GIFTS FOR DRINKS LOVERS
Here are some gift ideas for the drinkers and/or entertainers in your life:
Get someone started on their own epic journey to up to 33 stops on the new Laurel Highlands Pour Tour experience. The Laurel Highlands Visitors Bureau provides free passports, and the region’s makers of beer, wine, spirits, mead and hard cider supply stickers when you stop in for a drink. You collect the stickers to earn prizes. Take your gift recipient to their first stop, buy a round and enjoy their company. Get a passport at participating stops or via mail at www.laurelhighlands.org/plan/pour-tour.
Oak & Bond Coffee Co. is a McKees Rocks couple’s company that offers coffee aged in spirit and wine barrels (and roasted and packed in Washington County). The company uses two beer cans with resealable lids filled with 5 ounces of coffees in its gift boxes that are $24.99 plus $5 shipping on its website, oakandbondcoffee.com, and at some retail locations including Franklin & Mercer Co., 3507 Butler St., in Lawrenceville.
Give the gift of an epic, if vicarious, journey with a copy of “The Curious Bartender’s Whiskey Road Trip: A Coast to Coast Tour of the Most Exciting Whiskey Distilleries in the US, from Small-Scale Craft Operations to the Behemoths of
Bourbon” by Tristan Stephenson (Ryland Peters & Small, November 2019, $30). This most readable Brit visited some of America’s best distilleries, including Wigle Whiskey in Pittsburgh and Liberty Pole Spirits in Washington, Pa. At Barnes & Noble stores and online sources including Amazon.com.
State Fine Wines & Good Spirits stores rolled out a limited number of wine advent calendars — boxes containing 24 different 375-milliliter cans of assorted wines, one to be opened and removed for each day from Dec. 1 through Dec. 24. The boxes are $99 at the stores and at www.finewineandgoodspirits.com. There are other versions, such as one with an assortment of 24 187-milliliter bottles for $139.99, available online, including via Macy’s.
If you want to raise the bar, you could get your person — well, a bar. BDI makes a couple including the louvered Corridor Bar, which is available in different finishes starting at $2,499 at Pittsburgh-area retailers including Perlora on the South Side and in the Strip District.
412 City Cider is a collaboration between Threadbare Cider House & Meadery and 412 Food Rescue made with 3,500 pounds of wild crab apples and other wild apples foraged through 412 Food Rescue’s Hidden Harvest program. Cider sales raise awareness and funds ($2 per bottle) for 412 Food Rescue’s work. Available for $18 is a 750milliliter bottle at participating Giant Eagle Market District stores and Threadbare Cider House & Meadery on the North Side’s Spring Garden as well as at www.threadbarecider.com/product/city-cider.