Bars & Breweries

It may be in the mid ’80s today, but it will be winter before we know it. So guess which patio I’m sitting on, enjoying the last of summer and a delightful peach, plum and nectarine infused martini?…

“Oh, we have to leave,” Brian says, not thirty seconds after stumbling into Swanky’s and finding me alone at the bar. “Immediately.” Brian is wearing a vintage Chicago Bears sweater, the white version of the blue one Mike Ditka sports in the now-infamous middle-finger photo. Swanky’s is a Green Pay…

Late last night, after hitting up a party where the only beverage being poured was vodka (a poison I avoid at all costs), I stopped for a glass of wine at one of my favorite neighborhood bars, a spot with a fantastic late-night happy hour and more than one rose…

Anika Zappe is on a tear. Yes, she still has her band, Hemi Cuda, although its last show is coming sometime this year. “Had to make more time for cocktology,” she says. Zappe has been Root Down’s bar manager since the restaurant opened in December 2008, and the bar is…

The cocktails that the original Mad Men drank are back. Classic cocktails are the new, new thing — and the fact is, these old standards generally taste better than all those contemporary cocktails. They taste more like alcohol and less like bananas, pomegranates and apples; they taste more sophisticated. Depending…

This is part two of Nancy Levine’s interview with Sean Kenyon, the bar manager at Steuben’s. You can read the first part of Levine’s interview with Kenyon here. What do you think of bartending school? I am not a believer in generic bartending school as a way to get into…

At 6 p.m. tonight, the original Cru Wine Bar, 1442 Larimer Street, is hosting an Australian wine tasting with grape guru Stephen Chambers, whose collection of fortified Australian wines will be paired with dishes from Cru exec chef, Erasmo Casiano. The four-course dinner, priced at $65 per person, excluding tax…

What famous Wyoming bar is serving me a Jack and Coke — amidst all the brands and dead heads?…

It seems oxymoronic to call a guy covered in tattoos a geek, but when it comes to cocktails, Sean Kenyon is the biggest geek in town. He has taken his engineering coursework and applied it to the engineering of cocktails, with infusion experimentation and enhancements behind the bar a daily…

What’s geekier than having a fantasy football draft party at your house? Having it at a bar! And we’ve got three great suggestions for places to go to get your fantasy football geekosity on bigtime. For starters, there’s any one of the Tavern Hospitality Group’s five Denver restaurants (Tavern Uptown,…

Stomp Them Grapes, central Denver’s only brew-at-home beer-and- wine store, is moving this week from 2563 15th Street to 4731 Lipan Street, near I-70. But the added driving distance will pay off in added inventory. “We’ve outgrown the space. We’re going from a miserable 860 square feet to 4,800 square…

While it’s still a few weeks before we bid a formal farewell to summer, the wine geeks at Lala’s Wine Bar + Pizzeria, 410 East Seventh Avenue, see no reason to wait, which, in part, explains why the restaurant and watering hole is hosting an end-of-summer pinot party tonight from…

The combination of liquor licenses and life’s errands has always struck me as clever. In college, I used to frequent a laundromat with a full bar; while grocery shopping, I’ve been known to crack open a near beer while slugging down the aisles. If I wanted to drink during a…

Padded bubble chairs, mild-mannered bartenders, cool crowds and an Enomatic Wine Serving System that allows oenophiles to taste eighteen wines by the ounce simply by swiping a card and pressing a button: say hello to the Living Room, the latest bar and restaurant to pop on Broadway — 1055 Broadway,…

Ky Belk doesn’t judge who’s coming in the door at Elway’s in Cherry Creek. His best tip was a thousand bucks one night from a guy wearing a Green Bay Packers jersey. And while he won’t say it, I’m sure that some of the flashiest people at the bar have…

Small plates, big flavors. Where am I drinking — and eating — and drinking?…

Tonight, from 6:30 to 9 p.m., the Wynkoop Brewery, 1634 18th Street, is hosting a beer and tequila tasting dinner with tequila honcho Modesta Catagena, an agave expert with Brown Forman, one of the largest wine and spirit companies in the country. To complement those half dozen tequilas and craft…

Who doesn’t love an occasional gin and tonic? During the summer in landlocked Denver, a gin and tonic makes me feel like part of the yachting set, like I should be wearing Docksiders and screaming, “Hoist the mainsail! Batten down the hatches!” The gin and tonic is an invention of…

The happy-hour taco deals are enough to make anyone happy here. And on Mondays, the deals run all night…

Every week, Drink of the Week columnist Nancy Levine gets behind the bar with a local mixologist. Now serving: Mike Henderson, bar manager at TAG. How did you get into bartending? After college, I got a job as a doorman at a bar called Paul’s Club in Madison, Wisconsin. I…

With the Great American Beer Festival (September 24-26) and the first ever Denver Beer Fest (September 18-27) both around the corner, the craft beer industry’s major trade group has released some mid-year statistics on what’s been brewing nationwide. The Brewers Association reports that craft brewers sold 4.2 million barrels of…

Guess where I’m drinking this behemoth margarita? Not the best margarita I’ve ever had, but definitely one of the largest…