 176 was up for review and they did make some changes to the laws around labeling, but it did not concern nutritional labeling. The TTB said in April of this year that they will revisit those labels at a later time. But I think the real thing that we’re finding is that consumers want to know what they’re drinking and because we have created this environment of opaqueness around what is in the bottle across beer, wine, and spirits, that’s done two things. First, it’s turned many consumers off of these products onto other categories. Hard seltzer is one that has adequate product labeling, and I think that is one of the things that has really led to the rise of hard seltzer. Second, there have also been these dubious marketers, these clean wine marketers, these fitness marketers, making all sorts of claims about their wines that are verifiably false that we have fact-checked and have published articles about. Yet it’s because of this environment of opaqueness that those claims have now risen up.

Z: I think this is something that maybe more people in the beverage and alcohol space should have seen coming: That if you’re not transparent, people will use that lack of transparency against you. Whether they’re doing so dishonestly or not, it doesn’t really seem to matter. You pointed out this whole issue with clean wine companies and this has come up a few times in the past, but as one of the people who wrote one of those articles, I will say that it was remarkable going down this rabbit hole of what some of these claims that are made, and really a lot of it is an implication that “our wine doesn’t have these ingredients in it, we don’t use these additives,” so, therefore, your inference as a consumer, especially not a super well-informed one, is “everyone else must be using these.” Because if you’re making a point to say “we don’t put ferrocyanide in our wines,” which no one does, it’s not even allowed anymore, I don’t want that and the implication is that every other wine has that. But again this is where wine, beer, and spirits have made themselves vulnerable. I will say one of the things that I really want to get into in this conversation, and Erica, I’m curious [about] your thoughts on it: I do think there is a fundamental difference between wanting labeling that gives consumers actionable information, like how many calories in a serving, versus information that I’m not sure is all that useful. One of the wineries that does label in terms of ingredients is Ridge. Ridge is a great winery and makes exceptional wine, but if you look at that label, I think even for a wine professional, it’s pretty opaque. You have to know a lot about how wine is made to understand if what they’re talking about here is normal. Is it reasonable that they add nutrients to the yeast? Or is it normal to water wine down? For me or you as professionals, those words mean something, but to a consumer I’m not sure that a list of ingredients is going to help them at all. Maybe it will, but I think the calorie thing is one side and the specifics about what is in the products are another.

E: From my perspective, I think that as much transparency as possible is the way to go, and it’s really about educating consumers. The reason that I am for more transparency is that what you don’t say can be used against you. A good example from Ridge would be calcium carbonate. People might not know what calcium carbonate is, and they may want to look it up or go to Ridge’s website where you can see that it’s saying small additions of this compound are used during fermentation to moderate unusually high natural acidity. So I think if you give an explanation and you are stating why something would be used in a wine, then that takes away the ability of marketers to use it against you. I think that’s the unintended, unrecognized thing that people in the industry just didn’t anticipate. I think people in the industry thought for a long time it’s not going to be a good idea for us to label because if we start putting calorie counts on things, then people will drink less. There are also practical concerns for winemakers around cost. Having to test all these bottles every vintage has a cost to it. But when you don’t do those things, that’s when you’re opening yourself up for bigger problems where these unscrupulous marketers come in and start to take all of your business away because they’re saying “we don’t do all of these shady things,” when really not much of what is happening is very shady at all.

