Cocktails and COVID
I will confess that I’m missing bartending at Number Ten and helping guests expand their cocktail experiences by trying some drink they’ve never had, or, of course, just doing the…
Author: David Guenette
The Fifteenth Number Ten Symposium TalkTails: The Martini—Forward into the Past
The Fifteenth Number Ten Symposium TalkTails: The Martini—Forward into the Past took place on Monday, February 17, 2020, at Number Ten, 10 Castle Street, Great Barrington, as one of a…
Does Liquor Makes the Difference? Matching the Right American Whiskey to Your Manhattan
The Number Ten Fourteenth Symposium TalkTails took place at Number Ten, and the event was a different approach than usual, with the usual being tasting different whiskeys or exploring categories…
Number Ten Thirteenth Symposium TalkTails Moonshine and Cocktails: Tasting White Dog Whiskeys and Figuring Out What to Do with Them
We had a nice, albeit smaller than usual group for the Number Ten whiskey/cocktail tasting and talk, this past Monday, November 18, 2019, at Number Ten, 10 Castle Street, Great…
Number Ten Twelfth Symposium TalkTails: Cocktails Eggsactly Right! Sours, Nogs, Flips, and Fizzes!
The use of eggs—either whole or parts thereof (such as egg white)—have been part of cocktails for nearly four centuries, if you go back to the days of adding an…
Number Ten Eleventh Symposium TalkTails: More Manhattan!
The first of the new season, Number Ten Eleventh Symposium TalkTails: More Manhattan!, was held on Monday, September 23, 2019, at Number Ten (10 Castle Street, Great Barrington, MA). We…
These Are Some of Our Favorite Things
Monday, June 10, 2019, had a full house for “Number Ten Tenth Symposium TalkTails: These Are Some of Our Favorite Things,” well, which largely turned out to be some of…
Now Serving Ten-to-Twelve
No, I’m not in prison, unless an obsession with American Whiskey counts as such. At the “Number Ten Ninth Symposium Whiskey Tasting: Now Serving Ten-to-Twelve,” we tasted older Bourbons and…
Gin or Lose, Liqueur and Booze, Now We Get to Drink Chartreuse
Actually, getting to know cocktails that have the ingredient of Green or Yellow Chartreuse means everyone wins. Charteuse is a distinctly flavored liquor from a secret formulation of 130 herbs…
Number Ten Symposium: New Orleans Cocktails
On Monday, February 11, 2019, at Number Ten, New Orleans cocktails were celebrated. Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras, Jazz Town… New Orleans knows pleasure, and the number of terrific cocktails that…
Whiskey Tasting: Families and Flights
Another second Monday and another Number Ten Whiskey Tasting Symposium. On Monday, January 14, 2019, we explored taste profiles within a particular distillery product line and compared two different distillery…
SPLIT
Split is a recent collection of short stories that thematically focus on divorce or other acute relationship collapse. The writing of these pieces was no doubt related to my own…
THE WALL
The Wall is a novel-length work of stories set in the same place, at different times, with only some overlapping characters. The Wall was started in the early 1980s, as…
TalkTails Symposium Number One: Essential Cocktails and Essential Vermouths
Number Ten, where I tend bar, hosted TalkTails Symposium Number One: Essential Cocktails and Essential Vermouths, on Monday, December 10, 2018. Helping others enjoy vermouth is a topic that is near and…
Number Ten Fourth Whiskey Tasting Symposium: The Finish and Blend Trend
The second Monday of November saw another Number Ten Symposium, and this time we explored the new ways that both blending and second barrel finishing of American whiskeys are changing…
Essay: Why Newspaper Paywalls Are Bad for Democracy, Plus, Pretty Damn Stupid
I don’t know what the percentages are for Americans who get the main part of news online, but I suspect that it is significant and getting bigger. I use Google…
Essay: In The Bubble, Everybody Can Hear Everybody Scream, But How Much Useful Action Emerges from the Noise?
Let me offer the sort of information that can help readers weed me out for any and many views I hold: I was a Sanders supporter for his nomination as…
Number Ten Third Whiskey Tasting Symposium: High, Low, and Game
It was back to Bourbon for the Number Ten Third Whiskey Tasting Symposium, and a different format: The Blind Tasting. I presented a range of Bourbon from the moderately priced…
A Wry Old Rye and Other Tales of Aging: Number Ten Second Whiskey Tasting Symposium
The Number Ten Second Whiskey Tasting Symposium, A Wry Old Rye and Other Tales of Aging took place on Monday, September 10, 2018, as I ramp up the tasting program now…
Whiskey Tasting Test, “Lincoln, Lincoln, What’cha Been Drinking?”
On April 30 (2018), the first whiskey tasting took place at Number Ten, as part of an open-ended Number Ten Symposium series. The first one was called Number Ten First…
Whole Lot of Shaking Going On, But Cold is the Thing
Chilling. Chilling cocktails. So many have fallen in the great craft cocktail wars due to this one simple task: making the cocktail cold. I was at a very nice hotel…
Tasting Notes, or The Wondrously Silly Things We Say About Whiskey
I put a lot of work into the inaugural American Whiskey List for Number Ten. For instance, I had to research availability, which, as the robustly active Bourbon and Rye…