It is a given that we all love craft beer, its why we do the magazine, and its why your reading the magazine, but what about those rare occasions when you want something else, something different? If that is the case, than the City of Brotherly Love has come through for you yet again! Recently a new liquor has been introduced into the market called Root. Created, or as I should say, re-created (read on) from the minds of the Philly based Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and Steven Grasse, Root takes a page from the history books and brings it to a shot glass or mixed drink near you. Intrigued? You should be, because Root is unlike anything you’ve ever tasted. It extends beyond your normal liqueur and cannot be defined as a vodka, schnapps, whiskey or bourbon. It’s is seemingly in a league of its own.

For our first Not Beer, I took a look at a very misunderstood alcohol, absinthe, which has been popping back up in more and more bars across the Philadelphia area. And what better example could we give than Philadelphia Distillng’s Vieux Carré.

La fée verte, l’atroce sorciere, Notre-Dame de l’oubli*; these are just a few of the bohemian nicknames tagged to one of the world’s most controversial liqueurs. I am of course referring to absinthe, which was once knowingly consumed and appreciated by artists and politicians alike including Vincent van Gogh, Oscar Wilde, William Howard Taft, and Theodore Roosevelt. So with such great esteem, how did this liqueur get banned during the early 1900s
throughout countries in Europe and the U.S. in 1912?