Z: I think it’s also important, as much as possible, to differentiate between two important things with ingredient labeling. It’s sometimes muddied in even professionals’ minds, let alone consumers’ minds, the unfortunate history of wine, if you stretch back far enough, with things being added to wine or wine being adulterated in various ways that were not only disingenuous — producers in Burgundy blending in Rhône wine or North African wine to bulk their wines out, the same thing with producers in Bordeaux, to the Austrian scandal of glycerol in wines in the mid-’80s. And these are things where the additives can be potentially toxic or harmful. With modern winemaking, the area we’re talking about most often is pesticide residues in wine, that being a relatively small concern with most wine but it is a possibility and something I think I understand people’s interest in knowing whether that’s something that could possibly be in their wine, versus a lot of the additives, even the ones that wine connoisseur might turn their nose up. Like mega purple, which gets a terrible rap, and I think there’s a philosophical issue with using grape concentrate to make your wine seem more colorful and richer in flavor, but it’s not at all harmful. It doesn’t hurt people and it’s probably the only way that a $5 bottle of California Cabernet can make it to a store shelf. I don’t personally have a lot of issues with it like “this is bad for the public.” I think if it was disclosed on the label it might change people’s purchasing decisions, which probably is a good thing, but I guess I think that is important to understand what information we are trying to provide to people and how that will affect things. Anything that involves a potential health risk is hugely important to disclose. I’m not saying that I don’t think winemakers should be forced to disclose when they modify their wine in a variety of wines, but I think it’s important to also push back on the notion that doing that is harmful. It might not represent the pinnacle of winemaking, but it’s not bad for you in any real way.

E: That’s true. And I think it is a reality that people do not have any idea how many calories are in the alcohol that they’re drinking. I was looking at some different studies, and one public health researcher found that most Americans are drinking 400 calories a day of alcohol. When you think of an average glass of beer or wine it’s probably around 150 calories, and it’s much more for cocktails, so I think there’s a health concern that is legitimate — of people wanting to know how many calories are in their wine — and that’s why these hard seltzers and RTDs have been so successful. Certainly there’s the convenience as the appeal, but secondarily, you can really keep track of how much you’re drinking. If you look at a lot of the different surveys that have been done about labeling, you’ll see the Center for Science in the Public Interest, they say 94 percent of adults support alcohol content labeling, 91 percent support ingredient labeling, 89 percent support calorie labeling. These things are going to be coming up more and more. And the brands that get on board quicker with transparency are going to be the successful ones. Just looking at the E.U., for example, in the European Union by the end of 2022, you have to provide nutrition and ingredient information if you’re going to be doing business in those countries. Already there, Diageo, Treasury, AB InBev, have already started to provide ingredient and nutritional information on a voluntary basis before that date on a lot of their products. This is going to become a bigger and bigger issue, especially at the end of 2022 [when] it is required. I think then, a lot more American consumers are going to be requesting and requiring this. Additionally, I think that the brands that do get ahead of this are going to see better sales results. It may sound counterintuitive to say that if people are looking at the calories and ingredients, they’ll choose my product over another, but I really do think it will happen because it’s that type of transparency that has proven so effective for these clean wine marketers. When I say “transparency” let me put that in air quotes because certainly what they are doing is not transparency, it is pseudoscience and pseudo-transparency, but they are coming across as the ones who are taking the high road on this and providing that type of information that consumers are looking for. So once brands that have integrity and are doing marketing on the up and up are providing this level of transparency to their products, it’s going to take the wind out of the sails of a lot of the clean marketers and fitness marketers whose claims will no longer stand up.

Z: I think it’s interesting to think about who will benefit in a landscape where ingredient and nutritional fact labeling is a staple of the alcohol industry. My concern, and you mentioned this a little bit in the past, was that it will disproportionately advantage big companies. You mentioned the big multinationals that are already doing this on a voluntary basis in the E.U., as you said, getting this kind of testing done is not free and it may not even be cheap. If you’re a small winemaker, a relatively small winery, brewery, or distillery, that added cost you would have to weigh the benefit it might derive from the cost it will inflect, and each producer will make their own decision about that. It’s one thing for a big multinational to have its own lab where it can easily do this as part of everything else that they do as part of the business. I’m concerned that this will disproportionality benefit the companies that really don’t need more help at the moment, and also, the other question I am curious to hear your thoughts on is, people say they want ingredient and calorie count labeling, but how much of that 90-ish percent of the population will those numbers actually drive behavior? I think there’s a lot of people who would say, and do say, they want calorie counts on fast food menus but when they go through the drive-thru does that calorie count affect their purchase decision at all? Maybe at the margins, but most people are going to get a Big Mac regardless of whatever the calorie count says, if that’s what they want. So I think that… it doesn’t hurt anyone to have that information in the abstract, but I am dubious that for most consumers they’re going to pick up three bottles of wine or three beers and the determining factor is going to be the calorie count. I think it’s going to be what it tends to be already, which is, what does the label look like? What does it say on the front label? What is the price? That’s going to be how people make their decisions, and maybe calorie count is the tiebreaker for some people, and so fair enough. But I think, as you said, the other thing about this is, there’s not a big difference in a lot of these categories. Most dry wine is going to be in the same narrow range of calories per serving. Beer has a bigger range because of differing levels of alcohol — much more so than wine — spirits to some extent as well, but I think — it’s not a bad thing — but I’m not sure it’s going to be the holy grail of consumer independence and freedom that we might sometimes think it is.

