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The country of Italy is an extremely gorgeous peninsula jutting out deep into the Mediterranean Sea, meaning it has loads of coastline and very moderate climes. Its food, people, and scenery are all beautiful enough to have a person questioning whether or not they should ever return to whatever country they’re visiting from. In that very small and specific way, a trip there can feel almost bittersweet. Bassano del Grappa, a city in the northern region of Veneto, is a particularly appealing slice of Italian pie and happens to be home to grappa. After finding ourselves there in February of this year, Colton, Florian, and I took a couple of hours to visit the Poli Grappa Museum so that we could learn more about this quintessential Italian spirit. Grappa has a long and interesting history, which the museum did a wonderful job of illustrating in various formats. This distinct spirit has been...

09 July, 2020

What we’re doing, where we’ve gone, and our thoughts so far. We started 2020 with a clear goal in mind: to buy tickets to Europe so that this insane traveling spirits circus can finally begin. I’m not sure if you’re with me on this one—and I fully admit to sounding a little nuts—but I always feel like the process of purchasing airline tickets is a fickle one. I’m convinced that if I do even a scant amount of research into a flight and don’t buy the tickets right away, a) the internet will track that research and somehow charge me more the next time around, or b) the flight will be sold out when I come back to buy it, even if it was only a couple of hours that I was away. I know, I KNOW—those are both pretty illogical, but here we are. So when I sat down to my computer...

06 March, 2020

A market in fair Verona, where we lay our scene I woke up at 4 AM with sleep in my eyes and a dark ball of anger curled up in my chest. On second thought, that was just the beginnings of a nasty cold—I was about to be sick, and I could feel it. Still in bed, blinking in the harsh glare of the overhead light, I ran my hands through my hair and turned to our host to say, quite literally, “Florian, why are you doing this to me?” There are some things about a person that just cannot be helped. Paula Deen cannot help but add a pound of butter to everything she makes. Nicholas Cage cannot help wearing pinky rings the size of a newborn’s fist. And me, I am someone who needs sleep. It’s not that I like it (which I do), it’s that my body requires it...

20 February, 2020

It might surprise people to know that Italy as a country has relatively few spirits producers. Despite being a culture of great oenological renown, Italians seemed for a long while content to mostly ignore the modern distillation movement, or at the very least not engage with it in the same way as other European countries. Though they have a population of over 60 million, there are less than 120 distilleries in total. Compare that to Austria, which has over 100,000 licensees and only 9 million inhabitants. As you can imagine, the number of facilities helmed by talented producers dedicated to making exceptional products is smallest of all, but lucky for us we had an appointment at just such a place. It was early evening when we pulled into the gravel parking lot at Capovilla. The facility is a quick 15-minute car ride from the center of Bassano del Grappa—the historic home...

19 February, 2020

What would you do if you had six hours in Amsterdam? This isn’t a rhetorical question, nor is it meant to have some kind of deeper secondary meaning on any level—I’m literally asking you what you would do if you only had six hours in the city of Amsterdam? Because that’s exactly how much time we had. Here’s how we spent it. 3:30 PM After flying in around 1 PM, going through customs, figuring out the shuttle, and getting to our very budget hotel, Colton and I check our phones to see that it’s roughly 3:30 PM local time. It could have been any hour as far as our internal body clocks were concerned. We’re tempted to lay down our heads for a quick nap, but as seasoned travelers, we know that the best thing to do is pop into the shower located two feet from the bed and embrace the day. And...

17 February, 2020