Those of you heading to Millennium Park this evening to see Don Giovanni might want to head to the Artisan Cellar at Merchandise Mart from 4-6 p.m. this afternoon for a free tasting of Andre Clouet Champagne, which the Artisan Cellar touts as their most popular sparkling selection in recent memory. a member of the Clouet family will be on hand to discuss the champagne. Saturday at Provenance Food and Wine's Logan Square location,......

We had our gripes about DarkLord Day, to be certain. But there were some good things about heading down to Munster and waiting for four hours in line with nothing to show for it except a farmer tan. For beer lovers it means getting to hang around with your own for a day, sampling from folks' private collections. At times, the combination of beer and the crowd made DarkLord Day resemble "Heavy Metal Parking......

Slow Food Chicago and Uncommon Ground are joining forces for what appears to be, on paper, to be one hell of a dinner. The event next Wednesday at Uncommon Ground's recently opened Devon location will feature a menu of seasonal, locally farmed produce from chef Brian Millman with beers from Goose Island, Two Brothers, Surly Brewing, and Dark Horse Brewing. Additionally, the brewmasters for the respective breweries (Greg Hall, Jason Ebel, Omar Ansari and Aaron......

Longtime "BotW" readers might remember that we reviewed a barley wine last spring from Louisville's Browning's Brewery. We bought it retail in town but, after making a phone call to the brewmaster in Louisville, didn't disclose where we made the purchase for fear of outing the store in question for selling booze outside the three-tier distribution system. During a New Year's Day discussion with the store owner, Mitch Einhorn of Lush Wine & Spirits,......

This year's edition of the Great American Beer Festival is in the books, and Illinois breweries racked up an impressive 16 medals. Both Pabst (their corporate headquarters are in suburban Woodridge, so they qualified as an Illinois beer company) and Goose Island took home four medals each. Pabst earned respective gold and silver medals for Lone Star and Old Style (American-style cream ale or lager), and repeated the feat for Old Milwaukee Light and PBR......

We've been spending an inordinate amount of time at Skylark lately. We think it's the combination of the background music the bartenders play and the tater tots with the three different dipping sauces. Their draft selection also ranks high on the list, but we've already had all twelve selections. So we've decided to highlight one that we've found ourselves returning to again and again. It's a banner year for the Ebel Brothers of Two Brothers......

Like the circle of life, this week we revisit Warrenville's Two Brothers Brewing Company nearly a year to the day that we featured their Prairie Path Ale in this column. This time around, they've got something special for us. A bragot (or "braggot"), by definition, is a mixture of beer and mead. In olden days, the mixing was done by the bartender. Today, craft breweries tend to do the honors by putting the honey directly......

It's been nearly six months since Bell's Beer founder Larry Bell pulled his product from the Illinois market in a dispute with distributors over the Beer Industry Fair Dealing Act of 1982. Readers will remember that that specific law, enacted at the time to protect distributors from the loss of a giant beer account on the level of Anheuser-Busch or Miller should they decide to move to greener pastures, doesn't give mid-level craft breweries like......

Domestic beer specials don’t typically blow our kilts up, but we were pleasantly surprised by the craft beer selection offered at Mrs. Murphy & Sons Irish Bistro (3905 N. Lincoln Ave.), which happens to serve all of its American-made beers for $2.50 on Thursday evenings. Sure the name is a little long and confusing (what the hell is an Irish Bistro anyway), but the place has a banging beer list. For a measly 10 quarters......

We'll be the first to notice the (un)fortunate timing of this week's "BotW" post, just sniffing distance from our post about Forbes' naming Chicago America's sixth most drunken city. But duty calls and, if we're to take the study seriously, we couldn't file this. The local breweries all tend to load their brews with hops, like they're engaged in some sort of brewmaster pissing contest. Warrenville-based Two Brothers Brewing Company doesn't get the press of......