E: For the concern about wineries having to do it every year, I would say that there very well could be some sort of compromise. For example, back in 2017 when the FDA was requiring menu labeling, the Brewers Association said it’s going to be a huge burden on small craft producers to be able to do these calorie counts, so what if we work with the FDA to create some sort of guidelines on what is acceptable around these categories of beer styles instead of individual breweries having to do it themselves, and the FDA agreed. So there are workarounds. I think what if they TTB said, what if you have to do it every five years for your wines. That makes it much more manageable so I think there could be ways around having to test wines every single year. Or maybe it’s when a new product comes onto the market, and every year the alcohol changes by more than a percent and a half, I don’t know what it is but something like that could work. To the second point, I think for the people that are making decisions based on calorie counts, they’re doing that already and they’ve already turned off wine. I was just on Twitter with someone today who sent me a photo of a brand called Fit Wine and it was marketing on calories and I was joking and saying it’s essentially the Walking Dead. These brands are coming out of the woodwork, get your swords ready, you need to be like Daryl Dixon out there slaying zombies because they are coming out of the woodwork and if the TTB does not step in it’s only going to get worse. But the bigger point is we’ve already lost the people that are making these calorie count decisions. If their decisions on what they purchase are based on what’s on the label, they haven’t been purchasing wine but maybe they will come back to wine if they do see calorie counts on there. That would be my perspective. I think these sunshine initiatives that shed light on where there is opaqueness there may be some skeletons in the closet but probably not that many and when you are being more transparent and providing consumers with a level of transparency there’s so much evidence to show that’s what consumers are looking for and I think that is the way of the future for wine, beer, and spirits

Z: I’m a bit mixed in my thoughts on this. This comes back to the conversation about ingredient labeling about healthy wine and products and I think to some extent a thing that gets missed is that alcohol is not inherently a particularly healthy thing. I think that there are ways to which alcohol consumption can be a part of a generally healthy lifestyle but the idea that alcohol consumption is the healthy part of your lifestyle is a ridiculous claim and is the thing that TTB and others need to push back against. Anyone that is attempting to intimate or flat-out state that somehow drinking these wines are somehow good, the whole French paradox, the Mediterranean diet, there’s a lot of pseudoscience in there. And the reality is alcohol is delicious in many cases, its enjoyable, the effect it has on our brains is something that most people find enjoyable at lower levels but is not inherently healthful and so I recoil at the idea that what we should be trying to do is designing products that have a label that makes people want to buy them but it is this idea of Frankensteining a product that gets you below a certain calorie count and doesn’t use certain ingredients but is so divorced from what to me is the pleasurable part of drinking which is not just taste but also the idea of some sense of a through line from a place to a beverage. I just worry that we’re going to end up in this sort of endless quest to create this lowest calorie whatever with the fewest ingredients that has some flavor but really is just an engineered product that meets market demand. And I’m not naive, there’s a lot of wines, beers, and spirits out there that do exactly that and some are delicious and they have a place for sure, but I worry — and in wine in particular — if too much embrace of transparency ends up privileging those where all they have is transparency, there’s nothing there. It’s just a clear window into a factory or something.

