Amy Stewart

For the last year, the Journal has indulged my interest in drink and given me space once a month to rant about distillery tours, the dearth of good cider in these parts, excessively intricate cocktails, and so on. This has all been fueled by the research — if you can call it that — that […]

I can’t speak to the kind of summer Humboldt is having so far. I’ve been in Portland for two months for a teaching gig; by the time this column hits the streets, I’ll just be getting home for the first time. But it’s probably safe to assume that Humboldt, like Portland, has not seen much […]

Next time you’re in Portland, go west along U.S. Route 26 and head over to Forest Grove to check out the Saké One brewery. It’s not the kind of brewery you think of when you think of the Pacific Northwest, but there’s really every reason for saké to be a West Coast thing. Japanese culture […]

The directions from Lyon to the Chartreuse distillery go something like this: Exit the parking garage while trying to fire up your GPS. As it searches listlessly for a satellite (shouting “Look up!” or pointing it at the sky does not help), drive across the river with the vague feeling that the freeway might be […]

Buying herbs at the grocery store is a sign of defeat. Not defeat, even, because defeat would suggest that you tried and failed. It’s more like inertia. Because really, if you can’t grow a few herbs, you have just given up on having any kind of interaction with the plant kingdom or the parcel of […]

I know, I know. Valentine’s Day! Ick. Heart-shaped boxes of chocolate lined with those weird paper doilies, a card that plays a song — who does that, anyway? It’s a strange holiday. Single people hate it or ignore it, happy old married couples don’t need it, and anyone in a new, untested relationship approaches it […]

A friend of mine has been on a grueling book tour to promote her new novel. One night in early December, after she’d been on the road for weeks, she posted a note on Facebook that she’d developed a scratchy throat on the road and had done the only sensible thing: called room service and […]

Several years ago, at a family Christmas gathering in Sacramento, my brother-in-law served the pie and asked if anybody would like a drink to go with it. There was a pot of decaf going in the kitchen, so I asked him for a coffee with Bailey’s. He gave me an odd look. “Are you sure?” […]

Seems like everyone in these parts has an opinion about what Humboldt needs to make it truly great. A railroad. A trail around the bay. A general plan. A Wal-Mart. A Trader Joe’s. One grand, vitally important addition or improvement that would change everything. I agree that Humboldt is lacking in one critical area, but […]

After a week spent touring distilleries in France, Scott and I had come to suspect that anything called a museum must receive special benefits: tax cuts, subsidies, an extra-long vacation every August. It seemed like every distillery had created an official museum devoted to its product. The museum was often nothing more than a few […]

It is almost too late to write this column — almost. Peach season is winding down, but as of this writing I’m still getting sweet, local summer peaches in the market. So move quickly. You might need to get this done tonight. We begin, of course, with bourbon. Maybe you’re not a big bourbon drinker; […]