May 17th, 2012... broadcast from the 10 Pound Bar inside The Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills, CA... our guests include Joel Stein, Time magazine columnist and author of the best-selling book, "Man Made." Also on the show, Eden Algie, the Global Brand Ambassador for The Macallan.

The "Quintessential Cocktail" featured on this show is THE JIMMY MAC, which was created by internationally renowned barman Jimmy Yeager, proprietor of Jimmy's Bar in Aspen. It was no small challenge to craft a great original cocktail for a world-class drinking establishment using one of the more complex whiskies in the world, but Jimmy just flat-out nailed it with this one. As delicious a Scotch drink as this professional boozehound has ever tasted:

ABOUT "HAPPY HOUR":

Over the years, people have often told me that I have a "face for radio"... and I, in turn, have kicked those people in the junk as hard as I could.

The third annual Manhattan Cocktail Classic wrapped on Tuesday, May 15 with a top-secret "Anti-Gala" for over 1000 of the spirits industry's movers and shakers - the last hurrah of New York's most spirited festival of the year, and a tongue-in-cheek antidote to the über-glitzy (and impossibly sold-out) opening night Gala held at the landmark New York Public Library. The festival's opening Gala was attended by over 3,000 well-heeled attendees, who sipped on nearly 30,000 hand-crafted cocktails served up by over 150 of the world's greatest bartenders. Other (quantifiable) highlights from the evening included 5,000 oysters, 5,000 meatball sliders, 300 pounds of charcuterie, 300 pounds of jumbo shrimp, 6 live jazz bands, 6 tons of ice, 5 barbers, 3 deejays, 3 popsicle carts, and 1 much-photographed taxidermied grizzly bear.

This epic event was but the opening bell of the five action-packed days of Classic festivities. With 67 other publicly ticketed events on offer, as well as a multi-day invitation-only trade conference, the 2012 Classic garnered over 8,000 attendees from both near and far afield. The aforementioned "Industry Invitational", headquartered at the stunning Andaz 5th Avenue Hotel, ran parallel to the publicly ticketed events, and on its own proffered over 100 panels, presentations, tastings, and activities over the course of the four-day conference.

"We're never content to just sit on our laurels," says festival founder and director Lesley Townsend. "The Industry Invitational was a mammoth undertaking this year - as was our NFC-enabled 'cocktail tracking' experiment at the Gala. But both were received with such unbridled enthusiasm...how could that not inspire us to keep chasing after bigger and better things in 2013? We have about a million and one ideas up our sleeve at any given moment; the hard part is just choosing which crazy ideas we're going to try to tackle next."

While the full reveal may not come until later, the Classic has indeed announced its dates for next year's festival: May 17 - 21, 2013. For more information, please visit the official website at www.manhattancocktailclassic.com.

They drink a lot of juice in China. We’re talking about multi-course dinners prepared by serious culinary professionals, paired with OJ. There’s tea everywhere you look, too, but you knew that. You probably didn’t know about the orange juice, and maybe you knew that wine consumption is picking up in China but unless you go there yourself you will not know how delightfully excellent it is to tie a buzz on with red flags flapping all around you.

SHANGHAI
I spent some time recently at The Langham Yangtze Boutique hotel in Shanghai, and for a few days I reveled in the wonderful and pleasant disconnect that exotic foreign travel provides.

Exhibit A: Orange juice at dinner. It’s quaint and if the juice were not such a breakfast staple in the United States it might make a lot of sense at dinner. I mean, wine is essentially grape juice…

I’m not going to dwell on orange juice because The Langham Yangtze Boutique, just a short walk from The Bund and that space-age looking bulbous needle building, has four stellar restaurants with nice wine lists, plus a cocktail-focused Art Deco bar.

You could spend a week eating at this place and never be asked to drink even a sip of OJ--unless you dine with a local. And even then they won’t care if you order a few glasses of wine because they know you can’t help yourself. You should offer the same tolerance to them when they enjoy their juice, perhaps with a hairy crab.

The first time I phoned, after one of those just-too-long pauses, he “wasn’t in.” So I left a brief, casual-yet-firm message on Mr. Fong’s voice mail. Eight frustrating days and four unreturned calls later, I called again and finally got someone on the line who identified herself as Mr. Fong’s assistant.

“He’s not available right now,” she hissed, her voice dripping with contempt. “You’ll have to leave your number.”

“I’ve left my number too many damn times already,” I counter-hissed, my patience wearing thinner than Kate Moss on a three-month protein diet.

“I’m sorry, who did you say you were with?”

“With? I’m not with anyone, and what difference does it...look, could you please just explain to me WHY Mr. Fong is unfailingly unavailable?”

“Mr. Fong is in a meeting.”

Sure, L.A. has its challenges. Homicidal traffic. Corrupt cops. High rent and earthquakes. Hordes of people who dress better than you. It all goes with the town. But nobody should have to take this kind of abuse.

“Mr. Fong,” I told his assistant, “is always in a meeting. Everyone in this damn town is always in a meeting. Tell me — because you seem to be very astute — is anybody in Los Angeles capable of...of...of doing anything without having a meeting about it first?”

“Sure,” she sneered. Click.