E: I think that’s a fair concern and from my perspective, I don’t want to drink those wines but I also don’t want to eat fat-free chips or sugar-free cookies. I am a consumer that loves full fat, full-flavored, give me all the promenades, give me all the backstory, that’s the type of consumer I am, but I think I’m unfortunately less and less the consumer who is looking for all of that full-fat, full-experience type thing. I think it’s just a reality of where we are in the consumer landscape that every other category has some degree of label transparency and this category does not and now it’s being used against the category and consumers are turning off. So I come to this argument as someone who loves the wine industry and the spirits industry, beer I know less about, but wine, in particular, I am legitimately concerned about the future of the wine industry. If some degree of labeling transparency does not become more embraced voluntarily, or enforced if that’s what it needs to be, then more and more consumers are going to turn off of this category because that’s what they expect.

Z: I think I can’t and don’t want to argue against that. It’s an unfortunate reality but that’s what it is. Before we go I’m going to read our Cognac Connection ad one more time. If you are a professional bartender and are interested in entering the Cognac Connection challenge you can win a $1,000 cash stipend. The deadline to do so is Aug. 31 and to do that you go to cognacconnection.com to enter you can also find more details there. Erica, we made it through without Adam. Somehow I feel like we didn’t even mention Seattle until the last minute. He’s going to be so disappointed, I’ll edit in some random clips of us saying Seattle and talking about the weather just to keep up appearances. Adam will be back next week from his well-earned vacation and we will be back waiting for you then. Talk to you later.

E: Talk to you then!

Thanks so much for listening to the VinePair Podcast. If you enjoy listening to us every week, please leave us a review or rating on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever it is that you get your podcasts. It really helps everyone else discover the show. Now, for the credits. VinePair is produced and hosted by Zach Geballe, Erica Duecy, and me: Adam Teeter. Our engineer is Nick Patri and Keith Beavers. I’d also like to give a special shout-out to my VinePair co-founder Josh Malin and the rest of the VinePair team for their support. Thanks so much for listening and we’ll see you again right here next week.

Ed. note: This episode has been edited for length and clarity.

The article VinePair Podcast: Making a Case for Alcohol Label Transparency appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/alcohol-label-transparency/

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isaiahrippinus · 4 years

Text

VinePair Podcast: Making a Case for Alcohol Label Transparency

That lack of nutrition labeling has gone largely unchecked until now, when changes in the industry and interests of American consumers could very well bring the era of opacity to a close.

LISTEN ONLINE

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

OR CHECK OUT OUR CONVERSATION HERE

Zach: From Seattle, Washington, I’m Zach Geballe.

Erica: In Connecticut, I’m Erica Duecy.

Z: Erica, what’s your favorite Cognac cocktail?

E: That’s a good question. If I’m going to drink Cognac I’m probably going to drink it straight. It’s one of those things that if you really enjoy it, that’s one of the ones to savor.

Z: You’re telling me you don’t retire to your hunting lodge every winter?

E: I’m getting there, not quite yet.

E: Exactly. I’m getting a little old for hangovers, I think.

E: Talk to you then!

Ed. note: This episode has been edited for length and clarity.

The article VinePair Podcast: Making a Case for Alcohol Label Transparency appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/alcohol-label-transparency/ source https://vinology1.tumblr.com/post/627433105676959744

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johnboothus · 4 years

Text

VinePair Podcast: Making a Case for Alcohol Label Transparency

That lack of nutrition labeling has gone largely unchecked until now, when changes in the industry and interests of American consumers could very well bring the era of opacity to a close.

LISTEN ONLINE

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

OR CHECK OUT OUR CONVERSATION HERE

Zach: From Seattle, Washington, I’m Zach Geballe.

Erica: In Connecticut, I’m Erica Duecy.

Z: Erica, what’s your favorite Cognac cocktail?

E: That’s a good question. If I’m going to drink Cognac I’m probably going to drink it straight. It’s one of those things that if you really enjoy it, that’s one of the ones to savor.

Z: You’re telling me you don’t retire to your hunting lodge every winter?

E: I’m getting there, not quite yet.

E: Exactly. I’m getting a little old for hangovers, I think.

E: Talk to you then!

Ed. note: This episode has been edited for length and clarity.

The article VinePair Podcast: Making a Case for Alcohol Label Transparency appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/alcohol-label-transparency/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/vinepair-podcast-making-a-case-for-alcohol-label-transparency

0 notes